North has gone Missing

by Dan Davidson

If you’re looking for Dick North Road in Dawson City you might have trouble finding it. Sometime in the last month since it was officially unveiled the sign has been stolen from its location on the Dome Road.

According to Norm Carlson, Dawson’s superintendent of public works, it’s not the only one to disappear and is part of a regular seasonal problem in the town, where lots of visitors seem to be souvenir hunters.

There’s a road named after Dick North in Dawson City, but its sign has gone missing. Photo by Dan Davidson

Eric Wilson, the current writer in residence at Berton House, says he’d be of two minds about it if it happened to a street named after him. On the one hand he’d been annoyed; on the other he’d think of it as almost a good thing, since it would mean he meant something to the person who took it. Wilson had been hoping to get a photograph of the sign to add to his collection of Dawson memorabilia but when he finally got there it was gone.

Carlson says the sign will be replaced.

As for Dick North, the man who loves a Yukon enigma, he was philosophical about the whole thing.

“It’s just another Yukon mystery,” he said. “Maybe it’s a bit of a compliment. After all, Jack London’s sign wasn’t stolen. Neither was Pierre Berton’s or Robert Service’s.”

Uffish Thoughts: A funny thing happened on the way to the bridge

by Dan Davidson

There has been talk about a bridge in Dawson City for years. While it was on the agenda at municipal elections, where it really had no place to be, for decades, I suspect that most people never really believed it would come to pass.

I sympathize with those who hold that it should have happened back in the 1960s when a mining company would have covered half the cost, I suspect it didn’t because the powers that be in the capital city really believed that this shrinking hamlet in the Klondike was going to dry up and blow away, and what would have been the point of having a bridge here then, eh?

Had there been a link to Clinton Creek instead of a tram line who knows what shape the American’s Taylor Highway would be in now. As it is, the route over our Top of the World trail feeds into that lesser road once past the border at Little Gold, and we have ample anecdotal evidence to tell us that the Taylor really isn’t suitable for the land yachts that are currently coming to the Klondike in increasing numbers.

It has been correctly reported that the actual number of RVs coming here hasn’t moved up a lot in recent years, but you have to balance that against the increased size of the vehicles that do come. Motorhomes and trailers of the past are puny things by comparison with what we see now.

Most of the business sector holds that a bridge can be the salvation of the town, pointing to an extended tourist season; increased access for Alaskans, our target market of choice; and reduced prices in everything from gasoline to retail goods.

Maybe. And maybe some of the enthusiasm may be blinding people to realities.

More vital for the community is probably the ability to expand into the area with the best hopes for residential lots, the ability to service those lots with utility and emergency services and, though I keep hearing it denied, a long term sewage treatment solution that will get us off the federal hook and out of that kind of press attention.

But, a funny thing is happening. Because so few people ever thought this bridge would come to pass, very few people ever expressed an opinion about it. The word from the capital was summed up by a succession of governments which looked at the issue and said it was a gamble not worth the taking. There seemed a scant chance that the line promoted for 20 years by the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce would ever become the official government line.

But it has.

All of a sudden the bridge is an actual possibility and a number of formerly silent citizens are starting to speak up. They don’t want their names used yet, but that may come. People who have seldom talked to me about anything of this sort have been letting drop little comments about the “stupid bridge”, the “waste of money”, etc., some using the word “folly” and putting the name of either the premier or the Klondike’s MLA in front of it.

These are not the same people who have always opposed the bridge, those who have their own website, hold meetings and circulate news fliers to counter the government spin on the project.

The funny thing that is happening on the way to the bridge is that a lot more people than I ever figured aren’t fond of the idea, at least not the way it’s being presented.

A lot of those who are in favour of a bridge want nothing to do with building it at the north end of Front Street, where the bridgehead reserve lands have been for decades. An unsolicited dozen or so bridge fans have told me they would prefer to see the crossing upstream, in location number 6 as identified on the government’s potential site maps.

The other funny thing is that the nay-sayers who are willing to look at alternatives tend to agree with this second group.

While the politicians are saying that no decision has been taken on the location yet, the radio and newspaper interviews with the engineers on the project have the pylons all but sunk at one of the two George Street crossing locations.

We haven’t actually been asked about this location as a town. Don’t point to the Design Phase Partnership group as a bona fide consultation, because most of the local members on the group will tell you it was never about that.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, this is actually a territorial issue, because Front Street is a territorial highway, and the bridge is a territorial bridge, and the government can do just as it pleases with either of them.

Some might even look to last spring’s removal of local government here and suggest that this government is prepared to do exactly as it pleases in Dawson City in more than just this case.

A debate on this and other issues would probably have been a feature of a public forum, had one followed the two days of open house information sessions last week. But there was not a public meeting, so we’ll never know, will we?