Whitehorse

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Apparently the weather has been terrible in Whitehorse for the past couple of years. I've been told it's been cold and rainy a lot of the time. So far, I haven't had that experience. It's been quite nice aside from the little rain shower my first night here. And it was nice again today, if a bit chilly. For all the sunlight they get around here in the summer, it hasn't really warmed this area up much. But I can deal with that.



I was at the visitor centre just after they opened. I wanted to get a good start on the day, so I could visit as many of the stamp places for my Yukon Gold passport as I could today. Then I could decide whether to stay yet two more nights, or just one.



The visitor centre gave me their stamp and I also got some cool information. There is a desert south of here, on the way to Skagway. I'm stopping there for sure.



The next thing that was to be open (the visitor centre opened at 8, but everything else opened at 9:30 or 10) was the SS Klondike, one of the old sternwheelers that used to make up the water highway transportation fleet on the Yukon River. I had seen her sister ship, the SS Keno, in Dawson City. But this one had a tour involved. And with my parks pass I was going to get in for “free.”



I had to wait for a while longer because the tour time wasn't until 10, but I passed the time watching the same video I had watched in Dawson City somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where that was though. It may have been on the SS Keno.



After watching the video, I got ready for the tour. It was a fairly comprehensive tour. The Klondike is even better restored than the Keno was. There are lots more artefacts and the setup in the dining area is much more elaborate. The first-class passengers really went in style. Of course everyone ate the same food, which was included in the ticket price, and that was also quite fancy. Although I could easily have passed on the SS Klondike, since I could do it without laying out any cash, it was an interesting way to spend an hour and a half. And I got my stamp.



Then it was on to the local cultural centre. I had seen it on my arrival and it looked quite large and impressive. I couldn't wait to have a look. Of course, it was going to have to wait. It was closed. I thought it was just because it was Sunday, but when I talked with the visitor centre staff later, I was told they often just didn't open up. If they didn't feel like it, they wouldn't go in. That makes getting stamps in the passport booklet kind of difficult, but I guess they don't see it that way. I can have one more go before I leave and hope they are open. But I was told they apparently didn't feel like being open yesterday or Friday, either. So I guess I won't hold my breath. It's new, too, only being open since the 21^st of June. They are going to end up with nobody ever visiting with a work ethic like that. And it looks like a good deal of money has been spent on the centre, so that would be a shame.



So it was on to the McBride Museum of Yukon History. This looked like just a little museum, but it seemed to have more and more to it every time I turned around. The best part was the natural history portion. There were stuffed representatives of all the mammals in the Yukon, and quite a few birds as well. It's quite an impressive collection of stuffed animals.



Another thing I learned in that museum was that Pierre Berton actually came from Dawson City. He narrated a short documentary at the beginning of the museum.



There was also a gallery with some stories of individuals who helped shape the history of the Yukon from the gold rush until the present. Some were interesting, some were unbelievable, all show the unique character of the people of the north.



Near the McBride Museum was the Old Log Church Museum. It wasn't large, but it depicted the development of the church in the Yukon. And despite the bad reputation the church has earned for its role in wrecking the native peoples culture and populations, there were a lot of truly caring individuals who came to be missionaries. And they seemed to truly want to help the people here and to honour their cultures. Many even learned lots of the languages, so they could communicate with them. It was a bit enlightening.



Onward to the Museum of Transportation. This was more or less a yawner for me. It was all right, but I mostly didn't care too much about the place. There was a good piece on dog teams, and there was a lot of old vehicles that were modified for use in the north, but the best part about the place, aside from finishing and moving on, was the series of paintings they had in the entranceway. A young artist did a road trip from Winnipeg to Fairbanks, Alaska. Every 50 kilometres, she stopped and did a sketch that was later turned into a painting. It was an interesting set of 83 or 86 paintings. (I tried something like that for one of my calendars one year, but on a much smaller scale. I took a walk in Calgary and stopped every half hour and took a photo. Those became my series of photos for my calendar.)



But finish the transportation museum I did and then I headed next door to the Beringia Interpretive Centre. This one was fascinating. During the last ice age, the one that ended around 10000 years ago, much of the world's water was caught up in the glaciers and ice sheets. The ocean levels dropped 100 meters or more. This exposed the continental shelves, including the part that actually joins the Asian landmass to the North American landmass, the land bridge. This created the area now referred to as Beringia. And because of how mountains trap incoming moisture and drop it on one side, while leaving the other side dry, Beringia (surrounded on three sides by mountainous regions) was dry and arid, with no glaciation. Instead grassy steppes were widespread in the area. This allowed certain animals to flourish in the region. Thus there was the woolly mammoth, the giant beaver, a big lion and a giant bear, among others. They were all very large and ruled Beringia.



There was one thing that puzzled archaeologists, though. There was a large population of these animals and the scientists couldn't figure out how a region that is now so infertile could support all those animals. There is a possible answer now. The glaciation all around caused the rock dust called loess, ground up by all the ice sliding down mountains, was blown all over the Beringian land mass. Loess is very fertile and as it settled down over the land, combined with the tremendous amount of sunlight of the summer months, the land was able to grow enough vegetation to support the large animal populations.



These animals were known to live all over the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, including Siberia. The timing was such that as those animals were spreading across on the land bridge, which is thought to have been available for crossing from about 50 000 years ago until about 10 000 years ago, homo sapiens followed them. They came to prominence about 100 000 years ago. They spread to every habitat on the planet and it is thought that the land bridge was open at just the right time as they arrived to live in the northern habitats.



Then 10 000 years ago, the atmosphere warmed up, the ice melted, the oceans rose again, and the land bridge disappeared. But there were now people on the North American continent. Unfortunately, the animals were not able to adapt to the change in climate, and they declined and ultimately went extinct, or perhaps evolved into much smaller species. But homo sapiens was able to adapt and moved down the continent and into South America as well, continuing the spread to almost every place on Earth.



The interesting thing is that the First Nations have stories that tell of flooding, which would be associated with the melting of the glaciers. They also have stories of how giant animals were turned into smaller ones. They seem to have had some knowledge of all of this happening. The events were turned into myths and legends, but they seem likely to be based on fact.



Another story, told by an elder to some archaeologist, was about a giant creature (maybe an elephant, but I'm not sure) who died and turned to bones under a river. The archaeologist went out and started digging and found a mammoth skeleton at roughly where the elder's story suggested it would be found. It was another indication of myth being based on an ancient fact. It's all very suggestive, and fascinating.



The place was incredibly interesting to me. And with current climate change and the melting of the ice, the north is going to be undergoing a lot of change. It is very likely that, as the permafrost melts and erodes as a result, there will be a tremendous increase in fossils from the time and knowledge of what animals there were and what happened, as well as a more complete record of who came across the land bridge and when. It is going to be an interesting time over the next few decades.



After the Beringia Interpretive Centre, I had had enough of museums and such for one day. I had gotten six new stamps for my passport, but that was enough for one day. There was one more thing that sounded interesting though. That was the Frantic Follies, a revival of a Vaudeville show of old. It sounded like fun and I went to get a ticket. It would be my only chance as the show doesn't play on Mondays.



It was tremendous fun. The people putting on the show were all very talented. They danced, sang, told terrible jokes and re-enacted a couple of poems by Robert Service. They even did a decent rendition of Pachelbel's Canon. On handsaws. I had a good time. At the end, the players all signed the program I bought. I even had my photo taken with the women of the show. It's a bit blurry, but I think you can still tell I have now had my photo taken with a bevy of attractive Canadian women.

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Photos

SS Klondike
The SS Klondike is larger than the SS Keno in Dawson City. It, too, was restored and preserved and now sits on the shore in Whitehorse.

Opulent Quarters
The journey up the river could take up to a week. First-class passengers were treated to high class meals and had nice quarters. The lower-class passengers didn't fare too badly either, as they had the same food. They just didn't eat it in the dining room.

The Log Cabin Church
Early missionaries and priests set up functional but simple churches to minister to the people.

Giant Short-Faced Bear
The Beringia Interpretive Centre displays what researchers have learned about the flora and fauna of 10000 years ago in the unglaciated northern area now called Beringia. This giant bear is now extinct, but flourished in the far north thousands of years ago.

Scimitar Cat
This giant cat also lived in Beringia before the end of the last ice age.

Frantic Follies
Whitehorse has some continuing madcap entertainment. The Frantic Follies goes most nights during the summer months and features skits and dancing reminiscent of the old entertainment halls of the gold rush era.