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Explore Canada's
Yukon.
Answer the Call of the Wild
by
Jerry W. Bird
There's
a land where the mountains are nameless
And the rivers all run God knows where
There are lives that are erring and aimless
And deaths that just hang by a hair.
There are hardships that nobody reckons.
There are valleys unpeopled and still.
here's a land - how it beckons and beckons
And I want to go back, and I will.
Robert
W. Service.
The lengendary
“Call of the Wild” is bred in the bones for some
of us who had the good fortune to have been born in Canada's
Yukon. My father Don Bird (right) left the Seattle,
Washington in the 30s for a post with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police at Dawson City in the far Klondike. Among
other adventures during that brief time, he had the
distinction of guarding the mad trapper, who was in custody
awaiting his fate. Perhaps Dad was inspired by the Yukon's
poet laureate, Robert Service, who captured its majesty and
lure in his 'Songs of a Sourdough, or it may have been Jack
London, who immortalized it in his sagas. In any event, he
met my mother Violet and shortly after my chapter began. I
was born in St Paul's Hospital on the banks ofthe Yukon
River at a quiet period in the territory's history.
At the time, our
family and friends from Dawson City, Yukon, considered the
Inside Passage a normal, once a year commute to Vancouver or
Seattle. Heading "outside" from Dawson City, via Skagway and
the Alaska Panhandle our ship would stop at the ports of
Juneau , Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, BC's Northern seaport.
The final stop en route to Vancouver was a native community
at Alert Bay, near Port Hardy on the Northern tip of the
biggest "Adventure Island"... the one named for Captain
Vancouver Continued.
Note: Details on
Whitehorse
Airport and
Yukon- Alaska Air and Ground Transportation to
come.
The
Inside Passage to Alaska
 While
most travelers approach the fabled 'Inside Passage' from
points due south, my first experience of this 1,200 mile
Marine Highway, was from Canada's Klondike, having plied the
Yukon River for four eventful days aboard the SS Casca, a
classic paddle-wheeler, chugging and puffing our way
upstream from Dawson City to Whitehorse. There, after an
overnight stay at our favourite lodging, the Regina Hotel
with its ornate lamps and Victorian furnishings, we boarded
the narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon Railway for a
day trip, detraining on a wooden platform at historic
Skagway. Continued
in Klondike
Memories
Above: Trestle on the White Pass &
Yukon Railway, which operated from Skagway, Alaska on the
North Pacific, to Whitehorse on the Yukon river.(below)
Relics of the old Yukon. Paddlewheelers with their barges
loaded with coal from Carmacks near the Five finger Rapids.
The
Alaska Highway
 Imagine
yourself a time traveler. The year
is
1942; the month,
February. Our whole world is gripped by total war. For the
moment, Axis forces hold the initiative, and for weeks
following the Pearl Harbor disaster, every ship leaving
North America's Pacific ports is threatened. The president's
directive is clear: Furnish a supply route to the network of
northern airfields - an overland route to supplement our air
and sea lanes; one secure from
attack."
Approval comes
swiftly, and the task begins, with end points set up by the
military at Dawson Creek, BC. and Big Delta, Alaska.
Overnight, the entire North mobilizes, as the rugged Trail
of '42 rivals the famous Trail of '98 in worldwide focus.
Those of us living in the Yukon at the time felt suddenly in
the forefront of the action. What some called North
America's greatest construction project since the Panama
Canal began as a marvel of mobility at the time. U.S.
Authorities combed the entire coast, seeking available water
transportation, creating a patchwork flotilla of yachts,
cargo vessels, tugs fish boats and barges.
From the video "Alaska
Highway: The 1st 50 years," by Jerry W. Bird
Continued.
More information on
Canada's Yukon:
http://www.touryukon.com/touryukon/english/home.htm
PR Services Yukon Information
Guides.
http://www.yukoninfo.com/
Visit the Yukon Beringia Interpretive
Centre. Take a step back in time to when the woolly mammoths
roamed the Yukon.: http://www.beringia.com/
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