Background
Arriving in Dawson

Week 2
Saturday 29th October 05   -5°C   
Had David from KIAC come and cook us supper this evening - wow how often does that happen. We had salmon from the river. It was delicious - even better knowing it had come from close by. I sent him a note to say thank you.

There was a Halloween Party at the Eldorado Hotel. I went to the thrift store to find a costume but had to be pretty quick as our guest was on his way round. There were lots of people at the church which is part of the thrift store and they were attending a funeral of one of the oldest members of the first nation community that had just died Annie Henry. When I arrived on Monday they were talking about her on the radio and how she had been an important member of the community. She was 101 and could remember when white people first started to come here.

 

After sifting through lots of clothes I found a batch of outrageous 80's ski outfits. 'The bright red one will go with the balaclava that Helen has lent me and the orange ski goggles I got in Vancouver' what a treat. Apparently it is ordinary attire here, people wouldn't really recognise that I was in fancy dress at all!

You will need Flash to view the animation to your right.

comment ....
Sunday 30th October 05   -5°C

Got home at 4am and decided that my alarm clock in my room needed to be turned back. As a consequence did something to the alarm itself which meant it kept going off every couple of hours - the next day I wasn't any use even with the extra hour. Loaded web material which seemed to take an age and then went off to bed as early as I could.

comment ....
Monday 31st October 05   -6°C

Tried to fix little niggles with web site and film the Klondike and the Yukon whilst they were still on the move. It seems to have gotten slightly warmer than the other day as the ice wasn't as dense. Watched films on Yukon gold and extraction developments and found some interesting stuff out. Read more ...

Because I had watched films about the different types of extraction methods I was much more aware of all the rusty old paraphernalia that litters the road side and what it was used for.

I came home to look at the information about the lead industry in the North Pennines UK to try and work a few things out about migrating communities. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why people left the area as conditions and poverty were pretty bad by the end of the C19th. Read more ...

Halloween and lots of children (and rather scary adult chefs called Floyd pictured here on the left) out trick and treating - but not that many of them came to the door??? We had tons of sweets. I bought a pretty big bag (which I proceeded to try out of course) and Erin made a fab pumpkin for the door but the hoards of sugar rush children we expected did not alas materialise. Instead we ate a lot of the sweets ourselves. This meant I then struggled to get to sleep - not a good idea all round on the eve of hallow!

comment ....
Tuesday 1st November 05   -7°C

Met up with the local historian John Gould to chat about gold and his family business. His father came over to Dawson in 1901 when he had finally raised enough money to make the journey to the Klondike. He worked on other people's claims until he found enough on one of the hills where he could stake a claim. In order to have enough water to wash the pay dirt he had to build a reservoir and ditches.

John remembers as a child spending winter in Dawson in a red log cabin that is still there on Harper Street.The cabin had electricity but no plumbing like a lot of Dawson at the time. He thought it was funny how his mother, originally from Boston who had been used to all the mod cons of the city spent ' the happiest years of her life in Dawson.' The summer was spent in a very basic cabin on the mine with his 5 brothers and sisters. As a consequence when John returned from his RAF duties in WWII, after marrying his wife in Ontario he returned to work with his father on the mine.
'You have independence being a miner. You can go to work at 4 am or 12 noon if you want. If something ain't going right you can take a break. My Dad would say 'let's go fishing' if something wasn't going too well. How many jobs can you do that with? You have to just sit it out and get frustrated when things go wrong. Usually if you walk away from something and come back it sorts itself out. You are your own boss being a miner. My father worked for 55 years, I worked for 55 years and my son has been working for 25 years on the mines.'
Thursday 3rd November 05   -12°C
A previous artist in residence from 2003 Betsy Rosenwald was giving a talk and opening her great new show Salvage at the Odd Gallery. Met up with some more people from the area and invited to Byrun's house for elevenses with Betsy, her hubby John and Lulu Keating, a film maker and critic (also another previous artist in residence).
Friday 4th November 05   -14°C

At Byrun's house the next day for home made scones, coffee and gossip.

Beautiful crisp and cold day with big sunshine so Betsy and John decided to go for a drive. Me and Lulu joined them for a bit of a slippy adventure into the snowy tracks and headed for the dome. John struggled to get the car up some of the slopes but we managed to get to a viewpoint and see the patchwork of mining works that dominates the valley floor just outside the town. There are loads of squiggly snaked heaps that look like icing sugar.

Headed back down the hill and towards the gold creeks and into the wilderness. There were lots of abandoned and derelict wooden shacks. We stopped to have a look at one of them and started a pack of dogs off howling like mad. How exciting it would be if it were wolves or coyotes we all thought but it was highly unlikely!! The shack was built on a hillside and so all the windows had turned into little screens of what was happening on the hill behind.

We drove back to Dawson and a huge bank of snow cloud had descended on the ol' place and all the sun had gone away. Back to darkness I guess.

Saturday 5th November 05   -26°C

Noone in Dawson usually celebrates Bonfire Night. A few people had heard about it but everybody at KIAC thought it would be a great idea for us to have a bit of a bash to welcome me, say goodbye to Erin and Dr Gerard who was the artist in residence before me. In the afternoon went to collect wood with Kerry, the mastermind behind the whole operation, and Matt. We bought Guy Fawkes an outfit and tried our best to get him the most dapper suit in town after having many laughs about the weird and wonderful things you could buy there.

We constructed what we thought was a pretty neat little bonfire from pallets we had dragged from Kerry's Dad's van (which was doing a bit of skidding around in the process of getting there) and then we had much joviality creating Mr Guy (especially since Matt had brought a bag of hair that he had kept from his previous hair cuts and was just waiting for a moment like this to construct an effigy with real hair!). Meanwhile I cooked far too much veggie and meat chilli and burnt it again in the process - God I'm a good en!!! At least it was a potluck where everybody brings a dish and most people round here, it would seem, are good cooks so I didn't worry too much.

Despite our wonderful bonfire building efforts we were told that we should have probably cut the pallets down into smaller pieces. David got the fire going as me and Kerry didn't know how to do it and men usually love to start fires anyway. A few speeches and poor Mister Guy was quickly burnt to a crisp - he took all of 10 seconds to dissolve in all that cheap polyester and newspaper but he did make a big whoosh of flame which was impressive for about 5 seconds.



The grizzly is spying the Newkey brown ale! Those geordies get everywhere whyay man!

Much eating and drinking continued and once all the kids had departed some of us nipped to the Pit for the last one of the evening. It had gotten a lot colder as the windows had frozen on the inside. On the way home at -26°C I spied a shooting star as I left the pub and the green swirls of the Northern Lights. It was freezing cold and my face was stinging like mad but it was worth it just to see that. h


I wasn't brave enough to go outside and take a picture of the Northern Lights once I got home so thought I would have a go at making some myself.

Sunday 6th November 05   -30°C


It was so cold that the windows froze on the inside.  

I went to catch one of the miners on Eldorado who was at the Museum but he had just gone before I got there. I went to the river to see whether it had frozen yet. There were large quantities of steam rising from the Klondike as it reached the Yukon.

 

 

 

comment ....