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1 week ago | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
Students from all over the territory gathered at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre on May 1 to share their heritage projects with the public. The 2025 Yukon/Stikine Regional Heritage Fair is part of a national program to encourage students to explore Canadian heritage in both official languages.
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1 week ago | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
The Whitehorse Tim Horton’s is a great place to meet for friendly conversation, and that’s where I ran into Harold Cowx having a coffee. I had recently interviewed him and recorded his memories of 62 years of trucking, mainly in the North. Judging by those he greeted while I was there, this must be one of his regular haunts.
Harold was born in Ontario 87 years ago. Along with a brother and a cousin, he enlisted in the Canadian army while the Korean conflict was raging.
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3 weeks ago | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
While a war was being waged in the trenches of France and Belgium between 1914 and 1918, the women who remained behind in the Yukon were doing their very best for the war effort. Every social function since the war began had been turned into a fund-raiser. By March of 1916, they had raised $62,000 ($1,200,000 in current value) in a territory with a population of perhaps 5,000.
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3 weeks ago | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
There is a group in Whitehorse known as Long Ago Yukon.
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1 month ago | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
The Yukon has a history of fostering colourful and interesting characters: Swiftwater Bill, Klondike Joe Boyle, George Carmack, Chief Isaac, and all the Colourful Five Per Cent characters featured by Yukon artist, Jim Robb. But not all have achieved the notoriety bestowed upon such interesting individuals I have mentioned above. Take Richard Andrew Fox, for example.
R.A. Fox was an American who came to the Yukon during the gold rush of 1898, and remained in Dawson for the next 52 years.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
ourcommunitynow.com | Michael Gates
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On December 1, 1894, a large crowd had assembled in George Snow’s opera house in Forty Mile, on the Yukon River, not far from today’s international boundary. Opera house implies more than this building had to offer. It was a two-storey log structure amid a jumble of other log shacks at the mouth of the Fortymile River. The days were shortening as the winter solstice approached, and the interior was dimly lit by candles and kerosene.
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
canadiangeographic.ca | Michael Gates
Le chef Isaac de la Première nation Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, dont le territoire traditionnel englobe la région du Klondike, a dénoncé l’impact de la ruée vers l’or sur son peuple, alors que les prospecteurs affluaient dans la région. Auparavant, le territoire regorgeait de gibier et son peuple était heureux et bien nourri. À l’arrivée de l’homme blanc, raconte le chef Isaac, son peuple a aidé à nourrir et à vêtir les nouveaux arrivants.
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
canadiangeographic.ca | Michael Gates
Panning gold during the Klondike Gold Rush, circa 1897-1908. (Library and Archives Canada/C-005389)Expand Image I wanted the gold, and I sought it,I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy – I fought it;I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got it –Came out with a fortune last fall, –Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,And somehow the gold isn’t all.
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Nov 12, 2023 | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
While in the Vancouver area recently, I visited a spectacular new archival collection in Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Library. This one had a direct link through three generations to the Klondike gold rush – and before. John Grieve Lind made his fateful decision to look for gold in the Yukon on a coin toss. In 1894, he arrived in the mining camp of Forty Mile, situated about 80 kilometres below the future site of Dawson City on the Yukon River.
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Nov 5, 2023 | 
yukon-news.com | Michael Gates
May 26, 1919 was marred by tragic news in Dawson City. On the front page of the Dawson Daily News was an article about an automobile accident on Hunker Creek that was responsible for the first vehicular death since automobiles were introduced to the Yukon. But even worse news was tucked away on the back page where four deaths were reported under “mysterious circumstances.” Within a few days, the death toll had risen to a dozen.
