Open letter to Barb Waugh:
I am responding to your letter of July 23 criticizing the Dawson City Music Festival.
I, too, was born in the Yukon. I live in Dawson City.
I have been going to the Dawson City Music Festival since its debut in 1979.
You said, “The festival has become a mecca for underage drinking and all the broken bottles and vomit that go with it.”
Waugh, the Dawson City Music Festival happens once a year.
In your town, Whitehorse, there are many annual events that have become meccas for underage drinking.
Sourdough Rendezvous, the Native Hockey Tournament, Dustball, Mud Bog, Thunder on Ice, and the Frostbite Music Festival, to name a few.
You say, “In the washroom at Gertie’s there is a syringe container - I guess so the junkies can shoot up in comfort. Shame.”
Waugh, in Whitehorse there are people who give out free clean needles and crack pipes so the local junkies can shoot up and smoke crack in comfort. No such need for that in Dawson City as of yet.
And, somehow you have the nerve to say, “shame” on Gertie’s, the town of Dawson and the Dawson City Music Festival?
Many times, I have seen syringes, crack vials and coke flaps littering the streets and public bathrooms of Whitehorse.
Whitehorse is far, far more polluted with rampant partying, underage drinking and illegal cocaine use than Dawson City ever could be.
You say, “Perhaps the festival should find money for extra security to aid the RCMP and relocate the festival out of the city, as I’m sure the local residents aren’t crazy about this mess happening right in their front yards either.”
As a local Dawson resident I look forward to music fest every year.
I always open my home to festival people, my front yard is always full of much welcome festivalgoers.
Maybe you should help the RCMP relocate all those meccas for debauchery that happen so often in Whitehorse out of the city before you so heavily criticize the one weekend of the year called the Dawson City Music Festival.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Jon Wilkie
Dawson City