MOVEMENT
Tour a controversy
Home to one of only two self-sustaining rainbow trout populations in the Yukon, the area around McLean Lake is also prime territory for a concrete batch plant.
That’s part of why Marianne Darragh is banging her head against city red tape to turn the area into a park.
Darragh herself leads the upcoming tour of the lake, explaining its history and significance, and why she thinks it’s worth endless days of bureaucratic wrangling to save.
Thursday, 6 p.m. at McLean Lake. For more info, call the Yukon Conservation Society: 668-5678.
To get to McLean Lake, go onto Lobird Road, turn left at the fork onto McLean Lake Road, turn left again at the open area at the top of the hill where there’s a stop sign.
Sweat and dust, together at last
Those big city milksops may be able to run a marathon along paved boulevards and tree-lined avenues, but it takes a special kind of athlete (and footwear) to spend 42.195 kilometres on uneven, unpaved riverside trails.
In that sense, the upcoming Yukon River Trail Marathon more closely mimics the original marathon, when Greek soldier Pheidippides ran cross-country from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia.
After declaring, “We have won!” he is said to have died on the spot.
Hopefully, unlike Pheidippides, the hearts of Whitehorse competitors will continue to beat after they race along the Yukon River, Chadburn Lake, Schwatka Lake and the Hidden Lakes.
Not into full marathons? Try the half-marathon or the four-person relay.
Starts Sunday, 8:30 a.m. at the Rotary Peace Park.
Like a box social, but with more beer and mountain biking
It’s been months since a bunch of thrill seekers gathered on Mount Sima to churn up its surface doing something extreme.
The mountain is lonely.
The Sima Slamfest Mountain Bike Festival is back to provide an organized outlet for dozens of the Yukon’s most ardent mud-soaked gearheads.
Gear swaps, beer garden, skills camp, all-day cross-country events, biking film premiers and pancakes.
This weekend at Mount Sima.
More details and schedule available at www.cmbcyukon.ca/slamfest.html.
COMEDY
Imported rib-tickling
Usually manager of the Edmonton Comedy Factory, comedian Bob Angeli is taking a quick trip to the North.
And no trip North of 60 is complete without a Swede.
Wednesday night, Angeli appears at Coaster’s alongside Leif Skyving, the Stockholm-born Canadian comedy veteran.
Unlike 77 per cent of modern comedians, Skyving can do it all above the belt.
There are no f-bombs or scatology, but laughs will be coaxed nonetheless.
Opening acts by Whitehorse comedy regulars. Hosted by George Maratos.
Two weeks after, tune in once again for Coaster’s Comedy night, a fortnightly Wednesday night Coasters Bar and Grill institution.
Wednesday, 8 p.m. at Coaster’s Bar and Grill.
MUSIC
Some coke with your rum?
By day the Vancouver-based Whiskeydicks are highly trained classical musicians; by night they are viciously drunk Celt rockers.
Lead guitarist Ryan Enns is usually performing complicated classical guitar pieces in Vancouver concert halls. By comparison, the hard-rocking riffs of the Whiskeydicks are dead-simple.
“I’m usually strumming three chords most of the time, so I can do that no matter how drunk I get,” Enns told the News last July.
Generally, Celtic music focuses on either nauseating G-rated love stories or hard drinking. Luckily for everyone, the Whiskeydicks focus exclusively on the latter.
Hear squealing fiddles, heavy guitar and manic cello, all singing the praises of imbibing fire-hazard quantities of liquor.
The Whiskeydicks are playing this Saturday at Coaster’s Bar and Grill.
No swears
Before hip-hop became a global music phenomenon, it was a non-confrontational vehicle to rap about how fun it was to hang out with friends.
In the 1980s, artists like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five first introduced a form of music that took breaks and samples from funk records and transformed them into what would become an entirely new wave of musical understanding.
Hip-hop is now mainstream in almost every market across the planet, and the works of Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc have now been relegated to attic-stored cassette tapes across North America (“Hey, Huey Lewis and the News, what’s hanging?”).
Nevertheless, a good old nostalgia party is always a great way to forget about your dwindling youth/decaying looks.
The Old School Hip Hop Party is this Friday at Coaster’s Bar and Grill.
THEATRE
Are YOU afraid?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the classic 1962 ode to the psychological train wreck of unhappy marriage, is coming to Whitehorse’s Guild Hall this September.
George and Martha, a hard-drinking married couple mired in mutual disappointment and hatred, invite a young couple back to their apartment, where they are witness to an hours long, emotionally draining, ego-kicking power play.
When playing the part of George in the 1966 film version, legendary alcoholic Richard Burton says he had to remain sober on set to correctly capture the nuances of being drunk.
Interested in auditioning? Actors should contact Eric Epstein at ee@northwestel.net.
PLANES AND AUTOMOBILES
The wonders of fresh macadam
After more than a year, $15 million dollars and at least two botched explosions, Copper Ridge residents can finally shave precious seconds off their downtown commute.
Starting at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday, witness as government officials queue up behind microphones to somehow pay oral homage to a few hundred metres of road.
Adding flair to a piece of commute-reduction infrastructure is expected to test the limits of the territory’s most qualified political speechwriters.
Afterwards, spectators will be invited into a city bus for a guided tour of the extension.
Marvel at jet black asphalt.
Goggle at the un-adulterated perfection of newly painted dividing lines.
Stand dumbfounded at the spectacular marriage of forest with gently curving roadway.
The grand opening of the Hamilton Boulevard Extension is this Thursday at 9:15 a.m. The new road will be open to public traffic by 10:30 a.m.
For more information, call Brenda Wale at 1-800-661-0408 ext. 5941.
Squintacular
During the Second World War, Watson Lake used to be a key stopping for military aircraft on their way to do battle with the Japanese in the Pacific, or to supply Russia in her fight against Nazi Germany.
After the war, the aviation grandeur of Watson Lake continued when it became a joint Canadian-UK aircraft testing base.
Nowadays, Watson Lake is best known for a big northern lights simulator and the Signpost Forest.
Understandably, Lakers are always proud to blow on the dying embers of their aviation past.
This weekend catch the Watson Lake Air Display!
Saturday at the Watson Lake airport, planes arrive between noon and 1 p.m.
HISTORY
Spotty victory
Two thousand and one years ago this Monday, Roman Empire General Tiberius defeated the Dalmatians on the river Bathinus, in what is now modern day Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tiberius would go on to conquer the Alsatians, the Labradors, the Jack Russells and the Spaniels.
The one appointment we all must keep, and for which no time is set
At 4,844 years old, Prometheus, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, was the oldest known living thing on planet Earth.
In the 27th century BC, Egyptian builders had just put the finishing touches on the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, Mesoamericans had just started to plant and harvest corn and, in a rocky valley in what is now Eastern Nevada, Prometheus had just become a sapling.
On August 6, 1964, graduate student Donald R. Currey, oblivious to Prometheus’ five-millennia-long living streak, cut it down to study its rings.
Methusaleh, another Bristlecone pine, succeeded Prometheus as the oldest living thing on Earth.
The tree’s location is a closely guarded US Forest Service secret.
Got an event listing or something? Contact
Tristin Hopper at tristinh@yukon-news.com
