Residents of Skagway, Alaska and the Yukon are planning to join together at the international border in the mountains of the White Pass to celebrate friendship and promote good relations between the United States and Canada in the trying times the two countries face.
Wendy Anderson of Skagway is organizing the event being called Skagway and the Yukon: Friends and Neighbours.
Scheduled for 5 p.m. Yukon time on Saturday, July 5, it is being billed as a peaceful gathering of citizens lined up by the guardrail on the side of the South Klondike Highway carrying their countries’ flags and showing support for positive U.S.-Canada relations. Information circulated about the event notes that drone photos and video will be taken and shared on social media.
Anderson hopes that the photos taken at the border will show off the beautiful coastal mountains and demonstrate that Yukoners and Skagwegians are “really just in each-other's backyards.”
“I also ordered a big banner, eight-foot banner that says Skagway and the Yukon are friends and neighbours. So we'll be showing that in the visuals as well, because that's really the message we want to get across, is that we are friends and neighbours. We rely on one another,” she said.
She noted the history of cooperation stretches from trade up over the mountains between the Tlingit and Yukon First Nations thousands of years ago to today where assistance is offered when there are emergencies on the Klondike highways and residents of both countries attend each-other’s festivals and celebrations.
“We have always cooperated together and worked together in this part of the world. And that is the message that I want to get across, is that that's what's important right now, is that we as Northerners stick together.”
Anderson says she has spent her whole life living near the Canada-U.S. border, first in Bellingham, Washington and then in Skagway. She values cross-border friendships as a result. She has been promoting the event via a Facebook group and it has garnered some interest. A 28-seat shuttle bus has been arranged to leave Skagway and Anderson hopes it will be full. She notes that attendees coming from either side of the border will have to bring their passports as they will have to cross and return via their own country’s customs post.
The area picked out for the rally, roughly 23 highway kilometres from Skagway, has good-sized parking areas on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the border, but Anderson said attendees are encouraged to carpool and be mindful of the fact that the rally takes place alongside an active highway.
Along with promotional efforts in Skagway, Anderson said she and her co-organizers have been inviting friends from Whitehorse.
Yukoner Karen McColl was among those who Anderson contacted about the event. She says Anderson reached out based on a letter McColl wrote to the local governments of Skagway and Haines, Alaska in the spring. McColl said that in the letter she expressed her intention to boycott the Alaska communities over the political climate, tariffs and U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about making Canada the 51st state.
McColl said that events that bring people together such as the one planned for July 5 is exactly what she was hoping for when she announced her boycott. McColl said what’s being planned is positive and she likes the sentiment. She added that the intention of the boycott was never to punish individuals but to put pressure on the U.S. economy in light of the actions taken by its leaders.
While her boycott stands, McColl said that events like the July 5 rally as well as kind words she has received from over the border give her hope. She added that she would be much more likely to return to Alaska than elsewhere in the United States.
Anderson says she has observed less Canadians in Skagway this year than in years gone by.
McColl helped organize the “Canada Together” rally held in Whitehorse on March 27. She has also been promoting the July 5 friendship event via Facebook and encourages Yukoners to go out for it. She recognizes that driving up to the White Pass is “a bit of a mission” but hopes people will combine it with a hike or other activity in the Carcross area to participate.
Other events along the border on July 5 — 15 in all — are scheduled for communities in Ontario, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Washington.
Anderson caught wind of the planned July 5 rallies via connections she made organizing a “Hands Off” rally in Skagway in April. Rallies under the “Hands Off" banner took place at 1,200 locations across the United States on April 5 according to reporting from the BBC.
“Our focus in Skagway had been hands off Canada,” Anderson said, noting the event drew about 125 attendees.
The broader July 5 rallies have adopted the name “Elbows Up,” taken from what has become a common slogan in Canada amid Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats.
“Elbows up, basically to me, it means, you know, you stand for your own rights, you stand for your own self determination and you support others in their fight to do the same,” Anderson said.
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com
