Dawson City exists under a variety of unusual circumstances that shape the pattern of daily life in this northern community. Despite advances in transportation since the gold rush, remoteness combined with cold weather has always thrown a monkey wrench in the works. Two examples at Christmas that are clear in my memory.
The first was in early January 1997. The temperature had plummeted by New Year’s Eve to minus 50°C, and fell even further in the days that followed. No one was driving to or from Dawson and the usually reliable bus service was cancelled due to the extreme cold. Plane service was similarly cancelled for several days. On Jan. 5, the weather moderated and two planes were flown in to pick up the passengers who had been waiting for several days to get out of town, including the band that played for the New Year’s dance.
Another year, the temperature plummeted on Christmas Eve, and the mail truck was delayed by the cold and didn’t arrive until after the post office had closed for the day. Realizing that crucial Christmas packages were carried by that truck, the dedicated staff at the post office stayed at their stations and continued to sort the mail long into the night. They phoned us when our packages had been sorted, and we, like many others, were able to collect that final delivery before Santa arrived. My wife, Kathy, meanwhile whipped up a batch of cookies, which I took to the post office with me, in exchange for our packages.
Before the road to Dawson was completed around 1955, most products were delivered by the sternwheelers until freeze-up, after which the only reliable means of access was by a costly airplane flight from Whitehorse. In the early days, before reliable flight schedules were established, the only way to get to or from Dawson City was by the overland trail, a trip that often took five days to complete. Thus, Dawsonites came to refer to such places as Vancouver or Seattle as “Outside.” Living in Dawson in the winter was a time of isolation.
Dawsonites had to plan for Christmas well in advance of the event, if they were to receive those important Christmas gifts in time. Catalogues were consulted in mid-summer, orders were placed, and if things worked properly, the presents were delivered before freeze-up by one of the sternwheelers that used to ply the Yukon River between Dawson City and Whitehorse.
Tricia (Duncan) Sirss recalled the Christmas of 1950 in an article she submitted to the Moccasin Telegraph (Number 238, January 27, 2008, pages 11-13). In the days leading up to Christmas, she remembered the weather was extremely cold. Christmas parcels sent in the mail had piled up in Whitehorse as it was too cold to try flying them into Dawson. Remember too that at this time of year, the days were at their shortest, and there were only a few hours of daylight when a plane could safely land in Dawson.
The children were worried, she said, and the parents even more so, that critical presents would be delayed in Whitehorse, instead of being safely stored under the limbs of Christmas trees.
The cold wave first hit in late November. I checked the Dawson newspaper for that time. It was so cold that various public events were cancelled or postponed. Harry Gleaves, the operator of the Orpheum movie theatre announced that there would be no movies shown until the weather moderated.
Pat Callison, a bush pilot operating out of Dawson, had to cancel flights until the weather warmed up. The school was closed when the weather was unbearable, and there was a crucial wood shortage in town. Mind you, there was plenty of wood “up the Klondike,” waiting to be delivered, but it was too cold to haul it into town. Most unusual of all, a load of firewood being hauled up the hill to the cemetery above Dawson slid off the road and down the hillside. Since the firewood was essential for thawing ground to dig graves at the cemetery, interments were put on hold until another supply of fuel could be delivered.
Fortunately, world events played an important role in bringing in the Christmas deliveries that year. The Korean War had broken out just months before. North Korea, supported by its allies, the former Soviet Union and the Peoples’ Republic of China, invaded South Korea, which was supported by a United Nations force, lead by the United States.
Because Russia and the United States were separated by only a few miles of salt water in the Bering Strait, the U.S. was put on high alert. An auxiliary airbase was established in Whitehorse for the U.S. Air Force to serve as a staging point between the Lower ’48 and Alaska.
It was because of this, according to Sirrs, who was in first grade in Dawson that year, that Christmas was saved. All the gifts stockpiled in Whitehorse that contained toys, were set aside and loaded onto an American military airplane. Two young and brave (perhaps foolhardy) air force pilots flew an emergency flight into Dawson loaded with toys, and Christmas was saved.
I looked for an account of this in the newspapers, and found nothing, but the mercy flight of the two daring pilots may not have been sanctioned by the upper echelons of the military. I suspect, they wished to keep the flight a local secret to avoid repercussions for their actions.
The mercy flight got through to Dawson safely (the pilots were rewarded with much appreciated drinks), and the postal staff were at their stations ready to start sorting the gifts according to gender and age. According to Sirrs, every child got a gift for Christmas, perhaps not the one they were expecting, but a gift nevertheless, and the parents around town stayed up late to ensure that everything was safely delivered in time.
“Dad made several trips to the post office that long night,” she added (her father was Barrie Duncan, the town doctor). “He helped assign the gifts and turned our living room into something of a postal sub-station: parents living nearby picked up gifts for their children from our place.”
“We had spam and tinned apricots for Christmas dinner that year,” she added. “The rest of the Christmas mail orders, including turkeys, didn’t reach us until February.”
Having lived in Dawson through many cold winters, I appreciate the sentiment that the unpredictable arctic conditions can impose on a small northern community, and how a community can work together to make Christmas special despite the cold, the dark, and the isolation.
Michael Gates was the Yukon’s first Story Laureate from 2020 to 2023. His latest book, “Hollywood in the Klondike,” is now available in Whitehorse stores. You can contact him at msgates@northwestel.net
