Have you ever rolled out of your tent on a crisp Yukon blue-sky summer morning at 3°C and thought, “Thank God I’m not on the Acropolis!”
Connecting with the foundations of Western civilization is all very well, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.
For one Yukoner I know, that line was 40°C. That’s when Greek authorities -- worried about overcooked tourists -- shut down the Acropolis.
Long-time readers may recall my column on Forest Bathing. It turned out that Yukoners had been doing that hot TikTok trend for decades: walking, sitting and napping in the forest as a break from the ennui of day-to-day life.
Now it turns out there is another hot trend we Yukoners have been doing since long before Tiktok and, indeed, the internet itself: the Coolcation.
The internet is brimming with travel writers and influencers pumping up the idea of the "Cool Vacation." By most of their definitions, the Yukon summer can’t get hot enough for a trip here to be anything but a Coolcation.
We recently watched influencer Cecilia Blomdahl take her husband to Hamneskär Island, 8 kilometres off the Swedish coast. The trip started with a debate about whether it was warm enough to wear regular clothes instead of a survival suit.
Sounds like my last family picnic on Kusawa Lake.
You can see why this trend is happening. It’s been so hot in southern France in recent years they had to shut down nuclear reactors since they couldn’t cool them enough.
I myself ventured to Vietnam last summer and was foolish enough to climb a 500-step path to a mountain shrine with a wonderful view. It was soon somewhere around 35°C. I didn’t know I could drink that much Pocari Sweat, Asia’s favourite alternative to Gatorade.
Intense character building is supposed to happen on family outings in the Yukon, not summer vacations Outside.
The pesky Swedes are, as usual, ahead of us. VisitSweden.com highlights “Coolcationing in Sweden: 11 ways to stay refreshed.”
Yukon entrepreneurs should jump on the Coldcation opportunity. It is right in our sweet spot and has a much bigger target audience than many other marketing angles.
The Yukon government’s latest campaign is “The Yukon - it’s a little bit metal.” Despite some local carping that the slogan was “a little bit stupid,” it does appeal to the heavy metal and middle-aged metal nostalgist segments. We just need a tourist-and-bear video to go viral like that woman on Vancouver Island who scared off a cougar by playing Metallica’s Don’t Tread on Me on her phone.
But there are only so many headbangers out there. And if any of them want a Northern vacation they probably go to the annual Swedish summer metalfest in Sölvesborg, which regularly features the surviving members of bands such as Blue Öyster Cult and Def Leppard.
The Klondike Gold Rush and Robert Service don’t have the tourism star power they did fifty years ago. We tried slogans such as “The Magic and the Mystery” and “Larger than Life.” We attempted to lure French people from the Alps and Riviera with “Le Nord avec un grand N.”
None of these triggered an avalanche of tourists.
Despite the success of the Miners Museum in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, it is unlikely we can turn our Minto-Wolverine-Victoria Gold trifecta of bankrupt mine remediation projects into a compelling marketing campaign.
We could steal an idea from Yamal’s former Deputy Minister of Tourism and go with “If you’re afraid of the Yukon, you’re afraid of life.” This would be unique among tourism slogans, but we probably already have more than our fair market share of character-building masochists hoping to mountain bike the North Canol or solo climb Mount Impossible.
So why not try the Coolcation angle? One hundred percent of global tourists can suffer heatstroke. “The Yukon - we can guarantee it won’t be too hot!” could have legs.
The experience could begin in Vancouver. Instead of business class, Air North could work with Boeing’s air conditioning experts to create the world’s first “Cold Class.” It’s a gimmick that would get massive media coverage.
In Whitehorse, tourists could visit the Cold Chamber at the MacBride Museum, or maybe someone would open something like Stockholm’s Icebar. Cooled to a permanent -5°C, admission includes a drink in a glass made of ice as well as gloves and an “ice cape” so your pants don’t freeze to the seats.
We could also steal an idea from Chena, Alaska, and have an ice museum to keep the ice sculptures from Rendezvous alive all summer.
The costly and annoying melting permafrost slump underneath the Alaska Highway near the Takhini River could become a permafrost museum.
After that the possibilities are endless. Horizontal rain while kayaking in the wind on Bennett Lake. Glacial meltwater soaking you to the waist on creek crossings on the Slim West hike. Snow in August while hiking in the Tombstones. Rafting past glacial icebergs in July in Lowell Lake on the Alsek River.
Yukonhiking.ca could add “Average July temperature” to each hike’s info on their popular website, just so the tourists would know how cool they will be as they venture higher into the mountains.
If it works, we could even expand into Frigications for the winter season.
It’s worth a try. Even if it doesn’t work, it will at least make us feel trendier as we shiver in our summer down jackets on Yukon beaches.
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.
