The Yukon Order of Pioneers had all the flags this year. Photo by Dan Davidson

Welcome to the August 27, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the August 24 newsstand edition.

The Sun has only recently been updated on the web after a hiatus since the January 16/04 issue. We have been some time working out another way to get back online.

We have had many inquiries about the absence of current issues here, and we note that the site has had more than 1,000 hits since the last new posting.

As this new site develops over the next few months you will note changes in the format. We expect to be asking you to pay something in order to gain access to these files, and will be giving you an option of an issue-by-issue or yearly rate. In the time we have been online, since 1997, the site has had free access. We have tried asking for donations, and if the nearly 100,000 hits on the site had each generated a loonie, we’d be laughing right now, but it hasn’t worked out that way. We need to make enough money to pay for the existence of the site, and perhaps a bit more to help our bottom line.

Discovery Days is More than Just a Blast from the Past

by Dan Davidson

If you approach a Discovery Days weekend in Dawson City expecting to find only a celebration of the Klondike’s history, you will be either surprised or disappointed at what it has become in recent years. It’s not all Goldrush these days, even though that theme is never absent from these celebrations.

Take the parade for instance. Sure. there were floats celebrating the Stampede, but the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in remember a time before that event, and used their float to highlight that. When retired Anglican Archdeacon Ken Snider organized the Tribute to Dick North, he was thinking of all the post-Goldrush history that Dick has chronicled.

The Yukon Order of Pioneers has its view of Yukon history, but the Female Order of Pioneers mounted a colourful challenge to that in this year’s parade.

While history matters, no one could say that the ever popular mud-bog endurance test for trucks is following anything but its own tradition, or that the Golf Tournament is for anything but fun. As for the Discovery Days 10 km Run, who can say why these people do what they do?

Traditional Discovery Days fare does include the parade and yard awards, as well as the horticultural show, a fastball tournament and the Klondike Visitors Association’s annual Family Day, which actually happens a day or two before things get really busy here.

Now there’s the Authors of Eighth Writing Contest, an annual celebration of Dawson’s literary past, as well as the Yukon Riverside Arts Festival, in its fourth year of drawing attention to another type of talent.

While there was some threat of strike action looming, most of Parks Canada’s events continued as usual, with a couple of special interactive events scheduled over the weekend.

Should you have been too busy to cook over the weekend, you could at least count of breakfast at the curling club to take the edge off your hunger.

In addition, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture sponsored two theatrical events, the first a public peek at a work in progress called “Matriarchs of the Earth” at the Dänòja Zho Cultural Centre, and the second a live black light puppet and mask show presentation of the Goosluxxks or ‘Tree Monster’ story, using props that were created during the weekend at various workshops as part of the arts festival.

When you put it all together it makes for a very full weekend. It’s enough to make you wonder why anyone would not go to the place where it all started to celebrate the defining moments of modern Yukon history?