Berton celebrated in Dawson City

by Dan Davidson

December 5, 2004

Pierre Berton's life and his impact on both Dawson City and individual citizens were the themes of a gathering at St. Paul's Anglican Church on Friday, December 3 at two o'clock in the afternoon. The congregation of about thirty individuals included the English 12 class from the Robert Service School.

John Gould remembers boyhood times with Pierre Berton. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Organized by Archdeacon Ken Snider (retired), the celebration began with a viewing of "City of Gold", Berton's 1957 National Film Board tribute to his home town, and the film that helped to trigger Parks Canada's interest in the place in the early 1960s.

After that came the memories, beginning with those of Berton's school chum John Gould. John had spent most of his young summers at his father's Nugget Hill Mine, but had known Berton from the time the latter started school, a year after Gould, who is a year older than Berton was.

John recalled winter coasting on streets that had no vehicles to beware of, and remembered outdoor skating on the Mill Pond, about where the new ball diamond was established a few years ago.

Berton was to maintain an association with the scouting movement all his life, and that began in Dawson City, where both he and John were in a Cub pack led by the Anglican minister, which met in the log building which had originally housed the CIBC.

Berton and Gould lived about two blocks apart in those days and spent many an afternoon at each others' homes. Both lived away from Dawson for a time in the 1930s and met again when Berton came north to work in the goldfields for two summers.

One thing they certainly both agreed on was the memory of free pop for kids on Discovery Day during the 1920s.

After that their association was more sporadic. They served in different branches of the military during the Second World War, and John didn't recall seeing him again until Berton was working at McLean's magazine in Toronto.

John Gould with Pierre Berton

"I hadn't seen him for a number of years by then and he was over six foot something, and what I remembered most was him as a youngster.

"From then on we saw each other quite often. He came in '62 during the Goldrush Festival and spent about two weeks here. We got together then and after that whenever he come to town he was up to the house."

Gould remembered taking Berton around the goldfields in 1996 to show him how much the old areas where he had once driven points into the ground had changed. In 1998 John and Pierre spent an afternoon in front of documentary cameras at Nugget Hill.

As for Berton's books, John's dad had read Berton's Klondike when it first came out, "and he thought it was very good."

Other people had a combination of personal and literary memories. Paula Hassard read a tribute from Michael Gates, who lived in Dawson for many years. Gates recalled being captured one night by the book Klondike, which he read from cover to cover.

On other occasions he interviewed Berton as part of an oral history project.

"His memories were clear and his observations were delightful. He gave his time willingly and without complaint."

These conversations extended over a number of visits from 1982 on.

"I was in awe of this man who was so busy but would take the time to talk."

Jon Magnusson, who spent much of the 1990s working on Goldrush Centennial projects noted that Berton had said in 1957 that he doubted he would ever get back to his home town again.

"As you see, he came back many times. He always advertised Dawson, and the Klondike Gold Rush a lot, especially when he did Front Page Challenge.

"The thing that meant a lot to him was when he actually got invited back by the people of Dawson, and that came to me very strongly when we did the decade of centennials and he was invited back several times for that. It did his heart well, he would say, to know that Dawsonites hadn't forgotten him."

Glenda Bolt and Jay Armitage both cited Berton and his work as having had a major influence on their career paths in historic interpretation. Klondike was their inspiration.

Armitage noted that he did a little quiz while reading Robert Service for the tourists last summer. He began by asking who had heard of Pierre Berton, whose childhood home is across the street. Eighty percent of the Canadians knew about him and most of those tourists who didn't know about him weren't from Canada.

Dick North picked up that theme, speaking of the excellence of Berton's historical work and of his eye for detail.

"He came into the Jack London Museum one time, and looking at the pictures on the wall, he said, 'You know I went to grade school with them.'

Berton's father was the mining recorder here for many years, and he trained the man who became his replacement. Years later that fellow was instrumental in helping North track down the slab of wood on which Jack London had inscribed his name on his goldrush cabin.

Artist Valerie Salez related how a two hour conversation with the man in the Eldorado Lounge one afternoon had stimulated her to get out and continue her education, find out what she had say as an artist and begin to say it. Her path to Berton began with The Secret World of Og, his classic children's story.

Retired school teacher and fabric artist Shirley Pennell recalled having Berton arrive at her door with Audrey McLaughlin and a CBC documentary crew in 1998. While getting a book signed at Maximilian's she had half-jokingly suggested to McLaughlin that she bring him along for tea, but had not really thought it would happen.

"We're here today to say farewell to a Yukoner," said MLA Peter Jenkins. "The goldrush of 1898 may have created Dawson, but it was Pierre Berton who basically put it on the map and it continues today.

"His way of writing captures you. You can't put his books down."

Jenkins met Berton first in the 1970s and later on in his capacity as mayor of Dawson.

"A lot of the initiatives that were made in Dawson City as regards the historical restoration - Pierre played an important role in the background."

This reporter spoke briefly of the importance of Pierre's contribution of Berton House and of the many references to Dawson and the north that are in twenty-seven of his fifty adult books, not to mention half a dozen of his adventures in history books for younger readers, of which there are a couple of dozen.

Archdeacon John Tyrrell noted that Berton, though agnostic in many religious matters and a self-proclaimed skeptic on the subject of an afterlife, had written a book, The Comfortable Pew, which the Anglican Church had spent many years coming to terms with. The Church, he said, owed Berton a debt.

In that spirit, he offered up Psalm 19, which he said "speaks to the human condition."

The event closed with a singing of all three verses of "O Canada", using the older version which would have been familiar to a young Pierre Berton. It seemed a fitting tribute to a man whose biographer plans to call his book Mister Canada.