Uffish Thoughts: Berton Was a Dawson Success Story

by Dan Davidson

While Iíve been expecting to hear this news for some time, it still came as a shock when I heard of Pierre Bertonís death in the post office after school on Tuesday. Itís not that I knew him so terribly well, but more that heís been there as long as I can recall, and itís hard to imagine a publishing year without a new Berton book in it.

For people my age Berton was first of all a presence on television. I think I watched him on the Pierre Berton Show, doing all those celebrity interviews, before I saw him on Front

Berton signs books at Maximilian's on Front Street in 1998. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Page Challenge. I know I liked him better on his own show, and it was on that program that I caught my first glimpses of Dawson City, in a travel series based on the journey that would eventually become the book Drifting Home. I had no idea I would ever end up in the Yukon myself.

My first glimpse of Berton in the flesh was at the Whitehorse airport, where we were both waiting for a plane. It took me some time to connect this giant of a fellow with the little image on my television screen and the authorís photos on the backs of several of his history books, which I had begun to collect and read while in university.

It was my first realization that the bow ties, the comb-over and the obvious hairspray were part of an image that he could shed when he wanted to.

Not long after we moved to Dawson City, Berton bullied his CBC producers into bringing Front Page Challenge to the Yukon and we sat through the taping of two of three shows on those uncomfortable chairs at the Palace Grand.

I learned that opinions of his worth were divided here. Some thought him a great man and others a great nuisance. I was to learn myself that when you write stories with real people in them they will sometimes disagree with your observations, no matter how careful you may be.

What I also learned, though, was that that book I had read in Beaver Creek and that film I had first seen when we came through here in 1978 were important to the salvation of this town as something more than a dusty memory of another time. The book was Klondike, and it created an industry of gold rush research. The film was City of Gold, and it inspired Parks Canada to get involved here.

If Dawson City is a living historical community one of the reasons is that Pierre Berton has said it was so, and continued to say it on and off , as he noted in his last book, Prisoners of the North, in ìno fewer than twenty-sevenof his published works.

While my next door neighbour, John Gould, is one of Bertonís oldest chums, I didnít get to meet him personally until a dozen of us started this little labour of love called the Klondike Sun, and asked the man if he would contribute a little something to the first issue. He did that, and he let us extract Dawson visits from his two volumes of memoirs as well as from another book about the north which mentioned a Klondike visit. For our tenth anniversary in 1999 he wrote us another letter, banged out with two fingers on one of his electric typewriters; double spaced, and full of typos and revisions. I have it before me now.

By then I had met the man on several visits to the town during the 1990s, lunched with him and his wife when he came to open the Berton House Writersí Retreat in 1996, spent an afternoon in the hills when CBCís Life and Times made their tribute piece called ìPierre Berton: Canadaís Arrogant Icon.He claimed to love that title, but I wondered about it. If you really are good at something, is it arrogant to say so?

I had half a dozen Berton stories under my belt by the end of that decade, including his proposal that Dawson be awarded World Heritage Status, which I mentioned in this space last week. On that last visit in 1998 he was already a sick man, and I watched him pull himself together, putting on his PIERRE BERTON persona for the cameras and for the folks who came to get their books signed at Maximilianís. It occurred to me then that this BERTON fellow was probably the master showmanís greatest creation. In fact it was that icon, or ìbrandas we would call it now, that made him so instantly recognizable.

Historian Brian McKillop, who is writing Bertonís unauthorized (means he has a free hand) biography, put it all together for me last summer. Berton, he said, was a pioneer in Canadian mass culture, who had been first in our country with almost everything that we now take for granted. Documentaries on the History channel look like City of Gold. Good talk shows look and sound like the Pierre Berton Show. Rick Mercerís rants owe something to the radio debates he used to have every day with Charles Templeton. Those Canadian History t.v. spots are shorter versions of his attempts to dramatize our past while Canada, a Peopleís History is a much longer one. The ever growing stack of Canadian popular history books is a tribute to the success of his own stack. The Secret World of Og, which grade five here built a family party around tonight, is one of the best childrenís books you can find.

In every medium in which he tried his hand Berton was a success, and once he hit his stride in anything, he did it until he had said what he wanted to say.

In 1998 I asked why he kept it up. He fairly snorted.

ìWell I canít just lie down and watch television. Besides, itís not work anyway for me. I love it. And itís a lot better that shovelling gravel for 10 hours a day. like I used to do up here.

Prisoners, which was his last book, was finished in the spring, but he didnít stop working. He started writing a monthly column for the Globe and Mail. He held his annual fund raising bash for Berton House in the fall. He did a short book tour. He appeared as a octogenarian toker on Rick Mercerís Monday Report. He threatened to take up poetry. He kept on being PIERRE BERTON just as long as he could.

I wish it had been longer, but Iím grateful for what we had of him.

BENJ'S DAWSON BED

by Benj Gallander

The death of Pierre Berton made me think fondly of the time that I spent living at his childhood home in Dawson City, Yukon as the writer in retreat. It was a major departure, residing in that town of a few thousands people, far away from the hubbub of Toronto.

The home is full of history. Of course, there are traces of Pierre and his formation. If you shut your eyes, you can see Laura and her husband Frank giving little Pierre a bath in the kitchen as she besieges, ìHurry up before the water cools!

The bookshelves are laced with books featuring a Whoís Who of Canadiana, many who wrote in this house. I have no idea how many dreams flourished in that small space. How much of Andrew Piperís Lost Girls was conceived there? Was it based on the local ladies? Maybe Russell Smith's Young Men found its catalyst, as they helped out the lost girls? Perhaps a silken common thread led Sally Clarke to contemplate a sequel to ìMoo, perhaps laughing uproariously at the possibility of ìOink?

Authors' words emanate from a red loose-leaf binder. They write a letter - sometimes simple a missive - to the next writer, apprising the rookie of the vagaries of their new realm. Some focus of the creaky water heater that always seems to fire up around two twenty two in the morning, others of the friendly townsfolk, summer's constant light or winter's recurring dark, or the scary meeting point of Centigrade and Fahrenheit at -40. While the epistles vary, there is one major recurring theme: ìI cleaned the sheets,which they all seem to deem important to the next writer arriving to partake in northern hospitality.

Why is it that writers are so concerned about clean sheets? Is it knowledge of their personal sexual proclivities? Is it apprehension about other writers' appetites? Is it the legendary nature of Dawson, where the approaching frigid winter causes couples to ìfall together,while the thaw leads them to ìspring apart? Where men rut like moose for the attentions of a cow, their antlers poised as jutting fists and flying legs on the dance floor and in the alley. And women are protective of their mate, vigilant in warding off the overtures of the swarms, both real and perceived competition.

Living at the Berton House, one is a target for tourists. Every day in summer, starting at 8 a.m., the rumble of a humungous deep blue Holland Alaska bus coughs down the dusty roadway, passing Jack London's cabin, before dallying with motor running between the Robert Service cabin and ìmyabode. The tour guide's voice directs the puppet heads of the blue rinse set right, where they remain for about a minute, then left, where Pierre's place snares their interest for another thirty seconds or so. Then, like thunder, the motor throttles up, and the bus disappears, replaced soon after and throughout the day by vehicle cousins, who perform the same ballad. People rarely exit the vehicles, surmising perhaps that videos and cameras work best behind darkened, splotchy glass. If they could see more clearly, perhaps they might recognize the naked body of an author peering back, wondering which bird is in the gilded cage, before strutting, paisley white butt in tow, to his computer.

Upon his death, I showed pictures of Pierre to my son Caellum, now an energetic four-year old, who was attempting to crawl forward when he shared the house with me. I explained to him how the poster in his bedroom of Dawson and the ìProclamationof his ìArctic Circle Crossingwere a legacy of the largesse of this Canadian icon. We discussed how Pierre had written 50 books and Caellum exclaimed that he wanted to write too. That would have made Pierre happy.

(Ed. Note: Benj Gallander was a Berton House writer-in-residence a few summers ago.