On July 4th, Dawson City could hardly be seen from the Golfcourse Road on the far side of the Yukon River. The smoke, though a nuisance, actually helped to smother the fires south of town, and most of this smoke was imported from fires in Alaska. Photo by Dan Davidson

Welcome to the July 16, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the July 13 newsstand edition.

The Sun has only recently been updated on the web after a hiatus since the January 16/04 issue. At that time our volunteer webmaster, Richard Lawrence, finally ran out of time to keep this site current. 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.

Our July 27 newsstand edition is already in the stores and will be here in a week or so.

Smoke Doesn’t Dim the Glow of Canada’s Birthday

by Dan Davidson

Canada Day in Dawson City dawned a little cooler than it has been lately, and there was a touch of rain in the air for the dozen or so folks who made it to the Legion’s flag raising ceremony at 8 a.m. The rain was just a sprinkle though, and even the streets, which has been freshly watered to keep down the dust, were fairly dry by the time the parade began at 11:30.

The RCMP led the parade past the Sun offices at the Waterfront Building. Photo by Dan Davidson

The Mounties led off the parade as always, followed by the Legion, a host of bicycles, a few floats and a lot of fire engines, all of which made their way to Victory Gardens, beside the Museum.

With no council in Dawson at present, there was one less speech to hear this year, though Kelly Miller, recently appointed to the Trustee’s advisory council, did welcome the sizable crowd on the behalf of the town.

MLA Peter Jenkins held the political spotlight this year, celebrating the history of the region and its diverse peoples.

The rest of the day was full of events, some staged by Parks Canada and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, as well as an entire afternoon of the Yukon Goldpanning Championships in the North End of Town, and an evening lecture on Underwater Pinhole Photography at the Oddfellows Hall.

It was a busy Canada Day for Dawson City and perhaps just the beginning of a busy weekend.