Snowshoe maker - Paddy Jim shows Georgette McLeod how snowshoe webbing patterns are made. Photo by Dan Davidson

Welcome to the March 12, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the March 10 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.

Bridge Announcement Pleases Chamber

by Dan Davidson

Peter Jenkins, MLA for Klondike and Minister of Health, could have been forgiven a touch of self-satisfaction as he looked around the tables in the Downtown Hotel’s conference room on March 3 and prepared the audience for an announcement he’s been wanting to make for years.

There will be a bridge built across the Yukon River at Dawson City.

Peter Jenkins expands on a point during what was, for him, a most pleasurable public meeting. Photo by Dan Davidson

Only Jenkins didn’t make the announcement. He warmed up the audience of 45 or so with a recitation of the Yukon Party’s accomplishments so far and teased them with a list of capital works soon to be coming to the Klondike, including highway improvements and a projected multi-level health care facility. Then he turned the floor over to his cabinet colleague, Jim Kenyon, acting as Minister for Community Services while Glen Hart is attending the Arctic Winter Games.

“I’m here today,” Kenyon said, “to announce that our government will be constructing a bridge over the Yukon River at Dawson City.”

The room filled with members of the chamber of commerce, echoed with scattered applause as he said the words.

The $25 million capital project will be designed over the next year and in place by 2007, Kenyon said. The two lane highway with sidewalk will span 365 metres and replace the service currently offered by the aging George Black ferry in summer and an ice bridge in the winter.

Kenyon and Jenkins cited a number of factors in leading to the decision to build a bridge at this time.

• the need to have it in place before the ferry must be replaced at a cost of $6 $7 million

• rising insurance costs to cover the ferry since the September 11, 2001 attacks

• increasing costs of running the ferry in terms of fuel, wages and other costs

• environment damage being done annually to the Yukon River by the gravel ferry landings

• plans by the American government to extend the season on the Top of the World/Taylor Highway system as indicated by Governor Frank Murkowski

• possible reductions in the price of gasoline trucked over that route

• the potential for a longer tourist season, most likely beginning earlier, in concert with the Alaskans’ desire to move people off the cruise ships on the coast and increase tourism inland

While both Jenkins and Kenyon denied that there were any plans at this time to solve the problem of Dawson’s secondary sewage treatment by piping the effluent to a lagoon in West Dawson, Jenkins went on to say that the sequencing batch reactor plan currently envisioned for the community “can’t be justified” and that the existence of a bridge would open up other options for Dawson down the road.

While there is opposition to a bridge within the community, on both sides of the river, none of those people were at the chamber luncheon where the news was greeted with smiles and sighs of relief.

Chamber chair Martin Gehrig likened the feeling to winning an Oscar after 25 years of being unsuccessfully nominated. Presiding over a much larger crowd than usually attends a monthly chamber meeting, Gehrig invited the cabinet to make a announcement every month and bring out the people.

“I’d like to thank Peter for his persistence and dedication in working towards this brief for quite a few years,” said Jon Magnusson, chamber vice-chair. “I thank the government for looking toward the future of Dawson. This is going to help in all areas, I’m sure.”

Others at the meeting looked forward to the day when both hydro power, telephone service and high speed internet might be carried across the river over the bridge along with four wheeled traffic.

Elizabeth Connellan (Service Canada) lives most of her year in West Dawson, except when she can’t get there. She was philosophical about the announcement.

‘This decision today means that my five year old son and I will have the option of living at our own home 12 months out of the year. As much as I know that the bridge coming is going to forever change life across river, I thank you for this. I’m glad to see it.”

Opposition Parties React to Bridge Announcement

Extracted from a Whitehorse Star article by Jason Small

The Yukon River at Dawson City may have been promised by the Yukon Party during the 2002 territorial election. But Liberal Leader Pat Duncan says building this bridge should not be a top priority.

“There are a number of other urgent priorities that warrant the commitment of public funds prior to the construction of the bridge in Dawson,” she said in an interview with the Whitehorse Star on March 3.

She noted that sewage treatment plants need to be built in Dawson City, Carmacks and Ross River. As well, replacement bridges and schools are also needed throughout the territory.

NDP MLA Gary McRobb noted that Dawson City is still pumping raw sewage into the river. The federal government has ordered the community to build a treatment facility.

Duncan said this is not so much about what is best for the Yukon but what one politician wants.

“It’s about ego,” Duncan said, referring to Jenkins, her long-time rival. “It’s about a legacy for Mr. Jenkins and the Yukon Party. It’s not about what’s right for the Yukon.”

The Liberal leader added that not all Dawsonites want the bridge built, recognizing more important things are needed like the sewage facility.

McRobb contends the government has not yet made the business case for building the bridge.

“There’s far too many questions,” the New Democrat said in an interview this afternoon. McRobb noted that when the Yukon Party promised to build the bridge during the election campaign, it indicated it would do so when feasible.

The party’s platform book reads: “Plan the construction of a bridge at Dawson City to replace the current ferry system when it is economical to do so.”

McRobb doesn’t think it has been established yet that it is economical. He said there are also questions about how it will be financed.

Last fall, when Premier Dennis Fentie said the government would begin looking at business arrangements with private businesses, the construction of a bridge in Dawson was given as an example.