In August We Drove Up the Blunt Mountains to Dawson City

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-294
Author(s):  
Sarah K. Andersen
Keyword(s):  
2001 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Westgate ◽  
Shari J. Preece ◽  
Duane G. Froese ◽  
Robert C. Walter ◽  
Amanjit S. Sandhu ◽  
...  

AbstractThe late Cenozoic deposits of central Yukon contain numerous distal tephra beds, derived from vents in the Wrangell Mountains and Aleutian arc–Alaska Peninsula region. We use a few of these tephra beds to gain a better understanding on the timing of extensive Pleistocene glaciations that affected this area. Exposures at Fort Selkirk show that the Cordilleran Ice Sheet advanced close to the outer limit of glaciation about 1.5 myr ago. At the Midnight Dome Terrace, near Dawson City, exposed outwash gravel, aeolian sand, and loess, related to valley glaciers in the adjacent Ogilvie Mountains, are of the same age. Reid glacial deposits at Ash Bend on the Stewart River are older than oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 6 and likely of OIS 8 age, that is, about 250,000 yr B.P. Supporting evidence for this chronology comes from major peaks in the rates of terrigeneous sediment input into the Gulf of Alaska at 1.5 and 0.25 myr B.P.


2021 ◽  
pp. e20200048
Author(s):  
Robert Zacharias

Long dismissed as a “critical error” ( Booth 2016 ) and still capable of inciting “embarrassment palpable” ( Watson 2006 ) among scholars otherwise happy to emphasize the material contexts that inform the circulation of texts, literary tourism has recently become the focus of serious academic inquiry. Recent work has begun to disaggregate the various forms of literary tourist sites ( Fawcett and Cormack 2001 ), but continues to have a methodological gap surrounding the specifically literary aspects of the practice itself, and—with the notable exception of Green Gables (Squire 1992; Devereux 2001 )—has left Canada predictably unexamined. This essay begins with a brief introduction to literary tourism in Canada before moving into a comparative analysis of two National Historic Sites associated with Canadian literary authors: the Robert Service cabin in Dawson City, Yukon, and the John McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario. The sites offer a compelling comparison as the former homes of two of the best-known Canadian poets of the early twentieth century whose works have become popularly synonymous with two of Canada’s most heavily mythologized eras. The enduring popularity of poems like “The Cremation of Sam McGee” reflect not only Service’s central role in mythologizing Canada’s north but also a strategic “cultural commoditization” of the area’s gold rush heritage ( Jarvenpa 1994 ; Grace 2001 ), while McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” retains its status not only as the “most popular poem” of the First World War in Canada and beyond ( Fussell 2000 ), but as also as a primary example of the ideological function of Great War literature within Canada ( Holmes 2005 ; Gordon 2014 ). Although the two author houses may initially appear a study in contrasts, I draw on recent work in literary tourist studies to argue they are linked in their function as “materialized fictions” ( Hendrix 2008 ), or concrete interpretative frames that aim to offer tangible evidence of the Canadian myths their former inhabitants helped to fashion.


Author(s):  
Tricia L. Wurtz ◽  
Robert A. Ott

The most active period of timber harvesting in the history of Alaska’s interior occurred nearly a century ago (Roessler 1997). The beginning of this era was the year 1869, when steam-powered, stern-wheeled riverboats first operated on the Yukon River (Robe 1943). Gold was discovered in Alaska in the 40-Mile River area in 1886, a find that was overshadowed 10 years later by the discovery of gold in the Klondike, Yukon Territory. By 1898, Dawson City, Yukon Territory, was reported to have 12 sawmills producing a total of 12 million board feet of lumber annually (Naske and Slotnick 1987). Over the next 50 years, more than 250 different sternwheeled riverboats operated in the Yukon drainage, covering a large part of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory (Cohen 1982). This transportation system required large amounts of fuel. Woodcutters contracted with riverboat owners to provide stacked cordwood at the river’s edge, at a cost of $7.14 in 1901 (Fig. 18.1; Cohen 1982). Between 100 and 150 cords of wood were required to make the 1400-km round trip from the upper Yukon to Dawson City (Trimmer 1898). Over time, woodcutters moved inland from the rivers’ edges, significantly impacting the forest along many rivers of the Yukon drainage (Roessler 1997). The growth of the town of Fairbanks required wood for buildings and flumes as well as for fuel. In Fairbanks’s early days, all electrical generation was by wood fuel at the N.C. Company’s power plant. From the founding of the town in 1903 through the 1970s, white spruce harvested in the Fairbanks area was used exclusively by local sawmills, which produced small amounts of green and air-dried lumber. In 1984, however, the Alaska Primary Manufacturing Law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, removing the legal barrier to round-log export of timber harvested from State lands. During the late 1980s and 1990s, many high-quality logs from State and private land timber sales were exported, primarily to Pacific Rim countries. Declining markets ended this trend in the late 1990s, and there have been no significant exports since the market collapse.


Polar Record ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 9 (58) ◽  
pp. 18-19
Author(s):  
P. J. Carson

The ice bridges described in this article are constructed annually to replace the ferries which operate during the summer on the Yukon, Pelly and Stewart rivers in Yukon Territory. These river crossings are on the Mayo Road connecting Dawson City and Mayo with the Alaska Highway. The traffic on the road consists largely of heavy trucks carrying mining ores from the United Keno Hill, and other mines.


2019 ◽  
pp. 155-192
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald

This is the first extensive interview with the “Orpheus of nitrate,” Bill Morrison, whose forte is finding interesting imagery, often imagery with obvious film decay, in celluloid film archives, then fashioning this material into works of his own. Morrison has explored American archives—most often, the paper print collection in the Library of Congress and the Moving Image Research Collections housed at the University of South Carolina, which archive the outtakes of the newsreels Fox Movietone produced for theatrical exhibition between 1928 and 1963; and recently, a collection of early silent films unearthed in the permafrost in Dawson City, Canada. Morrison is particularly drawn to moments when obvious film decay seems related to the content or implications of the imagery that remains uncorrupted. Morrison’s breakthrough feature, Decasia (2002), like nearly all his subsequent works, was produced in collaboration with accomplished composer/musicians from around the world. Morrison’s films are to be understood as image-music experiences.


ARCTIC ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
R.S. MacNeish

... I shall attempt to summarize the various archaeological activities that occurred in the Arctic and subarctic during the last summer. ... Members of a party called Operation Hazen organized by the Defence Research Board as part of the Canadian program for the International Geophysical Year worked on archaeological remains on Ellesmere Island, discovering four sites of aboriginal structures. One, about twenty miles north of Lake Hazen; one on the shores of Lake Hazen; and two along the Ruggles River. Few artifacts were uncovered since they did no digging. These sites, however, are of considerable significance for not only are they the northernmost sites in the Canadian Arctic but they are situated along the hypothetical route of migration from the Canadian Arctic to Greenland. ... Dr. Jorgen Meldgaard of the National Museum of Denmark, returned to the Alarnerk Site in the Igloolik area on the Melville Peninsula after two season's absence. ... Most of these early pre-Dorset remains appear to belong to an early and late period having burins, micro-blades, side-blades, small end-blades, and other artifacts indicating a close relationship with both the Cape Denbigh Flint Complex of Alaska as well as with Sarqaq of Greenland. The sequential changes in his artifact types from these pre-Dorset remains closely parallel change of types from the four middle cultural phases from the Firth River in the Canadian Yukon. ... Mr. William E. Taylor of the National Museum of Canada undertook preliminary excavation and survey in the interior as well as the coast and adjacent islands of the northern part of the Ungava Peninsula. His activities in the interior were at Payne Lake where he found about forty house remains, of which he excavated four. All of these were Dorset with one having a slight overlay of Eskimo remains. On the coast at the estuary of the Payne River, he uncovered another Dorset site as well as one Dorset burial. ... At Sugluk, seven sites were investigated and five of these appear to be Dorset villages with semi-subterranean rectangular houses. My endeavours were in the southern part of the Yukon Territory between Johnsons Crossing, Kluane Lake, Dawson City, and Mayo. Ninety-seven sites were discovered as well as about 1,000 artifacts. The sites seem to belong to at least six different artifact complexes, four of which were below the volcanic ash layers dated about 300 A.D. Twenty-eight of the sites are micro-blade sites. In Alaska, Dr. Ivar Skarland of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Alaska, during the last part of the summer, investigated interior sites on which "Puma" projectile points have been found. Mr. Gordon Lowther, of the McCord Museum of McGill University of Montreal, undertook archaeological survey in the Old Crow Flats in the Yukon Territory. He was most successful in finding fourteen archaeological sites as well as places at which mammoth bones occurred. As yet, his materials have not been analysed ....


1996 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Heine ◽  
Kevin B. Wamsley
Keyword(s):  

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (8) ◽  
pp. 1011-1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Saka ◽  
K. Hayashi ◽  
M. Thomsen

Abstract. Substorm auroras observed on 17 January 1994 were localized within the field of view of an all-sky imager installed at Dawson City (DWS, 65.7° ILAT). In association with the enhancement of the anti-sunward convection in the polar cap and the ion flux enhancement in 1–6 keV at geosynchronous altitudes, a wave-like structure propagating equatorward to the onset latitudes with a high wave number in azimuth (m ~ 76, T ~ 120 s) was observed 30 min prior to the activation in the equatorward latitudes. The activation of the auroras in the equatorward latitudes and the subsequent poleward expansion lasted for approximately 6 min until a diffuse aurora formed. The auroras in the last 6 min were isolated and localized within the field of view of DWS, from 400 km west to 400 km east, and accompanied the magnetic pulse at the optical station. The magnetic pulse is interpreted by the propagating ionospheric current loop with a size comparable to the isolated auroras (~ 1000 km). We conclude that the wave-like structures in the pre-onset interval relate to the intrusion of the plasma-sheet plasmas from the tail by the convection. The plasmas from the tail eventually developed the ionospheric loop currents at the onset latitudes, in association with the triggering of the bead-like rippling of auroras and subsequent breaking out from the onset latitudes.


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