Klondikers

For readers of The Boys in the Boat and Against All Odds Join a ragtag group of misfits from Dawson City as they scrap to become the 1905 Stanley Cup champions and cement hockey as Canada’s national pastime An underdog hockey team traveled for three and a half weeks from Dawson City to Ottawa to play for the Stanley Cup in 1905. The Klondikers’ eagerness to make the journey, and the public’s enthusiastic response, revealed just how deeply, and how quickly, Canadians had fallen in love with hockey. After Governor General Stanley donated a championship trophy in 1893, new rinks appeared in big cities and small towns, leading to more players, teams, and leagues. And more fans. When Montreal challenged Winnipeg for the Cup in December 1896, supporters in both cities followed the play-by-play via telegraph updates. As the country escaped the Victorian era and entered a promising new century, a different nation was emerging. Canadians fell for hockey amid industrialization, urbanization, and shifting social and cultural attitudes. Class and race-based British ideals of amateurism attempted to fend off a more egalitarian professionalism. Ottawa star Weldy Young moved to the Yukon in 1899, and within a year was talking about a Cup challenge. With the help of Klondike businessman Joe Boyle, it finally happened six years later. Ottawa pounded the exhausted visitors, with “One-Eyed” Frank McGee scoring an astonishing 14 goals in one game. But there was no doubt hockey was now the national pastime.

The Klondikers was the name given to the people that heard about the gold that was to be found around what was to become, Dawson City. It was just sitting there, waiting to be picked up by anyone who could make the challenging journey to get there. This is the recreation of a journey that one farmer from the wheat growing areas of the prairies around Calgary, may have experienced to get to the gold! His journey would involve crossing the Rockies to the western seaboard, travelling up the coast and making landfall. Then the intrepid potential gold panner had to cross the Rockies on foot and brave blizzards and freezing cold. When the weather and the ice had melted, he then had to paddle his way down 800kms of river to the goldfields. Once he arrived that was the least of his problems.

Collecting 100-year-old lithographs attached to the inside lids of wooden cigar boxes is a gratifying hobby. This Jack Minor cigar box imitates a log house, not the typical venue for cigar makers who made plane wooden boxes for their cigar brands. Since the log house box is labelled Jack Miner, one presumes it was made in Canada because Jack Miner, from southwestern Ontario, was world-renowned as a Canadian conservationist banding thousands of migratory geese during his life. Acquired after Volume III of this four-volume series had gone to the printer, this rare cigar box is now displayed on the back cover of Volume III. Made, 1925, by B. R. Hahn, a member of the Isaak Walton League, Bay City, Michigan, this cigar maker wished to salute this Canadian with a custom-made cigar box. There are some 200 Isaak Walton League (see Volume II, page 81) Chapters across the U.S.A.

A richly woven insight into the Chilkoot Trail and the region straddling the American-Canadian border in the Alaska and British Columbia panhandles of the Pacific Northwest. Presented in three parts: a description of the trail as a classic example of modern Ecotourism with reference to management practices and user expectations, responses, and satisfaction; a history of the trail; an illustrated presentation of the authors' experience hiking the trail. Features a captivating narrative and 101 full colour photographs.

The popular image of the Klondike is of a rush of white, male adventurers who overcame great physical and geographical obstacles in their quest for gold. Young, white, single American men carried forward the ideals and structures of the western frontier. It was a man's world made respectable only after the turn of the century with the arrival of white, middle class women who miraculously swept out the corners of dirt and vice and 'civilized' the society. These impressions endure despite recent attempts to correct them. Gamblers and Dreamers tackles some of the myths about the history of the North in the era of the gold rush. Though many inhabitants came and went, Charlene Porsild focuses on the concept of community commitment to show that many put down roots. This in-depth study of Dawson City at the turn of the century reveals that the city had a cosmopolitan character, a stratified society, and a definite permanence. It examines the lives of First Nations peoples, miners and other labourers, professionals, merchants, dance hall performers and sex trade workers, providing fascinating detail about those who left homes and jobs to strike it rich in the last great gold rush of the nineteenth century. In the process, Gamblers and Dreamers puts a human face on this compelling period of history.

Gold fever sweeps the country as a twelve-year-old aspiring writer travels to the Yukon with her family and best friend, fighting natural disasters and a clever thief After traveling from San Francisco by steam ship, Hetty McKinley, her best friend, Alma, and their families prepare for the five-hundred-mile trek north to the gold fields of the Yukon. It’s only September, but the Arctic Circle is already frigid. As the two families, along with hundreds of other prospectors, camp out for the night near the outpost of Dyea, Hetty catches a glimpse of the legendary Chilkoot Pass, the narrow gap through which they’ll cross Alaska into Canada. But the next morning, Alma’s mother discovers that all their money is gone! A few days later, Hetty’s cherished locket, containing a photograph of her dead mother, disappears. More thefts soon follow, but these are the least of their problems. Soon, the group is battling typhoid, blizzards, and a terrifying avalanche. Will Hetty and her family and friends survive their journey to the top of the world? This ebook includes a historical afterword.

An event of international significance, the California gold rush created a more diverse, metropolitan society than the world had ever known. In Riches for All, leading scholars reexamine the gold rush, evaluating its trajectory and legacy within a global context of religion and race, economics, technology, law, and culture. The opportunity for instant wealth directly influenced a dynamic range of peoples, including Mormon military veterans, California Indian workers, both slave and free African Americans, Chinese village farmers, skilled Mexican miners, and Chilean merchants. Riches for All gives attention to the varying motivations and experiences of these groups and to their struggles with both racial and religious bigotry. Emphasizing gold rush social history, some contributors examine the roles and influence of women, workers, law-breakers, and law-enforcers. Others consider the long-term impact of this episode on California and the American West and on subsequent gold rushes in Pacific Rim countries and the Klondike. With lively and incisive strokes, these historians sketch the most broadly contextualized and nuanced portrait of the California gold rush to date.