How lakes Snafu and Tarfu got their names

Snafu and Tarfu are two lovely lakes just off the Atlin Road. Both are pleasant places for Yukoners seeking summer fun where the fish are jumping and living is easy.
The lakes are small, safe, fish-filled havens in the land of the big sky. If their names seem like military jargon, they are. The lakes were named by Canadian military personnel who built the Atlin Road in 1948.
Just a few years earlier, the Canadians had been the beneficiaries of a full dose of American military slang from the U.S. Corp. of Army Engineers who built the original Alaska Highway .
The story of how these two weird, wacky and wonderful words entered the vernacular is somewhat shrouded by the mists of time, but let me try and see if we can find their origin.
It seems that the word SNAFU was coined by American military personnel during the Second World War. They frequently found themselves caught in the verbal spider’s web called Murphy Law, which assumes that if something can go wrong, it will.

They also felt the effects of the law of unintended consequences, which means that no matter how well something is planned, something unplanned will happen that is not intended.
When that happens, the whole affair is likely to wind up as a SNAFU, an acronym for “Situation normal, all fouled up.” Naturally there are variations on the word “fouled”.
The words were likely the invention of two members of the California National Guard who had been ordered to active military duty in March 1941. While in training, Don Taylor and John Paup spent their time sending practice radio messages to each other.

Most radio communications used the international Morse code but had the disadvantage of being easily intercepted by the enemy. To overcome the problem, messages were scrambled or converted into five-letter code groups by a mechanical device. Example: The original “clear text” message might be: General Bootlikker requires more artillery support.
After being scrambled or converted, it would then be transmitted in five-letter groups, CSIAM OTILA IHTDA SNAFU DWXBR POOPO, and later unscrambled.
One day, Don and John made a game of creating sentences from meaningless coded groups. One code was SNAFU - Situation normal, all f——- up! After the soldiers coined the term in the early days of the war, major publications had a field day.

SNAFU seems to have been used first in a military context in the September 1941 edition of a publication called American Notes and Queries. Then, in 1942, Time Magazine wrote a lengthy thesis about the effects of a wartime bureaucracy on the civilian population and blamed all the foul-ups on one word - SNAFU. Time wrote: “ U.S. citizens knew that gasoline rationing and rubber requisitioning were snafu. For months, the people and their leaders had pussyfooted around the twin horrors. There were orders and counter-orders. All were different.
“The people, numb with bewilderment, choked with wrath, gave up. Snafu is a good, grumbling military precision word that meant when the supply ship arrived; the stuff on the bottom should have been on top.

“Snafu is when radio receiving sets arrived at a jungle camp without batteries. Snafu is when a Seattle regiment is shipped to New York for embarkation, and an identical New York regiment is shipped to the Pacific Coast .” Here you might ask if SNAFU is a noun or a verb. A noun is the Yukon lake. A verb is what happens when you get there. But I digress. It did not take long for SNAFU to have a big brother, a word describing far dastardly foul-ups than mere SNAFU. When things got really messy, the word TARFU took over. It meant “Things are really fouled up.” Probably beyond repair. Later, Fubar made an appearance, but because it meant that the situation was way beyond repair, it didn’t gain the cache of SNAFU or TARFU which became world-wide celebrities in the mid-‘40s. The words quickly caught on with military personnel everywhere. During World War II, America ’s entire industrial might was geared to winning the war - and so was the entertainment industry. In 1942, Frank Capra, chairman of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit who later directed blockbuster films such as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, was in charge of producing “entertaining” training films for the troops. Capra came up with the clever idea for a series of cartoons featuring a bungling little soldier named Private SNAFU. Capra wanted the SNAFU films to be first class, so he invited bids from the major Hollywood cartoon studios. Walt Disney Studios placed a bid, but the contract to produce the series was won by Warner Brothers.

The first cartoon was called “Coming! Snafu!” and introduced American G.I.s to Private SNAFU.
In the second cartoon, called ‘Gripes’, Private SNAFU pays for the foul-ups he’s caused by getting ordered on KP duty, which often meant peeling potatoes. After some complaining in rhyme, SNAFU is visited by the ‘Technical Fairy First Class’, a cigar-chomping, tiny flying wise-guy. “I hoid ya sayin’ dat everything stank, how you’d run things better if you had more rank, so as Technical Fairy, I gotta good notion, ta give ya a chance pal, here’s a promotion!” Private SNAFU becomes the head of everything but manages to make things worse. His voice of Private SNAFU is that of Mel Blanc who was also the voice of Bugs Bunny and Barney Rubble. The rhyming script is the work of writer, Ted Geisel.

Years later, Geisel’s special style of rhyming schemes would earn him world acclaim in books, movies and TV specials as Dr. Suess. So the next time you visit the Yukon lakes called Snafu and Tarfu along the Atlin Road , think of these names as significant members of the North American Language Hall of Fame.

Bob Erlam of the Whitehorse Star

Bob Erlam belongs in the Yukon’s colourful five percent. As one time owner of the Whitehorse star, he has to be. With Bob Erlam, the ideas just kept coming. More often than not, they were ideas for offbeat stories with a strange twist.
Bob and his wife Rusty arrived in the Yukon in 1947. He had been in the Canadian Army overseas during the Second World War. On a whim, he and Rusty decided to move to the Yukon. Whitehorse was a real frontier town then, and they shared a two-bedroom shack with two other couples in downtown Whitehorse. No running water, of course.
Bob got odd jobs - mainly as a handyman and electrician. The couple left the Yukon in 1957, but returned in the early 60s. Bob’s newspaper career began when he drew a cartoon featuring a dispute between a local resident and Yukon Electric and left it tacked to the door of the newspaper. The Star owner, Harry Boyle ran the cartoon on the front page. Bob became hooked on newspapers though his wife Rusty was the real writer in the family. Both were employed by Boyle at the Star.
In 1963, Bob arrived at work one day to find a note from Boyle saying he was now in charge since Harry was going back to school to study law. Bob became the publisher and then in 1967, the Erlam’s bought the Star. Bob always carried his camera and shot many scenes of Yukon life during his 35 years as publisher of the paper.
In 1965, he was contracted by Time Magazine to take photos of Senator Robert Kennedy’s climb of the Yukon's Mount Kennedy,named for his brother, the late U.S. president. Bob was also a jack of all trades - fixing the printing presses and keeping the spartan offices of the Star on Main Street operational - often with duct tape. The one thing he didn’t do, though, was a lot of writing. He said he couldn’t spell so anything attributed to him as a writer had been checked by Rusty.
Bob always thought of the Star as the opposition to the government. He said it was the job of the newspaper to criticize and expose wrongdoing, and Bob was a champion of independent thinking.
Once, as the debate raged over whether parking meters should be located on Main Street, the City hired a meter maid to police the system and hand out tickets. Bob hired an anti-meter maid to feed nearly expired meters. That story made international headlines.
The Erlams sold the Whitehorse Star to Jackie Pierce in 2002. Bob Erlam, a true Yukon pioneer, passed away on March 26, 2009 at the age of 92.

Female journalist on the Yukon frontier

Though much has been written over the years, the first news accounts from the Klondike came from a pioneering journalist. In the spring of 1898, the Toronto Globe newspaper got caught up in the incredible story unfolding in the Yukon Territory. The Globe would be the first to print first-hand descriptions as told by one of Canada's first women journalists.
Faith Fenton had already made a name for herself in eastern Canada, but this was to be different. She was going to the Klondike.
Faith teamed up with the Victoria Order of Nurses and the newly formed Yukon Field Force to travel from Toronto to Vancouver, and up the Inside Passage to the Stikine River in northern B.C. Then they would travel over the tough land route from Telegraph Creek to Teslin Lake, down the Teslin River to the Yukon River, and then on to Dawson City.
Faith wrote in great detail about the gold seekers who chose this all-Canada inland route over the route through Alaska.
She vividly described the human chain of more than 5000 desperate men carrying all their possessions on wagons pulled by dogs, horses, mules or - in many cases - by themselves. She told of fights on the trail. Luckily, the men of the Field Force were able to ensure the safety of her party.
A picture of Faith Fenton, somewhere in the wilds of Stikine valley, shows her sitting on a log in front of a tent in a wide-brimmed top hat, a stiff flowing dress, holding a kitten she had brought with her. It looked like she was ready for a walk in the park, except for the big boots she was wearing.
When the party finally reached Fort Selkirk on the Yukon river, it was late August. The land already had a look of fall about it as they boarded a paddlewheeler for the final 200-mile journey to Dawson. Here, Faith Fenton could scarcely believe the seething humanity in this newly established city of gold. A telegraph line was being built but, for the time-being, Faith filed her stories by mail - up the Yukon River by steamer, back down over the Chilkoot Pass and on to the outside world. The accounts she produced for the Globe were an extensive, detailed picture of the unbelievable events occuring in the Klondike. Her stories took eastern Canada by storm. The Globe featured each on its front page.
In December, the first of many fires took hold of the downtown sections of Dawson. Faith reported in great detail how the clapboard buildings, forty in all, were consumed. Most of downtown Dawson City lay in ruins, as the prospect of rebuilding during the coldest months of the year gripped the already beleaguered citizens of this frontier town.

One incident, during the winter of 1899, showed Faith's zest for getting a good story out quickly. In this case, too quickly. Four men were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. Since the mail run was leaving before the hanging was scheduled, Faith wrote the story and sent it by special dispatch with a packer she hired. The packer left Dawson on the trail to Whitehorse.

The story was on its way. But the hanging wasn't. It was postponed. A frantic Faith Fenton convinced her friends with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police to chase down the mail packer and retrieve the story. Once again, the mounties got their man, to the relief of this faithful frontier journalist. The next time, Faith wrote about the difficulties in filing stories from the frozen north.

Faith stayed in the Klondike long enough to see the coming of the telegraph line. She filed story after story during those tumultuous years. She stayed on long enough to marry the Yukon Medical Officer of Health, Dr. John Brown, in 1900. The couple left the Yukon for good in 1906. Back in Toronto, Faith continued her journalistic career. In January 1936, Faith Fenton died, bringing to a close a unique chapter in the saga of the Klondike Gold Rush.

The Klondike Newsman Stroller White

The Yukon has had more than its share of characters. But perhaps the most observant was a lifelong newspaper man who covered the Yukon for 17 years, and whose columns depicted a slice of life which would otherwise be forgotten.
It seems when he was born in Ohio in 1859, Elmer J. White was born a newspaper man. His first paper was the Gainsville News in Florida. Later, he moved to Washington State, where he was living when news of the Klondike gold strike hit the outside world.
He joined the rush with his wife Josie and small daughter, ending up working for the Skagway News. It was here, as an Associated Press correspondent, that he wrote the accounts of Soapy Smith's gang, and covered the shoot-out on the waterfront between Soapy and Frank Reid.
In 1899, White went to Dawson, where he covered all manner of local stories but, more importantly, began a column called 'The Stroller by E.J. White'. He left Dawson for Whitehorse in 1904 to edit the Whitehorse Star and carry on the traditions of telling all, or making up the truth - whichever came first.
When he wrote of blue snow and iceworms that chirped lustily at 70 below, the Smithsonian Institute, that prestigious scientific body, wrote asking for more information. It was Stroller White who encouraged Robert Service to publish his poems - much to Service's undying gratitude.
He sold the Star in 1916 and moved to southern Alaska, where he was elected to the state House of Representatives. White's view of journalism is best summed up with a few lines from a long letter he wrote to his nephew, who was about to become a journalist.
White wrote: "In the first place Walter, the newspaper profession in a sense is the ruination of all who engage in it as no other calling gives so much insight into human nature. No-one, my dear nephew, who would succeed as a newspaper man, will ever allow sympathy or sentiment to interfere with the publication of news. If it comes to your attention that your beloved pastor or Sunday school teacher was seen emerging from the back window of the house of parishioner who is away from town on business at 2 a.m., do not allow his second calling to prevent the publication of the story. If he has no respect for his calling, why should you have? Use adjectives freely in writing of the ladies. While Mrs. Arabelle Bourbon was homely enough to stop a mill that grinds mud for a brickyard, your uncle always referred to her as "the beautiful, charming and accomplished daughter of our distinguished and blue-blooded fellow citizen, Colonel Bourbon."
White continued "Always boost the patrons of your paper. If Mr. and Mrs. Pat Cassiday give a party and every male goes home with his nose peeled and his eyes bunged shut, refer to it as a swell society party. It will please the Cassidys and other people will see the brace of humour". That letter, written in January of 1906, captured in part the essence of E.J. Stroller White, northern newspaper man who died on September 28, 1930.

The riverboat A.J. Goddard

The AJ Goddard
In the summer of 2009, underwater archaeologists found a time capsule of the Klondike Gold Rush: a sunken Yukon River stern-wheeler so well-preserved that researchers can document the last minutes of the five-man crew as well as their life aboard the primitive cargo-hauler.
When divers reached the sunken ship in about thirty feet of water in Lake Lebarge, the door of the steam boiler was open, and slightly charred wood found inside suggested the crew was trying to build up a head of steam, perhaps to break loose from an ice jam as the ship sank in a storm. An ax remained on the deck after one crew member hefted it to chop the rope used to tow a barge, a sign of their frantic attempts to escape the ice floe.
The Goddard was not alone but it was the first of perhaps as many as 300 steamboats in the Yukon in the heyday of river transport. Few remain today and none ply the river anymore. But in 1898, river was the only way to get from the coast to the Klondike in a hurry. And there was money to be made especially if you were first in line and first in Dawson. Thus it was that a mechanical engineer from Iowa sailed into the history books by being the first to navigate a steamboat from Lake Bennett to Dawson City.
AJ Goddard and his wife packed parts for two steamboats over the White pass during the winter of 1897-98 when gold crazed souls headed for the goldfields near Dawson.
The iron sternwheeler named the AJ Goddard and her sister ship the F.H. Kilbourne were built in San Francisco in 1897 and shipped in pieces to Skagway, hauled inland and assembled at the tent city at Lake Bennett. The boat christened the AJ Goddard was forty feet long, about one quarter the length of the SS Klondike and weighed in at 15 tons - about the size of fifteen one-ton pickups.
The AJ Goddard left Lake Bennett on May 29, 1898, ran Miles Canyon and the notorious Whitehorse rapids and arrived in Dawson on June 21. Passengers on the boat included the famed Oatley singing sisters. Actually another so-called steamboat named the Bellingham beat the Goddard into Dawson by ten days, but it was - according to many - too small to be called a real steamboat. Engineer, AJ Goddard’s feat was recognized by the rough and tumble crowd in Skagway who realized he had done something special and held a civic parade in his honour.
Goddard's determination paid off as he established the first steamboat link between the gold fields and the Pacific coast.
For three years, the A.J. Goddard served as a ferry for stampeders on their way to Dawson City. The craft was self-sufficient and it had its own repair shop, a blacksmith's forge, and a workbench. She operated on the river until October 1901 when she was wrecked in a storm on Lake Lebarge with the loss of the Captain, Charles McDonald, cook Fay Ransome, and fireman John Thompson. They were buried nearby by the North-West Mounted Police after their bodies washed ashore in 1902.
As the vessel sank two other men, the engineer Stockfedt and crewman Snyder hung onto the pilothouse. They were spotted by a trapper camping nearby who came to their rescue.
Today, the AJ Goddard rests peacefully on the bottom of Lake Lebarge. The boat is largely intact. A piece of land on the Northeast side of the Lake is called Goddard Point.

The history of signs on the Alaska Highway

The Alaska Highway was famous for many things, most notably, signs. During the heyday of construction, they were everywhere. If anyone doubted who owned the Alaska Highway during the war, a huge sign on the outskirts of Dawson Creek erased all doubt. It read: "Alaska Highway, U.S. Army Patrol Station, STOP."
Here travellers had to pick up a pass from the American commander, authorizing travel on the road. Signs like "Suicide Hill, Prepare to Meet thy God" were descriptive in the extreme, yet proved a suitable warning to drivers who heeded the message, or regretted the outcome.
On a mud-strewn section, somewhere near Fort Nelson in 1942, some enterprising soldiers posted a series of signs advertising Burma Shave, the men's choice of shaving cream during the Second World War.

Nailed to a tree somewhere in the boreal forests of the Yukon, near a makeshift platform that held 45-gallon drums filled with fuel, were hand-painted signs on broken boards advertising "the lowest price; best gas in town, no smoking on platform, gas spilled on ground"
Less jovial were the red signs, trimmed with a black border, in the fifties that drew drivers' attention to the location of serious accidents. "One killed here" or "three killed here" were grim reminders to slow down and drive with care.

There was Carl Lindley's famous 1942 sign at Watson Lake, pointing the way to Danville, Illinois. Lindley's story of his homesick homage to his hometown is a well known part of highway history.
His makeshift work was a harbinger of bigger things to come. Today, Watson Lake is known throughout North America as the place to advertise your city, your business, or your favourite bistro.

Less well known, perhaps, is the story of how the famed 'Mile 0' sign at Dawson Creek came to be. Like Lindley's Danville sign, a minor accident started it all. In 1946, a car ran into a four-foot-high post that marked the start of the highway. Back then, the post was located at the corner of 8th Street and Alaska Avenue, and looked the same as all the others that marked every mile throughout the length of the highway - a square, white wooden post with a black top.
The Junior Chamber of Commerce saw the accident, not as an ill-fated incident, but rather a reason for creative celebration, and proposed an elaborate post be placed in the town centre.
On Christmas day in 1946, the 10-foot-high pillar was placed smack in the middle of downtown Dawson Creek. It was not the precise geographic origin of the Alaska Highway, but in the years to come, it would not matter. Every traveller wanted a photograph to mark the beginning of their own adventure over the Alaska Highway, and they had to visit the town centre to get it.

In Alaska, both Fairbanks and Big Delta erected mileposts similar to the one in Dawson Creek, and each claimed to be the official end of the Alaska Highway. At Big Delta, the sign read; "Delta Junction, Crossroads of Alaska, Pop 817, Mile 1422-end of the Alaska Highway."
In Fairbanks, the sign fixed the total mileage at 1523.

Not just American towns were competing for some highway glory. In Edmonton, Alberta's Highway 2 featured a big colourful sign, complete with mountains and forests and, in bold letters claimed: "Start, Alaska Highway, Edmonton, Alberta." Today, there are road-side signs advertising highway lodges and gas stations that multiplied like rabbits throughout the early days, when enterprising souls discovered that the highway was destined to become one of the great tourist attractions of the world.

And you can see how this world famous highway was built in a spectacular one hour video produced by Sturgeon Sound and narrated by Les McLaughlin. The video features stunning historical footage and present day scenes to take the viewer on a journey of discovery through the great Pacific Northwest. To obtain a copy of this video called THE ALASKA HIGHWAY STORY, A VIDEO HISTORY simply email your request to:

Tom McLaughlin

betmcl@shaw.ca

Champagne - what a name for a Yukon cowboy town

If there ever was a cowboy town in the Yukon, Champagne was it. After all, the community had horses, fences, log buildings like the American west had in the movies - and most importantly - a rodeo.
In the 1950s, Champagne's summer rodeo days were the place to be. I fondly recall my older brother Fred loading up the Chevy with a picnic basket and we’d be off to the rodeo.
No doubt famous Yukoner Alex Van Bibber was there - riding the broncos – as he had all his life. The Chambers boys would be there too. Like everyone else, they were competing for something more than prize money. They were competing for the honour of being the best Yukon cowboy. On the rodeo grounds, us kids of the fifties could saviour the smell frying onions ready to be laced on hefty hamburgers. These were the smells of an earlier time that mingled with genuine horse sweat, dust and other delights of a rodeo ground.
Our annual family summer trip to Champagne in the fifties over the narrow dusty Alaska Highway was a thing of beauty. I only asked brother Fred if we were there yet, because I wanted to be there as fast as possible. What kid wouldn’t?
Champagne has been associated with horses and the cowboy lifestyle since the gold rush when Jack Dalton established his famed Dalton Trail from Haines, Alaska to the Klondike.
Dalton wintered his horses at Champagne as well as at his permanent station on the Haines Road called Dalton Post. Champagne also figured in a famous Klondike cattle drive.
In 1897, a cowboy named Gordon Bounds drove a herd of about forty cattle to Dawson. He was likely working for Jack Dalton at the time.
When Bounds and his men reached this location with their unruly herd, they thought the worst of their cattle drive to the Klondike was over. So, it is said, they broke open a case of French Champagne and had a rousing party.
But the importance of the stopping place on the Dezadeash River was just beginning. In 1902, Shorty Chambers built a road house and trading post here to serve the prospectors who were heading for the new mining country around Silver City and Burwash Landing on Lake Kluane, the largest lake in the Yukon.
Then in 1942, when the American military was building the Alaska Highway, they followed the old Kluane Wagon road from Whitehorse to Champagne and briefly set up an operations centre for construction north of Whitehorse. At that time, the Alaska Highway ran right through the community.
But in the 1990s, the realignment of the highway meant that it would bypass some distance northeast of the community. So today, if you want to visit Champagne, you can only get there over the old Alaska Highway and the even older Kluane Wagon road. Which is a good thing and
hopefully when you go there’ll be a rodeo underway.

Cowichan sweaters

Interesting to watch Canada's Olympic athletes decked out in beautiful Cowichan sweaters during the closing ceremonies. It was a big deal for us kids back in the 50s to own such a sweater. I wish I still had mine. Here is it proudly worn as I sit on the hood of another treasure - my brother's 1953 Chevy. A four door beauty.

Hank Karr

Hank Karr released his second DVD called Long Gone to the Yukon in the Old Fire Hall in Whitehorse. Hank's many fans were on hand to watch selected cuts from the 14 song DVD on the big screen and see his band, Hank Karr and Company perform live. Long time friends, Wayne Smyth on drums, Tom Barnaby on bass and Merv Bales on guitar make up the band. Three years ago, Hank released the first ever full album of songs in DVD format called Hank Karr's Yukon Book of Memories. The latest release was filmed in widescreen HD.

Birds of a feather

Earlier this year when there was still a lot of snow in the snowy valley, though not nearly as much as two years ago when nearly 450cms covered the land, I was out feeding the Chickadees. Not that they need feeding. They take care of themselves very well. But they do like a little company once in a while along with a treat of store bought seed to complement their wild diet. So this is what you get when you walk in the woods on a snowy day.

The Man Who Cremated Sam McGee

"Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee," said Robert Service in his famed story of a man cremated in the boiler of a river boat called the Alice May. Of course, we know the real McGee wasn’t cremated nor was he from Tennessee. But who was cremated on the marge of Lake Lebarge? And by whom? And why? Well, the cremated man's real name seems lost in the mists of more than a hundrd bygone years. It wasn't Sam McGee, but whomever it was - he was cremated by Leonard Sugden.
Doctor Leonard Sugden had first come north on a whaling vessel and provided medical services to residents of Juneau. In 1897, he crossed the Chilkoot Pass and wintered at Marsh Lake where he built a cabin and worked as a doctor for the Northwest Mounted Police. When the real Klondike gold rush began in 1898, he helped pilot boats through Miles Canyon and the White Horse Rapids.
He was still working for the NWMP in the winter of 1899-1900 in Whitehorse when he was told to strap on the snowshoes, harness up the dogs and mush to a cabin on Lake Lebarge to check on the well-being of a miner, ill with scurvy. Sugden found the man – dead. There was no way to bury him in the frozen ground. Thus began a true tale of the Yukon trails which became stranger as the years rolled by.
At Lebarge, Dr. Sugden loaded the corpse on his sleigh and hauled it to the police post. Legend has it that the Mounties then used the newly operating telegraph line to contact the dead man’s family in Tennessee for permission to cremate him. Maybe! True though is that a steamboat, the Olive May was frozen in for the winter at Tagish. There, the crew lit the boiler fire and helped Sugden stuff in the miner. When Robert Service heard the story in 1906, his future and that of the real Sam McGee, a miner who lived in Whitehorse, was set. The Cremation of Sam McGee made Service famous.
Robert Service, the young bank clerk, had arrived in Whitehorse in 1904. Somewhat a loner and a dreamer, Service later wrote that he heard the tale of the cremation at a Whitehorse party. He had gone to the party quite by accident because he was not invited. But he stayed long enough to hear a "fat man from Dawson" tell the story of a cremation with a strange conclusion. Service knew this was the key to his future as a writer of verse. He left the party and hiked the frozen trails around Whitehorse while he created the poem in his mind. A line struck.
"There are strange things done neath the midnight sun."
By morning, as he returned to his room on the second floor of the Bank of Commerce building at Second Avenue and Main street, the poem was complete.
And there sat Sam looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door,
It's fine in here but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm.
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I’ve been warm.Service sent "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and some other Yukon poems including the Shooting of Dan McGrew to Briggs, the Methodist Publishing House in Toronto. He had decided to pay $100, his Christmas bank bonus, to have a book of poems published. To his amazement, Briggs wrote back offering to publish the book and royalties. The poem was the beginning of a million-dollar word empire belonging to the Yukon bank clerk.
Although Service always said that the poem was fiction, it was based on people and things that he actually saw. The "Alice May" was the sternwheeler the "Olive May" that belonged to the "B.L. and K." company and had originally been named for the wife and daughter of Albert Kerry Sr.
There is no doubt Service knew both Dr. Sugden and Sam McGee who had an account in the Bank of Commerce. William Samuel McGee was born in Lindsay, Ontario, near Peterborough in 1868. He came to the Yukon in 1898 and staked claims in the Whitehorse copper belt. According to McGee’s family, Service did talk to Sam about using his name and received permission. In 1907 the publication of the poem, along with the others contained in The Songs of a Sourdough, made both Service and McGee famous. Eventually, McGee and his wife Ruth moved to Beiseker, Alberta near Calgary where he died in 1940.
But what of the doctor who inspired the poem? Leonard Sugden stayed in the Yukon. He married in 1906 and moved to the Kluane area where he mined, hunted big game and bought a state of the art Prizma movie camera. With it in 1915, he produced a film called The Lure of Alaska which played to rave reviews across America and Europe.
The film includes scenes from the Seattle harbour, up the coast of Alaska and features scenes of Juneau, Sitka, Skagway, a midnight baseball game in Dawson City, a caribou herd swimming in the river, and icebergs calving from glaciers. The movie also includes scenes of Sugden piloting a raft through the Whitehorse Rapids. About the movie, the New York Times in 1917 wrote: "Seldom have nature pictures been such a combination of thrills and wild beauty. They are a notable accomplishment of the camera and Dr. Sugden’s nerve."
Sugden toured with his film and drew large audiences. However, it is thought that much of the film’s footage is now lost. An original black and white 11 by 17-inch poster for use on the motion picture lecture circuit and talks delivered by Leonard S. Sugden to accompany the film today sells for nearly 13 hundred dollars at auction.
The poster includes a portrait drawing of Sugden in a fur cap above the title of the lecture and a drawing of Alaskan totem poles. The poster is valuable because it advertizes one of the earliest full-length documentary films produced about the north, preceding Robert Flaherty's famous Nanook of the North by several years.
Unfortunately, Dr. Sugden’s life of adventure ended suddenly in 1923 when he fell off a barge into the Stewart River near Mayo and drowned. But the lives of Robert William Service, William Samuel McGee and Leonard S. Sugden remain forever inextricably connected

Snafu and Tarfu Lakes in the Yukon

Snafu and Tarfu are two lakes just off the Atlin road. Both are pleasant places for summer fun where the fish are jumping and living is easy. If the names seem like military jargon, they are. They were named by Canadian military personnel who built the Atlin road in 1948.
It seems that the word SNAFU was coined during the Second World War by American military personnel who found themselves caught in the verbal web called Murphy Law which assumes that if something can go wrong it will. When that happens the whole affair is likely to wind up as a SNAFU, an acronym for "situation normal, all fouled up." Naturally there are variations on the word "fouled."
The words were probably the invention of two members of the California National Guard in March 1941. While in training, the two soldiers spent their time sending practice radio messages to each other. Most radio communications used the international Morse code but could be intercepted by the enemy. To overcome this, messages were scrambled or converted into five letter code groups by a mechanical device.
One day, the soldiers made a game of creating sentences from meaningless coded groups. One code was SNAFU - Situation normal, all fouled- up! In 1942, Time Magazine wrote an article about the effects of the wartime bureaucracy on the civilian population and called all the foul-ups - SNAFU.
You might wonder if SNAFU is a noun or a verb. A noun is the Yukon lake. A verb is what happens when you get there. The words quickly caught on with military personnel everywhere. In 1942, Frank Capra, chairman of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit and who later directed blockbuster films such as "It's a Wonderful Life," was in charge of producing "entertaining" training films for the American troops.
Capra came up with the clever idea for a series of cartoons featuring a bungling little soldier named Private Snafu. The voice of Private Snafu in the cartoons is that of Mel Blanc who was also the voice of Bugs Bunny. The rhyming script is the work writer, Ted Geisel.
Years later Geisel’s special style of rhyming schemes would earn him world acclaim in books, movies and TV specials as Dr. Suess. Yep - THE Dr. Suess. So the next time you visit the Yukon lakes called Snafu and Tarfu, think of these names as significant members of the North American language hall of fame.

Hank Karr's DVD release party

My friend and partner Hank Karr is releasing his new DVD called Long Gone to the Yukon in Whitehorse on March 29th at 6.30pm in the Old Fire Hall on Front Street.
When I first met Hank Karr back in 1965, he was the hottest property to hit the Yukon since sourdough pancakes and fresh oranges. He was a ball of musical energy. This Saskatchewan-born son of the soil could deliver any song with ease. Ballads, pop, country, story songs – Hank handled them all.
He had a stage presence so natural, it belied his shyness underneath. Hank Karr did not blow his own horn. He didn’t have to. Whenever he performed, fans and friends would be there to sing along and dance.
Our friendship began when we were recording this first pan-Northern CBC Radio series called Northern Jamboree in the sixties — first in the ballroom of the old Whitehorse Inn, and later in the CBC studios on Third Avenue. From then, and during Canada’s centennial year (1967) when he represented the Yukon at Expo in Montreal, until today, Hank Karr has been a great ambassador for the Territory.
And through the years, he has never forgotten those fans who gave him undying loyalty. To this day, Hank Karr represents a good song well sung. Hank’s voice remains true to the country music sound he enjoys. He is an ambassador of Yukon and its music world-wide.
His CDs and DVD are testaments to the fact that a performer doesn’t have to leave the Yukon to succeed in the music world. He was once asked why he didn’t go to Nashville to make it. His reply was true to his philosophy.
"The Yukon," said Hank "is my Nashville."
The DVD called Long Gone to the Yukon is the second DVD release by the legendary singer. The first was called Hank Karr's Yukon Book of Memories and was released three years ago. It, along with the DVD - Long Gone to the Yukon and three classic CDs of great Northern Music are available at fine record stores and gift shops throughout the Yukon

Will Rogers and Wiley Post

The news spread around the world with the speed of a lightning bolt. Two of America's most beloved citizens were dead. In the wilds of Alaska, the picture of their crumpled aircraft was a sad sight, indeed. Two American heros were gone.Will Rogers was born on a Cherokee Indian reserve in Oklahoma in 1879. As a youngster, he became a cowboy. Wiley Post was born in Texas in 1899 and became a pilot at an equally young age.Rogers joined the world famous Ziegfield Follies in 1915 and was an immediate hit as the cowboy philosopher, twirling his lariat with extraordinary precision while making salty comments about the political and social scene in America. "I never met a man I didn't like" was an often quoted phrase. He hosted a national radio show and millions of listeners tuned in each week to hear such lines as "Everbody is ignorant. Only on different subjects". "They may call me a rube and a hick, but I'd rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it." Rogers wrote several books and starred in many motion pictures. Not surprisingly, he was one of the best known and highly paid entertainers in the '20s and '30s.Wiley Post gained world-wide acclaim in 1931 when, with co-pilot Harold Gatty, he flew around the northern hemisphere in eight days, becoming the first to accomplish the feat. Two years later, Post became as well known an aviator as Charles Lindbergh when he made the same journey alone. It was an age when flyers were as famous as astronauts are today.In August of 1935, Post and Rogers were bound for Alaska on board a float plane owned by Post. They stopped in Whitehorse, Yukon and in Dawson City, where they spent a few days on a sight-seeing tour. Their visit was big news in tiny Dawson. Here were real-life celebrities.They left Dawson and arrived in Fairbanks on August 14. The next day, they left Fairbanks but encountered heavy storms. This used up more fuel than Post had planned for. Post landed on a lake near the small community of Wallatka. Here they learned that Point Barrow, their final destination, was just 14 miles away.Post assumed he had enough fuel to make that short hop. The plane was barely air-borne when the engine sputtered and stopped. It plunged into a shallow lake, ending up on its back, a twisted chunk of metal. Both Rogers and Post were killed. The news stunned the people of depression-ridden America. Two of their most famous celebrities were gone.

Edith Josie "Here are the News"

Edith Josie was one of a kind. A journalist in the truest sense of the word. For years she reported daily coming and goings to the Whitehorse Star from her tiny Yukon community called Old Crow. When I first read her stuff in the early 1960s, I though it was kinda cute. Not very deep or insightful...just...well...just cute. But many years later, Edith Josie's columns have become an important record of lives of the people of Old Crow.
Her columns began appearing in the Whitehorse Star under the banner "Here are the News". Generally, the news consisted of when the plane came and what it brought...who was out on the trapline...where the caribou were running...and what the berry season was like. Pretty mundane stuff until you realize that for an aboriginal people with only an oral tradition, this material is really as complete a record of their times as possible.
Edith Josie joined the Star as a community correspondent in 1963. She wrote the way she spoke...in straightforward Gwichin-influenced English. Soon, the Edmonton Journal began running the News from Old Crow and, soon after that, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner took up her columns, all hand-written.
Edith Josie was born in Eagle, Alaska. In 1940, her parents moved to Old Crow. She was 16. Edith was devotedly religious and her columns reflect her attachment to the Anglican Church. Details of baptisms, funerals, marriages, church socials, and especially the Christmas season, all formed part of "Here Are the News" .
Over the years, Edith became a bit of a traveller, joining Old Crow politicians as they travelled to Ottawa and Washington to lobby against oil exploration in the Old Crow Flats. Her greatest fear was that exploration would harm the caribou and thus alter forever the way of life of the Gwichin. In 1995, she travelled to Ottawa to meet with the Governor General, Romeo Leblanc.
It was not a political meeting. She was there to receive the Order of Canada for her lifelong dedication to her own special kind of journalism. When asked when she might retire, Edith Josie said, "I wouldn't retire. Just when I pass away, that's the time my news will cut off." Her news was "cutoff" on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 when she died at the age of 88.