In a roundabout way, the Lost Whole Moose has come to represent the exploration of all that is really enjoyable about living in the Yukon--it's delights and challenges as well as its hardships. The Lost Moose is really a kind of quest, and includes the discoveries that people make along the way. It is the search for the perfect northern lifestyle. As legend has it, the search takes people down many paths. Some have been here seemingly forever. Others start by spending just a winter, learning to deal with the cold and heating with wood. They may become fascinated with the northern lights, find enjoyment in going for walks at 40 below and start thinking about building a place of their own someday. Then it's the summertime exploration of rivers and forest, reveling 'neath the midnight sun, trying to get a piece of land and learning about land claims and politics. Along the way learning bush crafts and skills needed to cope with town life. As the revelations continue, people are exposed to the many styles of life which are available in this land, including the relaxed practice of horizontal living. As horizontalists, whether full-time, part-time or just sometimes, they learn to enjoy a state of bliss with this life and this land. Experience (and legend) tells us this land is not for everyone; many people arrive and many leave. But for those who like what is here, it seems they keep on liking it. Their search for their Lost Moose, as legend would have it, is still in progress, and that's what this book is all about.

Another Lost Whole Moose Catalogue. A Yukon Way of Knowledge

Humor & Entertainment

Collective, Lost Moose

Humor

Lost Moose Books

Back by popular demand! This reprint of the original 1979 Lost Whole Moose Catalogue is a perennial favourite. It's the classic 70s statement about preserving a unique northern bush lifestyle

Original Lost Whole Moose Catalogue

Lost Moose

For decades the Whitehorse waterfront teemed with life as trains from the coast met boats bound for the Klondike goldfields. Edge of the River, Heart of the City captures those glory--days and takes the reader through the booms and busts of Whitehorse's past. This important new addition to Yukon history also provides readers with a historical walking tour of the Whitehorse waterfront.

Edge of the River, Heart of the City. A History of the Whitehorse Waterfront

History

Dobrowolsky, Helene

Association, Museums

Yukon Historical & Museum Association

Ingram, Rob

Historical, Yukon

Americas

Nearly 500 PAWS comic strips--the complete 10-year collection--presented in one hilarious, insightful volume. A favourite with northerners and anyone who has spent time in the North. In 1983 "PAWS" was launched as the first syndicated cartoon strip ever produced in the north. Since then it has appeared as a feature in 34 northern newspapers from Lynn Lake, Manitoba to Dutch Harbour, Alaska. Today "PAWS" remains the only successful northern cartoon strip in Canada and Alaska. It is carried by about 20 papers on a regular basis.

Skookum's North. The PAWS collection

Urquhart, Doug

Travel

In 1886, the discovery of rich goldfields in the Klondike precipitated a flood of gold-crazed men and women rushing north to the Yukon territory. Suddenly, the northern wilderness and its aboriginal population were overwhelmed by the newcomers. The presence of large numbers of American miners challenged Canada's sovereignty. Yet it was no lawless frontier. Despite the challenges of blinding snowstorms, steep mountain passes, raging rapids and novice gold seekers, a small force of North-West Mounted Police managed to patrol thousands of square kilometres of wilderness to maintain order. Beginning with the gold rush and extending to the modern era, this revised edition of Law of the Yukon covers more than a century of policing the North. Over a hundred archival photos illustrate the stories of the individuals who served in the force, along with accounts of the women and First Nations people who provided essential assistance. From tragic tales of the Lost Patrol and the "Mad Trapper," to curious murders, to dramatic search and rescue missions by dogsled, behind the iconic Canadian Mounties are real people with enthralling stories that require no embroidery.

Law of the Yukon. A Pictorial History of the Mounted Police in the Yukon

Photographer Richard Hartmier spent years travelling throughout the territory in all seasons to take photographs of landscapes, people and wildlife. The result is a spectacular collection of rare and familiar photographs, including caribou in the high Arctic, leaning buildings in Dawson City and the frozen sweep of remote glaciers. Yukon: Colour of the Land is a bestseller with over 20,000 copies sold.

Yukon: Colour of the Land

Arts & Photography

Richard Hartmier

Photography & Video

In 1907, Laura Beatrice Berton, a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher, left her comfortable life in Toronto Ontario to teach in a Yukon mining town. She fell in love with the North--and with a northerner--and made Dawson City her home for the next 25 years. I Married the Klondike is her classic and enduring memoir. When she first arrived by steamboat in Dawson City, Berton expected to find a rough mining town full of grizzled miners, scarlet-clad Mounties and dance-hall girls. And while these and other memorable characters did abound, she quickly discovered why the town was nicknamed the "Paris of the North." Although the gold rush was over, the townsfolk still clung to the lavishness of the city's golden era and the young teacher soon found herself hosting tea parties once a month, attending formal dinners, dancing the minuet at fancy balls and going on elaborate sleighing parties. In the background a famous poet wrote ballads on his cabin wall, an archbishop lost on the tundra ate his boots to survive and men living on dreams of riches grew old panning the creeks for gold. While thousands of people left the Klondike each October on the "last boat out" and Dawson City slowly decayed around her, the author remained true to her northern home. Humorous, poignant and filled with stories of both drudgery and decadence, I Married the Klondike is an unforgettable book by a brave and intelligent woman. "I have read many books on the Yukon, but this is different. It is the gallant personality of the author which shines on every page, and makes her chronicle a saga of the High North." --Robert Service, poet "The Cremation of Sam McGee"

I Married the Klondike

Biographies & Memoirs

Berton, Laura Beatrice

Community & Culture

No aspect of this harrowing journey was more difficult--or deadly--than the trek over the Chilkoot Trail: a fifty-three kilometre journey over the coastal mountains from the tidewaters of Alaska, through British Columbia to the headwaters of the Yukon River. But even before the gold rush, the trail was an important First Nations trade and travel route, joining the Tlingit of the coast with the First Nations of the interior. Today the Chilkoot Trail draws hikers from around the world who want to experience the area's natural beauty and soak up its rich history. In Chilkoot Trail: Heritage Route to the Klondike, two historians--one from each side of the border--give readers the feeling of what life was like on the trail before, during and after the great Klondike gold rush.

Chilkoot Trail: Heritage Route to the Klondike

Norris, Frank

Neufeld, David

The Yukon is famous for its Klondike gold rush, but it was the site of another major mineral discovery in 1918 that touched off its own stampede of sourdoughs and eventually produced more paydirt than the Klondike. This was the fabulously rich Keno Hill silver deposit, which made the Yukon one of the world's leading silver producers and backstopped the territorial economy for decades. And as the Klondike strike gave rise to the boom town of Dawson, the Keno strike fostered feisty Keno City, the last of the wild west mining towns: "Down in shacks by Lightning Creek, vintners and vendors of moonshine and the sporting girls catered to the miners on weekends amid scratching gramophone melodies. At that time Keno was a really lively town of 800 men, very few women and much hard drinking. Some of the boys had an old car called the Rum Runner that took cases of booze up to the camps every evening. At first both camps had the same second Sunday off but with two crews in, there was not enough of everything desirable to go around and a running donnybrook would break out. After a few wholesale brawls, which inevitably led to more drinking and absenteeism on Mondays, the companies alternated their Sundays off." At the top of the social order was the puritanical mine boss, Livingstone Wernecke, who never stopped inveighing against vice, "but Wernecke found that he did not run Keno; it ran itself." The story of Keno's discovery, development and decline is one of the great adventures of the north, and it is told here by one of the Yukon's legendary mining personalities, Dr. Aaro Aho. Dr. Aho's authoritative voice on mining matters is nicely offset by his taste for juicy gossip, as he fills the book with delightful portraits of such characters as Arthur Hester (aka Whiskey Jack), a dishevelled former engraver to Queen Victoria of whom the Wernecke said, "Never give Hester anything but meat or grease or he will find some way of turning it into alcohol." Hester, who could dash off a passable likeness in trade for a drink no matter how drunk, kept well oiled nonetheless. Or Nora, the tough prostitute who went about town dressed in nothing but toenail paint. When a customer once asked why her foot was covered in blood she explained she had killed a rabbit for dinner by kicking it. Or Marie, a pretty young woman who did very well as a "girl on the line" bought two houses, started a restaurant and taxi business, but lost her mind and was seen wading through deep snow placing handfuls of jewellery in people's mail boxes before disappearing into the wilderness. Aho extends his account to cover the mining history of the entire Stewart River basin, which in addition to its wealth of silver, was a major producer of lead, zinc and gold. Hills of Silver is not just the colourful story of Keno Hill, but an important addition to the history of Canadian mining.

Hills of Silver: The Yukon's Mighty Keno Hill Mine

Aho, Dr. Aaro E.

"People go north for a variety of reasons, some stay for a lifetime, while others can't wait to leave at the end of whatever term they have signed on for. The north tends to be either loved or hated with equal passion." These are the words of Keith Billington, who with his wife Muriel, arrived in the Northwest Territories outpost of Fort McPherson, 1,700 miles north of Edmonton, in mid-September 1964. They were among those who loved the North and stayed for six years. Keith, a nurse, and Muriel, a midwife, were barely into their twenties and fresh from England when they arrived, eager to put their brand new skills to work. Their clients were the Gwich'in people, who taught them how to snowshoe, choose a dog team and live off the land. These two young professionals were all the medical help available at the births of babies and the tragic deaths of other children, they were the first to tend gun-shot victims and deal with illnesses made worse by the isolation. Their story also tells of caribou hunts, fishing in summer lakes and travelling in winter by dog team, of sun-returning parties, and drum-dancing and New Year feasts. The book concludes with Keith leading a group who retrace the route of the tragic RCMP "Lost Patrol." This is a delightfully warm celebration of the north in the days just before skidoos and cell phones took the edge off the isolation.

House Calls by Dogsled: Six Years in an Arctic Medical Outpost

Billington, Keith

Professionals & Academics

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