Here we are in dawson city, yukon!
[cheering & applauding]
Dawson city, where the rivers of the yukon and
Klondike collide, the north wild west...
A town of entrepreneurs and artists,
Eccentrics, adventurers, where both the
People and the land have gold in their veins.
In the 1890s, 100,000 people
From all corners of the earth
Attempted the journey to this place to
Stake their claim and strike it rich.
This land is beautiful, but rough and tough.
And going for gold in the cold can take a toll.
And as the locals know, it can also take toes.
[laughing]
More on that later.
[cheering & applauding]
When you grew up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see that people have a sense of humour
About hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
[mc] mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places
You'd least expect it,
Canada's struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes,
But hanging in there...
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is dawson city, yukon.
♪
[indistinct conversation]
[cheering & applauding]
Dawson is, of course,
The capital of the klondike gold rush.
Dawson was not only put on the map,
It was put on the front pages of newspapers
All around the world.
And for a time- a brief time, but for a time-
It was the most famous city on earth.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
I found out all about it when I got to dish the dirt on
Dawson with interpretation coordinator, fred osson.
[cheering & applauding]
A very big strike was made on August 1896.
And that's what really started setting off
This huge migration.
And it eventually grew into nearly 100,000 people.
Everyone was ready to try their luck at
Klondike gold mining.
And for every experienced gold prospector,
Of course, there was 100 hungry fools.
The journey was incredibly dramatic.
Of those 100,000 people, something between 35 and
40,000 actually made it to the klondike because of
The many hardships on the way.
They had no idea how far they had to go, really.
They had to hump through gear up over the chilkoot pass,
A treacherous mountain pass.
You've all seen the pictures.
One of the most iconic images of the gold rush is the
Stampeders struggling over that incline.
And listen, I'm being absolutely historically
Accurate when I say, dude, you needed a ton of stuff.
[laughing]
So many people were going up there half-cocked,
The northwest mounted police created an outpost.
The mounties that said that you had to have 2,000 pounds
Of provisions to come into the territory, right?
So that's all your tents, your food,
Your sacks of flour, your tools.
So people with, you know, visions of gold bars in
Their mind are humping gear over the chilkoot pass,
Which of course you're never gonna do in one trip.
They might have to do it 30 or 40 or more times by
The time they're relaying their outfit over the pass.
What would you do for a klondike bar?
[laughing]
Just about anything was available in dawson,
Whether it's champagne, oysters, caviar.
If you had the money, you could have just about
Anything you wanted, here in the paris of the north.
This place went from dawson to dawson city,
To the capital of the yukon, to the paris of the north.
I think that's crazy because at the same time,
It's this you know, camp mining town.
Your head's in the clouds, but your feet are in the mud.
We'd be in this spot on the street ankle-deep
In the muck in the summer of 1898.
That's the dawson dichotomy.
I love to think about some guy going out for the night,
Got his best duds on, a pocket full of gold.
He's like, "I think I'll head to the palace grand theatre for
A night of french champagne and oysters," as he
Traipses through the mud and the horse shit.
[laughing]
Once the news came to dawson in the summer of 1899,
Of another gold strike in nome, alaska,
Within a week of that, about 8,000 people moved on.
The rush was over.
And thousands of people who had made this the
Paris of the north took a french exit.
[laughing]
There was a real shift in the methods as well as
The amount of people it took to mine for gold.
These hand miners working their claims,
They were replaced by large machines
Like gold dredges, for example.
Unfortunately, a lot fewer people means that
Dawson was also a less exciting place to be.
But here's the interesting thing.
I think the suddenness of the end of the gold rush was,
In a way, a blessing in disguise.
Surely, it cemented the legacy in time.
The legacy upon which dawson's tourism industry
Relies on so greatly...
The 1890s, that was it.
That's the theme, and it's worked well.
It wouldn't be as good if you had
Mini booms all throughout.
Like, just imagine you're like, "oh, third ave,
All the buildings that pay tribute to the 1890s."
And then, you turn on queen street,
And all those pastel-coloured split level bungalows
Pay tribute to the mini-boom of the 1970s.
-[laughing] -it wouldn't work.
[applauding]
Dawson's tourism industry has thrived.
2018 and 2019 saw record levels of tourism here.
And then...
Covid happened.
It takes hundreds of young, seasonal workers
To keep dawson city's bars and hotels
And casinos running every summer.
And after the pandemic ended,
Tourists were quick to come back,
But workers not so much.
And to tell me about it, I met a guy
Who's worked all kinds of jobs in dawson.
He started out bagging earth samples for gold testing.
And I knew we'd get along right away because
I've never met a dirt bagger I didn't like.
[laughing]
He's now executive director of
Klondike visitor's association.
I'm talking about ricky mawunganidze.
[cheering & applauding]
The majority of our folks are working in hospitality or
Tourism businesses, right.
After covid and trying to come back from covid,
It's been really tough.
You know, the service industry staffing
Has been a problem everywhere.
Ricky explained to me why it has been vastly more
Problematic here in dawson.
You lost your word -of-mouth momentum.
You call a mate, you say, "I had a wonderful summer,
You've got to come up here, it's the craziest place that
I've ever been to, it's the most magical place
I've ever been to."
You sell it so well, because it's true, right?
And that's how organic our, our recruitment has been.
The main thing that convinces young people to come here and
Work for a season is wild stories that they hear from
Friends who did just that.
Ricky, himself, that's how he ended up here.
I was living in mississauga at the time and...
My buddies, they were sending me bbm's of these
Crazy times that they're having.
He said he was in mississauga,
He was getting pictures sent to him of his friend,
Who was butt naked on top of a mountain
Getting picked up by a helicopter.
[laughing]
He had bear spray explode on him,
And so he had to get naked and sit on a mountaintop
Waiting to get picked up by a helicopter.
So, he's sending me all these stories, and I'm like,
Obviously, that's where I need to be.
And of course, first thing ricky thinks is, oh, man,
I gotta get to dawson.
[laughing]
And he said, you know, the energy here among
The people that come to work,
He said it's always a party.
We don't stop partying until the sun goes down.
And in the summer that never happens.
Even if you're working until 2 o'clock in the morning and
You come out, it's broad daylight.
He said, you can finish your shift at the bar at 2 am.
And of course, it's still broad daylight.
But that's the thing, like, it's way too easy to
Party here if the sun doesn't go down.
Like, that's mother nature's way of telling you
When to party or not.
You can see somebody be like, "oh, man,
That was a great party last week.
I think I took off around 2, what about you guys?"
"oh, man, we went...
Oh, it must have been at least 3 or 4, like days."
[laughing]
A few years of covid,
You lose those crazy stories.
You lose your recruitment campaign.
Majority of our operators were burnt out by
The end of the season,
Because they were doing everything.
Right, so there was simply not enough people
Changing bedsheets and...
-Exactly. -Right.
You guys might try something that we've been doing
In newfoundland for a while,
And we call it "experiential tourism".
It's like, "come to newfoundland.
Come out on a lobster boat and haul traps for a day."
[laughing]
"real newfoundland traps."
"come to dawson and live like the locals did
During the klondike gold rush.
Oh, how those wily prospectors would
Make their own beds..."
[laughing]
"and their own breakfasts!"
[laughing]
[applauding]
♪
But there's still gold in them there hills,
Not to mention in the chewed up caterpillar's of dirt
Left behind by the old industrial dredges,
Not as lucrative as the rivers once were,
But as it turns out...
Even picking the bones in this area can be rewarding.
I met with placer miners, lisa and guy favron.
[cheering & applauding]
Lisa and guy are both descendants of the gold rush.
Guy's great-grandfather had a job translating stories of
The klondike gold rush into french
For newspapers in montreal.
And lisa, well, lisa proudly comes from
A long line of gold diggers.
[laughing]
My mother used to tell us that my great-grandfather
Carried the first cookstove over the pass.
Was it a true story? Or was it an urban legend?
I don't know.
She can't prove that he actually did that.
Maybe it's a bit of a legend, but you know,
Really if you think about it, he wouldn't have cooked the
Story up if he never brought the stove.
[laughing]
We always say that we're the third generation of miners.
So, there was the hand miners,
Then the dredges went through.
And now we're doing placer mining.
They told me most of the mining done today is
Through this method known as placer mining.
The equipment is enormous,
But basically uses water and gravity, the same way
You would do with a pan in the river.
But they said it's a long, slow process,
Not as profitable as the old days.
You want to make a million dollars mining,
You start with 10, and you quit when you have one.
[laughing]
They said, "jonny, you have no idea how many tons of dirt
You haveto haul up and go through before
You find the tiniest piece of gold."
I was like, "ah, as a comedian,
I think I know exactly what you are talking about."
[laughing]
I wish you'd had a webcam in my room
At the triple j all week,
So you could see me every night pulling out my hair,
Storming around the room with my laptop, being like,
"come on, there's got to be a flake of gold here."
Might as well have been like a guy in the river...
[laughing]
Sifting through all the crap I wrote.
[laughing]
But, while digging for gold, they've uncovered
Some truly remarkable treasure.
The most famous thing was the wolf pup named jur
By the local first nation.
They told me about jur, discovered in 2016,
And it was found by one of their employees.
A guy operating heavy equipment,
He looked down, he saw-
He thought it was a dog.
And he called out to it, but it didn't respond.
[laughing]
So then he thought it was a cat.
[laughing]
And the scientists came, and they were able to
Date this wolf, and it's 57,000 years old.
I don't know how dog years worked back then...
[laughing]
'cause it's still just a pup- anyway.
[laughing]
These are some of the treasures that we find
When we dig in the dirt.
They've got a collection of fossils and bones that
They keep on display in their garage.
Animals that you would never imagine to roam these lands-
North american lions, giant prehistoric bears,
Woolly mammoths.
Those are mammoth teeth, a mammoth skull.
We got a pelvic and a shoulder blade.
That's a mammoth tusk.
That is a mammoth... Tusk.
Is there are so many woolly mammoths in the area that
You start keeping them in the garage?
[laughing]
Like one of their new employee's like, "oh, my god,
I think I found a woolly mammoth tusk.
What do I do?"
"oh, ah, put it in the garage.
Don't scratch the boat."
[laughing]
But then, they showed me the gold room,
Which is even more fascinating.
So, they've got a room there with a safe and
All this equipment in it,
And that's where lisa does the last bit of processing to
Remove the gold dust from the dirt.
She showed me a bowl of gold.
-Can I see? -Yeah.
Holy cow!
The amount, it looked like maybe if you like
Poured yourself too much cereal.
That's how much it was
127,000.
[laughing]
What do I get for weighing?
[laughing]
And then they told me, "yeah,
That's $127,000 worth of gold."
But they said the expense that goes into-
The time and operating costs that goes into getting that.
So, this is, we'll call it two loads of fuel a week,
A load of fuel is $50,000.
They said most of that money will be spent on fuel alone.
And it's sort of funny to see them do the math on it
'cause lisa's got this huge calculator.
It's the biggest calculator I've ever seen-
Hung on the wall,
Got buttons on it like hub caps.
Maybe if you're spending $50,000 a week on fuel,
Corrective lenses just, you know.
[laughing]
♪
Next, I met an artist whose work is more about
The journey than the destination.
I had a chat with jackie olson.
[cheering & applauding]
Jackie is, like myself, an incredible artist.
[laughing]
Her works have been showcased across canada,
From dawson to edmonton to gatineau.
It really is about process for me, right, it's like...
That physical journey, and then shaping
That material that's in front of you.
Jackie is a process artist.
For her it's more about the process than...
The destination, which is kind of the opposite,
I guess, of my work.
My work sort of really needs to be
About the destination, right?
If you want to hear about my flight from whitehorse,
I can tell you.
[laughing]
The first step in her process is prospecting the natural
Environment for materials that she can use in her art.
I like to walk along the river.
You know, I love to look for rocks and
I love to look for driftwood and roots...
Feathers, glass.
I'm like the raven, right? Anything shiny, "ah!"
You know, it's like, zoom in, pick it up.
Jackie works a great deal with willow...
Which is sort of ironic because she said
When she was a kid,
That's what her and her brother got spanked with.
[laughing]
Mom would be like, "go get a willow!
You're in trouble!" and we'd be like, "ugh!"
Oh, boy, you know, we're both out there
Crying and trying to pick the right willow.
And she said there was a real strategy to choosing what-
Right, because right away you think, oh,
The smaller, the better.
The small one is like a...
A whip.
And the bigger one is like, "kadunk!"
[laughing]
It sounds to me like just picking the willow itself is...
You don't need a spanking,
That's a pain in the ass already.
[laughing]
I've been looking for willow my whole life, I guess.
To make her art, jackie begins by
Making her own paper.
It's a process of finding willow,
And then literally beating it to a pulp.
And she got me to help her out with it,
So we're mashing up this willow,
And she said it's meditative work.
This is like therapy, you know? It's physical.
It's rhythmic, and it's repetitive,
And you're just beating on this willow.
[laughing]
So, you really make that connection.
I really see what she means, right, it's like
If that was the thing that hurt you as a kid, yeah-
[laughing]
Like I imagine how I'd get into it if I had-
I don't know how many people here got a lot of wedgies,
But if I had a pair of my own underwear there,
And I was like... -[laughing]
I could see how I could really get into it.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
When I found out that this town is known for
Serving a cocktail with a frostbitten
Human toe in it, well,
It wasn't just the toe that was petrified.
[laughing]
I sat down with local legend, terry lee.
[cheering & applauding]
Tell me, what is this crazy tradition?
You have to kiss the sour toe.
You can't bite it, chew it, stuff like that,
You can't swallow it.
Don't worry about that.
The toe has been packed in rock salt.
Basically, it's mummified.
Like, it looks shrivelled up and weird, but it is a human-
It's not a representation.
It is literally what it is.
Downtown hotel, I'm not gonna order a fuzzy navel.
[laughing]
If I order a gin rickey, do I have to kiss ricky?
[laughing]
Let me rephrase that- if I order a gin rickey,
Do I get to kiss ricky?
[laughing & cheering]
Has anybody ever accidentally ingested a toe?
Oh yeah, yeah, actually-
Five have been swallowed.
He told me about one guy who swallowed it for a lark.
Took a slug of it, and stood up and said, "it's down."
And I thought, the bastard swallowed it.
He had to pay a fine, but he was willing to do it.
And I said, "oh, my god, he swallowed the toe?"
I said, "what kind of impact would that
Have on your system?"
If somebody swallows a toe, it goes through you
Like salt pork through a seagull.
He said, "johnny, that would go through you like
Salt pork through a seagull."
[laughing]
And I said, "and that would be like...?"
[laughing]
Anyway, it turns out,
Not so bad, is what he means.
So where do you source yourself another human toe?
We usually get them through wills,
But we also get them through living people
That donate them.
So, we get them from death, diabetes, gout,
Chainsaws, that sort of thing.
So if anybody here wants to make a "toe-nation"...
[laughing]
...Just fill out your "toe-nor" card.
[laughing]
They gotta get 'em quick, he said you know,
Because between when somebody dies and then
They're buried or cremated...
And I said, "so what, they just snip them off
At the morgue?"
And he laughed at me then, and he said, "yes."
[laughing]
You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow.
But your lips must touch this gnarly toe.
Anyway, I went for it, alright?
I'm used to putting my foot in my mouth,
How bad could it be?
Here we go.
[crowd] cheers!
A dark, purple-y, petrified severed toe
From the foot of god knows who.
[laughing]
Sfx: [heartbeat]
♪
[cheering & applauding]
And it was delicious.
[cheering & applauding]
[applauding]
I had it in a drop of rye whiskey, and you know what,
It really brought out the corn.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Gold may run low in the quarries,
But you made the most of the stories.
And while the staff shortage makes for a quandary,
The lore of this place is forever
And folks will come more than ever,
If you can manage to keep up with the laundry.
[laughing]
Where the summer breeze will whistle through the willows,
But winter brings a cold and savage side...
Up way north of whitehorse and west 'til almost alaska,
Where the yukon and the klondike collide.
The northern lights have seen queer sights,
And they've seen plain as day in the dark,
That while you can't claim dawson,
Dawson may claim you,
And you'll feel that like a stake through your heart.
Thanks for coming out, everybody!
You've been great!
[cheering & applauding]
Thanks so much!
[cheering & applauding]
Next time you pound the willow, jonny...
Beat it harder. [laughing]
You know, miners make the bedrock.
[laughing]
♪
Well, thanks jonny, for putting the
Gin rickey on the map.
That should now be the official dawson drink.
Have a gin and a ricky. [laughing]
I don't know if your camera caught this,
But a bird pooped on my hand.
That's good luck. [laughing]
Just keep on walking!
♪
Jonny, I haven't seen them,
I don't want to see them...
But, if we could have your toes...
[indistinct speaking & laughing]