“Expect the Unexpected” wasn’t a slogan written anywhere in the countless tourist brochures we received about Dawson City, Yukon.  I’ve checked. 

However, based on personal accounts from the night before–by Evelyn and Ronney in Eagle Plains, and a Dutch motorist camping his way through Canada–I could’ve bet some precious gold nuggets on the fact that the town on the Yukon and Klondike Rivers known for sourcing the gold rush of 1896 was going to offer us plenty of bounty.  And it did.

For many reasons, our arrival to Dawson was unconventional, and not as we planned, but as it always does, it worked out in the end. Our illustrious tourism host known by the locals as Yukon Jim (to us, he is Jim Kemshead) was open-arms when we met him in our hotel’s lobby. The Eldorado Hotel–unlike the city that is a mythical legend– was bustling with patrons who were settling in for the weekend.  Mulling over hot popcorn and cold bottles of Yukon Lager, they were cordially served by the staff dressed in period costumes of tight corsets, high-neck ruffled shirts and ankle length skirts.  How pioneering!

We were actually looking forward to meeting up with our Vancouver-based crew who were on a tour of the Yukon as well.  Elyse Mailhot from the Canadian Tourism Commission's Media Centre, Deb Greenlaw and several other journalist from Vancouver (Grant Lawrence from CBC Radio 3, Lori Henry, Ann Campbell, Kevin Chong from the Walrus, and photog Michelle Mayne) met us for dinner to kick the night off.

Following a sobering dinner experience at the Drunken Goat Greek Taverna (endless plates of Mediterranean delicacies delivered a much needed energy boost), we set our sights on entertainment at Canada’s first casino, Diamond Tooth Gerties.  Keeping in character, the girls of the nightly cancan show kept it tight: After all, perfect timing with the pianist is key to a sily high-kick.  Speaking of characters, there was no shortage of them in this saloon: Women wearing petticoats, gamblers in cowboy hats and loners who “got stuck” in Dawson, like Marty from Austria, all tried their luck at the game tables.  (Marty, a man of modest means has been living out of a van on the outskirts of town for several years, and has no plans to change his situation.)  

As a side, and as far as character studies go, Carolyne and I are totally predictable when it comes to street vendors and meat products.   We discovered our love of caribou hot dogs after a stop-‘n-nosh at the only street vendor in town. 

As it is the case up North, the night is young almost 20 hours a day.  So with no setting sun in our way, our exit strategy for the evening was an entry into the line up at the Pit pub. (Yukon Jim said it’s the only place to end a true-and-respectable Dawson night.)  Decorated simply by a row of Christmas lights strung from the wooden-beamed frames painted pink and red, the Western-themed murals were a hoot to decipher. With little room to move, close encounters with atypical characters like the Johns and Bobs of Dawson are also a possibility.  (Who knew that the trend of one-name celebrities wasn’t started in Tinseltown?) We were lucky to run into a Jimmy, a maverick, who after much strong-arming confessed to being one of the last remaining gold miners in the area.  An elusive stare and two-large palm-sized nuggets of gold were his proof. 

A day filled with visiting a drunken goat tavern, meeting Austrian pioneers, eating caribou-on-a-stick, and discovering real gold may sound strange, but it was true.  But then again, I couldn’t have expected anything else from Dawson City, could I?