Dawson City to Inuvik - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 192

We had fun although I think the proprietors depend on audience members spending a great
deal more on drinks and gambling than we did. We also stopped by the bar at the Down-
town Hotel to check out the ritual of the sour toe. For a fair piece of change you can buy a
drink and they'll stick a preserved human toe in it. You drink your drink, making sure the
toe touches your lips - but don't swallow it! People pay a lot of money to get a certificate
saying they did this. I have no idea why, but they were lined up.
At the height of the gold rush Dawson City boasted a population of 40,000. A year later
it was 8,000. Today it hovers around 1,500. I can't help noting though, how many in-
spired personalities have made Dawson home. Robert Service, revered as the “Bard of the
Yukon,” lived in Dawson, just up the road from the cabin used by novelist Jack London
from 1897 to 1898. Mr. London arrived as just another stampeder in 1897, leaving penni-
less less than a year later. But he was inspired by what he'd experienced, going on to fame
as a novelist who used his Yukon adventures as the foundation for five volumes of short
stories and 50 novels including The Call of the Wild and White Fang .
Canadian author and media personality Pierre Berton spent his childhood in Dawson City.
His father Frank had made the iconic gold rush journey through the Chilkoot Pass above
Skagway in 1898, hauling a year's supply of goods (about a ton) on his back in multiple
trips over the top.
A few years later a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher in Toronto named Laura was offered
the opportunity to take a position in the Dawson City school. She knew little about the
Yukon but the salary on offer was four times what she got in Toronto. That was gold rush
enough for her.
Laura and Frank found each other and so a legendary north country family was begun. As
a young wife, Laura sent well-received features about life in Dawson off to mainstream
magazines in the south. Despite the success of these articles, it never occurred to her that
people would enjoy learning more. She was well into her seventies before she understood
the remarkable times and the unusual life that she had experienced.
Her memoir, I Married the Klondike has become a Canadian classic. In it, Mrs. Berton re-
counts the dismay of any woman who travels all the way across the country only to dis-
cover she brought all the wrong clothes! She had packed for a frontier town full of grizzled
old miners and life with lots of rough edges. Instead she discovered that her position as
the school teacher catapulted her up the societal ladder to fancy dress balls and formal din-
ners in dining rooms fitted out with the latest furnishings and fashions from Paris. Wrong
clothes indeed.