Canada s Yukon Territory and Whitehorse as the cold winter arrives

I'm going to give you a glance at Canada's far northwest, the famous Yukon territory, which is not at all confusingly to the west and the northwest of the northwest territories. It's most likely the first time people have drawn territorial borders in places that don't really make sense. But this short film isn't to be drawn from the time of year you're perhaps used to. If you're here, you're familiar with footage of sub-arctic and arctic winter and spring, and probably of the summertime too. In this film though, we'll do the other bit. I'll start us off down in the south of Canada, en route from my home in England. It's October, and so still comfortably mild in southern Quebec. There's no indication yet of what's beginning to draw close in the vast country's north. Three long flights later, and I've crossed the continent to the west coast, and I'm finally, for the first time in my life, in the Yukon. A natural starting point for me is the territory's capital, Whitehorse. It's now home to many thousands of people, but unlike Yellowknife, its equivalent in the northwest territories, it feels smaller, less packed in, and without high rise buildings. Whitehorse feels older, and it is. The broader region has been important to indigenous First Nations for centuries, but, and the community is not slow in reminding visitors of this fact, Whitehorse came to be during the Great Klondike Gold Rush a little over a century ago. It became an important camp, and then a town, along the Yukon River as people, some greedy and some desperate, travelled north into prospecting territory. There's something slightly forced and inauthentic about the way this past is leveraged as an attraction. It won't surprise you that these facades are just that, but efforts have been made to preserve artefacts of a remarkable, albeit slightly surreal, period in history. This growing hub for the spring and summer tourism high season is just as well, as Whitehorse's original purpose itself has of course disappeared. It's become the administrative and industrial centre of the Yukon, and it's positioned usefully along the Alaska Highway that links southern Canada with Alaska. Heavy industry is most obvious as you step away from the centre of Whitehorse. Rocks, minerals and precious stones support a continuing mining trade. Also, forestry and logging are naturally at home in a place dominated by a to show you the oft-overlooked but critically important moment each year, the arrival of winter, snow and ice. We'll start with the Yukon River itself that Whitehorse grew on the banks of. Indeed, it is named after the now non-existent river rapids on the Yukon. The winter was to hold off a little longer, and it gave me the chance to head upriver along the steepening banks to where the Yukon dramatically narrows, at least for a few miles. It's not much of a discovery on my part. The Miles Canyon, caused by an old volcanic eruption forcing the river to forge a narrow groove instead of the now typical wide meandering, receives copious visitors throughout the summer. Anyhow, it's another reminder of Gold Rush history. Early surveyors and prospectors handed over their rafts and boats to local experts who could manage the route without sinking or being crushed against the rocks. There was also a bridge, so I walked over that. As I ventured further south, not enormously far from the border with British Columbia and towards Canada's more urbanised south, it was clear that high ground was a little ahead of the rest of the region, and snow was already well established. Indeed, some will have survived the summer from the previous season. The village of Carcross, originally Caribou Crossing, is a centre for the Tagish First Nation, and indeed it was they who originally came across gold in the but had less need of the stuff than the fledgling nation of settlers, complete with its financial economy based on the stuff. Another summertime draw for Yukon tourism, unsurprisingly less so during the flagging months of the fall season before the truly cold months. Even a true sandy desert in amongst the mountains and valleys couldn't reverse the unrelenting march towards winter. These final days will be crucial for this sparky little guy in preparation for the cold and The interior of Canada's north, particularly those areas distant from the more dramatic mountain ranges, is best characterised by its stable weather. Storminess and unpredictability is reserved more for the coastlines, and where airflow over extreme terrain shakes things up. In this way, the next day, the first signs began. An overnight frost had persisted, and snow was forecast for later. Once up at slightly higher elevation, freezing fog also gave a sense of real change. It's typical that the earliest snow can thaw, and so needs to be replaced some days later, before it settles for the winter and begins to build a snowpack. On a short wander through the forests, still certainly far from the wilderness, I came across clues harking back to now past, but still more recent decades of Yukon endeavour and industriousness. Space is not at a premium, so old equipment often ends up this way. Hundreds of miles of narrow-gauge railroad supported communities in the frontier days. Some of it is in somewhat more serviceable condition than this stretch. It would be many, many years into the mid-20th century, in fact, before serious road building became feasible in this part of the north. Meanwhile, the Yukon truly has begun to freeze up, with a long night at a consistent minus 10 degrees, barely thawing the following day. Of course, one of the key steps as the subarctic enters winter is the freezing of rivers and lakes, small ones at first. Then, the moment that trees and vegetation take their final actions to protect themselves and hunker down until the following spring. The Yukon doesn't have the same reputation as the high arctic, whether Canadian, Greenlandic or Russian. It's not so much barren wasteland as vast, vast, forested, unforgiving wilderness. I'm sure you'll have deduced this already. The ice here is young, not yet able to take the weight of my affectionately laced boots. Further along the Klondike Highway, one of the handful of long distance paved road routes, I wanted to see more of the high ground and the lakes that filled the elevated valleys. Although dense fir forests define the essence of the Yukon, there's a limit as to what they can manage once the terrain becomes truly steep or too rocky. Clear skies are few and far between, but the weakening sun did peek through on occasion. More often though, I was happening upon scene after scene of the landscape slowly giving up in the face of the impending cold. I'm aware that my line of work gives me something of a bias, but it's a matter-of-fact process I found mesmerizing. It's not cruel, just indifferent. With that, I'd seen enough part-frozen ponds and snow-dusted mountains, and decided to head back towards Whitehorse. The town, sorry, city, sorry, territorial capital, was also looking distinctly more wintry, and I went for a tour to see what might have changed. Aside from the fake Gold Rush-era facades, there was some narrow-gauge railway in better condition to that I found out in the sticks, indeed here it's still used, and also remnants of old landing stages on the riverfront. I suppose there's nothing to be gained in clearing up old structures and installations, and it does lend the area something in character. Also, evidence of an ever-increasing tendency to openly give a nod to the fact that European settlers in Canada, in general, rode roughshod over those already calling it home. A discussion for another time, and another film. Although we saw smaller streams and lakes freezing over a few moments ago, it'll take a great deal more than that to make a difference to the mighty Yukon itself. For fast-flowing water to freeze, you need a combination of sustained low temperatures and sections of the river that are more static. A small frozen zone can then expand, and eventually lock up the whole of the flow. Here, though, we have a clear delineation between winter and the obstinate river still of the summer and fall. I've tried to keep this film firmly focused on the Yukon and Whitehorse, and northern Canada's passage into winter, but it seems bereft not to have a budget documentary-style clip of the narrator walking somewhere aimlessly and looking at something barely linked to the topic in hand, generally due to a lack of engaging footage. There we go. The forests, even a handful of miles out of town, have a bear threat. The animals are often busy stocking up on food reserves before the worst of the cold, and they're retreating to dens, so it's worth being vigilant if out and about. You can surely see the gradual path from season to season, irreversible at least until the thaw of next spring. The ground surface itself will freeze, although this zone of the Yukon is further south than any serious permafrost, and this helps the next layer of freshly fallen snow to settle. Meanwhile, local residents have been up to mischief on the riverbanks. Some important trees are guarded by wire mesh, but the others are fair game for beavers. Not being a resident of North America, and so seeing beaver-felled trees as something of a novelty, I'm staggered at how precise and machine-like their nocturnal efforts are. I thought this would be a fitting end for this perfectly unusual story anyhow, a true native of the vast Yukon quietly, and without a fuss, going about their business before the landscape is enveloped by months of cold, shadowy wintertime. Also, the discount code for my books, totally coincidentally prior to the holiday period, is still active for a few weeks from when I upload this. Here's the code. Everyone go and get at least one, please. Excellent. Bye.