Yukon, North of Ordinary: In This Issue

Fall 2007

Inside

Editor's note

Communication is only a mouse-click away.

Contributors' bios

Letter from Joe Sparling, Air North's president and CEO

Returning to our place

A journey to Fishing Branch Ni’iinliiNjik Protected Areas, text and photography by Stephen Mills

Your letters

Extra! Extra!

Yukon newsmakers

Where are they now?

Where are they now? Catching up with former Yukoners Brad Booth, Gillian Campbell and Lorill Crees.

Venture north

Venture North: Interviews with Sportees Active Wear, What’s Up Yukon and Solitude Designs.

Yukon spotlight

Calling all stations: Keeping count of songbirds migrating through southern Yukon.

Travel Yukon

Things to do in Yukon this season.

North of Ordinary trivia

Citysnap calendar

What's going on this summer in Yukon, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.

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Features

Cover story: Look ma, no office

Running water, electricity, high-speed Internet, BlackBerry, cellphone … oops, there goes the stereotype. The average Yukoner no longer makes a living by sluice box and pickaxe. A growing number of us are taking advantage of new technology so that we can have that big-city job and still live a small-town lifestyle. Teleworking has become a way that Yukoners are making their jobs work for them, by Erling Friis-Baastad, photography by Cathie Archbould.

Bob Couchman once endured long commutes from downtown Toronto to a rural lake where he could engage in his favourite sport: canoeing. Then, one day, a very bright light went on and he said to himself, “You know, I work bloody hard all week so that I can get away on the weekend. I drive for three hours to get to a place where I can canoe and then drive three hours home on Sunday night. Why wouldn’t I go and live in such a place, so I can have access to canoeing in 20 minutes?

“I wanted to move where I could enjoy certain things I’d come to cherish,” he says. Couchman, who is now 70 and recently stepped down as the director of TQR Ltd., a charitable foundation with headquarters in the United Kingdom, moved from Toronto in 1996 and set himself among the lakes and rivers of the northwest—first in Atlin, British Columbia, and then in Whitehorse, Yukon. He continued to facilitate the distribution of $4.5 million a year among such deserving organizations as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. He even managed, with professors from the University of Manitoba, to help improve the employment prospects of young Arab women in Jerusalem—all from the tranquility of the Whitehorse subdivision of Granger.

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Just the artifacts ma'am

Gunter Glaeser began working on Yukon museum exhibits in the ’80s. Over 20 years, seven museums and countless exhibits later, Gunter shares his approach to design and construction, by Al Pope, photography by Cathie Archbould.

In 1981, Gunter Glaeser was about to complete a graduate degree in industrial design at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. After six years in a demanding German university system, he was ready for a vacation. He and his partner Fay Tangermann flew to Yukon, rented a cabin on Teslin Lake, and before their six-week holiday was over, Yukon had cast a spell on them.

“For me—coming from Europe—it was just a brand new experience,” Glaeser says. “We were living off the land, more or less, because there were lake trout and mushrooms and there were raspberry bushes, and we baked our own bread, so we didn’t have to deal with money for about six weeks.” Afterwards, they returned to Germany, Glaeser finished his degree, and—with an offer of a partnership waiting there—he says, “I decided I better move now, before I get into a career and it’s hard to get out.” The couple applied to immigrate and were back in Yukon by 1983.

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Behn around the world

When Dr. Danièle Behn Smith set off on her journey around the world to discover the traditions of aboriginal peoples’ medicine, she didn’t go alone. She took a film crew. Dr. Behn Smith’s journey has been made into a 13-part series, Medicine Woman, that will be aired on VisionTV, by Wayne Potoroka.

Dr. Danièle Behn Smith’s home in Dawson City, Yukon, is decorated with the keepsakes of a well travelled woman: a painting of a burnt-orange sand dune in Namibia; a worn, wooden slingshot—similar to an atlatl, traditionally used by Yukon First Nations—from Sri Lanka; a hand-woven, brightly coloured table runner from Guatemala; and a pair of mukluks from Fort Nelson that were intricately beaded by Behn Smith’s Eh-Cho Dene grandmother, Mary Behn.

Many of the items were acquired while filming Medicine Woman, a 13-episode television series that followed Behn Smith as she travelled the world learning from indigenous healers, herbalists and shamans.

“We started in Fort Nelson,” she says, and lists an itinerary that could inspire sympathetic jet lag in even the most seasoned traveller. “Wales and Ireland, then Namibia, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Guatemala, Arizona, and then finished in Saskatchewan.”

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Travel Outside

ABCs of the gateway cities

Whether you’re travelling to Edmonton, Vancouver or Calgary for the first, second, or even the third time, here’s our quick guide to the tricities of western Canada, by Heather Cleland.

Let’s get to the Point

Cherry Point Vineyards in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island is a great place to start your tour of the island vineyards, by Diane Selkirk.

R & R

The boreal chef: The sweet side of sour

Miche Genest explores the pungent taste and smell of the not-easily-jellified highbush cranberry.

Of note: Kim on the cusp

The singer-songwriter, and now producer, talks with Brenda Barnes about the inspiration for, and collaboration on, her new CD Champ.

Air North

Yukon spirit in action
Fleet facts
Our people, our strength—a class of their own

p. 70

Feast your eyes on this

A combination of practicality and creativity—Yukon style—can be experienced at the Yukon Artists at Work co-operative gallery, by Lily Gontard.

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