The Yukon takes its name from Yu-kun-ah, the Loucheux word for the Yukon River, the ‘great river’ that drains most of the territory. Some five per cent of Canada’s landmass, the Yukon lies in the northwest corner of Canada. Bordered on three sides by rugged mountains and on the 4th by the Arctic Ocean, it shares many of the characteristics of its neighbours, Alaska, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories.
It is a land rich in natural wonders – rough mountain peaks, bottomless canyons, powerful rivers, meadowlands strewn with wildflowers – a scenery whose wildest aspects are available only to the hiker, the climber and the paddler.
Only a hundred years ago, under the able stewardship of the First Nations peoples, the untrammelled 186.000-square-mile region was as close to a true northern Eden as you could get. And despite the tremendous rewards still available to recreationists and tourists who come from around the world to ‘mine’ this golden storehouse of natural-history treasures, the Yukon’s raison d’etre is inevitably associated with one event, an event that changed the history of this huge parcel of pristine wilderness.
Since the gold rush, the number of permanent residents in this northern territory has not gone much beyond 30,000, perhaps because of the severity of the long winters and the region’s relative isolation. But its modest population has kept the Yukon very much a ‘people-friendly’ place where you can drop in unexpectedly on past or new acquaintances and enjoy true northern hospitality.
Southern Yukon lakes such as Teslin, Marsh and Laberge are important stopovers for waterfowl waiting for smaller waterways to melt before moving on to their nesting sites. The greatest diversity of birds north of the 60th parallel is found in the southwest corner of the Yukon. The cacophonous honking of trumpeter swans, the largest waterfowl in North America, heralds the coming of spring.
Although the wild days of the Klondike are but memories, it can be said that a gold rush of another kind is now taking place: industrial tourism. Thousands of eager sightseers come every summer on cruise ships via the Inside Passage along the coast of British Columbia and the Alaska panhandle to Skagway and Haines, both in Alaska. For the more adventurous, a guided multiday raft trip on the Tatshenshini River is the ultimate northern experience.
