Whalers at a 19th century Arctic outpost keep (relatively) sane with America’s pastime
Written by Daniel Campbell
Whaling crews in the 1890s played an extreme version of baseball on the winter sea ice around Herschel Island, off the coast of the Yukon. The local Inuit were their biggest—and rowdiest—fans. Image from National Baseball Hall of Fame, BL-2540.93
It's the North's coldest cold case: Two centuries ago at the mouth of the Mackenzie, six bold fur traders came to grief. Did 'Eskimos' murder them? Or was it an inside job?
Written by Randy Freeman
To 18th-century voyageurs, Inuit were mythic savages, dangerous and strange. Did they kill Duncan Livingston and his crew?
On an icy October morning, two Igloolik hunters set out in their boat, looking for walruses. What happened next was part horror story, part miracle: One of the most difficult - and ultimately deadly - life-saving efforts in Arctic history.
Written by Katherine Laidlaw
The inland sea of Nu-thel-tin-tu-eh had long been a place of legend. One man was dying to find it.
Written by Conor Mihell
Prentice G. Downes, intellectual and adventurer, was in love with the romance of the 'Old North.' His passion for the place very nearly got him killed. Photo courtesy McGahern Stewart Publishing
How an ingenious hunting practice let the Tłįchǫ survive in the harsh North
Written by Daniel Campbell
Once the herd was spotted, the men would make wolf sounds to scare the caribou into the corral. Women and children would line the fence to keep the caribou headed towards the ambush point, where a team of men would be ready with spears and arrows to slaughter them. Illustration by Beth Covvey
The NWT then and now, with its former premier and current senator Nick Sibbeston
Written by Tim Edwards
Photo by Hannah Eden/Up Here
Fifty years ago, a pilot spotted an arrow stamped into the snow near the B.C.-Yukon border. He had no idea where it would lead.
Written by Elizabeth Hames
Helen Klaben was near death when she was rescued in 1963. She and Ralph Flores had survived a plane crash and six hungry, cold weeks in the bush. Courtesy Charles Hamilton
In the tipsy Yukon, prohibition was a buzzkill. Would bush planes full of liquor quench their thirst?
Written by Tristin Hopper
Long before the U.S. temperance movement put a cork in Klondike liquor, Yukoners loved their 'hooch.' Here, Dawson ladies hold a 'drinking bee' in 1900. Joseph Duclos/Dawson City Museum
They'd already risked it all to get this far. The red flags of an avalanche wouldn't stop them.
Written by Eva Holland
Bringing out the dead: hauling bodies by sled from the summit of the pass, April 3, 1898. Yukon Archives, Anton Vogee Fonds, #71
