Tourists don’t leave Whitehorse to go into the wild; Whitehorse is already there.Travel Yukon
Whitehorsians (Whitehorsers?) call the northern lights “Aurora,” as if they’re a person. (“Aurora lit up the whole highway last night.”) Though I spent only three days in the Yukon capital, that makes sense to me. Never have I been to a city where the line between animal and human, nature and man-made, felt so permeable.
You don’t leave Whitehorse to go into the wild; Whitehorse is already there. The unapologetic weather, the ever-expanding and contracting light – they’re your neighbours. Aurora is a friend you’re happy to see.
At least, these are the thoughts you have while lying on your back at midnight in an open plain of snow 30 minutes outside the city, marvelling at the millions of stars invisible elsewhere, and hoping that the subtly shifting green glow on the horizon starts to dance.
My group and I – a handful of Toronto journalists who arrived for the Available Light Film Festival this time last year – have been roaming the snow since 10:30 p.m., courtesy of the adventure company Northern Tales. Spaced around the field’s perimeter are outdoor fire pits, plus tents and log cabins heated by wood stoves, which we pop into for hot chocolate and snacks.
For February, it’s unseasonably balmy, -4 during the day. Tonight it’s -20, chilly enough to warrant the outerwear we rented from a company called The Base: boots, coat, pants, mitts and hat, delivered to and picked up from our hotel. Stuffed into all that puffiness, we resemble grape-leaf dolmas, but we are toasty.
The northern lights – aurora borealis – appears more vivid through a camera lens than the human eye.Pi-Lens/Getty Images/iStockphoto
While we wait for Aurora, our guides teach us the art of long-exposure photography – meaning, we pose for hundreds of selfies – because the aurora borealis appears more vivid through a camera lens than the human eye. We draw hearts and stars in the air with flashlight beams; we hop from one side of the frame to the other, so in the picture it looks like we’re twins. But after three hours we head for the bus: We’re film festival media, we know when a star isn’t going to show. Maybe next time.
Event travel – going to some place (like Whitehorse) to do some thing (like attend a film festival) – is booming, and ALFF’s timing is perfect for attracting first-timers to the Yukon.
“It’s that sweet spot in early February when the light is starting to return and people want to be out socializing, but before prime ski season in March,” says Andrew Connors, artistic director of the Yukon Film Society, which runs the festival.
On the three mornings I’m here, I buy tea at 9 a.m. by the light of a fat, low-hanging moon, and drink it while I walk along a paved path beside the Yukon River, where the multicoloured holiday lights draped over the trees stay on well into March. The sun rises around 10:30 a.m. and slides away eight hours later.
ALFF is a 10-day run of concerts, creator talks and 100-plus films, in two venues: the Yukon Arts Centre, a handsome stage a 10-minute taxi ride from downtown; and the Yukon Theatre, the territory’s only commercial/art house cinema.
A two-hour flight from Vancouver, Whitehorse is one of Canada’s fastest-growing municipalities. (About 800 people a year move here, which in a city of 32,000 is a lot.) And since Vancouver is only a three-hour flight from Los Angeles, both aspiring artists and eager government officials are hoping to lure more movie shoots and their attendant drifts of cash.
For local art on a more personal scale, Lumel Studios in Whitehorse offers glass-blowing lessons.Travel Yukon
For local art on a more personal scale, I head to Lumel Studios for a glass-blowing lesson. Owner Luann Baker-Johnson conceived it as a community hub: Riverside walkers pop in to get warm. A café at the back, Gather, serves Mexican food on glassware blown in-house. There are classes for the blind and for active seniors. Mourners bring in the cremated ashes of their loved ones – pets and humans – to be blown into glassware or jewelry.
My instructor, Hilary Crawford, patiently takes me through the steps for a vase: Stick a blob of molten glass onto a metal wand. Roll it in coloured chips (Aurora hues are popular, bands of green, amber and midnight blue). Reheat it in a 1,150 C clay oven – lined with kitty litter to protect it from molten droplets, which are acidic and eat into the clay. Spin it on the wand while shaping it with a damp wooden scoop. Crawford does the actual blowing – and let’s be honest, most of the other stuff, too – and my fist-sized blob inflates to a grapefruit-sized ball.
Crawford believes in the alive-ness of glass; she talks about “levels of enlightenment” in learning to blow it. Traditionally, only men did it – in Egypt for the pharaohs; in Murano, Italy, for the doges. So for her, “It’s powerful to be countering that exclusive history.” I knock the wand to free my ball, and voila, it’s a vase.
The most popular tourist activity in Whitehorse is dog-sledding, but the slots have been booked since November. So my group experiences the next best thing: the start, in Shipyards Park, of the Yukon Quest dog-sled race, run annually since 1984. Six teams, 14 dogs each, are racing 724 kilometres to Dawson City.
The most popular tourist activity in Whitehorse is dog-sledding.Travel Yukon
I expect to jostle for space at the starting line, but we’re the first ones here. (Whitehorse is chill that way.) So we roam the warm-up area, cooing to the most eager-looking dogs you’ll ever see, shod in neon-coloured booties.
Back at the starting line I meet the mother of Michelle Phillips, an elite musher. To run 14 dogs, Phillips and her husband, also a musher, keep 40 to 50 in rotation. The food and vet bills are astronomical, so Phillips has a sponsor for each dog, plus a side hustle where tourists pay to give her dogs treats.
It’s a staggered start, so teams pull up one by one. The sleds are surprisingly small, and the dogs leap all over each other, joyous athletes ready to go. The barking is sensational. The announcer counts down – 10! Nine! Eight! – and the teams surge off. At 15 kilometres an hour, they’re quickly out of sight. (Phillips will go on to win.)
At the 750-acre Yukon Wildlife Preserve, 25 minutes outside town, we meet more local fauna: 140 animals, 11 species, all with enough space to maintain their natural behaviours.
“They’re not pets, they don’t have names,” says our guide, Teena Dickson, who runs Who What Where Tours, manages remote lodges and consults on the TV series Yukon Vet.
We hop off and back onto her minibus as she does a slow loop. A herd of bison sit in the snow like mini mountains. Mule deer are a sign of climate change, because it used to be too cold for them here. Mountain goats sport shaggy white coats the Rolling Stones would have envied in the 1970s. A solitary lynx, whose mate just died, stares us down with yellow eyes. Dickson respects the animals, but no Yukoner is sentimental about them – elk and bison are on every menu.
ALFF is a 10-day run of concerts, creator talks and 100-plus films, in two venues: the Yukon Arts Centre, a handsome stage a 10-minute taxi ride from downtown; and the Yukon Theatre, the territory’s only commercial/art house cinema.Supplied
On my last morning, I head out alone for a walk on the Millennium Trail, a five-kilometre loop of hard-packed snow that parallels the Yukon River on both sides. At first, it’s pleasantly busy with joggers and dog walkers. Across a bridge to the wooded side, though, the city disappears and the world reduces to two colours: brown tree trunks and white snow. The only sound is the river – until I run into a pack of ravens the size of kiddie cars, who speak a raucous language of clicks, chirps and caws.
The collective noun for ravens is “unkindness,” but that’s unfair. They, like the silty morning light, and the clay cliffs that line the river (and once lay underneath it, a blink of an eye ago in geologic time), are just part of that Whitehorse permeability.
If you go
The 22nd annual Available Light Film Festival runs Feb. 8 to 18, 2024. yukonfilmsociety.com/alff
Breakfast: The Railwork Lounge, 150 Keish St., home of a 125-year-old sourdough starter brought in during the Gold Rush. Try the sourdough waffle sticks and the sourdough waffle toast. raveninn.com/railwork-lounge
Lunch: Burnt Toast Café, 2112 2nd Ave. Wraps, salads, truffle fries. And unlike many Whitehorse restaurants, it’s open Sundays for brunch. burnttoastcafe.ca
Dinner: Belly of the Bison, 101 Main St.. Elegant comfort food featuring local specialties: elk roulade, bison Bolognese, Alaskan sockeye salmon. bellyofthebison.ca
Drink: The ‘98 Hotel Lounge, 110 Wood St., is the local you dream about, with a copper medallion ceiling, Yukon memorabilia and live fiddle music Thursdays from September to mid-June. 98hotelwhitehorse.com
See: The MacBride Museum, 1124 Front St., presents Yukon History and is built around a historic prospector’s cabin. macbridemuseum.com
The Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre, 1171 Front St., features exhibits and Indigenous cultural experiences throughout the year. In summer, Andrew Connors screens short films outside around the fire pit. kwanlindunculturalcentre.com
The writer was a guest of Telefilm Canada. It did not review or approve the story before publication.