#09 - Coast Efficiency
Southeast Alaska offers ocean-loving Yukoners an easy way out.
When it’s time to celebrate Canada Day or the birth of Queen Victoria, there’s nothing Yukoners enjoy more than a trip to the United States. No doubt, America is also a favourite long weekend destination for patriotically-challenged Canadians who live along the 49th parallel. But, due to Alaska’s convenient geography, Yukoners are the only Canadians “North of 60” who can routinely fête our national holidays on foreign soil—and, even better, foreign surf.
Of course, we don’t mean any disrespect to the homeland. It’s just that we long for the occasional stint by the sea. While the Yukon does have some oceanfront to call its own, this coastline measures a mere 418 kilometers. (By contrast, the NWT has nearly 15,000 kilometers of coastline, while Nunavut can boast almost ten times that amount.) More problematic, the Yukon’s coast is on the thin edge of our territorial wedge; located at the northern tip, along the Beaufort Sea, a couple of hundred kilometers from the nearest Yukon settlement, completely inaccessible by road. Even if Yukoners had the wherewithal to plan a weekend on our seashore, we’d discover that it’s icebound until July, subsequently overrun by bugs, and lacking any services. All in all, it presents a poor scenario for a carefree getaway.
Which brings us, literally, to southeast Alaska.
A two-hour drive from Whitehorse, the moist and salty air of Lynn Canal proves irresistible to our dry, cracked skin. This 145 kilometer-long finger of the Pacific Ocean—the longest, deepest glacial fjord in North America—pokes teasingly towards the Yukon’s landlocked underbelly. Near the inlet’s furthest reach, the once-and-again boomtown of Skagway lies at the foot of the Coast Mountains. It was here, and in nearby Dyea, that thousands of stampeders jumped ship in 1897, then began the grueling climb over a coastal pass en route to the Klondike gold fields. And it is through the infamous White Pass that Yukoners now regularly travel, in the opposite direction over a well-maintained highway, to enjoy everything the coast has to offer.
Every time we Yukoners crest the White Pass summit and begin the descent to the promised land of Skagway’s tidewater, we enter a world that is simultaneously foreign and familiar. Foreign, yes, in the sense that we can’t mistake the beefed up American border crossing where the guards seem a little less laid-back than in days-gone-by. And foreign, too, by virtue of the lush vegetation on the mountainsides that funnel a stream of Yukon campers and boat trailers down the road to sea level. There, we rediscover the alien delights of—among other things—abundant salmon runs, halibut fishing, shrimping, camping by the ocean, and sea kayaking on actual sea.
Our sense of familiarity, on the other hand, derives from the deep historical ties between the Yukon and southeast Alaska. After more than a century of constant to-and-fro that has seen, for example, Skagwegian babies born in Whitehorse’s hospital and Yukon minerals exported from southeast Alaskan docks, Yukoners tend to feel right at home on Skagway’s boardwalks, as well as on the rolling streets and fishing grounds of neighbouring Haines. We can even feel a little territorial, knowing that both of these communities—and all their scenic and recreational bounty—might have belonged to Canada (though to British Columbia, not the Yukon) had a boundary dispute with the United States been resolved more fairly in 1903.
But, all in all, it’s hard to complain. As long as our friends in southeast Alaska are willing to share the spoils, Yukoners won’t be holding grudges. If anything, history has taught us that we can accomplish a lot more by holding fly rods and cheap American beer.
© 2008 Mark Koepke
