TRAVERSE 107
TRAVEL-CANADA
LEIGH WILKINS
AT THE ENDS OF THE ROAD
There’ s a place where the pavement runs out, where the GPS gives up and the map just becomes a vague blue smear, and where every passing truck sends up a cloud of dust that smells like stories. That place is the Dempster Highway, Canada’ s most iconic stretch of gravel road, stretching over 740 kilometres from Dawson City in Yukon Territory to the Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories. It’ s more than just a route to the north; it’ s a journey away from convenience, and yet at either end is plenty of convenience, plenty of history, and towns so diametrically different that their populations converge on what it is to be Canadian.
The Dempster starts innocently enough. Dawson City is a strange and wonderful throwback, with false-front buildings, boardwalks, and the feeling that you’ ve wandered onto a film set sponsored by whiskey and stubbornness. People here still pan for gold, or at least pretend to, and tourists sip cocktails with amputated toes in them.
There are few towns in North America where the past sits so comfortably beside the present as it does in Dawson City, Yukon. Perched at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers in Canada’ s far northwest, Dawson is a living relic of gold, grit, and the tenacious human spirit. But don’ t let the wooden boardwalks and centuryold façades fool you, this isn’ t just a town frozen in amber. Dawson hums with an eccentric energy, a sort of northern alchemy where history, culture, and wilderness collide. It’ s quirky, proud, remote, and entirely irresistible.
You don’ t just stumble upon Dawson City, it’ s not on the way to anywhere, unless you count the Arctic Circle. To get here, you either drive a thousand kilometres north
TRAVERSE 107