Northern Trails And Tales

Shortly after we arrived at the campground in Dawson City last Friday night, I was absent-mindedly walking around the corner by the garbage/recycling center when I almost bumped into a guy coming from the opposite direction…. “Daydreaming, eh?” A bit abashedly, I confirmed my guilt. We laughed and began the obligatory introductions. He had a prepared spiel, “a seven day a week dirty job with few benefits, that nobody would ever want to take away from me.” He is a “small” (1,700 acres) wheat farmer from Saskatchewan….. He was eager to tell me about a guy he’d just met who had rolled his motor home on the Top of the World Highway the day before. It seems the fellow had tried to pull to the shoulder of the dirt road to let another vehicle pass when the loose gravel on the shoulder gave way and the motor home rolled into a ditch. Fortunately, no one was hurt and even more fortunately it rolled into the ditch on the side of the road away from the cliff opposite, which pitched down several hundred feet. The farmer and his wife (nope, I never heard if he had a daughter so no joke here) had just crossed the Top of the World and he could see how that could happen. His own feelings were that he was glad he did the Top of the World, but he wouldn’t do it again. It wasn’t the danger that bothered him but the nearly 140 miles of washboard and potholes. Anyway, we struck up a friendship, or at least a friendship as far as these things go on a campground, and through Monday morning we met several times to “palaver.”…..Despite his seven day a week job, “you get some down time,” he has traveled quite extensively including Australia, New Zealand, several weeks in Europe for the Olympics (” the Americans walk on the right, the Europeans on the left, and the Japanese down the middle, disrupting chaos”)much of the Unitedd States, and Japan, though never Alaska before this trip. He claims not to be a reader, “that’s my son,” though he’s familiar with both Robert Service and Jack London as well as Pierre Burton and is a “newspaper junkie.” Politically, he self-describes as “conservative leaning; I’m a farmer, eh.”….. He says he initially supported “Bush’s war,” though he never really understood why Saddam/Iraq was the focus as there are bigger problems in the world “Maybe his father.” He’s now come to the conclusion that” war shouldn’t be the perogative of one man” and that little good, will ever come out of the Iraq situation, though we’ll be forever cleaning up the “mess.” Nor can he condone the use of mercenaries. “If you have a war, you have to feel the pain.” He doesn’t think the States are particularly imperialistic, but the use of paid armies is “typical” of imperialism…… He’s a free market man, except for commodities (grain), he says with a chuckle. He went to the Diamond Tooth Gerties shows in both Whitehorse ($20) and Dawson City ($6). You get what you pay for. the show in Whitehose is at least five times better…. Then, he proceeds to detail all the need for government…The primary problem he sees with government is that the prevailing parties change too often and, “particularly with ideology gone crazy, things swing 180 degrees. You can’t be a chemical farmer one year and an organic farmer the next.”….. On health care, he’s totally baffled by the US refusal to develop some national standards. He quickly acknowledges some problems with the Canadian system, primarily backlogs for certain procedures, but points out that everyone gets solid basic care. ” If you get caught in the backlog, and you have the money, you go down to the States and have things taken care of.” He says he knows of several people who have done exactly that. He believes Canada should build that type of option into its system…. His son, who is just turning 43, came back home last summer to take over the farm. He’s thrilled as after the university his son got into computers and had spent the last twenty years or so living in southern California. He’s been somewhat concerned that his daughter inlaw wouldn’t be happy to live in Saskatchewan, but it’s turned out quite the opposite. “I’ve been a lucky man,” he says, a term I occasionally use to describe myself….. None of this is particularly revolutionary, but some of it is surprising coming from someone who says he leans conservative, A different perspective from our friends to the north, perhaps? On Monday morning, as we were both leaving, he wanted me to take “just for a half hour to go see the cemetery in Dawson City. “The most fascinating place in town. You can practically trace the whole history.” I had to beg off as we were already late getting started to the Top of the World. We shook hands and called it a weekend. He’s a man I’d be glad to have for a friend and neighbor. If you’re ever in Saskatchewan, look him up— or maybe he’ll find you. His name is Frank….