INDEPTH: YUKON
Spring in Dawson: waiting for the ice to break
John Boivin, CBC News Online | May 4, 2004
Canoes provide transportation for two men and their dog in the 1979 flood. Note the water level halfway up the stop sign. Credit: Yukon Archives. Yukon Public Affairs Department collection 85/21/ PHO O/S 14
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Some say it happens 10 days after the seagulls return to Dawson. Others say it's three days after the Klondike river breaks. No one knows for sure when the Yukon River will shed its ice cover and flow again for the summer. But everyone in Dawson City has an opinion on when it will be. And every year, it's not only like a lottery, it is a lottery.
"I pick my birthday, Oct. 26, so 10:26," says Joyce Caley of her formula for picking the time of breakup. The head of the IODE's breakup raffle for 10 years, Caley buys tickets for that time over several potential breakup days.
It's not a great formula. She says she's never been close to being the winner.
Since at least the Second World War, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire has offered a chance for Dawsonites to bet on the breakup of the Yukon River, which flows past the town on its 3,100-kilometre journey to the Bering Sea. For a $2 ticket, you can put your prediction down for when the Yukon will be ice-free after the territory's long winter.
But betting on the breakup is as old as the city itself, dating back to the Gold Rush. "It's a real tradition," says Caley. "I guess because it's always happened, since 1896."
Determining when breakup happened was a little less complicated back then, she says. "Now, in those days, they knew the ice was moving when the piles of garbage on the Yukon River were moving."
Ice against a damaged building after flood waters recede, probably
in the 1979 flood. In 1944 the Whitehorse Star wrote: 'Front Street
naturally suffered the heaviest pounding. All the way along, from
York Street to the hill below St. Mary's Hospital the main street was
blocked with tons of ice, many of the blocks being seven to ten feet
in height."
Credit: Yukon Archives. Yukon Public Affairs Department collection
81/18 #59, PHO 291
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In following years someone posted a flag that people could watch for movement. Then, says local historian John Gould, a local business owner by the name of Herschberg put a clock up on the wall of his building.
When money's at stake, people will go to great lengths for accuracy. The clock was connected to a tripod out on the river ice. When the ice moved the tripod, it stopped the clock, registering the exact time the ice went out.
That opened the floodgates for ways to bet. In the days before lottery commissions and regulations, everyone got into the act.
"All the businesses a number of years ago used to have a minute pool," says Gould, who saw his first breakup in 1925. "A business would put up $60 worth of groceries, $60 of credit, or the jewelry store would have a watch or camera or many things; clothing stores would have a jacket. You'd pay a dollar or two or five dollars a minute."
Says Caley, "It's not quite as exciting now when it's just money." Still, there's excitement enough. The IODE sold about 3,000 $2 tickets this year. The money is split between the winner and the organization, which uses the funds for local charity work.
Some of the excitement may be gone, but a whistle still blows to signal the town that the clock has stopped. And to this day most everyone in the community of 1,200 turns out for the event.
"Everybody would run down to the river bank," recalls Gould. "Even all the children in the school would run out. It wouldn't matter if the teacher would like it or not, they were
gone."
And nature can put on quite a show. "Well, if it's a dramatic breakup the blocks of ice are usually quite large depending on what the winter was like, the thickness of the ice, they would tumble and squawk and make an awful racket as they went by here," says Gould, who's got tickets for a May 9 breakup.
But it was more than just a spectacle. In the earliest days of the community, breakup meant a reconnection with the outside world. Steamers could once again ply the river from Whitehorse or Alaska, hauling in tonnes of goods and breaking winter's siege.
"We had stages coming in but they were limited to what they could carry, so the idea of getting the boats in and getting supplies was a big thing."
Breakup has also meant danger to the town. The winding river has many shallows, and ice jams are frequent. The town had been flooded many times. Among the worst were 1925, the first breakup Gould saw, and 1979.
"Worst Floods Known Submerge City" was the headline on Thursday, May 14, 1925, in the Dawson City Daily News. "[T]he south end of the city is now under water to the depth of four or five feet, some cabins and other dwelling places are afloat, and many have been so undermined by the floods that they are in a serious state..."
In 1979, the flood pushed buildings off their foundations, ruined cars and caused millions in damages. "There was big blocks of ice on the waterfront, Front Street. If someone forgot their car it was swamped," recalls Gould.
A dike built in the 1980s has shielded the town from the worst the river might offer. But nature herself has been subdued in recent years. The breakup is coming earlier, and with less drama.
High waters often come quickly and personal losses can be
tremendous. Here, residents of Dawson watch as cabins are submerged
in the 1925 flood.
Credit: Yukon Archives. Finnie Family fonds 81/21 #192 PHO 140
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"The last 10-15 years have been unspectacular," says Caley. "There used to be great chunks of ice churning along. I suppose when winters were so long and so cold you got these bigger ice floes coming."
Government data confirm things have changed. Officials say there is a significant trend towards earlier spring breakup, with the ice moving about six days earlier now than 108 years ago, when the first records were kept. May 9 is now the average. And with all-weather road connections, the economic importance of breakup has also diminished.
Not that Dawsonites don't still make every effort to witness the event. "You'll notice when you're here, you go downtown and the ice starts to break up, people will walk along the dike hoping to be down there when it moves," says Gould.
Bets on the IODE pool closed last Sunday, just a few days before the earliest recorded breakup – April 28, in 1940. It could happen any time in the next week or two. Or three.
"There's a lot of good camaraderie here, so the Dawson people like someone from Dawson to win," says Caley. "So it's really a downer if someone from Outside wins." Last year a woman from Whitehorse won, but she worked for a company that used to be in Dawson. "So that was OK," says Caley.
Caley just hopes the contest doesn't end like it did in 2001. Because of a technical glitch, the ice went, but the clock didn't stop. It sent them scrambling to find some other way to confirm when the breakup occurred.
"We had to search for someone who saw it happening," she says. "Luckily the RCMP were checking out some person standing on the riverbank. The person heard sounds at about 3 in the morning." The police had an entry in their log noting the incident, so 3:30 became that year's "official" time for breakup.
For very different reasons, the winter-weary Caley hopes it isn't like breakup of 1964. That year the ice didn't move until the last week of May.
Forty years later Caley still remembers it with disgust. "Now that," she says, "was a dismal spring."
In the end, the 2004 ice break-up was a little earlier than usual. The river gave way uneventfully at 12:06 a.m. on May 4. Evelyn McDonald of Dawson had the raffle-winning prediction – worth a prize of more than $2,960.
And for those who didn't win, there's always next year.
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