People & Culture
Since 1896, Dawson City residents have been placing bets on when the Yukon River will break in the spring — a tradition that marks the start of life returning to the Klondike
At precisely 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5, the sound of sirens echoed across Dawson City — this was when I first learned about the city’s famed ice pool tradition.
Alex Somerville, the former director of the Dawson City Museum, was giving my wife and me a tour of the building when we heard the sirens. Within seconds, swarms of people were heading to the river. We quickly joined, following Somerville’s direction to merge with the crowd. What we were about to witness was one of the North’s most anticipated annual events, and one of Canada’s most enduring: the annual Yukon River Breakup.
By 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush was quickly turning Yukon’s Dawson City from a ragtag tent town into the largest city between Seattle and Winnipeg. Around the same time, its citizens were placing bets on when the ice on the Yukon River would break up, opening the river to seasonal boat traffic. This betting system continues today. People buy tickets to bet on when the river ice will break — their guesses are down to the minute.
Thousands of dollars are riding on when that precise moment will be. Participants can enter a lottery to pick the exact minute the ice broke up, and the river opened. The winner gets half the total, and the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire distributes the other half to local charities.
To accurately measure the “winning” time, a wooden tripod with a cable attached to a clock is placed on the ice near the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre. When shifting river ice moves the tripod, the cable stops the clock, marking the precise moment of breakup in a tradition that dates back to 1896.
The Breakup is a major event in Yukon, marking the end of seven months of winter and the unofficial start of the tourist season, when Dawson’s population swells to three times its year-round 2,000 residents. But this is nothing compared to the gold rush days that saw its population swell from a small First Nations fishing camp in 1896 to a boomtown of 30,000 people two summers later.
But this year’s river breakup was different: a long, bitterly cold winter, a warm spring and high snowfall triggered a rapid melt, swelling the Yukon River faster than usual. Even so, it was not as catastrophic as 1979, when the river burst its banks and flooded Dawson’s streets, already water-logged by thawing permafrost. The levee built in the aftermath protected the town during another major breakup in 1998, whose high water levels were comparable to this year’s breakup.
But we knew none of this on Tuesday, May 5.
The ice broke up; the river swept it away, and by the next morning, it was essentially clear of ice. We saw the ferry boat to the Top of the World Highway being fitted out for its first crossing, and the S.S. Keno, a national historic site, being polished for the anticipated flood of tourists arriving after the May long weekend. That was Wednesday.
But by Thursday morning, the strangest thing happened. We went to the riverbank and were shocked to see the entire river was packed with rushing, heaving blocks of ice, some more than six feet tall.
What happened? An ice jam downriver had caused a massive eight-kilometre-long pileup back in Dawson City. Trees along the river banks were snapped like sticks by the force of the ice, and flowing among the ice blocks were logs that had been trees hours before with long, thick branches, now stripped clean for the journey downriver to the Bering Strait 2,100 kilometres away.
By Friday morning, the ice was largely gone, the river was open again, and summer could begin once more in the Klondike.
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