I’m on a floatplane over the Yukon River and halfway between Whitehorse and Dawson my caribou sausage lunch isn’t sitting so well. Into my flight headset, I ask how high we are. The pilot quips: “High enough not to hit any trees but low enough to breathe.” I wouldn’t mind a little more air right about now.

My queasiness subsides for a moment when the pilot instructs us to look down at the river. Below us is the hull of the SS Klondike, a 19th-century paddleboat that ran aground in 1936, its remains still resting on a sandbar. Two days earlier, in Whitehorse, I had visited the second SS Klondike, a steamer restored by Parks Canada with artifacts like crates of gin in the ship’s cargo bay, where second-class passengers slept on cots. The hull of this first, sunken Klondike is pale, eerily coffin-shaped and the only man-made structure in sight. Seeing the restored Klondike up close, then getting this glimpse of the original, is the difference between seeing a rare stuffed and mounted species versus spotting one in its natural habitat: exhilarating.

I’m on the Great River Journey, a luxury voyage on the Yukon River by 30-foot aluminum-hull boat and float plane. Stringing a common thread throughout the trip are these markers of the past. When the Klondike Highway ended the sternwheeler era, entire settlements along sections of the river were abandoned, left to decay peacefully until they were eventually absorbed into the landscape. To my city-trained eyes, the Yukon, roughly the size of Spain but with a population of only 30,000, seems just vast enough to contain both the past and the present. Only in such an untouched, uninhabited place could these parallel glimpses of past and present co-exist.

Our trip begins in Whitehorse when we board the Shakat (“summer journey” in the Southern Tutchone language) and travel swiftly along the silty, grey river that freezes every winter. The most memorable spring thaw was on May 29, 1898: the ice broke and within three days 7,200 boats carrying over 30,000 gold rush prospectors launched from nearby Lake Bennett. Most of these stampeders had travelled to Skagway, Alaska, hiked over the 53-kilometre Chilkoot Trail and spent the winter and spring constructing boats and rafts, some setting off on dogsleds with logs tied on each side. These wannabe Klondikers had to get through the whirlpools of Miles Canyon and the now-defunct White Horse Rapids.

Today the trip is considerably smoother. On either side of the boat, rows of slender, bristly spruce trees, sometimes wobbly on the shifting, discontinuous permafrost, stand along steep cliffs. Farther out, we’re framed by rounded hills. Along the shore we spot wild Yukon sage, bright red fireweeds the size of waving hands and a few purple crocuses, which signal the onset of spring for Yukoners.

Within an hour we’re at Upper Labarge Lodge at the foot of Lake Laberge, memorialized by Robert Service as Lake Labarge in “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” I disembark to find 10 newly constructed but slightly off-kilter “bentwood” cabins in a row, built with mismatched corrugated tin roofs. Inspired by Yukon artist Jim Robb’s lively depictions of northern life, they come with touches of vintage luxury like clawfoot bathtubs.

Down the path is an old hunting lodge that serves as a dining hall and social hub for travellers. Meals (prepared by Jackie Bazett, a council member of the Ta’an Kwäch’än, whose traditional land we’re presently occupying) make the most of local game and produce, like caribou loin in beet sauce with Yukon gold potatoes, mushrooms and carrots.
The next day, back on board the Shakat, Christian (an energetic tour guide who makes everyone laugh by swearing in Spanish) leads a few early birds in search of beavers along a creek. The sun is breaking through the clouds and the water catches it like a like a glinting knife’s edge. Beavers, it turns out, are rather shy, only popping up momentarily for air before smacking their tails in the water and submerging again. While the only shooting in this safari is with cameras, I’m still missing wildly. That afternoon, on a canoe trip, I have a hard time even spotting reclusive baby eagles perched in their nest on the blunted tip of a spruce.

We’re pulled back to the past again by a five-minute walk to an abandoned First Nations village. Amid the crumbling old buildings and a rusted-out truck from the 1940s, our group runs into Ben Learmont, who is travelling along the river by canoe and has made a campsite of one of the cabins. “They’re renaming it Ben’s River,” cracks Learmont, a slight man with a handsome, sunworn face. Originally from Australia, Learmont is an architect who immigrated to Canada a half-century ago. The bear bells on his belt jangle lightly. “And I’m charging men $250 to go down it. Women ride for free.” We joke that Learmont seems like an actor, here to give us a dose of Yukon eccentricity; our guide denies it.

Shipyard Island, where the Teslin River meets the Yukon, is our next stop. On this island sternwheelers were once pulled out of the water on beams, or “ways,” for the winter. The remains of one ship, SS
Evelyn, built in 1908, still stand in ragged glory like a relic or a haunted house.

Here a float plane awaits to take us to remote Fort Selkirk, a trading spot for the Selkirk First Nation (or Northern Tutchone) people who inhabit the area and traded with the coastal Chilkat Tlingit long before the first Hudson’s Bay Company settlement was built in 1848. That settlement was completely abandoned when the last sternwheeler left town; the entire village seems flash-frozen in the past. We enter hunters’ cabins with moose antlers nailed over the doors, an ornate Anglican church and an unfinished schoolhouse with a lesson still on the chalkboard.
Afterward, we go by boat to Homestead Lodge, a pioneer-style dining hall and group of cabins on Pelly Farm, the oldest working farm north of the 60th parallel. That night, we all sit outside by the campfire sipping cognac and listening to Johnny Cash’s Greatest Hits. It would’ve been a perfect evening—if I had stayed awake for the northern lights after midnight.

The place that marked the last stop for thousands of prospectors is our endpoint, too: Dawson City. At the height of the Gold Rush, Dawson’s population was at 40,000; now it’s 2,000. With its slanted saloons and unpaved roads, it remains a fun-loving town that avoids being embalmed in tourist gloss. Though I enjoy a gold-panning demo or anecdote-rich tour on occasion, this trip convinced me that I prefer my history uncanned.

Later that night, at a blackjack table at Diamond Tooth Gerties, I run into a woman I met briefly in Whitehorse a week earlier. It’s the type of likely coincidence that befits a place where one’s next-door neighbour can be literally hundreds of miles away.

“Found anything interesting to write about?” she asks. I nod twice, watching my chips disappear like in a dream.