Yukon Ho! The New Rush North

It's Gold Rush days long since passed, Canada's Yukon Territory was until recently a wild, myth-bound place. But now oil and gas revenues are fueling new construction and population growth.

1 minute read

July 28, 2008, 12:00 PM PDT

By Michael Dudley


"It won't be long, realtors here say, before [the] Whitehorse subdivision of Copper Ridge routinely sees homes going for a million dollars or more. Many of the château-style estates wouldn't be out of place in the upscale suburbs of Vancouver or Toronto. Or Whistler, for that matter.

As the financial and political epicentre of the [Yukon] territory, there is no question Whitehorse is undergoing a radical change. It is reflected in subdivisions such as Copper Ridge and big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart that have moved in downtown. There are gleaming new multimillion-dollar complexes such as the Canada Games Centre that would be the envy of any city.

In the downtown core, it is becoming harder to find the quaint, authentic, Gold Rush-era facades that have always been the hallmark of Whitehorse. But is destroying these myths all a good thing? For everything that Whitehorse is gaining in the modernization process, is it losing just as much? Does it need Pizza Huts and Real Canadian Superstores to not only attract new residents but keep those it has?

Good luck finding a prevailing wisdom to any of those questions."

Saturday, July 26, 2008 in The Globe & Mail

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

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