How Diamond Tooth Gerties gives back
“This isn’t merely a casino with shows, but a community institution that uses entertainment as its vehicle for giving back.”
Kati Pearson sits on her deck during our video call, the Midnight Dome just visible behind her, while her small dog—just arrived from Toronto a week prior—sniffs around this new northern territory. Birds chirp between our words and I’m struck by how this scene captures the very transformation she’s describing: the urban performer who has found herself unexpectedly rooted in the wilderness.
I’ve attended a few Diamond Tooth Gerties shows, felt the worn wooden floors vibrate with cancan music, watched sequined professional dancers kick high above tourists and locals alike. But listening to Pearson speak from her Dawson home, I begin to understand that what I witnessed was only the surface of something far more complex—a performance that transcends entertainment to become an act of community stewardship.
“Entertainment makes people happy,” she says with the voice of someone who has found meaning in her work. “No matter what you have going on in your life, sometimes you can just sit down and escape for thirty-five minutes. If I can make somebody smile or laugh, then that makes me happy.”
This philosophy of joy, as service, has roots that stretch back more than half a century, embedded in the very foundations of what makes Diamond Tooth Gerties extraordinary: it is Canada’s only non-profit casino, where every dollar earned returns to the community that sustains it. In an era where corporate entertainment dominates, this historic hall stands as a testament to a different way of doing business—one rooted in giving back, rather than taking from.
The story begins in 1971, when the Klondike Visitors Association transformed the old Arctic Brotherhood Hall into Canada’s first legal casino. They brought a consultant in from Las Vegas to learn the ropes and put together a stage show featuring the casino’s servers, who would be hauled up by Diamond Tooth Gerties, depending on the tune. From these humble beginnings evolved a sophisticated production featuring professional talent from across Canada.
The venue’s namesake, Gertie Lovejoy, was one of Dawson’s most famous dancehall stars, from the Gold Rush era, who had a diamond between her two front teeth. Her spirit of entertainment and community connection lives on in the modern incarnation, where the stage hosts three different shows every night from May through September.
The transformation to professional spectacle mirrors a deeper evolution in how this community institution operates. Andy Cunningham of the Klondike Visitors Association explains how the non-profit model works in practice. “The majority of the money goes back to contracts and wages, so most of that money stays in Dawson. Those people live here for at least half the year, if not year-round.”
But the impact extends far beyond employment. During the winter months, when the shows go dark, the venue opens its doors to local non-profits, for fundraising events. “We make sure that there’s money going to non-profits that are applying for the grants in the winter,” Cunningham notes. The weekend openings, from October through April, become community lifelines—the Music Festival’s annual lip sync competition, the Golf Club’s shuffleboard tournament, and the Humane Society’s fundraisers.
This cyclical rhythm of giving reflects something deeper about how place can shape purpose. For many performers, what begins as a seasonal contract becomes something more profound—a connection to community that reshapes their understanding of home. “What really attracts me to Dawson is the simpler life,” Pearson explains. “I live in Mississauga. You need a car to get anywhere. In Dawson, everybody’s closer. It’s easy to have a drink after work, in part, because you don’t have to worry about the ride home.”
Sydney Sudmals, the show’s dance captain, describes how the simple act of walking down Dawson streets creates connection: “I really love that … you’re just walking down the street, you’ll say hello to everyone and everyone’s very friendly. I can just go on a hike during the day and then go perform a high-end professional production at night.”
Such intimacy is more than social convenience—it’s the architecture of belonging. Dawson offers something increasingly rare: the possibility of genuine encounter. This isn’t mere nostalgia for small-town life, but recognition of how physical proximity enables the kind of spontaneous interaction that builds lasting community.
The venue’s influence on Dawson extends through generations of performers who arrived for one season and never left. “You see a lot of community members who came up for one season to dance and that turned into two seasons or three seasons of dancing, and then they turned into long-time residents,” Cunningham observes.
As the final cancan of the evening concludes and performers mingle with the audience, the true magic of Diamond Tooth Gerties reveals itself. This isn’t merely a casino with shows, but a community institution that uses entertainment as its vehicle for giving back.
The numbers tell one story: Gerties remains the only casino in the Yukon, runs the only ongoing live show in the territory, serves as one of Dawson’s largest employers, and attracts over 34,000 visitors annually. But these statistics represent more than tourism data—they reflect a sustainable model where entertainment, employment and community support intersect in ways that create lasting value, rather than extracting it.
The true performance here is the daily demonstration that giving back can be both sustainable and spectacular, creating a legacy that extends far beyond any single show or season. In the interplay between stage lights and community care, between entertainment and investment, Diamond Tooth Gerties proves that creating value and retaining value go hand in hand—that success can be measured not just in revenue but in the depth of roots put down, the number of lives changed, and the strength of the community that emerges.
