As I settled into my gig at the 202 I decided to stay in the Yukon
Two weeks into our month-long gig I called my (now ex-) wife and told her that “I live in Whitehorse now. Do you want to move up or are we done?”. We’d been having some ‘issues’ and she was living with our two very young girls at her parents’ place in Golden, B.C. She was all for the idea of moving to Whitehorse.
By the end of my 202 gig, I’d been offered a full-time, six-nights-a-week house gig at the Roadhouse, plus staff accommodations for myself and family. I finished up at the 202 and went south to move my young family up to stay.
Our friends and family were skeptical. Y2K was imminent and computers would crash, plunging the world into darkness and chaos. What would we do then? I told them that from what I’ve seen of Whitehorse and Yukoners, we’d probably just build a big bonfire at 2nd and Main, roast weenies and marshmallows, sing songs and dance!
Our families and friends were not amused. Some even suggested that I’d ‘lost my marbles’, so to speak.
The 44-hour Greyhound bus ride from Golden, B.C. was gruelling, especially for our little girls, who were three years old and eight months old at the time. The last sit-down meal we’d had was in Dawson Creek and when we got to some old, abandoned place called Fireside the bus driver needed a smoke so we stopped for ten minutes.
I explained to him that our cooler was empty, that the girls were hungry, and asked when might we see another town? He grinned, took a puff off his smoke and said, “Watson’s not far. Haven’t you heard the Greyhound motto? Coast to Coast on a piece of toast!”.
We arrived in town less than a week before Christmas at 4:20 in the morning (not going into how fitting that might have been!) and got a cab to the Roadhouse where our room out back was waiting for us. The next morning, the manager moved us up to a more secure room upstairs and we started settling in.
This is where the real magic started!
After a few days there was a polite knock on our hotel room door and I opened it to see an amazingly well-dressed lady. She told me that she owned the Hobah Apartments in Riverdale and had heard that there was a young family with very young kids staying at the Roadhouse.
“I will not let a young family spend Christmas in the Roadhouse!” she exclaimed. “I will give you a free apartment. If you choose to continue staying, you can start paying rent as of February 1st.” She took us all over to the apartment, showed us around, gave us the keys and a ride back to the hotel. We got started packing.
WOW!
A few hours later there was another knock on the door. It was Johanna from the Salvation Army. She had also heard the story. She used her van to help us move our stuff to the new, empty, apartment and then took us over to the second-hand store.
She opened it up and proceeded to give us furniture, kitchen supplies, presents for us and the girls and a little tree to put them under. Then she gave us some food, including a Christmas turkey and all of the fixings, and helped us get it all into the new apartment.
We were dumbfounded, humbled and blessed. In less than 48 hours we went from staying in a hotel room at the Roadhouse to a lightly-furnished apartment through nothing less than the incredible kindness and generosity of perfect strangers in our new home – The Yukon.
We were home and went on to have one of the best Christmases ever! To say the least, my stories about how awesome Yukoners are had been verified! Over the years, I think that I have learned first-hand from some very solid people how to extend that generosity, kindness and love. I will continue to behave in the way that I was originally shown as what it is to be a Yukoner.
I’ve been a proud Yukoner ever since. The rest, as they say, is history, which, alas, is for other stories!
