Every year around this time, I’m reminded of how very caring the people of the Yukon actually are
Nine years ago almost to the day, I went in to visit my really good friend, Debbie. She was the manager of the 202 bar at the time.
Nine years ago almost to the day, I went in to visit my really good friend, Debbie. She was the manager of the 202 bar at the time. Deb and I had met over the phone. She used to be the front desk receptionist at the 202 Motor Inn and we had talked dozens of times prior to my band coming up in 1999. We became really great friends in the years to follow.
I was like staff in her bar. I didn’t even need permission to go have a chat, and sometimes a beer, with her in the office. Just poke my head around the corner and if she wasn’t busy, she’d invite me in to sit down. Debbie was also, unarguably, one of — if not the — biggest supporter of live music in the territory.
I sat down with my beer and we chatted, caught up on things, and then I glanced over at her wall calendar, where she kept track of her bands booking schedule.
“What are you looking at?” she asked me. “Well,” I said “I can’t help but notice that you have an open Friday the 13th there in a couple of weeks.” “I do, do you want it?” She replied, smiling. Then I told her about this great idea that I had.
Instead of our usual classic rock and a few country two-steps thrown in, I wanted to do a tribute to the country greats — Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. One set each. We’d use our regular guys and hire in a couple of guest singers to front the band. She absolutely loved the idea.
I finished my beer, we had a hug, and I left thinking about certain folks that I’d call to get involved with the show. We didn’t have long to learn a bunch of new tunes and rehearse before the date so I’d need to get busy. We had barely two weeks to pull this off.
A couple of days later, on May 1st, 2016, the devastating news came out about the wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta. By May 3rd, it had swept into the city and forced the biggest evacuation in Alberta’s history — roughly 88,000 people were forced to leave their homes, many to later return to find that their homes had been completely lost to the fire.
Now, I grew up in Alberta. I have toured all over, but I had so many good times, and friends, in “The Mac.” I had played the old Peter Pond Hotel, the Oilcan was always a hoot and the “new” Boomtown Casino was a really great gig.
My first memories of travelling to Fort McMurray as a child were to watch my Dad compete in a soccer tournament. My first wife was also born and raised in Fort McMurray, so I had spent a considerable amount of personal time there as well.
This fire was absolutely devastating, but for me it had a personal element that I just couldn’t shake. I felt that I needed to do something, so did Pam who has her own connections to the community.
On May 4th, I stopped in for a visit with Debbie and she could see that something was wrong. I explained to her about the fire and the hopeless feelings that we were having. Then, while I was chatting with her about it, it’s like a little light bulb came on. “Hold on a minute Deb, can I use my date in a couple of weeks to hold a fundraiser in support of these people … you know, bands, a silent auction, donations, something like that?”
Debbie’s face lit up and she positively beamed. “I couldn’t think of anything better to do,” she said. And with that, it was decided. Go time! I told Pam about it and she was absolutely delighted about the idea as well. But, we’d really better get moving on this.
We got back to our little wired cabin in Mendenhall and started burning up the internet and phone lines. I made a Facebook event and we invited everyone that we knew locally. We set up a gmail account for communications and e-transfer donations. There was so much to do and less than nine days to do it.
Well, it mushroomed much bigger and faster than we could have ever imagined. We started calling local businesses for silent auction donations and talking to the many musicians that I know about coming out to do a set. Every single person was so very supportive and willing to help out.
It got to the point where people that we didn’t even know started advertising for us. Leonard Linklater interviewed us both live on his Midday Cafe show. Tim Kucharuk from CKRW — The Rush called us and did a live interview over the phone. Auction items and donations started pouring in.
It was not easy to get through to our phone line, but on the morning of the event, the phone rang. It was a very kind lady at Air North. She told us that they had heard about the event and were wondering why we hadn’t asked them for a donation to the auction. I tried to explain that we had seen how much they were doing already, and we didn’t feel comfortable asking them for more.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Come on down to the head office; we have 8 segment passes for your auction.” Wow! Jim Robb donated an original, framed drawing, with an additional doodle on the matting, and signed it.
We were blown away by the magnitude of kindness and generosity of perfect strangers, coming together for a worthy cause.
The day of the event arrived, and things went off without a hitch. Roly and I worked all day getting the stage set. Pam and Melanie worked all day getting the silent auction ready. The donation box that had been sitting on the bar for well over a week was overflowing.
The doors opened at 7 p.m., by donation. The silent auction started at 7:30 and the performances kicked off at 8 p.m. with opening remarks by our then-Mayor, Dan Curtis, followed by a video message by our then-Premier, Darrell Pasloski and eventually the feature event.
All in all, we ended up putting 42 dignitaries, performers and musicians across the stage in a five-hour period. It set the house on fire! (Pun intended.) Brilliant performances by everyone and the packed house was standing room only. The dance floor was full all night, dancing to an eclectic assortment of music, ranging from country, to rock to jazz.
At the end of the night, after everyone had left, we sat at the bar with the staff and tried to do a tally of how much we had raised. We couldn’t do an exact total because some of the money raised was in U.S. funds and we weren’t sure what the exchange rate would be. But we knew that we had at least $10,000.
Some more donations trickled in over the next couple of days and finally we went to the bank to donate the funds. We knew at the time that the Toronto-Dominion Bank had promised to match any donations dollar-for-dollar, and that the Red Cross had also promised to match funds. So we donated to the Red Cross through the TD and effectively quadrupled the donations.
In the end, we — as Yukoners — sent a whopping total, with the matched funds, of $43,504.26. More than a dollar from every single Yukoner. Amazing!
I was playing a gig out at Loren’s Destruction Bay RV Lodge that night and we were looking at the deposit slip, after the U.S. funds had been converted to Canadian. Our jaws hit the floor. The Canadian deposit was for $10,867. How insane! We’d managed, as a territory, to send more than a dollar from every single person. Not only that, but with the U.S. exchange rate at that fixed point in time, the last three numbers in the deposit were our area code.
My only regret about the entire thing, in hindsight, is that we called it “Whitehorse Cares.” We really should have called it “The Yukon Cares.” The Yukon does care, and came out in full force to help some people, more than 2,000 kilometres away, in their time of need. As I posted on my Facebook wall on May 17th, 2016, “I’m always proud to call myself a Yukoner, but today I walk a little taller with pride for my fellow Sourdoughs and Cheechakos! Mussie Cho! Merci! Thank You!”
