Smells Like Yukon Flog

It’s nice to see that the Mayor of Whitehorse isn’t the only one who’s been smelling like Yukon.

Apparently, SLY’s efforts to keep the Yukon’s Coat of Arms on the minds of Yukoners has finally inspired the mainstream media–in this case, Air North’s inflight magazine–to take a kick at the story. Notwithstanding the fact that Smells Like Yukon’s groundbreaking Coat of Arms work is never acknowledged in this magazine piece, we still give it two paws up.

Mark and Jesse paid no attention to the actual history behind the Coat of Arms during the research for “Best in Snow” and “Knock It Off,” so they found the article quite informative, though they might have enjoyed it even more had there been a stronger focus on the dog and a little less stuff about the history. And, seriously, why would anyone go to the trouble of writing a story about the Yukon’s Coat of Arms without suggesting a few things to replace the dog?

At any rate, we think it’s about time to finally put that dog down–and perhaps, while we’re at it, place a moritorium on stories about the Yukon’s Coat of Arms.

A few weeks ago, some anonymous vandal destroyed a series of wooden structures on one of Whitehorse’s most popular mountain bike trails–an event now immortalized as the Boogaloo Chainsaw Massacre. News of and speculation about the vandalism spread quickly through the local mountain biking community, but it wasn’t until early last week that a pair of stories by CBC’s Nancy Thomson, one of which included an interview with Smells Like Yukon’s own Mark Koepke, brought this issue to the attention of the wider public. This initial coverage then begat a print story by Tom Patrick of the Yukon News.

By now, enough has been said and written about the Boogaloo Chainsaw Massacre, so Smells Like Yukon has no intention of jumping on the story bandwagon. But all the publicity does provide a perfect opportunity to revisit a subject that once loomed large on the Flog.

You guessed it: The City of Whitehorse’s Gameswear Where? Gallery.

You may recall that an offhand comment in a radio segment from Smells Like Yukon’s first season inspired Whitehorse Mayor Bev Buckway to call Mark with the news that the city was setting up an online Gameswear Gallery to prove that all those orange Canada Winter Games volunteer jackets were doing more than collecting dust in Whitehorse basements. Less than a year later, we can’t find any trace of the gallery on the city website, which is really too bad.

Below is a photo of a pile of household and construction waste recently dumped at the side of the Boogaloo trail near the Grey Mountain Cemetery, in an area where, thanks to the planned expansion, many Yukoners can look forward to one day having their remains disposed of in a “neo-traditional” fashion, whatever that means. Now, if you look closely, you’ll note that the centrepiece of this pile of garbage has a pretty familiar appearance….

And now, for the close-up…

Once again, Smells Like Yukon’s powers of prediction have proven all too accurate. Last season’s segment, “The Barstools of Yutopia,” recorded on location in the then-brand new Yutopia Bar and Grill in downtown Whitehorse, ended with the warning that “utopias are a lot like bars at 4th and Main: they don’t last forever….”

Well, Yutopia lasted little over a year. Now it has been replaced by Kathy’s Restaurant & Asian Food. We’re still trying to figure out the name–Is the Asian food served in the alley, as opposed to the restaurant? Do you have to mail-order the moo goo gai pan? Why not tack on “& Beverages” to the name, just for good measure? As Smells Like Yukon grapples with these timeless questions, we understandably mourn the loss of the previous establishment and especially its name, which did, after all, inspire six minutes and 43 seconds of speculation about how to make the Yukon a better place to live. Only time will tell what Kathy’s Restaurant & Asian Food is going to inspire.

Fortuitously, when Jesse and Mark ate lunch at Lizard’s yesterday, the waitress explained that the martini bar that is scheduled to open in the space between Lizard’s and Kathy’s would not just be high-end, but “super high-end.” Somehow, this assertion seems ripe with satirical possibility.

In the last segment of the previous season, Smells Like Yukon paid a visit to Yukon’s Medical Officer of Health to ask about some of the most dangerous activities in the Yukon. In the finished piece, we did highlight a number of serious dangers associated with the way Yukoners approach sex, alcohol and ATVs. But, for the most part, we tried to put a humourous twist on the exercise–for example, by naming Man Yoga and watching TV in Lobird as two of the most dangerous activities. The following bit also seemed kind of funny, if only half-joking:

“We were ready… with a barrage of questions about other life threatening activities. Like trying to use a crosswalk on 2nd Avenue….”

Given the events of the past week–a young Alberta woman killed doing this very thing–any humour has been completely lost. This is one of those situations where you wish that an effort at satire could have fallen way off the mark; instead, it seems to have hit the truth head-on.

As bad as we should all feel for the victim and her family, Whitehorse drivers shouldn’t be too quick to judge the person behind the wheel, whose life, you’d imagine, has been destroyed in an entirely different sense. You don’t have to spend much time driving in the Yukon’s capital, and down 2nd Avenue in particular, to realize that 90% of local drivers should be saying “There but for the grace of God….” How many of us aren’t guilty of driving down 2nd Avenue with excessive speed, impatience or carelessness on a fairly regular basis?

Clearly, Smells Like Yukon’s attempt to raise a serious issue in a not-so serious way didn’t do much to make the crosswalks on Whitehorse’s busiest street any safer. We can only hope that a tragedy can finally succeed where comedy failed.

There’s a serious need for Yukon drivers to take a more vigilant approach behind the wheel. Collectively, we’ve been too cavalier for too long. It’s time to smarten up. And until that happens, pedestrians beware.