Discovery Days in the Klondike!
Discovery Day is a provincial holiday celebrated every year in August in the Yukon.
During August, there are celebrations happening everywhere. Citizens and tourists alike celebrate the fact that in 1896, George Carmack, an American prospector, and Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie, two Tagish First Nations men, staked placer gold claims on Rabbit Creek which they renamed Bonanza Creek. Once they had marked their claims in the nearby town of Forty Mile on the Yukon River, word of their discovery spread throughout the region and around the world. It was the beginning of one of the largest Gold Rushes in the world.
Over 100,000 gold seekers hoped to find financial security by trying to reach the Klondike goldfields but only about 40,000 made it there due to lack of mining experience. Nonetheless, although the gold rush was short-lived, its cultural heritage to the Yukon area was very significant and in 1911 the Yukon’s Territorial Council declared Discovery Day a public holiday.
Klondike Gold Discovery Days are still celebrated with gusto, and it is believed that the three men who made the initial discovery might well have altered the course of North American history.
People had headed for the Yukon from all over North America, especially from Seattle and California, and some even came from Europe. In Victoria, men such as Richard Layritz (later of Layritz Nursery fame,) Benjamin Axhorn who built a large house in the city in 1899 (perhaps with money made in the Klondike), and Charles Jones and Norman Rant who went into business together in the Yukon, all drawn to the gold fever. The Klondike Gold Rush was said to have caused more interest than any gold rush before or since.
Quite apart from the excitement that the gold discovery had stirred up in the Yukon, 1896 was also a momentous year down in British Columbia’s capital city. In May, the tragedy of the Point Ellice bridge collapsing with so many lives being lost had caused sorrow for many families. The following month, festivities were once more in evidence, however, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s 60th year on the throne.
The controversial Canadian journalist, publisher and politician Amor de Cosmos who was also the second premier of British Columbia, passed away a few days later, his passing causing little notice despite his “brilliant but unpredictable” career. As the Fort doctor, Dr. Helmcken, commented when talking of his career at his funeral: “. . . it was neither worth living nor dying for. . .”
Much more attention was paid to an event that happened a little later that year, again in August. Residents of Victoria, Vancouver and Rossland, witnessed a phenomenon in the sky that was thought to be a “flying saucer.” On August 14th, the Colonist reported this event as follows:
“It looked like a very bright red star surrounded by a luminous halo, cigar shaped. After hovering about for a quarter of an hour posed in mid-air, surrounding itself the while with flashes of colours, it streaked off in a southerly direction and soon faded from sight.”
After continuing its journey from Victoria to Rossland where it made a second appearance, this mysterious object in the sky apparently headed south and was not seen again.
So, from all accounts, August was quite an eventful month in history and 1896 a very momentous year.