Canada Day 2017 – Dawson City style!

Happy 150th Birthday Canada!

Thanks for the Canadian flag Uncle Paul!

Canada Day is one of my favourite holidays of the year. It makes me so full of Canadian pride and love!

Canada Day 2017 was a busy one! We started by helping set up a tent and BBQ station for a fundraiser on the waterfront for the Humane Society.

We missed the parade while we were fiddling with nuts, bolts, and missing parts for the metal framed tent we had to assemble, but we did our best with the parts that did come in the box!

Then we went to the Museum for a free BBQ with the community.

Then Jeff signed up for the Yukon Gold Panning Championships and we went to have a beer at the Pit while we waited for the competitions to start.

During the morning, while I was at the waterfront, a lady came up to me and said “Hi Lisa!, I read your blog! Remember me emailing you last year about plans to come visit?”

Wow!

Anna was on her first road trip solo of the Yukon so we met up with her several times during the day, cheered her on when she entered the panning competition, and later took her for dinner at the Goat, did the Sourtoe Cocktail, and then saw a couple shows at Gertie’s!

But first, let’s get back to the gold panning!

Diamond Tooth Gertie and her girls opened the competition.

Meanwhile, the volunteers were busy BBQ’ing their hearts out for the hungry competitors and visitors, with all proceeds going to our Humane Society.

The competition had several entry classes, from children, to senior citizens, and from amateur to the panning experts!

The goal is to go fast, but not to miss any gold. Some competitions gave you an entire pail of gravel material to pan, while the amateur classes had just one pan of material to process. Every one was given the same number of small flecks/flakes of gold in their pail or pan. You need to find them all, as fast as you can. Every one you miss is a 3 minute time penalty on your final time. As you find the gold, you need to put them in a little vial to show the judges when you finish.

Here’s Jeff with our neighbour Brian judging his skills and maybe giving him a few pointers too!

Jeff didn’t win, but he did have to get extra examination for the judges when he reported finding 9 flakes and they had only hidden 7 in his pan! After some extra judging, they determined that two of them may have broken apart, or something, I don’t know, but I was super proud, and he had a dose of gold fever as he examined his vial for next 20 minutes 😀

After the competitions were over, we helped take down the BBQ tent and hauled our propane tank and coolers back home. Then we met our new friend/visitor/blog fan at the Drunken Goat where Harmonica George was playing a killer set on the back patio.

Then, Jeff and Anna did the Sourtoe Cocktail over at the Downtown hotel. I’ve done it twice, so I let Jeff do it without me so we’d be even at two times each again 🙂 There was easily 100 people in line last night. All the fame of the toe being recently stolen and mailed back may be drumming up additional business!

After they did the toe, we went to Gertie’s for the 10pm and midnight show. The midnight show is always my favourite because it really highlights Gertie’s tremendous singing power. She’s really talented, well they all are really! Something about that Gertie though – when she sings to you, you can’t help but leave with a little crush on her 😍

What a great Canada Day!