Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 21

The Dawson Daily News:
Journalism in the Klondike

by Edward F. Bush

Ghost Town, 1910-54

The vital part of the story of the Dawson Daily News has new been told; in the last 44 years of its existence the paper followed the fortunes of the town. While the rest of the world lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, the Klondike subsided into a staid middle age. The News grew old with Dawson, cutting back to tri-weekly publication in 1924, then to weekly in 1946. With the notable exception of the war years, the News confined itself in greater measure to the local scene.

On New Year's Day 1909, the News had proclaimed:

Yukon territory stands on the verge of its most successful era. With triumphs in material wealth at which to point with pride during an eleven years of active production which have passed, the country has a future which will pale into insignificance the outpost of the first decade. [1]

Whether the editor believed that his confidence had been justified by events, the New Year's Day issue of the News a year later carried but seven columns on its four pages in contrast to the former eight although the paper still presented the aspect of a metropolitan daily with vigorous editorials and various features. Sports spectacles, such as the Johnson-Jeffries heavyweight fight, were given full coverage.

By July 1910 the News was suggesting various gimmicks to publicize the once-renowned Klondike. Perhaps an auto race could be organized across Alaska and the Yukon or a race from Dawson down the Yukon to Saint Michael and thence to Vancouver or Seattle. It should be given the widest publicity, for example, that Chicago was only ten days travelling time from Dawson with good rail and steamer connections. Too many prospective investors thought of the territory as remote and difficult of access. Now that the stampede was a decade in the past, it was more than ever necessary to publicize the territory. On 20 October 1910 the editorial page of the News carried the following declaration of faith.

As long as water runs down the Yukon, Dawson will be Dawson. It was predicted years ago that when the individual workers had ceased operations on Bonanza, Eldorado and Hunker there would be no Dawson. The prospectors and the individual operators on those creeks have eagerly given way to the large concerns, and the same may be said respecting the other creeks. But the prospectors and operators have not by a long shot left Yukon. They are scurrying through the hills, overturning the rich gravels and getting the golden reward, and the change has proceeded far enough to prove Dawson always will be a live place. [2]

The Yukon was a good place to live and to raise a family, continued the paper editorially the following day. It provided a stimulating and healthy climate and was not visited by the disasters which befell so many other parts of the world.

Election of 1911

In September 1911 the Conservatives, led by Robert Borden, ended 15 years of Liberal rule. A month later the polls were opened in the Yukon territory to decide whether Congdon should continue to represent the Yukon in the Liberal interest, or the veteran Thompson in the Conservative. Now that the News was the sole paper in Dawson, the editor took a less partisan and more objective look at the candidates and issues. There were few of the latter by this date. The decision really lay in choosing between the personalities of the candidates. The News repeated the counsel it had offered in 1908 when it had passed to new ownership; that is, that Yukon would be best served by returning a member belonging to the party in power, which now meant a Conservative. For this reason the News favoured Thompson. Congdon lost his seat, but the treatment accorded him by the News was in sharp contrast with that of the old days. The paper intimated that it would have supported Congdon had Sir Wilfrid retained power. As it was, the defeated candidate merited the respect and gratitude of the territory he had served so well.

It must not be forgotten that although one candidate won, the man who lost had a large share of the people of Yukon back of him. But in deciding the best course for Yukon, the people chose the Conservative candidate. Mr. Congdon doubtless will find other lines in which to employ his talents to advantage, and his work on behalf of Yukon may not be counted ended. [3]

The territory had passed the politically contentious, faction-ridden phase in its history and future elections for the most part were to devolve upon the merits of rival candidates more than upon party issues.

The First World War

Through the prewar years the Dawson Daily News retained the same size and format — four pages, seven columns — and sold for 25 cents per copy or two dollars per month. Editorial columns, rarely exceeding one and one-half to two columns, were about subjects of general interest. With no rival paper and political controversy settled, the editorial page was a bland offering now compared with the gold-rush days and their aftermath.

The News covered the First World War as effectively and thoroughly as most of its outside contemporaries, with liberal use of banner headlines and recent telegraphic news from the front. News editorials dealt with various aspects of the war. The paper had its share of chauvinism, after the armistice demanding the execution of the kaiser.

Even in the final crisis of the war, an ominous item of local news was given priority on the front page. On 23 March, headlines announced a cut in the Yukon federal spending estimates of no less than 40 per cent. On 6 April the editor vigorously protested this cavalier treatment by Ottawa of a territory which had sent 500 volunteers to the front and produced in all 200 million dollars in gold. "The Dominion is not justified in reducing the territory to a vassal state." [4] Last year alone, commented the editor on 10 May, the Yukon had produced $4,700,000 in mineral wealth.

The Yukon is not done for, and never will be. As long as water runs down hill and as long as the sun shines, Yukon will be on the map. And it will be peopled and productive. The occupation of this realm is permanent. The evidence is here to those who will open half an optic. [5]

Then on 4 May 1918 the News carried the still mere foreboding headline, "YUKON COUNCIL TO BE ABOLISHED." The news had come in a telegram from Arthur Meighen to the gold commissioner. The editor again stated his unshaken confidence in the territory's future, with the assurance that "Dawson will be here as long as there is a map and as long as the sun shines." [6] Anxiety on this count was unfounded for although the council was reduced from eight to three members in 1921, it has never been abolished. Whether Dawson will survive as long as the sun shines is more problematical.

Early Postwar Years

In an editorial dated 24 February 1919, the News lamented the lack of favourable publicity by someone other than their own member of Parliament. The editor still assumed that the mineral wealth of the territory was virtually inexhaustible; this being so, what could account for the apathy toward Yukon displayed by the rest of the country? One wonders whether the editor's confidence was based on knowledge or wishful thinking.

The postwar issues featured the virulent influenza epidemic, disarmament, the peace conference, reparations and rehabilitation as did the News's contemporaries on the outside. By New Year's Day 1920 the paper, its four-page issue carrying six rather than seven columns, was in apparent decline. Editorials by now rarely filled more than a column or a column and a half. Advertising had decreased and was principally that of local retail merchants in and about Dawson. The paper had become restricted in format and character in comparison with the editions of a decade earlier.

Like all the provinces with the exception of Quebec, the Yukon had adopted temperance legislation as a war measure during 1916-17, with Quebec following suit in 1919. Temperance appealed to many from a sense of dedication and self-sacrifice, it is curious to note, in a leader of 20 February 1920, that the paper which had defended dance halls against the meddlesome hands of the reformers should preach temperance in its editorial column, granted, under new management, a little mere than ten years later.

Intoxicating beverages have no place in a world where machinery occupies such a prominent place as it now does. The safety of too many others is involved when the unsteady hand is left in control of the steering wheel or the engine throttle.

The editor continued: "The greater our democracy, or our civilization, the more restricted become our liberties." [7] The "dry" period ended for the Yukon, as it did for British Columbia and one or two other provinces, in 1921.

The News's decline from the status of a metropolitan daily to a small-town paper was reflected during the early postwar years in the quality of its editorials and its diminishing advertisements alike. By the early 1920s reprints from other papers increasingly replaced leaders from the hand of its own editor. Periodically the editor would bestir himself to comment on some matter of local interest or to stimulate confidence in the territory's economic future. By the mid-1920s advertisers in the News were reduced to a half-dozen local retailers and the Canadian Pacific coastal steamship service. The constricting economy of this depressed region inevitably regulated the scope of the journal which had so often boasted of having the finest plant north of Seattle. On 11 October 1924 the News ceased publication as a daily; henceforth the paper appeared tri-weekly, but until 15 November it clung to its original title, then became simply the Dawson News in keeping with its reduced circumstances. [8]

From the time of its change of ownership, the News had carried at the head of its editorial page the simple designation "Dawson News Publishing Company" as owner. By March 1924 this security measure, if such it was, had been relaxed sufficiently to disclose the name of the editor, Arthur Hazelton Dever, described as an American citizen by birth. A trio, two of whom (Charles Reed Settlemier and Harold Malstrom) were American citizens by birth and the third, Otto Frederick Kastner, surprisingly of British origin, managed the enterprise. [9]

The 6 December 1924 edition carried the banner headline, "YUKON RADIO SERVICE OFFICIALLY OPENED." Communication by wireless or radio, as distinct from land line, had been opened between Edmonton and Dawson. At this date transmission was by Morse rather than voice or radio telephony. It was as well for the fortunes of the little community that technology kept pace with the times in that region for on 4 March of the following spring, 1925, the government telegraph service discontinued operation. On 7 May 1925 the News proudly printed the first press news from its Edmonton correspondent. Wireless press service using Morse transmission at 25 words per minute was to be a major medium of news dissemination until supplanted by teletype following the Second World War.

By August 1925, however, the News was encountering trouble with its news service and had incurred criticism for inadequate coverage of outside events. Both the American Press and Canadian Press service had been cool to a News proposal for a radio-transmitted news service since anyone with a properly tuned receiver and competency in Morse would have access to the service for nothing. The News's solution had been to engage its own Edmonton correspondent who transmitted selected news items culled from the Edmonton papers; however, atmospheric and ionospheric blackouts periodically interrupted radio communication for days and sometimes for weeks at a stretch and news had to be sent by post. [10] Although the News retained its enterprising spirit, its misfortune lay in being tied to a declining and isolated community at a time when technology was transforming the newspaper world elsewhere. Many metropolitan dailies on the outside, however, found that implementing the technological advances so expensive that they were bankrupted in their efforts to compete with better-financed rivals. By the 1920s and 1930s daily newspaper publication in the large cities had become big business. In contrast the News had no competition, but by 1930 was serving a community shrunk to village dimensions.

The Great Depression

The thirties, however, were not as harsh in the Klondike as in the country in general. Dawson's economy was tied to gold production, the price for which did not fluctuate. Hence when gold production increased, the Klondike economy revived. Pronounced increases in Klondike gold production occurred in 1931 and again in 1933, reaching a prewar peak in 1939 with an output of four to five times that of 1928. [11] A revival in the local economy is in some measure discernible in the pages of the News. Still the issues of the early 1930s make dull and parochial reading compared with those prior to 1909. The early 1930s witnessed a four-page, six-column paper largely patronized by local storekeepers and the products they stocked — Blue Ribbon Coffee, Hippress Boots, Winchester Cigarettes, Cuticura Powder. The large headlines had disappeared, although they were revived later. Several December 1930 issues exhibited a smattering of short items from the international scene, most of the datelines being one or two days old.

Two years later, 30 December 1932, the front page of the News had revived its old format with banner headlines and a fair coverage of outside news. Although the paper maintained its former size, the editorial page still carried little original matter. Three years later, in January 1935, the News answered substantially the same description, it carried proudly the title "Canada's Farthest North Newspaper," with which there could be no dispute. This edition carried a half-column editorial on American unemployment, and foreign news coverage was fair, generally consisting of short items from abroad, although it had by no means regained the standard set by the paper in its heyday. Often the few editorials that appeared were on subjects of local and domestic concern; an example is a short leader of 25 July 1935, urging merchants and residents to repaint and refurbish their premises in preparation for the tourist season. On 31 October, however, the editor did discuss the League of Nations sanctions in the Italo-Ethiopian crisis.

The Second World War

Even the stimulus of war in 1939 on the whole did little to revive editorial life in the paper. The few editorials appearing in the war years were generally on some aspect of the struggle. On 18 June 1940 the News headlined on the front page the imminent fall of France.

FRANCE IS MAKING DESPERATE STRUGGLE
MARSHAL PETAIN IS NEW PREMIER OF FRANCE
ASKS ENEMY FOR THEIR TERMS IF FRANCE
LAYS DOWN ITS ARMS [12]

Curiously enough, the one editorial on that day discussed phlegmatically the subject of hydro-electric power development in Canada. On 22 June 1940 Churchill's eloquent speech to the House of Commons and the free world was printed verbatim in the News. The paper gave good coverage to war news from the various theatres, it is notable too that in the first winter of the war, advertisement patronage about doubled, with a few entries from as far afield as Seattle.

In the spring of 1944 the News faced a local crisis. On a Friday afternoon, 5 May, the Yukon River began rising ominously, and by that evening most of South Dawson was under water. Four days later, on 9 May, the News office on Third Avenue was flooded with 18 inches of murky water sloshing about in the main composing room. The greatest damage was to paper stock. The base of the linotype machine and the heating plant were both inundated. Several hours were taken drying the machine out, but not in time to set the type for the Thursday edition. On Saturday, however, the News was again on the streets, having missed but one issue. [13]

The VE Day edition, 8 May 1945, featured an editorial on the San Francisco Conference, birthplace of the United Nations, through which the powers were to make a second attempt to banish war. The News editor pleaded for the individual and collective practice of Christian ideals in order that the cost of war would not prove vain a second time. To the sophisticated this must have seemed a naive appeal, but however idealistic, its sentiment was more humanistic than the chauvinistic crowing of a quarter-century earlier.

The Uncertainties of the Postwar World

On 14 November 1945 it had been ten years since the Dawson News had adopted the slogan "British Empire's Farthest North Newspaper." With the conclusion of the war already three months in the past, the News faced the vicissitudes of the postwar world. This was a prosperous and expansive period for Canada as a whole, but the burgeoning prosperity of those years did not extend to the Klondike. By the new year, 1946, a definite decrease in international news coverage was noticeable and the paper as a whole was reverting to the standards of a small-town sheet. On 2 May 1946 the News became a weekly, at a subscription rate of 50 cents per month or six dollars per annum. The four-page, six-column format was maintained. Thenceforth news coverage in the main was restricted to local and territorial items for no doubt air-mail service brought in newspapers little more than a day old from the outside. The once thriving and progressive daily was now a village weekly.

Advertising patronage seemed to increase if anything in the course of the early postwar years as the remote community withdrew into itself. Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian Pacific Air Lines and two of the large American insurance companies still found it worth their while to advertise in Dawson.

With the war years now well in the past, the editorial page lapsed to its former comatose condition, using occasional reprints from other papers. On 7 April 1949 the paper that had 30 to 40 years earlier freely exchanged journalistic fire with Seattle and Vancouver dailies was not too proud to reprint an editorial from the Simcoe Reformer, a small-town weekly from the tobacco belt of southern Ontario, which may well at that time have had a higher circulation than the Dawson Weekly News. [14]

It must have been obvious by the early 1950s that Dawson's days as the territorial capital were limited, rumours to that effect having circulated as early as 1949. Whitehorse, a town that had grown to 8,000 during the war years and only declined to about 7,000 by the early 1950s, had become the centre of a copper-mining industry and a communications hub as the rail head of the White Pass and Yukon Railway. The completion of the Alaska Highway during the war years confirmed Whitehorse's importance. On 21 September 1950 the News published a telegram from their member of Parliament, J.A. Simmons, assuring his constituents that he had protested to the minister regarding the proposed transfer. The News remarked, "It is generally agreed here that transfer of the capital would mean a calamity for this district." [15] The transfer was effected in the spring of 1953 and the News lost the government patronage it had inherited from the World.

On 12 October 1950 a letter from a former resident appeared on the editorial page, encouraging Yukoners to maintain faith in the territory's future. Time magazine, among others, had been depicting the Yukon as a forlorn land with bleak prospects barring some unexpected miracle. An article by an unidentified journalist roused the oldtime fire from the editorial columns, with no doubt an accurate, if patronizing, description of Dawson.

The capital of the Yukon is setting up a howl that echoes through the musty, empty saloons of the '99ers . . . . But today the batwing doors of the haunts of Sam McGee and Dan McGrew swing idly back and forth on rusty hinges, patiently waiting for prospectors who never come.

This prosy description was too much for "A.A.G.," a regular contributor to the News editorial page.

Batwing doors be damned. There's not a batwing door in any hotel today and the doors that are in our Dawson hotels today do not swing idly back and forth on rusty hinges.

In the first place Dawson's hotels are not known as saloons and what's more the beer parlours and the lobbies are not musty, nor are they empty.

Some of the high-grading re-write men who insist upon recreating a Dawson in the image of fifty years ago, should take time out and come up this way and see what a lot of rot they're talking about. [16]

Even in its comparative dotage the Dawson News could still defend the Klondike.

In March 1951 the editorial page introduced a new feature entitled "Weekly Report From Ottawa," a summary of House proceedings and government measures composed by the member for the territory. In some measure this compensated for the paper's narrowed horizon that for several years had taken in little beyond the territory. A revival of editorial writing was apparent in 1951 and 1952, and advertising patronage was well maintained. The editorial revival may have been in part due to the stimulus of the Korean War. For example, on 10 September 1953 a two-column editorial discussed Canada's role in that conflict.

With Dawson reduced to village dimensions, bereft of its function as territorial capital, and the News's loss of government printing contracts, continuance of publication became difficult even on a weekly basis. On 25 March 1954 the Dawson Weekly News ceased publication.

This paper after serving the Dawson area and its many subscribers at outside points for the past fifty-five years, has through adverse conditions been forced to cease publication with this issue . . . .

We thank our advertisers, subscribers, contributors and all others who have so faithfully patronized us over the many years and leave with the hope the period of suspension will be short. [17]

Unless the well-worked hills of the Klondike disclose further treasure, the News's suspension of publication may be considered permanent.

So passed from the scene one of Canada's pioneer newspapers. By the standards of the best Canadian dailies, no doubt even in its prime the Dawson Daily News left something to be desired, but to adventurers from all over the world, this vigorous, progressive and varied paper must have been welcome. Although the News was not born with Dawson — it was several years too late for that — the story of the Dawson Daily News is also the story of Dawson and of the Klondike.