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Put up yer dukes, Dawson City

The Guelph Mercury, 5/6/2009

Let’s rumble, Dawson City.

Say what you will about our citizens’ beady eyes, lack of dental hygiene and general untrustworthiness, but leave Cirque du soleil out of this.

This past weekend, the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon held its spring conference in your Klondike town. In between all the gold panning and saloon gunfights, the association’s chair, Rod Taylor, told the CBC that Cirque du soleil, the internationally acclaimed circus troupe, had shown interest in coming north to Dawson City.

That’s fine, if improbable. But then he added this:

“If we’d been talking about Guelph — no offence to Guelph — we wouldn’t have got in the front door. But the moment you say Dawson City, that sort of stirs the creative juices of these guys,” he said. “Hard to believe, but they were quite interested because of the cachet of Dawson City.”

That just hurts. When you picked on us, you hit a sore spot.

And what’s so great about this Dawson City cachet, anyway? First of all, how can you even call yourself a city? You barely have 1,500 residents. That’s false advertising, if you ask me.

So you’ve got Pierre Berton and Jack London. So what? We’ve got Robert Munsch and, umm, that’s about it. OK, that’s a draw.

You had the gold rush, we’ve got the rush hour.

You’ve got the Yukon River, which means “great river” in the native Gwich’in tongue. We’ve got the Speed River, which means “crappy river” in English.

Even more embarrassing, you’re home to the Dawson City Nuggets hockey team, which holds the record for losing the most lopsided series in Stanley Cup history. In 1905, the Nuggets travelled to Ottawa by dogsled, ship and train, and promptly lost two games to the Silver Seven by a combined score of 32 to 4. That, coincidentally, was also the last year the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs.

Taylor, that slinger of mud, said the Yukon’s tourism industry needs to come up with innovative ideas, such as inviting Cirque du soleil north, to attract more visitors to the territory. But Dawson City already gets around 60,000 tourists a year. Why so greedy? Guelph would kill for that kind of traffic.

Guelphites already know about their city’s charms. But to outsiders like this Taylor character, we may have a bit of an image problem. With that in mind, here are the Mercer Retort’s Top 7 suggestions for things to do this summer in the Royal City:

1) Wear your “I’m a narc” T-shirt at Hillside and get dirty looks from hippies.

2) Camp out overnight in the lineup outside Eggscetera on weekends, and hopefully you’ll get some scrambled eggs by suppertime.

3) Count the babies being carried in locally made, ethically grown, fair-trade, organic, hemp slings at the farmers’ market. When you reach 50, start over.

4) Order the tofu plate at Ribfest. See if you can count to 10 before security asks you to leave.

5) Watch the Toronto Maple Leafs play deep into spring. Wha? I’m talking about the Intercounty Baseball League team that visits the Guelph Royals, of course.

6) Stand at the corner of Macdonell and Wyndham streets after midnight on Saturdays and watch the drunk meatheads, err, hug it out.

7) Stage your own protest. Pick an issue, any issue, and start complaining. It’s kind of what we do here. Guelph’s getting the GO Train? Let’s march on City Hall! The NDP’s Karan Mann-Bowers’ alter-ego was caught driving drunk? We live in a police state! Revolt! Revolt!

See? Not so dull after all, are we Dawson City?