Klondike Friday: Photography

The forth book in the Klondike Gold Rush series, Gold Web, will be released by Dundurn in December, 2013. In this book a photographer arrives in town to set up a business. Angus, being a keen and intelligent young lad, takes a job escorting her around town. Naturally I wanted to be able to describe the equipment and the process of taking a photograph in the day.

I contacted Jared Case at the George Eastman Museum of Photography in Rochester, NY. Jared arranged a tour of the facilities for me and a meeting with a couple of the experts on 19th century photography. It was a fascinating day.

One of the reasons the Klondike Gold Rush is so historically famous, is that it occurred at the beginning of the era of common photography. The camera and all it's equipment was becoming small enough and light enough that it could be taken outside of the studio to photograph people on the street or going about their business. By 1898 there was even a camera for hobbists. It was the Brownie, invented by the abovementioned Mr. Eastman. You took your pictures and mailed the entire camera to the Kodak offices. They developed it and sent back the pictures and a new camera.

Photography was still a clumsy business though, and it was likely my photographer would have used dry plates, rather than film. The dry plate had two sides, so one could snap two photographs before having to change plates. Light was a problem - and most pictures had to be taken in the sunlight or in a very well illuminated room. Otherwise, the photographer required a bowl of magnesium, lit to provide a sudden flash.

In the book, Angus is totally captivated by the new art of photography. What wonders it will show. Corporal Sterling thinks science has a place in the future of policing. Fiona, on the other hand, is most concerned about protecting her privacy. There are still people searching for her, you know.

Here are some pictures I took with my own camera at the museum.

Klondike Friday: Women in the Klondike

With the publication of Gold Web, the fourth book in the Klondike Gold Rush series only two months away, I’m mentally back in the Klondike.

Today, I’m going to recommend some books that I used as research for the history of the time. The definitive book on the subject is Pierre Berton’s Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush. A highly readable popular-history book, it’s well worth starting your historical investigation with. One thing about Berton though, is that he does gloss over women’s participation. (Hardly the first historical record to do so). It’s estimated that about one-sixth of the people who went to the Klondike were women. And not just prostitutes and dance hall owners either. But businesswomen, shopkeepers, nurses, nuns, newspaper reporters, wives and mothers. They carried their babies up the Chilkoot trail or lugged pregnant bellies and tried to make homes out of the wilderness and created successful (or not-so-successful) businesses. They supported themselves, or they supported their families.

Charlotte Gray’s book: Gold Diggers: Striking it Rich in the Klondike, examines, among others, Belinda Mulrooney, prominent businesswoman.

I’d recommend Also Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike. by Charlene Porsild

And Goodtime Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush by Lael Morgan for a peek into the demimonde.

And now, a word from our sponsor: Pre-orders are important to build interest in a book (and usually at a reduced price) Gold Web is available for Pre-Order at a reduced price.

From Amazon.ca, From Amazon.com, From Chapters/Indigo. Also your favourite independent bookstore.

Klondike Friday: Not on the Lord’s Day

Today is Good Friday. I'm planning to go to a fabulous little shop in Bloomfield called Diva which -stocks fancy hats and fascinators. I'm in need of a new 19th century-style hat for my upcoming promotional appearances for Gold Mountain.

Which got me thinking about changing attitudes to religious days.

As I’ve discussed here before, the Klondike Gold Rush was notable for the presence of the police. The NWMP was in the territory before all those mad prospectors and their hangers-on began flooding across the border. Thus what the newcomers found was not a wild west town, but a place where the police were firmly in control and some laws strictly enforced.

The Mounties turned a semi-blind eye to offenses such as prostitution and gambling recognizing that banning those things outright would simply lead to driving them underground. Somethings they didn’t bend on, however. Such serious crimes as the use of vile language or working on Sunday – the Lord’s Day.

Swearing in public could get you tossed in jail and any form of work on Sunday could see one facing the long arm of the law. It has been recorded that people could be, and were, arrested for such offences as chopping wood for their own stove on a Sunday.

Times certainly have changed, haven't they!


Get it early: Gold Mountain has appeared on KOBO in advance of publication date. So, if you have a KOBO e-reader, now’s your chance: click here. Gold Digger and Gold Fever have been on KOBO for a while. I am expecting (hoping!)they will be available in all electronic formats soon.

All she wants is a quiet life: Fiona MacGillivray guests at Killer Characters

Fiona MacGillivray, owner of the Savoy Saloon and Dance Hall in Dawson City, 1898, guests today at the fun blog Killer Characters. Head on over to see what she has to say about her adventures and about being a character in a book. http://www.killercharacters.com/

Klondike Friday: Law and Order (Sometimes)

In Gold Mountain, the third in the Klondike Gold Rush Series, due out next April from Dundrun Press, there are some flashbacks to when Fiona and Angus first arrived in Skagway, Alaska in August of 1897. Fiona’s on the run from the law in Toronto. She has no intention of going on the difficult trip to Dawson, and thinks it might be a nice idea to set up a theatre in Skagway, something for the entertainment of all the eager prospectors sure to follow.

Then she has an encounter with the legendary outlaw Randolph Jefferson Smith, and decides it expedient to take her prospects across the border into Canada and then to Dawson City.

Smith (aka Soapy) is a real historical character and I did a fair amount to research into him for his small part in this book. There was pretty much nothing in Skagway before July of 1897, when news of the gold strike hit the cities of the south and tens of thousands of people headed north. Skagway, and nearby Dyea, were the jumping-off points for the interior. Passengers travelled by ship from Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver or Victoria and disembarked at Skagway or Dyea to head overland into Canada.

The aforementioned Mr. Smith, who got his nickname from a confidence game involving a bar of soap, was one of the first on the scene. Seeing an opportunity, he quickly took over the town, and ruled Skagway for the next year.

What little there was in the way of law and order, looked the other way. (The Marshall was in Smith’s pocket.)

Smith was killed in July of 1898 in a shootout on the Skagway waterfront. His killer died of his own wounds a few days later. The picture of Smith on the horse was taken was he was the Grand Marshall of the July 4th parade, but a few days before his death.



Meanwhile, at the top of the Chilkoot Trail, at the Canadian border, the North-West Mounted Police kept a Maxim Machine Gun with the express purpose of keeping Soapy and his gang out of Canada.

Many an American was not impressed to arrive in Canada and find that there were rules and the law was enforced. For example, the NWMP inspected all boats leaving Lake Bennett for sea-worthiness, and insisted that women and children get out and walk around the rapids. In town they kept an eye on the gambling halls and cribs, enforced Sunday closing, and banned firearms from town and the Creeks.

And created a very Canadian version of the not-so-wild west.



The picture to the right is of Sir Sam Steele, who in typical Canadian fashion, gets far less recognition than he deserves.

Klondike Friday: A Day Off

I'm taking a day off today. Yup, a holiday. Normally, when I'm at home I write every day until about noon or one-ish. Yesterday I realzied that summer is ending, I have a fridge full of blueberries, a counter-top covered in tomatoes, and almost nothing made for the freezer. I have books to read and a swimming pool to enjoy while I still can. So I'll take a day off.

But wait - the last-minuite edits for Gold Mountain are due today. I can do those quickly. And it's Klondike Friday!

Sunday was the Lord's Day in the Yukon. Everything was shut down, the bars, the dancehalls, the shops. People could be (and were) fined for chopping wood for their own stoves on a Sunday. So consider this my version of Sunday, and that's the end of Klondike Friday for this week!

One more thing - the release date of Gold Mountain has been moved up to April.

Klondike Fridays

Time to head back to the wild days of the Klondike Gold Rush. And wild days they were.

Gold Mountain is on schedule for a May 2012 release and I am sitting down this morning to begin plotting out the next Klondike Gold Rush book. No title as of yet, but ideas are simmering. Last night when I pulled out my history books to start getting back into the sense of the time period, I thought it might be fun over the next year to post things of interest on this blog, for anyone wanting to know more about the background to the books. I’ll try to keep to a regular schedule of Klondike Fridays. Yes, yes, today is Saturday, but I only thought of the idea last night.

One of the reasons the Klondike Gold Rush is so well known (and so darned easy to research) is that it was not only the last great gold rush, but it was also the only one to be captured extensively on film.

You all know those iconic images of the lines of packers trudging up a 45 degree slope in the snow.

In the 1890s, the camera and all necessary supplies for it had become small enough that photographers were able to get out of their studios and stiffly posed portraits and take their camera not only into the streets but also the mountains and the gold fields and peoples’ homes. Thus we have a fully documented photographic record of the period.



Some were professional photographers, perhaps the best known of which was Eric A Hegg, who opened a studio in Dawson City and made a living taking photographs of Klondike scenes to sell in an early version of the postcard. There were many amateurs as well, people who loved their cameras and the new art of photographer such as George Hicks. The White Pass & Yukon Route company employed a full time photographer, Harry Barley, to keep company owners and shareholders informed about the progress of the railway.

One of the books I rely most on for my research is The Klondike Quest: A Photographic Essay 1897-1899 by Pierre Berton. It’s a big beautiful book packed with wonderful photos of the amazing people who made the great journey to the promised land.



That the promised land didn’t turn out to be quite so promising will be the subject of my next posting.

A Joy to be Home

I'm home. Hurrah! The trip was great but it is so nice to be home. I wouldn't normally go on a long trip in Spring but my cross-Canada book tour for Among the Departed was planned around Bloody Words in Victoria so I had little choice. When I left, the garden was a bunch of stubby hosta tips poking out of the cold ground. Now it's a riot of peonies and iris and the hosta are HUGE. I won't get my vegetable garden in this year - it's getting too late and my priority will be the annuals and cleaning up the perennial gardean and the weeds that have had their way with the edges of the lawn. Fortunately a neighbouring boy came regularly to cut the grass.

I have lost six weeks of writing time. I don't write when travelling, but i did do a lot of thinking about the new standalone and am really eager to dive right in. I find that I am able to do edits when in cheap motel rooms, so was able to get the editor's suggestions incorporated into Gold Mountain (coming March 2012).

Good thing I like to drive - I put in over 10,000 Kms on the car in five weeks.