Berton House Comes Back to Life

by Dan Davidson
Sun Staff
Appeared in: Klondike Sun - August 23, 1996

Like all famous sons, Pierre Berton sometimes gets a mixed reception in his home town, but you'd never have known it to hear the spontaneous applause that broke out from the crowd of some 200 people as the tall man in the dark blue blazer strode out onto the balcony of his boyhood home on the evening of August 14. As KVA manager Denny Kobayashi, put it, the crowd welcomed the Bertons, Pierre, his wife, Janet, and his sister Lucy Woodward, home.

For the Klondike Visitors Association and the Yukon Arts Council, the opening of the Berton Family Home was a triumph. This project has been in the works since 1989, when Pierre Berton invested $50,000 in the house and donated it to the YAC to operate as a base for a new writer in residence program.

As Pierre himself noted, this was a far cry from the $500 his father had paid for it in 1924 and even further from the $400 he'd been able to sell it for, after doubling its size, when the family moved south in 1932.

In addition to Berton's original investment, KVA treasurer Peter Jenkins revealed that the organization has invested some $97,000 in bringing the house up to a standard that could house a visiting author.

"But what we have is this wonderful restored home for the writer-in-residence program," said Jenkins. "Mr. Russell Smith will be the first...and he will have, unlike the Berton family, running water, a bathroom--all kinds of neat things."

Not that there was no bathroom in the original, but as Lucy Berton Woodward told the story, it was reached by climbing down a ladder. One day, when she and Pierre were just toddlers, they were playing blind man's bluff in the kitchen when Pierre, a paper bag firmly over his head, unexpectedly joined his mother in the root cellar.

"My mother was startled to say the least, to have a small bundle landing at her feet and me peering over the edge saying, 'Pierre all gone.'"

Mayor Art Webster welcomed everyone to the official opening of the newest addition to the famous authors block. Robert Service's cabin is across 8th Avenue above Berton House, and Jack London's cabin is just around the corner to the south.

"I want to thank Mr. Berton for his insistence that this be part of a writer in residence program, because it will keep not only Dawson on the map, but provide some inducement to our young people...to write more and perhaps we'll see more famous authors come from Dawson City."

Speaking on behalf of the Yukon Arts Council, Max Fraser congratulated the KVA on a job well done and explained some of the background to the program, which was designed several years ago by a working committee of Dawson and Whitehorse residents.

"Mr. Berton's original concept...was to bring professional Canadian writers to the north to experience a part of the country they might otherwise not experience, so their time here could infect their writing and show up as part of their literary production in the future."

Berton has donated not only the house, but a large quantity of books for it and a further $5,000 to be seed money for next year's program. This year's inaugural writer will be in Dawson for three months.

"The purpose," Fraser explained, "is to let them experience the north and to have a good place where they could focus and concentrate on their work. This could be the beginning of a long line of writers coming to the Yukon, learning about this place and writing some pretty neat stuff about the Yukon."

The first writer in residence is Russell Smith, who introduced himself to warm applause and much laughter from the audience.

"I'm the real Cheechako. I'm from Toronto and I've never been north. I used to joke...that I'd never go north of Bloor Street...or west of the the farthest subway stop...so for me this is just a huge gift. The greatest gift that you can give a writer is time, and in an era when much government funding is drying up it's the hardest thing to come by, for us. (This) gives me the opportunity to see a whole new place, plus giving me the time and tranquility to write..."

John Gould, who has been pitching this project for a number of years, and proposed it to Berton in the first place, was a childhood school mate of the Berton children, and recalled some incidents, to the delight of the audience and the embarrassment of Pierre and Lucy.

On one occasion John, the Berton children and some others were playing doctor on the back porch. John was the patient, stretched out on a steamer trunk.

"They laid me out on that and pretended to operate on me. I don't know if Pierre was doing the operating...but the girls were the nurses. The next day I was sick. The day after that I was in the hospital having an operation for my appendix to be removed. I spent a month in the hospital."

John also recalled struggling to master the sport of cricket on the lawn there: "I never did...but we had lots of fun at this cabin years and years ago."

Lucy Woodward will be assisting the KVA by drawing up a garden plan for the landscaping as she recalls it from the early 1930s.

"It's terribly exciting to be back here," she said. "I haven't seen the inside of this house since we left in 1932 when I was--well, I won't tell you how old I was."

She recalled life without running water in the winter in Dawson, deliveries by the water wagon and removals by the honey wagon, but most of all she remembered the gardens.

"That's one thing that I miss--the beautiful gardens of Dawson. They really were exceptional, and the tourists in those days, who came on the riverboats with their fur coats from California, were astounded to see the fruits, vegetables and flowers that we had around here.

"I hope that the ghost of my mother scribbling away at the kitchen table and pounding our stories and so on, on her old Underwood typewriter, will inspire all these writers in residence to produce many great Canadian works."

The Bertons will actually be spending four nights at the home before moving out to make way for Russell Smith, so they will be attending many of the special Discovery Days events during the rest of the week.