CSANews 102

Travel Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall Downtown Hotel patron with Sourtoe Cocktail and certificate Time travel Diamond Tooth Gerties, a re-created 1898 saloon, is Canada’s oldest legal gambling hall. The community reinvests all blackjack, roulette, poker and slot machine proceeds. Gertie and her highkicking cancan girls transported us back to the Gold Rush era. The city’s wooden boardwalks, Dawson General Store and Dawson Trading Post were also straight out of a Klondike movie set. We visited the log cabin once owned by poet Robert Service, known for verses such as The Spell of the Yukon. A costumed guide recited his poetry and shared stories about Service’s life. He told us that Robert Service once dated Pierre Berton’s mother. Today, Berton’s little white house is used by rotating writers-in-residence. World’s most unusual cocktail “There are strange things done in the midnight sun,” wrote Robert Service. In the Downtown Hotel’s Sourdough Saloon, we witnessed one of the strangest – visitors lining up to imbibe Sourtoe Cocktails. The key ingredient is a dehydrated human toe. As the bartender chants, “You can drink it fast. You can drink it slow – but your lips must touch the toe,” patrons swig down the cocktail to the cheers of onlookers. “The whisky was the worst part,” stated one lady. (The $10 price includes the whisky and a certificate to show disbelievers at home.) A hotel guest guzzled down the first Sourtoe Cocktail in 1973 after a local named Captain Dick found an amputated frostbitten toe in a jar of alcohol inside a cabin. Since then, 70,000 members have joined the Sourtoe Cocktail Club. Two have swallowed the disgusting digit, either accidently or deliberately. The penalty is a hefty $2,500 plus a lifetime ban from the bar. Sourdough Saloon eagerly accepts donated toes – especially big ones that are harder to swallow. Did we drink Sourtoe Cocktails? No. (Ahem, the lineup was too long.) Instead, we sampled Yukon Gold and Lead Dog Ale, two of the popular beers made by Yukon Brewing in Whitehorse. Yukon Brewing beer on tap 22 | www.snowbirds.org

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