Yukon

Zack exhibit celebrates nature

Enda Bardell (photo from Enda Bardell)

Creativity manifests itself in people’s lives in different ways and at different times. For Enda Bardell, various forms of art occupied her for decades, while Mike Cohene discovered woodcarving only a few years ago, on his way to retirement. Their double show, Artistry in Wood and Water, opened at the Zack Gallery on July 26.

Bardell told the Independent that she was born in Estonia. In 1944, when she was a young child, her family fled from Estonia, then occupied by the Nazis, to Sweden. Her mother worked at a paper factory there, and Bardell played with paper dolls she made herself. She also drew all the dolls’ colourful outfits. “I gave the dolls away to other girls, to make friends,” she recalled. “My first attempts at fashion design.”

A few years later, the family was forced to move again. The Russian communist government wanted the return of all the Estonians who had escaped the Nazis during the war, and Sweden was going to comply with that demand. But Bardell’s father didn’t want to live in communist Russia, so they became refugees again, this time ending up in Canada.

“In 1951, we came to Winnipeg,” said Bardell. “I went to school there and I desperately wanted to fit in. To belong. To be Canadian. I participated in many school clubs and activities. Entered an art class, too. My teacher praised me and recommended that I send one of my drawings to an interschool art competition. I did. And I won. I knew then that I was an artist.”

Interested in landscapes and abstracts, Bardell painted a lot as a teenager, but, after her high school graduation, she became deeply involved in fabric art. “I sold my batiks at craft fairs and house parties. People liked them, and someone suggested I should open my own store,” she said. “I did. I designed lots of different textile objects: skirts, pillowcases, aprons, etc. I felt that I needed a business course, in addition to my art education, so I took it. My store was very successful.”

But, as soon as the store achieved that success, running it lost its challenges. “I became bored,” said Bardell. “It was time for a change.”

She sold the store and did many other things in her professional life. “I always want to try something new, something I’ve never tried before. At one time or another, I was a lamp designer. I worked in banking. I was a realtor. I designed costumes for the Vancouver movie industry,” she said.

She also traveled a lot. “I have visited 38 countries. I like adventures, like it when I can’t speak the tongue. Then I have to express myself through body language. I have to be creative,” she said.

Art always shimmered on the periphery of her life, a constant creative supplement to her various commercial careers. First, abstract oils and acrylics, and, later, watercolours. Painting eventually metamorphosed into the focus of her existence. In the past two decades, she has participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad. In 2008, she even participated in an art show in her native Estonia, the Estonian Art in Exile exhibition at KUMU, the National Museum of Art in Tallinn. KUMU acquired one of her acrylic abstracts for their permanent collection; another of her paintings is in the Tartu Art Museum in Estonia. Her paintings are represented by many local galleries.

The current exhibition at the Zack is the result of a trip Bardell took to Yukon shortly before the COVID pandemic temporarily closed all travel. “My son lives in Yukon,” she said. At his prompting, she applied and was granted residency for one month at Ted Harrison Cabin in 2018. “We hired an RV and traveled there for two weeks,” she said. “Yukon was amazing: mountains, rivers, lakes. The place resonated with me. I took 1,400 photos during our travels. Based on the selection from those photos, I painted 40 watercolour pieces during my stay at the cabin. It was a privilege to stay in that wonderful place, especially because I had met Ted previously.”

Many of Bardell’s paintings in this series involve rivers and lakes. “I like water,” she said. “I have always lived on the water, except for one year in Winnipeg. I swim year-round here, summer and winter. Sometimes, I have seals swimming with me. It feels magical.”

When she submitted her Yukon series to the Zack Gallery, it was accepted, on the condition that it would be a double show, as gallery exhibitions must have a Jewish connection. Bardell’s Jewish connection became Mike Cohene, a local woodcarver. His colourful carved fish complement perfectly Bardell’s watercolours of Yukon’s rivers and lakes.

Unlike Bardell, Cohene didn’t do anything artistic until 2009. “I had a solid clothing business,” he said. “Awhile back, I started thinking about retiring and selling the business.”

photo - Mike Cohene — Mike Cohene *(photo by Linda Babins)*

In the summer of 2009, Cohene visited Steveston Farmers Market. “They had a booth of the Richmond Carvers Society – I thought their works were outstanding,” he said. “I always whittled but I never considered myself artistic. I started talking to the man in the booth, expressing my admiration. He said anyone could learn to do it. He invited me to come to the club meeting in September. I went.”

Since that day, he has learned a lot about the artistry and the technique of woodcarving. His journey began with woodcarving classes at the society. Later, he took a course at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and enrolled in carving workshops.

“My first carving was a bear cub,” he said. “Then I made a dolphin. Then I started carving fish and birds…. I’ve always been a fisherman, but I never studied fish anatomy before. I caught a fish and tossed it into a bucket. Now, I catch a fish and study it: the fins, the tail, the scales, how the colours change. I look at fish from a new perspective.”

In 2017, Cohene participated in his first two-artist exhibition at the Zack Gallery, with photographer Joanne Emerman. Since then, his art has become even more refined. “I learned more sophisticated techniques and tools,” he said. “I got several residencies in B.C. and Oregon.” Three years ago, he began teaching woodcarving to other Richmond Carvers Society members.

To create his wooden creatures as life-like as possible, Cohene uses various reference materials. “Mostly I use my own photographs,” he said. “When other people photograph wildlife, they give it their own interpretation, but I want to follow my own vision.”

His statues of fish include rocks and corals, all carefully carved and painted in bright, realistic colours. “Sometimes, one statue takes up to 20 coats of paint – different wood parts absorb paint with different intensity,” he explained.

He also uses tree branches as mounting blocks – they are not carved, just sawed off, polished and lacquered. “I only use dead wood for my statues. I often walk along the beach and pick up interesting pieces of driftwood. I’ve never harmed even one living tree,” he said.

Recently, Cohene has started exploring First Nation carving. The motifs attract him, and he has several pieces on display at the gallery, including two decorative oars.

He also creates Judaica – mezuzot, chanukiyot and dreidels – some of which can be seen at the gallery. Cohene has been to Israel 34 times. “Once, I brought 12 kilograms of olive wood with me from Israel, and I make many of my Judaica pieces from the reclaimed Israeli wood,” he said. “Olive wood has such a beautiful texture. And dreidels are fun to make.”

Whatever he works on, Cohene always gives it his all. “For me,” he said, “woodcarving is a form of self-fulfillment.”

Artistry in Wood and Water runs until Sept. 5. To learn more, visit the artists’ websites: endabardell.com and mikecohene.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Yukon Jewish history online

The rich and rugged history of Jews in the Yukon has found an internet home on the website of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon, jcsy.org. The lure of the Klondike Gold Rush and the stories of its enterprising and colourful Jewish personalities, some respectable and others salacious, comprise a large portion of the newly created virtual real estate.

The quest to get to the gold, a journey undertaken by 100,000 prospectors between 1896 to 1899, was treacherous, the site explains. There were several routes, but one of the more popular ones was boarding a ship to Skagway, Alaska, then trekking over the Chilkoot Trail to Yukon. Once there, prospectors and retailers set out along Yukon River for another 550 kilometres to Dawson City – a trip that could take months – traveling during the winter so they would be ready for the summer prospecting season.

Prior to venturing on their northbound journey, however, fortune seekers needed supplies, dubbed a “Yukon Outfit,” the equivalent of one ton of provisions, which were essential to live and work in the north. The website shows photos of people bearing heavy loads headed to Dawson City, climbing ice-carved stairs to get to the Chilkoot Trail.

On the same page, there is a newspaper ad by Cooper & Levy, a Seattle company equipping gold hunters for their excursions. “Are you going to the Alaska gold fields? If so, send for our Supply List for ‘One Man for One Year’…. The list will be sent free of charge to any part of the world,” the ad reads.

“The idea of getting to Dawson City was an unbelievably difficult task. People needed to get there on a raft with all their things. The strength of the people was incredible,” said Rick Karp, president of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon (JCSY). “It was not a party. It was unbelievably difficult and many didn’t survive. As well, the First Nations communities suffered life-changing events.”

Albert and Marcus Meyer, whose histories are told on the website, were but two of the many industrious Jews to land in Dawson City. They opened a jewelry business in 1897, were buyers of Indigenous gold and produced Indigenous-style gold jewelry. Expert silversmiths, they also crafted silver trade bracelets with carved Tlingit designs.

Other families with connections to the Klondike would rise to prominence elsewhere, such as the Barrons in Calgary and the Oppenheimers in Vancouver. And there is Sid Grauman, whose father wanted to build a theatre in the north, and who would later establish the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.

Diamond Tooth Lil, on the other hand, was one of the notorious characters to arrive north of the 60th parallel. Born Honora Ornstein, she started out as a star “entertainer,” popular among spendthrift gold seekers and purportedly owned a luxury home in Skagway that “catered” to wealthy clients.

Another page of the website includes photos and video footage of the discovery, restoration and rededication ceremony of the Jewish cemetery in Dawson City in 1998. Herb Gray, deputy prime minister of Canada at the time, made a speech at the ceremony.

The JCSY has plans to expand the website in the coming months. “We will be keeping the site up to date and will be posting more information and photos,” Karp said.

Originally formed as the Jewish Historical Society of Yukon in 1997 after the discovery of the Jewish cemetery in Dawson City – a century after the Gold Rush – its mandate was to clean, restore and rededicate the cemetery, as well as research those buried there. The identification of those interred inevitably led to questions about the others who participated in the Gold Rush, what they did during their stay, and the impact they had when moving on to other communities or returning to the families they’d left behind in search of fortune.

Upon completion of the cemetery project, the historical society believed its work was complete. However, by 2012, with the growth of the Jewish community in Whitehorse, interest in their work flourished and the JCSY was formed. Its mandate expanded to include forming a community to share Jewish culture, celebrate the High Holidays and Passover together and hold social gatherings.

The stories the society uncovered in its goal to learn more about the Jews of the Gold Rush resulted in the creation of a traveling historical display to share them. The display was exhibited both in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, last making a stop at the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria in 2020. (See jewishindependent.ca/victoria-hosts-klondike.)

One can become a member of the JCSY through the website. The cost is $25 for a single membership and $40 for a family. Should a person make a donation of any size to the JCSY, they will be sent an email with a link to a new booklet (upon its completion), which outlines many of the notable stories of the Jewish presence in Yukon during and after the Gold Rush.

A section of the booklet’s introduction states, “While the north may not seem like an obvious choice for a nice Jewish boy from Milwaukee, Edmonton, Vancouver or Seattle, when you think about it, it is not such a stretch. Harsh times foster resilience and for every dreamer there is also a pragmatist. With a history of harsh times, Jewish people have been nothing if not resilient.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Victoria hosts Klondike

Cooper & Levy store, 104-106 1st Ave. S. near Yesler Way, Seattle, 1897. The store was one of the major outfitters of the Klondike Gold Rush. (photo from Asahel Curtis Collection, University of Washington UW 4770)

The archival images and newspaper headlines contained in the Gold Rush exhibit now on display at the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria (JCCV) evoke a sense of the hysteria that gripped the West Coast more than century ago, in spite of the risks involved in traveling to a severe and treacherous terrain. And Jews were not immune from the mania, as the three-panel display, entitled “The Jewish Presence During the Klondike Gold Rush 1897-1918,” distinctly demonstrates.

The exhibit will be at the JCCV through January. It brings with it a number of revisions from the one that toured Canada from 2016 to 2018 and included a stop in Vancouver.

“During its previous run, we received a lot of additional information from people who visited the exhibit, so much so that we couldn’t include it all in the current display. We are seriously thinking about doing a book starting later this year,” Rick Karp, president of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon (JCSY), told the Independent.

Once the previous display returned to Whitehorse, Karp followed up on the input he received and updated the three panels and the booklet accompanying the exhibit.

“As well, we revised the video that details the finding of the Jewish cemetery from the Gold Rush in Dawson, the cleaning and bringing it back to its original condition, and the rededication ceremony,” Karp said. “All the information about the cemetery in the accompanying booklet has been added, as well as the section entitled ‘The History of the Jews in the Klondike Gold Rush’ and the ‘Stories of the Gold Rush.’”

A significant addition to the Gold Rush stories is that of Joseph Barron, one of the first to open a mercantile store in Dawson. Barron came from Winnipeg and followed the stampede of 1898. He mushed into the Yukon via the White Pass route, bringing with him a stock of merchandise.

His beginnings in the north were not the most fortuitous. He lost his supplies on three occasions to fire between 1899 and 1901. Undeterred by adversity, he restocked and started over.

The Barrons would become a prominent Calgary family. Joseph’s son Abe founded the law firm Barron & Barron, which is still operated by the family today. His other son, Jacob (J.B.), was a leading businessman and theatre owner in the city, building Calgary’s first high-rise, the Barron Building, and breaking ground on its first Modern Orthodox synagogue, Shaarey Tzedec (which was demolished in 2013).

Joseph Barron’s wife and children did not come to Dawson until 1902. The younger Barrons only stayed for two years before they left to complete their education. The senior Barrons eventually left Dawson to join their children in Calgary in 1915.

Henry Isaacs was another entrepreneur who ventured north. He earned the moniker “the Butter King of the Klondike” upon learning about a technique using sea water to re-churn a shipment of what others had considered rancid butter into something edible.

Among the most enterprising adventurers was David Gross, a Russian immigrant and dropout trained as tailor, who, not yet 20 years of age when he made the journey north, found ways to make money selling groceries, stoves and other provisions, though his primary business was a clothing store. His ingenuity led him to see opportunities where others did not. For example, if butter had turned rancid and was unsalvageable for food purposes, he would sell it as axle grease for squeaky wheels. After learning that water can only penetrate an inch or two into flour, he would purchase large sacks of flour other merchants thought had been drenched and, therefore, ruined and then sell the flour that the water had not reached at a much higher price. Gross also became active in the nascent movie theatre business in Dawson City.

Yet the prize for the most daring Jewish seeker of fortune would have to go to Max Hirschberg. After losing his supplies en route and then finding, in 1890, that many of the good claims in Dawson had been staked, Hirschberg pushed on to Nome, where more gold was reported to be, on a bicycle!

Later in life, before his passing in 1964, he recounted the 11-week journey in which he made his way along a two-inch trail, confronting snow-blindness, exposure and exhaustion, nearly drowning in the Shaktoolik River and losing $1,500 in gold dust. When his bike chain broke, he made a sail from his coat and rigged it to his bicycle, then crossed the Norton Sound to Nome.

Interest in the Jewish community during the Gold Rush was ignited after the discovery of the aforementioned Jewish cemetery in Dawson City in 1995, and its ensuing restoration in 1997 and 1998. “The discovery of lives lost inevitably leads to questions about lives lived,” the exhibit booklet reads.

“The Jewish Community Centre of Victoria is excited to host the mobile exhibit. We would like to thank Rick for making it possible,” said Larry Gontovnick, president of the JCCV.

After it completes its current tour around Canada, the exhibit will be on permanent display at the Dawson City Museum in the Yukon. A duplicate copy will tour various communities in the United States.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Klondike’s Jewish links

Entrance of the Jewish Cemetery in Dawson City, Yukon. The sign reads Bet Chaim (House of the Living). The photo was taken in 1961. (photo by Irving Snider; Dr. Irving and Phyliss Snider fonds; Jewish Museum and Archives of BC L.18992)

As visitors to the traveling exhibit The Jewish Presence During the Klondike Gold Rush 1897-1918 will learn, while the hope of striking it rich drew thousands upon thousands to the Klondike during the gold rush, most had left the region within five years, many as poor as when they arrived.

The exhibit, created by the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon, is currently at Temple Sholom and will open at Congregation Beth Israel on Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m. The opening will feature a talk by Michael Schwartz of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, and the exhibit will be on display at BI until Feb. 7.

The first panel, called “Gold Fever Strikes,” begins, “It was at Schwabacher’s dock on Seattle’s Elliott Bay that the steamer Portland arrived on July 17, 1897, with her ‘ton of gold’ that electrified the world and sparked the Klondike gold rush. Soon thousands would leave that dock and others on their way to Alaska.” It notes that the Schwabachers – Abraham, Sigmund and Louis – who founded their Seattle merchandising business in 1869, had been born “in Germany of Jewish heritage” and “they left to escape the oppression of Bismarck.” The rest of the panel highlights several Jews who were involved in supplying goods and transportation to Yukon.

The second panel – “Life in the Klondike” – relates some of the stories of successful, and not so successful, Jewish prospectors and merchants. For example, “Louis Brier, a native of Romania, followed the rush and provided grubstakes to prospectors on a percentage basis. He eventually left for British Columbia with what he called ‘a rather bulging bankroll,’” it notes.

One of the less happy outcomes is that of the Shudenfreis. Among the first Jews to arrive, in fall 1897 to Dawson City, Solomon and Rebecca Shudenfrei came to the Klondike without their children. By September 1898, Rebecca had left and, soon after a fire in March 1899 that destroyed many of the city’s homes and businesses, including Solomon’s hotel, Solomon also left. The loss of the hotel was a mixed blessing, according to a letter he wrote: “I only lost all I had, which is not much, and I was glad that the fire occurred so that I could get rid of all my bed-bugs, which I could not do otherwise … the loss is not so great when you come to consider that we would have to remove the building anyhow by May 1, and [that] would have been a great expense to me…. The whole town is on the buy, and all my acquaintances are not any better off than I. This is the only consolation we have.”

The second panel also touches upon other aspects of life at the time – religious observance, politics, the Jewish cemetery and crime (of which Jews, as much as anyone else, were among the victims and perpetrators). The third panel, “After the Gold Rush, Where Did They Go?” provides brief descriptions of where some 15 Jews went after the rush was over.

The exhibit includes a booklet, as well as four videos, each about eight minutes long. They centre on the finding and rededication of the Jewish cemetery in Dawson City in 1998. One video shows the finding of the cemetery, which was established in 1902 but fell into disrepair as the Jewish presence in the area disappeared; one video covers the cemetery’s restoration; and one the July 31, 1998, rededication ceremony, which included many guests, including then-deputy prime minister Herb Gray, who spoke at the ceremony. (Gray passed away in 2014.) The fourth video, explains the document about the exhibit’s setup, “is the CBC TV coverage of the arrival of a Torah, the first time in history that Shabbat services were held in Whitehorse, a little tour of Dawson City … and the rededication services.”

That Torah, in 1998, was only the second to have been brought to Whitehorse – the first having been brought during the gold rush. With the rededication, the Dawson City Jewish cemetery, Bet Chaim (House of the Living), once again became a place where Jews can be buried.

photo - Rick Karp, president of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon — Rick Karp, president of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon. *(photo from JCSY)*

“Cyril Leonoff’s book Pioneers, Pedlars and Prayershawls: The Jewish Communities in British Columbia and the Yukon was what started all of our research,” said Rick Karp, president of the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon, in an email. Additional research was contributed by Dr. Brent Slobodin, who has a doctorate in Canadian history from Queen’s University and was the assistant deputy minister of advanced education in Yukon. Slobodin has been a member of a number of heritage advisory and volunteer boards.

Karp’s day job is president of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce, and Slobodin joined the chamber when he retired to manage its Partnering for Success Program, Karp told the Independent. “As an historian, he was fascinated with the work we were doing on the Jewish presence during and after the Klondike gold rush and we hired him to work on the research, design and preparation of the mobile display,” said Karp.

Now that the exhibit has been completed and displayed both within and outside of Yukon, Karp said the cultural society has two main priorities, the first of which is keeping “the display going across the country, so, after Vancouver, it will go to Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. Then we will get it back here and it will go to Alaska and a few other cities in the U.S.”

The second priority is closer to home. “We are also educating the Yukon on what it is to be Jewish so, for example, we celebrate Passover and have the seder in the United Church meeting hall (about 40 people attended last year), and we are part of the interfaith community in Whitehorse,” said Karp.

“We also have more than 12 Israelis living in Whitehorse and have visits from Israel often,” he added. “For example, we have Dr. Wayne Horowitz coming … from Hebrew University and we will have him do presentations when he is here, and Dr. Paul Sidoun, as well, who is coming in February.”