Klondike Days Dress Up And Step Lively During Edmonton, Alberta’s Annual Gold-Rush Celebration

Put a spit polish on those shoes and dust off the top hat, gents. Ladies, prepare to step lively and show a bit of leg with fancy garter prominently displayed.

Because Klondike Days 1996 is about to cut loose with with 10 days of non-stop fun and excitement for young and old.

Both residents and visitors in Canada’s self-styled “city of festivals” dress up in froufrous and loud vests July l8-27 to commemorate the heady days of the 1890s Klondike gold rush, when this city was a rowdy gateway to the Yukon Territory gold fields.

Edmonton is a “get up and go” kind of city with back-to-back and overlapping festivals from the end of April through August, plus a couple of mid-winter events. But Klondike Days is a special time for letting down your hair and kicking up your heels and doin’ the town with the current year’s Klondike Kate.

Events include the annual World Champion Sourdough Raft Race, in which the strangest contraptions ever afloat move in a wet and wild competition down the North Saskatchewan River, passing under a bridge that (thanks to imaginative plumbing) can be turned into a huge man-made waterfall.

“K-Days” also means parades, pancake breakfasts, hot-air balloon racing, bathtubs on wheels being pushed pellmell along 102d Avenue in downtown Edmonton, men and women climbing a greased 20-foot pole to ring a bell at the top, crowning of a “King of the Klondike” at a timber carnival at Hawrelak Park, and everything from a rodeo to casino gambling to hot band entertainment and variety acts at Edmonton Northlands.

Midway during the festivities is Promenade Sunday, July 21, when the city core is closed to vehicular traffic and residents and tourists parade in Klondike-era finery, and the likes of Klondike Kate and others perform on stages throughout the downtown area. There’s a tea party at City Hall from 12:30 to 1:50 p.m. for those in costume. It’s a chance to sip and chat with Klondike Kate and other dignitaries and it ends just 10 minutes before parade time. Jeans worn with plaid or striped shirts may keep the unwary out of the Klondike clink. To be safe, “Gay ‘90s” attire can be rented at Shirley Potter Costumes in Edmonton, which will outfit the men as gamblers or frontier judges and the women as “fancy ladies” or fashion belles.

Visitors can step back in time away from the skyscrapers at nearby Fort Edmonton Park, where the original fur trading post from which Edmonton grew has been reconstructed. Numerous period building have been moved to the park or recreated as windows on the days of 1846, 1885, 1905 and 1920. Costumed interpreters make the park a living history museum.

The park is 10 minutes from downtown and the Disneyesque West Edmonton Mall, the mall to beat all, with its five-acre indoor water park featuring waves, slides and beach; an indoor amusement park with with triple loop roller coaster, 14-story-high ride and “Drop of Doom” plunge; submarine rides; a miniature Pebble Beach Golf Course; and a full-size replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria floating in an indoor lagoon.

The mall has more than 800 stores and services under one roof and 110 places to eat. There are 19 movie theaters, 11 major department stores, a casino, bird aviary and an ice rink where the Edmonton Oilers hockey team practices. Under that same gigantic roof is also the unbelievable Fantasyland Hotel where guests can sleep in trucks, carriages, catamarans, rail cars, Arctic igloo or exotic Roman, Arabian or Hollywood room’s. There’s even an African safari room in a jungle setting.

There is a lot to do besides participate in Klondike Days while in Edmonton. The Provincial Museum of Alberta is like a visual set of encyclopedias with tableaus covering history and anthropology. The Muttart Conservatory, a complex of huge glass pyramids, offers visitors a stroll in climate-controlled horticultural environments from the desert to tropical and temperate zones.

There’s a Space Sciences Center and an Aviation Hall of Fame. Near the city is a Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village and the Alberta Wildlife Park.

Edmonton was established originally as a fur-trading post for the Hudson’s Bay Co. on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River in 1795. The railroad came in 1891, a year before Edmonton was incorporated as a town. Gold fever struck the city in 1898 when it became the main supply base for the Klondike and, in 1905, with a population of about 7,000, Edmonton became the capital of the new province of Alberta.

Discovery of oil and gas in 1947 brought new riches and new buildings and an enthusiastic embrace of cultural showplaces.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Most K-Days entertainment events are free. Opening day parade is at 9:30 a.m. July 18. The Sunday Promenade, July 21, begins at 2 p.m. and lasts about 6 hours. The World Championship Sourdough Raft Race, also free, runs from 11:30 a.m to 4:30 p.m. July 21. Churchill Square across from Edmonton City Hall is renamed Klondike Square during the festivities and this is a great place to sample all at the “Taste of Edmonton” fete July 24-27. Klondike breakfasts are served daily July 18-27 and there are 12 or more hours of entertainment daily from 11 a.m. on Klondike Square. Information: Alberta Tourism, (800) 661-8888. Klondike Days information: Edmonton Klondike Days Association, No. 1660, 10020 - 101 A Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T5J 3G2; (403) 479-3500, FAX; (403) 4479-3538, E-Mail, ekda@klondikedays.com, Internet http://www.klondikedays com. Edmonton’s Klondike Days Exposition at Northlands Park, (403) 471-7210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Story and photos by Rolla J. Crick, Special to travel