A lively and beautifully designed celebration of sport in the Yukon Sport is a cornerstone of community building. It connects people and enables new arrivals to fit in, qualities valuable in regions where populations are far-flung and the climate and landscape offer dangerous challenges and irresistible enticements. Sport in the Yukon has a long and colourful history, beginning with the games played by the territory's First Peoples. In this entertaining, fact-filled compendium, author John Firth celebrates the impressive scope of sport in the Yukon, alongwith the adventurous spirit of the many people who participate.

The Yukon's first recorded sporting event was a snow-shovelling contest at Forty Mile in 1882. For centuries before that, the territory's Aboriginal people played competitive games that brought communities together and taught key survival skills. Today, Dene games like the snow snake, the stick pull, and the finger pull continue under the umbrella of the Arctic Winter Games. Yukon residents enjoy skiing, skating, and other snow sports, along with sports that take advantage of the territory's mountains and its many lakes and rivers. Firth'” book ranges much more widely, however, covering everything from archery and arm wrestling to boxing, bathtub racing, cycling, cricket, dog mushing, fencing, gymnastics, karate, and weightlifting in words and pictures. Hockey is here too, of course--men'?, women's, senior league, minor league, and even underwater. Drawing on research and extensive interviews, Firth hits the highlights of organized events like the Klondike Road Relay, the Arctic Ultra, the Alcan 200, the Yukon/Polar Games, and the Yukon River Quest and gives us the stories behind numerous sport organizations.

Firth'” book does more than profile individual sports in the Yukon - “t reveals their commonality. Sport embodies the shared values of unity, friendship, equal opportunity, the pursuit of excellence and honest effort. It is also, as everyone knows, a lot of fun.

Filled with colourful anecdotes and the voices of sports enthusiasts, this book will appeal to anybody who has ever played a sport or been a fan.

A life-long resident of the Yukon, John Firth has worked as a prospector, expeditor, journalist, public relations director and theatre manager. He is currently a financial planner. Writing is his hobby. Long distance running is his sport--he ran in the 1995 Boston Marathon. He doesn't mush dogs.
John was the only journalist to cover the inaugural Yukon Quest from start to finish. He sat on the Canadian board of directors for Yukon Quest International in 1986, 1988 and from 1991 to 1997, serving as president from 1994 to 1996. In 1997, he received the Commissioner's Award from the Yukon government for his work with the Quest.

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