Live & Learn

The problem is solved 15 minutes later - as we are in the process of asking Jess and Grace how much they think we can sell them for to raise some money - when the manager comes in, flicks a couple of buttons somewhere in a backroom and emerges to announce the problem has been solved. In other words, I think to myself, he's turned the machine on.

AFTER ESCAPING breakfast without having to sell our children, we head down to the train station, board and are promptly informed that we are travelling on the exact day the railroad opened 108 years earlier. It ran for 84 years, primarily servicing the mining industry, but ceased operations in 1982, when the industry fell into recession. It reopened six years later, mostly catering to the many big cruise ships that dock in Skagway.

The White Pass was originally a 177-kilometre line between Skagway and Whitehorse, but it now runs 110 kilometres and terminates at Carcross, a little town just inside the Yukon border. Close to half a million people ride the train every year, and it must occur to each and every one of them how staggering an achievement it was for its time. Just outside Skagway, not 10 minutes into our three-hour journey, we are already chugging slowly up some of the steeper inclines, our green and yellow diesel-electric locomotive, four cars and 40-odd passengers hugging the rock face, with 1,000 metres or so of free fall mere centimetres away. Sometimes the most awesome thing about human achievement is not the achievement itself but the scope and ambition of the imagination that produces the idea. How it even occurred to anyone that such a railway would work is a mystery; how it was achieved is a miracle. In the 26 months it took to complete the line, 3,500 men worked on it and 35 died.

The ride is uniformly majestic, the views so absurdly stunning (and, in some cases not a little terrifying) they almost seem computer-generated. Jessica is regularly at the back of the caboose, standing on the platform, taking photos, pointing out waterfalls and trestle bridges, enjoying the trip as its operators no doubt imagined enthusiasts might. Grace, on the other hand, discovers a one-year-old baby at the rear of our coach, effectively terminating her attention toward anything outside the range of interests of said one-year-old, that being Cheerios and playing peekaboo.

After getting through the foggy, rocky desolation of the highaltitude White Pass at the Alaska-British Columbia border (we'd had our passports pre-checked at Skagway), we trundle to our only stop along the way, the town of Bennett, B.C., which had been the stampeders' transition point from trail to water. Bennett still offers a unique glimpse into the history of the gold rush, a history literally scattered about the place. Because Bennett is part of the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site, you are not allowed to remove or alter anything, which means the place remains littered with the detritus of the rush. Century-old broken glass and rusty cans still clutter the shoreline, adding some verisimilitude to the experience. You can easily imagine the helter- skelter panic to get going, get out of Bennett, get the scow built and in the water ahead of the pack on the way to the goldfields of Dawson, 600 kilometres downriver.

A connection to the past still lives and breathes in Bennett. One permanent home is still standing, and we are explicitly reminded when we leave the train not to trespass, though as we explore the ruins, the old hotel site and the still-standing Presbyterian church, Bennett's one resident opens up a tiny hut to sell some of her handmade necklaces and earrings. The jewelry speaks to her Tlingit heritage, and we ask about her technique. She answers in a supremely expressionless manner, as though forever suppressing a smile. As Jessica is purchasing a pair of beaded eagle-wing earrings (which she has yet to remove), I ask our host how long she's lived in Bennett.

"Born here,” she says, phlegmatic to the core. "Raised here. Still here.”

"Oh, right,” I say, trying hard to match her poker face. "And what's the total population of Bennett now?”

She keeps her eyes on the wares she is arranging on the small table in front of her. "You're looking at it.”

I can't help myself; I break into a smile. She's won, and this allows her to smile back, if you could call the merest upward crinkle of the corners of her mouth a smile.