http://www.pbs.org/wned/klondike-gold-rush/home/
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Documentary about Yukon gold rush in the late 1800s based in part on Charlotte Gray’s Gold Diggers.
Canadian author Charlotte Gray has mined literary gold by plumbing the history of the Klondike. Her well-reviewed 2010 book Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike spawned a scripted miniseries executive-produced by Ridley Scott, starring Tim Roth and Sam Shepard on the Discovery Channel. And now PBS is premiering TheKlondike Gold Rush on Tuesday, Jan. 6.
The documentary is not entirely based on Gray’s book, but the Ottawa author is featured extensively in the hour-long program, along with historians Michael Gates and Terrence Cole.
“People set off with very little clue about where they were going, they were swept up in this mass hysteria,” says Gray in the film. “The saying was that there was gold as thick as a cheese on a sandwich.”
It’s not hard to find an abundance of material, both literary and academic, on the rush to Canada’s Yukon territory that took place in the short, crazy years between 1896 and 1899. And some might question why the attempt now to mine well-plowed ground.
That canon includes Pierre Berton’s classic short NFB documentary City of Gold, which also looks at the Yukon from a historical and contemporary perspective.
The Academy Award-nominated film, which you can view on YouTube, premiered in 1957 and it stands up remarkably well. It gives an intimate, personal look at Dawson City, ground zero for the gold rush where author and former Toronto Star columnist Berton grew up.
Gray doesn’t have a personal connection. But like Jack London and Berton before her, she rebottled a moment in history ripe with drama and told it from a unique perspective.
Those looking for a documentary version of her work in this PBS film will be disappointed. The author distinguished Gold Diggers from earlier examinations on the topic by focusing on the lives of six key individuals who were some of the 100,000 who flocked to the Yukon. That included writer Jack London, miner Bill Haskell, RCMP officer Sam Steele, priest William Judge and reporter Flora Shaw.
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