©Linda Dawn Hammond 1981
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DAWSON CITY CONTENTS
©Linda Dawn Hammond
1981
The Orpheum was one of the buildings directly affected by a terrible flood which had occurred as a result of the ice breaking a previous year. Unfortunately, it did not receive the funding other businesses received to compensate for the damage... It remained closed the year I was in Dawson, which left a huge gap as entertainment, beyond that afforded by the food and beverage industry, was now the sole domain of the local library.
I remember going up to the dump at the top of the Dome Road and finding row upon row of soggy upholstered movie seats amongst the rubbish. To bring them so far up North in the first place must have been an ordeal and it seemed impossible that nothing could have been salvaged. In a town where family entertainment was now officially non-existent, these forlorn objects dimly echoed memories of better times- of black and white movies, laughter, tears and popcorn, the whirr of projectors sending bespeckled light particles through the dark... But once the nostalgic reveries wore off, I found myself standing in a smelly dump, confronted with a heap of moldy wood and velvet that screamed of the callousness of false priorities.
There is, as in the movies, another story behind this one...