Yukon humour

A few of people have emailed to say that I have left out memorable instances...the blog is not meant to be a blow by blow account or perhaps I wasn't part of that particular episode.

But one thing that did happen every afternoon was a recounting of a few Yukoner jokes when we were rafted up. It took the form of me and then Benny alternating telling a one liner joke.

Just so that people not familiar with the Yukon will understand the jokes here is a bit of back ground. 

People who spend the whole year in the Yukon are hardy souls and have a certain notoriety. They have a certain characteristic that can be summarised as back woodsmen, typically male, unshaven with a love of the outdoors, hunting and self-reliance. 'Work' centres around panning for gold, hunting caribou and moose, cutting wood for fuel for the long winters or paddling along rivers for hours just to get to see a neighbour.

People often live off grid...outside of the main towns there is no mains electricity, no mains water, no public sewage system, no internet, no telephone (unless you have a sat phone) and the only gas available is from a gas tank. The winters are long and harsh with extreme temperatures and biting winds with the weather so bad that there is nothing that you can do outside for weeks on end. You have just your own company with possibly no internet or television and no telephone. 

There are bears and wolves in the woods so you always need to be cautious. Natural hazards are bears in winter and mosquitoes in summer. After Whitehorse there is only one more bridges across the Yukon at Dalston in Alaska. There are a great number of German tourists and despite being Canada where English and French are official languages, German is probably the second most spoken language in the Yukon. 

Now for the jokes and I will add a few more with every blog post so just three for starters;

You know you’re a Yukoner when...

...your snow plough has more miles on it than your car

...you owe more on your snow plough than on your car

...you know what square tires are