Gold Diggers of the Klondike: Prostitution in Dawson City, Yukon, 1898-1908

Bill Waiser is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan,
and the author of Saskatchewan’s Playground: A History of Prince
Albert National Park and Park Prisoners: The Untold Story of Western
Canada’s National Parks, 1915–1946.  His

One of the most enduring myths of Dawson City during the Klondike gold
rush was that it was a wild, rollicking frontier town that never slept.
This popularized Dawson may actually have existed for a few weeks during
the summer of 1898 when thousands of stampeders descended on the
gold-rush community. In reality, though, the largest city west of
Winnipeg and north of Vancouver aspired to Edwardian respectability and
tolerated drinking, gambling, and prostitution as necessary evils.

In Gold Diggers of the Klondike, Bay Ryley looks at the lives of women
who engaged in the sex trade in Dawson during the first decade of the
20th century. She also provides a glimpse of their pimps, men who were
regarded as idle and effeminate—not predatory—because of their
aversion to hard work. And she documents how Dawson’s “red light”
district was relocated across the Klondike River in order to satisfy
local sensibilities.

Ryley does a good job in demonstrating that the last great adventure of
the 19th century was not a men-only story and that many women, like the
miners, had experience in earlier gold rushes in other parts of North
America. It is not clear from her study, however, what proportion of
Dawson women made their living from prostitution, how many different
nationalities were involved, whether all dance hall girls were
prostitutes, whether it was a good life or one marked by abuse, fear,
and harassment. Ryley could have examined at greater length why
prostitution and other vices were initially acceptable in Dawson
City—despite the heavy-handed mounted police presence. It might
explain why one of the first structures that the Canadian government
chose to rebuild in decaying Dawson was a former dance hall.