My first commentary in the Whitehorse Star was published in December 1989, with several to follow rapid-fire over the next few months as I overwintered in the Yukon for the first time, living in love and in sin at the Baranov Trailer Park.

It was my first professional publication, and the first time (and last!) time I was paid for the privilege of appearing in print in the Star.

That generous $100 payout for these very first works of an aspiring writer caused some consternation, as I was an American shacking up with a Canadian lass at Baranov — just me, her, our two human roommates, and our two canine family members (the subject of one of my most controversial commentaries, where I described Whitehorse’s arrest-prone bylaw officer as a “mini-Ceaucescu,” in reference to the recently deposed Romanian dictator after my canine companion’s dogs were rounded up against their will while innocently minding their own business just outside our trailer’s fence).

I ended up driving to Skagway, always fearful of my re-entry for my continuing adventure of living in sin, practicing my wordcraft on a portable manual typewriter beside the wood stove at Baranov by day while my lady friend worked in the newsroom at CHON-FM. I deposited my cheque there only to lose much of it to the currency exchange.

And while I would continue to pen comments over many years to come (35 years in all, albeit only a dozen or so comments in total – if this final piece makes the cut), though I would never again be paid for the pleasure (nor did I ask!).

This last comment, in what is the final issue of the Star ever to be published after its proud 124-year history, is my heartfelt and misty-eyed goodbye, and my thank you for giving me the space to share my views. A particularly big, enthusiastic bear hug of thanks to Jim Butler, who edited each and every piece I submitted over these more than three decades! And though I’ve now retired to UConn (rhymes with Yukon), where I am a research scholar in the Geography department specializing in Arctic geopolitics, the Yukon remains now and forever in my thoughts, and with it, the Whitehorse Star.

Saying goodbye to the Star and the wonderful opportunity it has provided to me since I was 25, running all the way to and just slightly beyond my 60th year, is bittersweet. 124 years is a great run, especially nowadays when print publications are dropping like dinosaurs after a meteor strike, their local economies torpedoed by social online media.

The topics I’ve expressed views on have been wide ranging, from the local to the tribal to the global (and often all three at once). The headlines were, if memory serves, in December 1989,

Operation Just Cause (lampooning the U.S. invasion of Panama), “AM for PM: From a Local to a Global Voice” (celebrating the rise of Audrey McLaughlin as national NPD leader), and “Anger and Outrage in the Wake of a Massacre”; articulating my grief at the horrific Montreal Massacre.

These were followed in January 1990 by “It’s Time We All Slowed Down” (urging Yukoners and Alcan longhaulers to drive slower and safer after my tiny 1977 Toyota longbed, already a battle-hardened veteran of a Dempster Highway rollover, was rear-ended by an American semi-truck hurtling north to Alaska on an ice-covered Alcan right after Christmas on the way to Takhini Hotsprings with our entire trailer’s inhabitants along for the ride) and in February, a more jovial ”It Might Be Ugly, But So Am I” (taking YTG to task for its effort to banish the gold panner from the Yukon licence plate in favour of fireweed, of all things, in an ill-fated effort to erase displace the Yukon’s proud gold rush history in favour of ecotourism.

In March, upon news of the sudden defunding of Ottawa’s Native Communications Program (NCP), which led to the eventual closure of Ye Sa To’s beautiful magazine, Dannzha, I penned “We Must Save These Native Publications,” (calling for a restoration of this important federal program).

A few years later, from Inuvik where I landed my first real job as a newspaper editor, editing the Inuvialuit biweekly, Tusaayaksat (and while finally no longer living in sin, nor in a trailer), I submitted a couple of new comments, the first of this wave on August 27, 1993 a rather testy piece on the overlap issue then festering between YTG and the Gwitch’in Tribal Council, “The Doublespeak of Yukon Bureaucrats” (which found its way to print thanks again to Jim’s editorial courage, and in which I said some unkind words about YTG officials then opposed to Tetlit Gwich’in claims to traditional lands on the Yukon side of the boundary. (My boss at the time said I could never again go to Whitehorse, lest I be lynched – but I did return safely in 1998 to take the helm of NNBY for my final years north of 60 – a period in which I launched my own small newspaper, called Cabin Fever, which evolved into the webzine The Sourdough, which went on to enjoy a 10-year run – just a small fraction of that enjoyed by the Star.) The next, “Land Claims Hopes and Promise Have Vanished,” on June 5, 1994, looked critically at the Inuvialuit land claim on the eve of its 10th anniversary, as the claim went through growing pains that have, unfortunately, become typical of the first generation of land claims implementation, complete with a financial scandal and widespread discontent that the benefits of the land claims were not being equally shared.

Then, nearly a decade after I exchanged my identity as Yukoner for a less adventurous UConner, on June 4, 2008, I was overjoyed to see “Melting Ice Heralds a New World of Opportunity” come to press in the Star, after my 15-year long hiatus from my very first and still favourite daily newspaper, celebrating the under-appreciated opportunities of Arctic climate change (the subject of my third book, Arctic Boom, Arctic Doom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic, that was published a year later, and which remains my best selling tome). On Nov. 8, 2009, my next comment in the Star would be “Torch Has Reinforced Unity Across a Vast Land, that saw in the Olympic torch’s tortuitous (if that’s a word) journey a metaphor for our northern unity.

Fast forward another decade, and on Aug. 26, 2019, my “China and Near-Arctic: A Long-Lost Opportunity” was my next comment to come to press in the pages of the Star, the start of a new and less infrequent series of columns on Arctic international relations, including my discussion of the controversial Arctic Council boycott in April 20, 2022, “The World Needs the Arctic Council Now More Than Ever”; followed by a two-parter, “Lack of Consultation Weakens Ottawa Declaration” that June 24 and 27, taking the Arctic states to task for their betrayal of the Arctic Council’s foundational commitment to consult with the six Indigenous organizations (the Permanent Participants) prior to their

historic, and I still believe ill-advised, decision to boycott the Council under Russia’s term as rotating chair, in protest of its aggression against neighbouring but very much non-Arctic Ukraine.

I have continued to sending comments to Jim, but as my writing took on a more global (and more academic) and a less Yukon-specific focus, he did not have the heart to tell me the word “no.” After so long, so I continued (and continue) to ego-surf in the Star’s search box, over and again, hoping to see my words in print one last time.

But my most recent columns – on Finland’s accession to NATO, the post-Ukraine revision of American Arctic Policy, and Greenland’s first Arctic strategy – had to strike out in search of other presses, none as meaningful to me as the Whitehorse Star. I know I’m now a UConner, and not a Yukoner. But I can’t shake my love for this feisty, resilient, scrappy and enduring news daily. After all its motto, illegitimus non carborundum, says it all: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It never did.

The Star will always hold a special place in my heart. After all, it’s where I got my start as a writer. It’s where I found an editor who saw in my words something worth sharing, no matter where in the north I was, or even when I strayed to the south. It’s always been the first place, once I wrote something from the heart, no matter how unpopular my view may be nor how offended those in power might feel, that I’d consider submitting it for publication. It is with my gratitude that I hit the send button one last time, with warm memories and not a little bit of heartbreak having to say goodbye.

By BARRY SCOTT ZELLEN