Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

It is Edmonton’s way of remembering the famous Gold Rush of 1898, when the city, then little more than a Hudson’s Bay fur trading post halfway to the frozen north, became important overnight as one of the bases for miners heading for the Klondike. As a realistic way of commemorating history – not by speeches and exhibitions but by a halcyon, rip-roaring fortnight in July when Edmonton goes into costume en masse... when roulette wheels turn in saloons 45

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The Coming of Saska again, waiters in striped aprons scuttle around carrying clutches of beer mugs, go into a bank and you’ll be served, without his turning a hair, by a cashier wearing straw boater, butcher-striped waistcoat and sleeve-garters – there can be few experiences to equal it.

Our own costumes were waiting for us in our room and I, one of my lifelong dreams being to have lived in the gay Nineties, was into mine like a shot. So was Charles, without a word of protest... in fact he appeared to be rather pleased with himself. We surveyed each other. He in an olive-green tailcoat, green-striped trousers, kingfisher-blue brocade waistcoat, buff top-hat and gold-topped cane, I in a pink slipper-satin Mae West dress with a huge cartwheel hat trimmed with ostrich feathers. ‘Whoever would have thought a trip to see Canadian Wildlife would start like this,’ said Charles. ‘What on earth would the village think if they could see us now?’

What indeed. Particularly in the days that followed, when Charles, entering thoroughly into his Victorian dandy role, sang a microphone duet at a public luncheon with Klondike Kate, and he and I, together with David Hunn, the Sports Correspondent of The Observer , danced Knees Up Mother Brown, by request of the audience, on the stage of the Silver Slipper Saloon. As Britishers – the only ones in the party of writers and photographers – apparently we added authenticity to the occasion. I lost my shoes, Charles practically dislocated himself, but we did the British pioneers of the 1890s proud!

The whole thing was like a dream. One morning we had breakfast with the Mounties. Not the khaki-shirted RCMP

of modern times with their peaked caps and streamlined police cars, but men in the scarlet tunics, blue riding breeches and wide-brimmed hats that represented law on 46

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Doreen Tovey

the prairies in the old days. It reminded me irrepressibly of a scene from Rose Marie – with due apologies to the Mounties themselves, who wince at the name of Nelson Eddy!

Sitting at a huge round table, eating bacon and eggs and muffins and honey, we talked of horses and riding and of being out on the trail. Even so, when I kicked what I thought was some dropped cutlery and bent to pick it up, and realised that in fact it was the jingling of my neighbour’s spurs... sturdy silver spurs with chains on them, fastened to the traditional black RCMP riding boots ... it brought home to me with a surge of joy that I was back in my beloved West.

Even in the cities the outdoors is not very distant.

Certainly not in Edmonton, where from the window of our hotel room we could look out, beyond the tall white buildings and wide, straight-running streets, to where the prairie waited for us. A mist of burnt-yellow and blue in the distance, stretching on as far as the eye could see. Five days to go before we set out on our own trail. Meanwhile we enjoyed our Klondike Days.

We did enjoy them, too. Normally we live quiet country lives. Sophistication is not our cup of tea. But this sophistication... the nightclubs, the receptions, the huge luncheon given by the Toronto and Dominion Bank...

all of it was overlaid with a country-style flavour that was irresistible, like a gigantic Harvest Home that just went on and on. Country-style, yet tempered with old-time elegance.

Wearing those costumes seemed to have an effect on people.

Women moved with grace, men became much courtlier...

opening doors, doffing their toppers with a flourish, bowing the ladies through. Which is how Charles, who is always courtly, made history at the Château Lacombe.

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The Coming of Saska Charles always ushers ladies through turn-stiles and doorways ahead of him. The number of times I’ve gone through a theatre foyer or a Customs barrier with Charles, as I think, right behind me... and when the official holds out his hand and I turn to indicate my husband, who has the tickets or our joint passport, as the case may be, there he is, with about eight females between me and him, politely waving them on...

It was a foregone conclusion, therefore, that Charles in 1890s costume would be courtlier than ever. Always last out of the hotel lift, for instance, having ushered everybody out ahead of him – though normally it didn’t matter in the least. Usually our party filled the whole of the lift and we all got out at the same floor.

On this occasion, however, we had an additional couple on board. In Klondike costume, of course, so nobody really noticed. And at our appointed floor our party trooped out, dispersing towards its various rooms. We had ten minutes flat in which to freshen up and meet again, ready for the next sortie, down in the hotel lobby.

The rest of the party dispersed, that is. As I stood there waiting for Charles to come out of the lift he politely gestured the remaining pair to precede him, the woman stepped forward in her aquamarine bustle... pressed the lift button with the point of her parasol and, right before my very eyes, the lift doors closed and off soared Charles.

Apparently, the next thing was that Charles explained he’d wanted to get out there, and the woman tried to halt the lift by running her finger down all the buttons from top to bottom before he or her husband could stop her. This produced the galvanising effect (the couple themselves getting out two floors up) that the lift, with Charles as its 48

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solitary occupant, went on stopping at every floor, right on up to the twenty-fourth with the revolving restaurant on the top, and then began to descend again, opening and closing at every stop.

On the way up the doors had parted to reveal a man in a maroon frock-coat standing on one of the landings, waiting for a downward lift. He didn’t half look surprised, said Charles, when the doors opened on the downward descent and there was Charles, still in solitary glory, now on his way down. Even more surprised when, he having pressed the button for the lobby, the lift continued to stop and open automatically at every floor going down. Nobody was waiting to get in, of course; it was the result of the woman pressing all the buttons.

Unfortunately Charles got so engrossed in explaining this that when the lift eventually arrived back at the twelfth floor Charles didn’t realise it and so didn’t get out. I wasn’t on the landing to signal to him, being busy, by that time, trying to find a maid with a key to our room... our ten minutes’

breather was nearly up and we were due down in the lobby almost at once. And so it was that when Charles, having descended floor by floor to the lobby where a fascinated audience had gathered to watch the phenomenal progress of the lift flashes, smiled at them disarmingly and started back up again... when he eventually arrived once more at the twelfth floor and the door opened upon the landing, the rest of our party was gathered there, waiting now to go down.

Unruffled, courteous as ever, Charles stood aside to let them get in. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ I said, grabbing him before he could do it again.