All language subtitles for City of Gold 1957 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DDP2 0 H 264-GINO

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- [Pierre Berton]:
This was my home town

and my father's town before me.

It's a quiet place.

A few stores, a restaurant,

300, maybe 400 people.

Hard workers, most of them.

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On the main street, the old men

sit on the porch of the hotel
in the sunshine

and they talk about
the old days,

the good old days.

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The park is always full of kids.

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After a rain, there are always
plenty of puddles

to sail boats in.

But I must tell you that this
town where I spent my childhood

isn't really like
any other town in the world.

This is Dawson City,

the center
of the Klondike Gold Rush.

History will never see its
like again.

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Every summer when the seeds
of fireweed drifted

across the Valley
of the Yukon River,

we kids used to roam through
these decaying buildings.

Some of them had been locked

and barred
for almost half a century.

You could buy anything in Dawson
City in its heyday,

I remember
my father telling me.

Anything from oysters
to opera glasses.

You could buy a dance hall queen
for her weight in gold,

and one man did.

His name was Chris Johanson

and he lived on Whiskey Hill.

For a child, Dawson was a bit
like a giant play-yard

full of enormous dollhouses,
each one crammed

with the trinkets
of the stampede.

Hundreds of picks and shovels,
old magazines,

bedsteads, pictures,
furniture, bric-a-brac.

We used to play
locomotive engineer

on the old
Bonanza Creek Railway,

almost on every spot where
George Washington Carmack

picked up the nugget
that started it all.

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We played steamboat captain too.

These deserted sternwheelers
were part of a fleet of,

oh, there'd be 250

that steamed up the Yukon
in the stampede days.

Floating palaces,
brightly painted,

loaded with champagne,
and dancing girls, and gold.

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Today, there isn't a single
one left on the River.

Most of the men are gone
with the steamboats.

Of the tens of thousands
who came here,

only a handful found
the gold they were seeking.

And yet very few, I think,

regretted the journey
to Dawson City.

For the great stampede was
the high point of their life.

♪♪♪

The winter of 1897,

beyond mountains,

2000 miles north
from civilization,

the cry was "« Gold "».

All over the world, a million
people laid plans to go.

A hundred thousand
actually set out.

But the going was so hard,

the way so weary

that more than half turned back.

My father was one of those
who struggled on.

Scarcely any of these men
were miners;

most were white-collar workers.

My father had just
graduated from university,

in Civil Engineering.

All them had one idea:

they were on their way to
the Klondike to shovel up gold,

and they were going to be rich
beyond the dreams of avarice.

♪♪♪

The Chilkoot Pass.

This scene above all others

remained in my father's mind
to his dying day.

Even when his memory
began to fail,

this spectacle remained.

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You had to pack a ton of goods

up this terrible 45-degree slope
of sheer ice,

a hundred pounds at a time,

over and over again,
a year's outfit.

Without that, the Mounties
wouldn't let you

enter the Yukon.

You couldn't stop to rest,

or it might be hours

before they'd let you back

into that endless human chain.

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At the top, a city
of provisions.

70 feet of snow fell
that winter,

and by spring, there were
seven such cities,

layer upon layer,
buried beneath it.

But the persistent ones
dug out their supplies

and sledded off
down the mountain slopes

on the next lap
of the great adventure.

♪♪♪

Here on Lake Bennett at the head
of the Yukon River,

20,000 men

built 7000 homemade boats.

Few of them had ever handled
a saw or a hammer before.

They cut the planks by hand

and then they used Oakum
to caulk the seams,

or pitch boiled from spruce gum.

Sometimes, they even
used their own underwear.

♪♪♪

And then the word,

the river's clear of ice,

and on June 3rd, 1898,

the fantastic armada
was launched.

The mountains behind,
Dawson ahead,

500 miles to the north.

Clear sailing
all the way downriver

to the gold fields.

♪♪♪

Most of them were too late.

They found almost
everything staked:

valleys, hills,
even moose pastures.

Here was Eldorado Creek,
the richest of all.

31 claims,

each worth more than a million.

But all owned by men

who'd been on hand
18 months before.

All the land was being torn up

by these early birds,
as they worked feverishly

with sluice box and rocker.

For the newcomers, nothing.

Only a few got claims

and these soon came to realize

that you just
couldn't scoop up the gold

by the shovelful.

You had to burn your way down
through the permafrost,

30, 40, perhaps 100 feet.

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As you went, you kept testing
for that elusive,

glittering ribbon of soil,

known as the pay streak.

♪♪♪

It might take ten months
of backbreaking toil

before you knew
how rich you were.

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But the gold was there.

And Dawson City grew on it.

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Here on a wedge of frozen swamp,

not far from the Arctic Circle,

a weird and exotic city
sprang out,

a city big enough
to hold 30,000 souls.

For one demented summer,

it was mecca.

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And here too,

ground of another kind

was being staked out
by the early birds,

who would never need
to swing a pick handle

to fill their pockets.

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40,000 customers
poured into the waiting town

from all over the world:

Australia, Greece,

every province in Canada,

every state in the Union.

They had names
like Calamity Jane,

Diamond Tooth Gertie,

Swiftwater Bill

and the Evaporated Kid.

And if a man was shrewd enough

or cold-blooded enough,

a fortune could be made
in a week.

There were no price ceilings:

a fresh egg cost 2$,
a glass of milk, 5$,

a pint of champagne, 30$.

For Dawson was feeding on gold.

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Gold poured in from the creeks
on mules' backs

while the whole town watched.

Watched and waited.

My father used to talk
about Big Alec Macdonald

who had 29 mules,

each loaded with a hundred
pounds of gold.

He'd been broke two years before

until he bought
a million-dollar claim

for a sack of flour
and a side of bacon.

He lived to eat off
gold plate

and ride a carriage
down the Champs EÉlysée.

But when he died,
back here in the Klondike,

he was broke again.

That was the way it went,
down the hatch.

You could buy
wine enough fill a bathtub.

And if you were so inclined,
and some were,

you could pay a girl
to take a bath in it.

You could do anything,
if you had enough gold.

♪♪♪

Paradise Alley

ran right behind
the main street.

Every residence
had a name on the door.

Names like Montreal Marie,

Spanish Jeanette,

Golden Gut Flossie.

For these ladies,
Dawson imported

fashions from Paris.

Nothing but the best.

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With all its gaudy glitter,

Dawson was never a lawless town.

The Mounties saw to that.

They might overlook the sins
of the flesh,

but they didn't sanction
anything else.

Nobody could pack a gun

and all the saloons
had to close on Sunday.

The Sabbath was so holy

that one man was actually fined

for chopping his own wood
on the Lord's Day.

You know it's almost
inconceivable

that the law should have been
maintained so firmly

in a city nourished
by that metal

which is said to be
at the root of all evil.

♪♪♪

And yet in that crazy summer,

no major theft,

not a single murder.

All the more remarkable

because there were other
passions to keep in check,

national passions.

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Dawson was an American town

on Canadian soil,

subject to the Queen's laws,

but populated almost entirely

by strangers
from the United States.

And so the great festive day

was a combination
of Dominion Day

and the Fourth of July.

It was a perfect moment
for a celebration.

The last stragglers
had attained their mecca.

The miners on the creek had
finished their winter's work.

The carnival had reached
its climax.

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The daylight hours were endless.

There was plenty
of dynamite to explode

and release pent-up emotions.

The reverberations were so great

that the very dogs
fled the town.

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What were they celebrating,
really?

More than Independence Day,
I think.

More than Dominion Day.

♪♪♪

Each man had a great deal
to think about.

All were at least
2000 miles from home,

some were 10,000.

On the face of it, they had very
little to celebrate.

Only a few had got any gold

and very few of these were able
to hang onto it.

And yet, after the long months
on the passes

and the lakes and the rivers,

they found themselves seized

by a curious mixture
of feelings,

not the least of which
was a strange elation.

It's hard to believe,
but after coming all this way,

many of them never bothered
to look for gold at all.

It was as if somehow,

they'd already found
what they were seeking.

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You know, when we were playing
house in Dawson,

it never occurred to us
that any of this meant anything.

That one of these chairs
for instance,

might be the very one

in which Silent Sam Bonnifield
was sitting

the night he lost
the M & E Hotel in a poker game.

It never occurred to us

that each Victorian picture
told its own story,

that these two paintings

had once been worth
more than gold itself

to a man who traded
half his claim for them.

[dog barking]

No ghosts of the past
returned to haunt us,

here in these silent rooms.

[children playing]

- Get out of there.

- Let's go. Come on!

- [Pierre Berton]:
I don't suppose
the next generation

gives the old days much
of a thought either.

For the Klondike
is only a beginning to them

and not an end,

as it was to the men of 1898.

I think my father
understood that.

He found no gold,
but he lived here 40 years

and I know he would have been
content to die here,

like some of his cronies.

♪♪♪

But that was not to be.

He knew that each of us
had his own Chilkoot to conquer,

of another kind.

And so he left Dawson City
behind

and I don't imagine
that I shall ever see it again.

I don't suppose things
have changed greatly.

I know that all the men

still sit in the sunlight
on the main street

and talk of the good old days.

And the good times, the times
that are remembered,

usually turn up
to be the hardest times.

No the moment when the nugget
was found in the pan,

but those bitter hours
on the passes

and the long days of the trail.

♪♪♪

The Gold Rush was
something like a war.

It caused many casualties.

But those who survived it
and learned from it

were strangely ennobled.

These men found their Eldorado.

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Well, that's my home town,

Dawson City.

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