North of 64

In Dawson City, time is measured in many ways.

The Yukon River, freezing and thawing year after year, serves as a natural clock, marking the passage of time in seasons, decades and centuries — just as it has for the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation, the People of the River, for millennia.

The town's meticulously preserved historic buildings whisper of another era. A brief but storied period when this remote outpost, just south of the Arctic Circle, transformed into a bustling frontier town, dubbed then as the 'Paris of the North.'

The passage of time is most visible in the few crooked structures that lean with age, like the iconic 'Kissing Buildings' on Third Avenue, slowly sinking toward each other. These weathered landmarks serve as a reminder that it has been 128 years since gold was first discovered in a nearby creek and thousands rushed to the Klondike to find their fortunes, only to abandon Dawson for Alaska just a few years later.

For today's population of 2,000 year-round residents, time is also measured by more recent milestones — like the opening of BonTon and Company.

"It's been about 8 years of what we refer to in Dawson as 'having BonTon around,'" says owner Shelby Jordan.

BonTon began as a butcher shop with a goal to bring local meats into the community and has grown into a celebrated restaurant, landing on best-of-Canada lists and helping to anchor the local food movement north of the 64th Parallel.

The small log cabin that houses BonTon and Company sits adjacent to the Kissing Buildings on Third Avenue, providing a nice contrast between the old and the new.

During the day, BonTon operates as a cafe where guests can purchase coffee, a light meal and the types of provisions that would end up on an amazing charcuterie board.

Three nights a week, BonTon serves dinner. The emphasis is on local, with ingredients coming from as close to Dawson as possible. It isn't easy getting fresh local ingredients but the town has come a long way in the last decade, Shelby says.

It has been about 10 years since Shelby decided to leave behind her desk job to work in the culinary world.

"I did a major, wicked career change and decided to train to become a butcher," she explains. "The push for that in our northern community here was I was really looking for a better way to feed my family."

Shelby studied butchery at Thompson Rivers University and later traditional charcuterie through the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, Italy. In 2016, she opened BonTon as a small backyard workshop processing farm and hunted meats.

"I wanted to bring different foods, preserved meats, into our community. It was so hard to get meat here and access these products," she says.

"I wanted to hang my hat a little bit on Dawson's history, being the 'Paris of the North' and the extravagance of the gold rush and having foods that were a bit of a treat for ourselves."

Her products became very popular and she regularly sold out.

Although many businesses in Dawson rely on summer tourism for their income, what made BonTon so successful in the early days was the support of the year-round residents.

"The community really opened their arms not just to me and this business but to eating local and trying to do what they could to feed themselves and their families better and support a local food network," Shelby said.

Building on the success of local partnerships and local support, BonTon Butchery turned into BonTon and Company, a year-round restaurant, in 2020. In 2021, it made the top of EnRoute's list of Best New Restaurants in Canada.

The challenges for local farming and sourcing are many, with the top issue being the remote nature of the community.

"I can't emphasize enough how long that road is from Whitehorse to Dawson," Shelby says, referring to the 533-km Klondike Highway that connects Dawson to the Yukon capital. Bringing in livestock or feed for animals is a daunting process. The recent rise in food and transportation costs has become a problem as well.

Despite these challenges, the list of BonTon's local partners is impressively long, speaking to the success of the burgeoning local food movement. It includes local Dawson farms like Lastraw Ranch and Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in (TH) Farm.

The ingredients may be local, but the flavours that appear on BonTon's menu are shaped by the culinary team's world travels. Shelby is fond of saying that BonTon offers visitors a taste of Dawson and locals a taste of the world.

Shelby continues to run the butchery and charcuterie program and has two chefs who create new menus each week using what is locally available. Chef Georgia Hammond handles the daytime (lunch) menu and Chef Ariel Adams is in charge of the evening (dinner) menu, which is by reservation only to minimize food waste.

"It is important for us to be open year-round and be a place for people to get together," she says.

Guests are treated to elevated dining, with creative menu items that are meant to be shared like tapas.

The word 'bon ton' traditionally means good times, and high fashion, Shelby says and that's the feeling she's trying to infuse into the restaurant.

"It's about sharing and experiencing food you wouldn't find at any other restaurant here but using what we have here locally," she said. "That's what sets us apart."