Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia

Mile 497

Mitch Miyagawa, Derek Crowe, Brian Fidler,
Ray Puttonen

Mile 497, 2004 - 2005
Artists’ Statement

Mile 497 Brian tells us that Mile 497 is actually at Mile 496.5; Trapper Ray insisted, for potential marketing purposes, on calling it Mile 497 because it rhymed with "heaven." And while it might not be most people’s paradise, the north is always an interesting place to live and work.

Mile 497 Many people in the Yukon say the "Colourful Five Per Cent"—the free-spirited characters that came to the territory starting 100 years ago in the Gold Rush—are disappearing. I disagree. People like Trapper Ray continue to find strange, dark and wonderful places to exist along the Alaska Highway. Elvis lives in the Yukon in a log cabin, visited by aliens. This past year, he ran for the leadership of the Yukon Liberal Party. In that same year, a Whitehorse musician won a Taiwanese Grammy, two biologists pretended to be caribou, and the trial of the murderer of gold miner "Two-By-Four Bob" in Dawson City made the national news.

Mile 497 What connects my collaborators and me, in our work in print, photography, film, and theatre, is an interest in the characters of the contemporary north. Mile 497 is a true-life, modern-day northern adventure, part of that ongoing interest for all of us. Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll be called "characters" too.



Gallery by Mitch Miyagawa, Derek Crowe, Brian Fidler, Ray Puttonen
Mile 497 Mile 497 Mile 497 Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497 Mile 497 Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497
Mile 497
Installation, Art Gallery of Alberta Installation, Art Gallery of Alberta
Installation, Art Gallery of Alberta Installation, Art Gallery of Alberta Installation, Art Gallery of Alberta


Art Gallery of Alberta
albertasource.ca Heritage Community Foundation Alberta Lotteries



Albertasource.ca | Contact Us | Partnerships
            For more on the Alaska Highway, visit Peel’s Prairie Provinces.

Copyright © Heritage Community Foundation All Rights Reserved