Ed Dixon, despite the warnings and protests of his friends, made another
trip through Miles Canon and Whitehorse rapids last Monday morning. Dixon is like Sarah Bernhardt, Forbes Robertson, Madam Shuman-Heink and many great actors, actresses and opera
stars. Each year he announces that he has retired, at which time all his friends congratulate him on his good judgment and on still being alive. But annually he falls victim to the luring song of the sirens at the rapids, and goes back for another farewell trip.
This time he piloted Lowell Jackson Thomas, the travelogue lecturer,
through the famous boiling waters between the head of the canyon and the end of Whitehorse rapids. Bob Jones, who sailed before the masts for eighteen years, handled the oars. The high water and the fact that Pilot Dixon sent the row boat through the worst part of the rapids for the benefit of the moving picture machine operated by E. J. Hamacher and Jack McDonald, from the bank, made the trip very thrilling for the men in the boat as well as for the tourists and residents of Whitehorse who watched from the bank of the river.
Prof. Thomas described the trip as follows:
"Our boat was hauled from Cooper's shipyards to Miles canyon station on a
White Pass & Yukon flat car. From there we rolled it down the hill to the water's edge. Messrs. Hamacher and McDonald from the top of the canyon caught a reel of pictures as the boat and the rest of us dropped out from the shore into the eddy and shot through the mouth of the canyon. At times the waves came up so high they say the boat was out of sight and only the heads could be seen bobbing up and down, from the shore.
"When the boat arrived at the whirlpool in the center of the canyon, Jones rowed her in to the shore, and there we waited until the movie men could reach
another point of vantage near the mouth of the canyon.
"Just above Squaw rapids the boat shot ashore again and took aboard
Messrs. Hamacher and McDonald, who rode down to a point about half a mile above Whitehorse rapids. There the men operating the moving picture machine got out again and 'mushed' down
to a point on the bank where the best pictures of the boat going through the rapids could be obtained. A signal from Jack McDonald, who waved a handkerchief from a pole, started us on the last part of our journey.
"Due to the skillful manipulation of the sweep by Dixon and the fast work of Jones at the oars, the boat took all the big waves with her nose. Although we shipped about a barrel of water and were tossed around by the waves as carelessly as though we were three corks and the boat pitched worse than if all the Wyoming mustangs at a
Cheyenne Frontier Day celebration had been fence-rowing and side-wheeling under us at the same minute, no mishaps occurred. It was a trip of a lifetime.
"Of course there is no point in describing the 'shooting' of these world-famous rapids to the readers of the Weekly Star, all of whom, I suppose, make the trip with the nonchalance and careless abandon of a man sitting down to a square meal, but I would say that when it comes to good piloting, Ed. Dixon is in a class by himself and I believe he could bring a train load of quaking kneed Chechakoes through Miles canyon and Whitehorse rapids on a two-by-four plank, and not get any of them wet. And as for oarsmen, well the English Navy lost an expert when Bob Jones hit the trail for the Klondike.
"Monday afternoon Mr. Hamacher and I made a test development of a few
feet of film and it came out sharp and clear as crystal, which shows that all the good moving picture operators are not in the employ of the film companies down in California. There is one in the photography business right here in Whitehorse.
"If the citizens of Whitchorse, ever decide to build a specially constructed, solid, sea worthy craft for the purpose of taking visitors through the rapids, which would be a tremendous advertising feature for the trip over from Skagway, where so many Northern visitors now conclude their journey, there is no doubt but what Ed Dixon and Bob Jones should be the official crew. They have not asked me to say this, but a trip with them is enough to inspire any one to make the suggestion."
