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written & directed by Karen Murray & Vanessa Engel

KareVan Productions, Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall, Dawson City, YT

May 9-September 20, 2025

“I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold” (Neil Young, 1972)

One of the must-dos of any visit to Dawson City, Yukon, is taking in a show at Diamond Tooth Gerties. When the casino was established in 1971 so was the tradition of presenting what the venue calls “cancan shows”, a reminder of the type of entertainment popular in Dawson City at the height of the Klondike gold rush in 1898. KareVan Productions which now produces the entertainment stages three different 45-minute shows per evening seven days a week from May into September – Gerties Dance Hall Follies at 8:30, Paris of the North at 10pm and The Gold Show at midnight. On the night I attended (September 3), I was able to see only the first two shows since a power outage (not unusual in Dawson) caused the cancellation of the third show. The shows are definitely fun, but they survive mostly by providing a tiny glimpse into the history of the city.

Dawson City was founded in 1897 across the river from Tr’ondëk, a Hän Nation fishing camp, after gold was discovered in a nearby stream in 1896. At the height of the Klondike Gold Rush the camp became a boomtown of over 30,00 residents making it the largest town north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg and was dubbed the “Paris of the North”. One reason for this appellation was the city’s nightlife with several of the local dancehall girls achieving fame and fortune. The most famous was Kate Rockwell, known as “Klondike Kate”, who married Alexander Pantages, the founder of the Pantages chain of movie theatres and vaudeville halls.

Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall is named after another Klondike celebrity, Gertie Lovejoy, known as “Diamond Tooth Gertie” because she had a real diamond set between her two front teeth. She became respectable when she married Charles Tabor, a solicitor for the Bank of North America. Diamond Tooth Gertiesoccupies a building from 1901, now a Municipal Heritage Site, built for the Arctic Brotherhood, a fraternal organization of the time. It opened as a casino in 1971, making it Canada’s oldest casino and still the only casino in northern Canada. It is run by the Klondike Visitors Association, a non-profit organization. All revenue from games and shows is invested back into the community to support the preservation of historic sites. For only $20 you can buy a season pass to enter the casino and see all three shows. The pass is valid the entire summer season.

The hall is laid out with slot machines and tables for blackjack and poker occupying the back and one side of the auditorium. The rest of the first floor space and the balcony have seating for 300 at tables of various sizes with table service for food and drinks during the shows. The proscenium stage itself is five feet above the floor so that stage is easy to see even for those in the back tables. The shows are general admission, so to grab tables nearest the stage it is advised to arrive at least a half hour before the first performance. Sitting at tables in the very front row, however, does make you a good target for audience participation.

The host for all three shows is Diamond Tooth Gertie herself, played the night I attended by Grace Rockett, the alternate for regular Kati Pearson. Rockett is plus-sized and proud of it. In her elaborate gowns and hats for the first and second shows designed by Michael Engel and Audrey Levesque, Rockett looks exactly what you imagine the host of a Klondike dance hall should look like. Luckily, Rockett does not have a diamond set between her two front teeth.

The main disappointment with the Gertie character is that Karen Murray and Vanessa Engel have provided her with nothing interesting to say. Gertie introduces herself, the one male singer, the mellow-voiced Liam McGibbon, the indefatigable pianist Floriane Gerard and drummer Jon McCann and the three Gold Rush Girls. This she does at the beginning and the end of the show and asks us partway through whether we’re having a good time. But otherwise, though dressed like Mae West in Klondike Annie (1936), there are no joking references to life in Dawson, sly insinuation or witty banter with the audience.

Gertie’s primary role is to sing a lot and dance a little. Rockett has a big voice but it tends to be piercing in its upper register. In its lower register it achieves the sultriness we expect from a worldly-wise chanteuse. Rockett’s cheeky rendition of Julia Lee’s double entendre song “I didn’t like it the first time” (1947) is the only time Gertie gets to be as suggestive as we hoped.

Perhaps too academically inclined, I expected Gerties Dance Hall Follies and Paris of the North to be recreations of what a night at a dance hall might be like circa 1897. (I did not expect this of The Gold Show, which is described as a decade-by-decade stroll through popular music’s greatest hits.) In fact, the two shows despite their 19th-century costumes include very little music from the 1890s. In Follies we get a cancan to Offenbach’s famous Orphée aux Enfers (1858) and McGibbon sings the vaudeville classics “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” (1892 version) and “The Future Mrs. ’Awkins” (1892). In Paris we have the can-can girls perform a march to Bizet’s “March of the Toreadors” from Carmen (1875).

Other than these four numbers, the music is chosen from hits of the 20th century. Some have to do with themes relating to the Gold Rush mentality such as in Follies when McGibbon with a perfectly straight face sings “New York, New York” (1977) substituting “Yukon” and “Dawson City” for the praised location. Now, cleverly, “I wanna be a part of it” sounds like the urge to join in the rush for gold.

Other songs in Follies are about wealth in general such as “Big Spender” (1966) in Follies and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” (1949) and “Rich Girl” (1977) from Paris. The best song on this theme is Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” (1972) sung as a duet by Rockett and McGibbon. The plaintive nature of the song and the final line “And I’m getting old” provide a welcome moment of reflection in an otherwise peppy sequence of song and dance.

Paris of the North begins with a delightful shadow play reminiscent of earlier forms of theatre. In this show the songs move further away from the theme of wealth and focus more on the theme of love. “Rich Girl” (1977), “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” (1962), “The Way You Look Tonight” (1936), “It’s In His Kiss” (1963) and “L.O.V.E.” (1965) all follow in quick succession. Rockett and McGibbon’s duet imbues “The Way You Look Tonight” with the most feeling, and, as a bonus, the audience is invited to dance to it. In Paris, the Gold Rush Girls, mute in Follies, prove they are also talented backup singers.

After the two shows were over, what the friends with me admired most was the dancing of the Gold Rush Girls. The online programme and photos of the show depict four dancers – Sydney Sudmals, Rowe Demers, Kyra Harris and Holly Plett. On the night I attended Plett was absent and the show appeared to have been choreographed with only three dancers in mind. The can-can requires strength, flexibility and precision. The dancers, clad in vibrant new outfits on every appearance, excelled in all three.

Besides the stereotypic high kicks, leg twirls and ruffle lifting, the dancers did cartwheels and terrifying jump splits. Most impressive of all, was a move called the “port d’armes” (turning on one leg, while grasping the other leg by the ankle and holding it almost vertically). The most spectacular version of this is the “cathédrale” when the three dancers all do a “port d’armes” with the heels of their upright shoes touching. Only the dancers’ intermittent screams of enthusiasm (a can-can tradition) seem forced. Follies featured only the can-can, while Paris allowed the dancers to display other early dance forms.

Even if the two shows are not a recreation of actual dance hall routines in the 1890s, the whole atmosphere of Gerties creates the right mood. The constant background hubbub of the gamblers and the cries of excitement when someone is on a winning streak at first may seem annoying but on second thought are fully appropriate to the mingling of sounds from the stage and the tables that would have existed in the past.

Given that Dawson City now has a population of only 2,380 and is a seven-hour drive northwest from Whitehorse, the only city in the territory with a five-digit population, it is amazing that town has a five-month season of live entertainment at all. The whole setting of city-like entertainment located at the confluence of the mighty Yukon and Klondike rivers and surrounded by grandeur of enormous mountains creates the strange mood of settler-style glamour in the midst of isolation. For that reason, if you are in Dawson City, you should not miss the “can-can shows” at Diamond Tooth Gerties.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Kati Pearson as Gertie with the Gold Rush Girls; exterior of Diamond Tooth Gerties; interior of Diamond Tooth Gerties; Grace Rockett as Gertie; Holly Plett, Kyra Harris, Rowe Demers and Sydney Sudmals as the Gold Rush Girls.

For further information, visit: diamondtoothgerties.ca.