Arctic Paradise
On one of the last frontiers - in the Yukon, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where the winter temperatures can drop to a dramatic 70 degrees below zero - Roger Mendelsohn has chosen to make his home. He lives by fur trapping in winter and salmon fishing in the short summer.
He came from a Toronto suburb, his wife from the warmth of California and together they have had to learn the skills they need to survive in one of the harshest but most beautiful lands in the world. They live with two small children in an isolated log cabin they built themselves. They travel by dog sled in winter and by boat in summer on the Yukon River, their only ' road ' to the outside world.
Now their peaceful pioneer life-style is under threat. The rising price of gold has brought a new Gold Rush to Dawson City, just 30 miles away; their wilderness is now being torn up by the big mining companies; their traps disturbed by tractors: small-scale prospectors are staking their claims in the neighbouring creeks. Their Arctic paradise could soon be destroyed.
Verse by TONY HARRISON Spoken by ROBERT BEATTY and HELEN HORTON
Film editor JESSE PALMER
Producer ANDRÉE MOLYNEUX
Series editors ANTHONY ISAACS and PETER JONES. BBC Bristot