*North to Yukon: (Beyond) the frontier in Canadian national -cultural imaginaries

In this dissertation we travel North to Yukon: (Beyond) the Frontier in Canadian National-Cultural Imaginaries. This dissertation is a contemplation on the ways that ideas of North as frontier figure in Canadian national-cultural imaginaries. Ideas of North act, among other ways, to provide Canadian (and American) national-cultural imaginaries with a source of defining originary features, visions, dreams, ambitions---vast untamed wilderness, epic pioneering histories, abundant natural (and national) resources, the frontier. Through phantasmic narrative repetition North emerges as an originary source of national nature and the nature of the nation . It is a national-cultural phantasy.;Yukon's place in dominant narratives of Canadian nation-building (and how places in Yukon are subsequently produced as tourist attractions) revolves largely around three themes: the lure and lore of the Alaska Highway, the guts and glory of the Klondike Gold Rush, and the romance of Yukon's 'pristine wilderness.' Each are called on as symbols of originary national-cultural characteristics, stories, events, and accomplishments. All three celebrate Yukon's colonial past and in so doing, reconstitute an ongoing present.;Tourism and nationalism join forces on this frontier, and Yukon emerges for many of the people that I spoke to as a symbol of national-cultural identity and pride. This dissertation closes by asking, if travel North is an enactment of national-cultural subjectivities, is it also a productive moment where one can confront those things done in their name as a national-cultural subject---those things done in the name of the frontier?;By joining visitors to Whitehorse and Dawson City, Yukon, and talking with year-round residents of both communities, we are able to examine how ideas of North as frontier are produced, activated, and energized on the ground. Following Tsing's (2005) lead, I conceptualize the frontier as an imaginative project capable of molding places and processes. In Yukon, the frontier is a historically produced and politically activated technology of colonial power that works to turn North as an national-cultural imaginative space into an actualized place.