The Yukon’s Most Important Piece of Infrastructure Is a Plastic Blue Jug
The Yukon’s Most Important Piece of Infrastructure Is a Plastic Blue Jug
The Yukon’s Most Important Piece of Infrastructure Is a Plastic Blue Jug | The Walrus
Hauling water is how thousands make an increasingly unaffordable North livable
I’m lugging six twenty-litre blue jugs in the back of my truck to my permanent residence outside of Whitehorse, a dwelling without running water known as a “dry cabin.” These 120 litres will last myself and my partner—and our three dogs—just over a week. On average, individual Canadians use 223 litres of water a day. For us, it rounds down to just under nine.
Yukoners call us “blue juggers,” or that we’re “blue-jugging it”; the lifestyle is both a noun and a verb. We use an outhouse, even at minus forty, and shower opportunistically at my in-laws’, the cross-country ski club, or a corner gas station.