MARLEN V. RONQUILLO
FROM people coming from the tropics, The Yukon, one of the three Canadian territories with winters more brutal than Alaska, is, in theory, a daunting, foreboding territory. The climate is extreme, sub-arctic most of the year, broken only by brief but extremely warm summers. With a land area of 474,712 square kilometers, it is the most sparsely populated place among the three Canadian territories at close to 40,000 people. Picture a country teeming with rural and urban slums, then make a comparison: the Philippines is about 300,000 sq km and it has close to 110 million people.