The Yukon and the Northwest Territories lack the population to become Canadian provinces, despite their huge area, and both are mostly roadless with vast tracts of wilderness. This is the wild north as popularized by the stories of Jack London and the poems of Robert Service, the land of the lynx, grizzly, wolf, moose and caribou, of midnight sun and weeks-long winter night. Indigenous populations (Inuit and Athabascan) form important parts of the population and subsistence hunting, fur trapping and fishing are common.

I have chosen to present my panorama sof this vast area in three guidebooks: the northern Yukon, from the Klondike Gold Rush area around Dawson City north past the Arctic CVircle; the southern Yukon including Whitehorse and the Alaska Highway; and the Mackenzie River area in the Northwest Territories.