fter the sounds of the marching band and cheers from local businesses celebrating the opening of the Canadian border to customers and tourists earlier this month, a high school student and his father quietly reunited in person on a snowy evening last week for the first time since the pandemic began in March 2020.
Trygve Bakke, a Haines Junction resident, met his son, Trygve Bakke Junior, a senior at Haines High, last Wednesday at his home on Piedad.
“Our visits came to a complete halt right when the pandemic started,” Trygve Junior said. “This is the first time we’ve seen each other in almost two years.”
Unlike most people who have used Zoom or Facetime to communicate, expensive internet service has prevented the pair from seeing each other digitally and they’ve relied on phone calls to keep in touch. They’ve missed a handful of birthdays, holiday celebrations such as Father’s Day and numerous Thanksgivings (Canadian and U.S.).
“It’s been a few years so I got him Father’s Day gifts and birthday gifts,” Trygve said. “I got him a blue polo shirt because he’s getting into golf.”
“I had to get into something to take my frustrations out,” Bakke said.
Trygve turned 16 two months after the pandemic began. He’s been waiting on his sixteenth birthday gift ever since, a 2001 Chevy Blazer.
“He’s still waiting for his sixteenth birthday gift which is parked in his dad’s yard in the Junction,” Trygve’s mom Evangeline Willard Hoy said. “He told me, ‘If dad doesn’t bring my car, I don’t even care. I just want to see him.’”
Bakke and Trygve took for granted the routine trips across the border to visit each other. They’d go to their family cabin near Kathleen Lake, hunt moose in the Yukon, fish around Haines and visit with local relatives. Although nonessential travelers can now cross the border, there are still barriers for the quick trips they were accustomed to, such as expensive COVID-19 tests.
“Usually all you needed was just your passport, an overnight of clothes, a tank of gas and off you go,” Trygve said. “I know it’s not original, but I wish everything was back to normal. I don’t think there’s a soul out there who thinks different right now.”
One of the first things the father and son did together was drive around town. Trygve showed Bakke how Haines has changed since the pandemic began: the harbor’s sport ramp, the Haines Highway road construction, the new Oceanside RV park improvements and office building, and the Beach Road slide path.
Trygve said they plan to cook meals together, talk and watch old comedy movies.
“We’re going to try to make up for some lost time because it’s my senior year and I’m going to hopefully be heading off to college in the fall,” he said. “We’re just going to enjoy every second of each other’s presence and hope for the best, I guess.”
Bakke said he’d make weekly or monthly trips to Haines, depending on his work schedule, to visit his son and other relatives. He works long hours plowing snow for the Yukon’s Department of Highways, but is looking forward to summer when he can visit more frequently.
“I’m thinking next summer to bring my boat down to take him out and do some fishing,” Bakke said.