If you find yourself in Dawson City, whether you are traveling for pleasure or running from the law, you can’t leave without trying the Sour Toe Cocktail. Yes, it is a drink with a human toe in it. It is real. And it is, as far as I am aware, it is uniquely Canadian.
Apparently, in the 1920s, a couple of rum running brothers holed up in a cabin near Dawson City in a blizzard. One of the men had gotten severe frostbite in his foot and the other cut off the affected toe and put it in a bottle of whisky as a memento. As you do.
Flash forward to the early 1970s and riverboat captain/bartender Dick Stevenson found the bottle in the abandoned cabin and in 1973 decided to start serving the toe in a shot of booze at the bar at the Downtown Hotel: the Sourdough Saloon.
Over the years the original toe was lost, but there have been multiple toes in use. Some have been stolen or swallowed; some just got worn out. New toes have been donated from new frostbite victims. And in 2019 when Captain Stevenson himself died at 89, he willed his toes to the bar to be used in future cocktails.
Each toe is preserved in salt and then popped into drinks for brave bucket-listers to enjoy.
To date over 93,000 people have had the cocktail. I was number 93,090.
I was staying at the hotel, so I just popped downstairs and told them I was there for the sourtoe cocktail. I paid them ($12 CDN I think) and selected my booze. Well, actually I told them to pick, since I figured they would know best what goes with toe.
When my name was called, I sat at a table across from a ‘toe captain’ who reminded me that there is a hefty fine for swallowing the toe and recited a rhyming verse about having to have the toe touch my lips to officially be in the ‘club’. He did this whilst waving the toe around with tongs. I should say that I was there alone and felt self-conscious about taking too many pictures as others were waiting, so my pictures are lousy, but authentic.
My alcohol selected for me was the traditional Yukon Jack whiskey, which was too sweet for my liking but also masked any other flavours that might have been lurking in the glass.
I must admit, the toe did look pretty gross and I did my shot, worried that I would accidentally swallow it after it stuck to the bottom of the glass and I had to give it a shake to get the wet, mummified toe to fall onto my lips, but I didn’t swallow it. Just a brief bit of contact and it was done and I was awarded with my very own certificate, which I think should be on the wall of my office with my law degree, but it is not…yet.
I don’t know how anyone could go to Dawson City and not ‘kiss the toe’. It’s too weird to be believed and even though roughly 100,000 people have done it, it is still a great story.
