A Little Adventure That Became Something Special

Luciana, from Cove’s Customer Experience team, spent part of this summer in Dawson City. Outside of work, painting is where a lot of her time goes, and what started there as a small personal project turned into something she wanted to share with the rest of us. Here’s her story, in her own words.

A painting for a friend’s fundraiser

This past summer I was in Dawson City working for a friend, and through her I met a geologist named Sue, who mentioned a fundraiser she’d be hosting in November for the children of the Yukon through a geoscience event. I offered to donate a painting.

I chose to paint the Westminster Hotel, a Dawson City landmark since 1898, known locally as “The Pit.” It was more than a bar. For over a hundred years it was one of the places that held the town’s character, live music most nights, a birch canoe and a mounted bison head on the walls, floors so uneven that people joked you felt like you were stumbling before your first drink. My husband and I visited in 2025 and caught a set from local musicians there. It was the kind of place that stays with you.

The Westminster burned down in May, so the painting became something else too, a way of holding onto a place that isn’t there anymore.

An unexpected connection

Once the painting was finished, I emailed Sue to let her know and to ask more about the fundraiser. She told me it would be auctioned at the Yukon Geoscience Banquet in November, with proceeds going to the Yukon Imagination Library. In her words:

“Through YIL, children receive a free, high-quality, age-appropriate book in the mail every month from birth until their fifth birthday. In the Yukon, roughly 1,200 children are currently enrolled in the program, and thousands more have already graduated, together amounting to hundreds of thousands of books mailed to Yukon children, including in rural and remote communities. Every book is an invitation to read, imagine, and spend time together as a family.”

That same day, August 25th, Dolly Parton passed away. It was only after reading Sue’s email that I learned the Imagination Library had been her idea in the first place, a program built on the simple belief that every child should have books of their own.

A painting of a building that no longer stands, helping put books in the hands of children who are just starting to discover the world. I keep coming back to how those two things ended up connected.

What’s next

About 600 people are expected at the banquet in November, and I’m glad the painting will have a small place in it. Sue and I are meeting in Vancouver toward the end of September so she can pick it up.

I didn’t expect a small gesture from a summer trip to lead anywhere in particular. Sometimes it just does.