Dawson

Dawson or Dawson City, city (1991 pop. 972), W Yukon Territory, Canada, at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers. It is the trade center of the Klondike mining region and a tourist center. During the gold rush of 1898 Dawson was a boomtown, reported to have a population of about 20,000. It was named for George M. Dawson (see under Dawson, Sir John William ), the Canadian geologist. The territorial capital was moved from Dawson to Whitehorse in 1952.

Dawson, Jennifer (1929–2000), novelist, brought up in Camberwell, south London, educated at St Anne's College, Oxford, and University College London. After working at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, she spent a year as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. Her first novel, The Ha-Ha (1961), is a first-person account of the experiences in a mental institution of an intelligent, sensitive, and eccentric patient, followed by her amusing and sometimes surreal return to health. The novel anticipates later shifts in attitudes to mental illness. Dawson's later work includes Fowler's Snare (1963), The Cold Country (1965), Strawberry Boy (1976), A Field of Scarlet Poppies (1979), and Hospital Wedding (1978, short stories).

Dawson, Anne (b Stoke-on-Trent, 1952). Eng. soprano. Kathleen Ferrier memorial schol. 1982. Sang Angelica in Handel's Orlando, Bath Festival 1978. Grenoble Fest. 1979. Prof. opera début, ENO 1981 (Xenia in Boris Godunov); Glyndebourne 1984; CG début 1988. Has sung with WNO, GTO, Opera North, and throughout Eur.