Month: April 2026

Ricardo Mop has been part of the custodial crew at Royal Caribbean for six years, but this spring was his first time working anywhere on the Alaska route.

“I guess you could say I was pretty surprised,” said Mop, pulling down a scarf. “I was used to wiping sunscreen spills off deck chairs and picking up margarita glasses off the lido deck. Now here I am in a parka and ice-climbing gear with a vacuum cleaner.”

Mop and a dozen other janitors from Dystopia of the Seas, a 2,000-foot Royal Caribbean cruise ship, were cleaning the Sawyer Glacier in Tracy Arm fjord before the start of cruise season in Southeast Alaska. Most cruise companies that regularly include glacier viewing in their itineraries contract janitors to spruce up the ice, but only Royal Caribbean has an entire crew dedicated to the task. Geraldine Swiffer, Chief Spick n’ Span Officer aboard Dystopia, stated “Royal Caribbean is dedicated to giving its guests the best possible cruise experience and we are legendary for our ships’ cleanliness. To that end, we also tidy up the glaciers before showing them off to visitors.”

The crews consist of teams of dirt sweepers and vacuumers, high-powered leaf blowers, tanzanite graders, ice-worm exterminators, as well as custom-built four-wheel-drive Zambonis. Driver Brice Scate told reporters that the valley glaciers were usually the dirtiest. “Medial moraines are like dirt-central. Very unsightly. Imagine if you came all the way up here and all the nice white ice was covered in rock and dirt. And all the katabatic winds kicking up silt, rockslides and glacial retreat—it’s a complex janitorial environment.”

When asked how long they were at the glaciers, Ricardo Mop replied, “What? Can’t hear over the cracking sounds. We’re at Sawyer Glacier now, still got Dawes Glacier, the Hubbard, the Mendenhall. It’s a lot of vacuum bags. There’s that cracking sound again, what’s that? A tree falling?”

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The main gallery of the Sheldon Museum has gotten its first overhaul in nearly a decade, and the new look debuts Friday. 

Residents accustomed to the previous gallery exhibit will find a re-arranged space with a higher density of information and objects. Some large centerpieces remain, including a display case of Chilkat blankets and Eldred Rock lighthouse’s  Fresnel lens. But most of the exhibit has not been on display, including a new collection on loan from Excursion Inlet’s cannery museum. 

As for the space itself, the previously open-floor look has been replaced by standing panels arranged with an eye toward a more intentional flow, museum director Brandon Wilks said. 

The new exhibit is the product of a year-and-a-half’s work from lead curator Andrea Nelson and Blythe Carter. 

Nelson, an on-again-off-again museum contributor over the past two decades, said her goal was to “home in on what makes this place different from other places in Southeast Alaska, other places in Lingít territory.”

Nelson focused on the physical topography of the land and the trade routes that ran up corridors into the interior. 

“I felt like (the exhibit) needed some kind of grounding narrative, instead of just peppering the audience with facts about the place,” Nelson said. 

From the gallery entrance, viewers first see a large canoe carved by Wayne Price. The canoe is meant to orient visitors in a historical landscape before highways, where water-based travel was often the quickest and easiest route. 

From there, visitors walk out into the center of the floor, which includes panels on Lingít trade empires, with porcelain originating in China on display. 

“Even people who feel like they know Chilkat Valley history might not realize the extent of Lingít trade, that they had one of the largest trade empires in the Americas,” Wilks said. 

Wilks and Nelson described the museum’s limited space as a challenge in displaying the valley’s historical breadth. 

“Recalling history is a really botched process, no matter how careful you are,” Nelson said. “A story can be told in so many ways from so many different perspectives.” 

Part of Nelson’s approach to that problem, she said, was to let the museum’s collection lead the narrative, “letting the objects speak,” as she put it. At the same time, she added, the approach introduces other challenges. For instance, the fact that the museum’s collection is determined by what can be acquired or donated, not necessarily what has the most historical significance. 

For his part, Wilks said he invites visitors to provide feedback on the history and is leaving open the possibility of adjusting the exhibit in the coming months.  

Alongside older art and archaeological artifacts, the museum will display a significant amount of work from renowned contemporary carvers, like Price and Ed Kasko, as well as a new retrospective on late Chilkat Valley painter Carol Clifton. 

Wilks said the museum has hosted art students in the past year to see the work, including high schoolers participating in this week’s regional Art Fest. 

The Clifton exhibit, curated by Donna Catotti and on display in the museum’s Elisabeth Hakkinen gallery, shows a range of Clifton’s local landscapes and portrait work. Starting Friday, the paintings will be up for silent auction, with 60% of proceeds going to the Clifton family and 40% going to the Haines Sheldon Museum.  

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Barbara Pardee last saw her friend Carol Clifton around August 2025. 

Clifton hadn’t left her Dusty Trails apartment in months. She needed oxygen at that point and was self-conscious about the size of her tank. But once inside Pardee’s car, she didn’t want to go home. As they drove, Clifton pointed out old homes, old stories, old neighbors from 56 years of living in the Chilkat Valley. 

They went out to Mud Bay and passed by John Svenson’s art studio. 

“He saw me and we’re friends. But then he saw Carol and he just came right over,” Pardee said. “She rolled down her window and those two talked for at least 30 minutes. They just talked up a storm. She was just that way with everybody. If you were her friend, you were always her friend.” 

Clifton died Feb. 27 in Juneau after doctors discovered an advanced lung mass following a January fall.  She was 88 years old.  

Clifton and her twin brother were born Aug. 15, 1937, in Los Angeles. She was one of five children born to Finnish immigrants Emil William Hakkila and Frances Lavalle Hakkila. 

After high school, she moved to Fairbanks to work as a waitress in a cafe run by the mother of her childhood best friend, Gail Hay. 

“Alaska had just become a state and it seemed safe enough,” her son, Kim Clifton, said. “So off she went. And I’m sure it was quite the journey in 1959.” 

There, she met her future husband Jerry Clifton, and the couple eventually settled in Haines in 1969. They raised six children: Jerry, Kim, Van, Christine, Kelly, and Ralph. 

Kim said Carol worked at, and loved, being a good mom. With six children, the inevitable fight would break out and she would referee the situation to get everyone to calm down and make peace with one another. 

Clifton was always reaching for positivity, which, when combined with her quick humor, was a powerful tool. “Now I understand it to be something where … it was like a daily practice for her,” he said. 

The family  eventually bought three acres across from Portage Cove where Jerry built a three-story home overlooking the campground. Carol set up an easel in the corner of the house. 

“She was always painting something,” Kim said. “She’d get out her little palette and with all the colors and it was just part of where we were living. Part of the decor you might say.”

Pardee said when she first became aware of Clifton, it was from the paintings on small pans hanging at a local cafe. 

Pardee said it was fun to watch Carol’s artistic talent grow from small gold pans to large murals on the wall at the Captain’s Choice Motel. 

“She really studied it,” Pardee said. “Once she took me into the back bedroom and she had every art magazine and all of her art books. She said, ‘This is my college education right here.’”

Pardee said she will miss the depth that Carol brought to their friendship. Her intellectual curiosity led to constant reinvention. 

“She loved to learn. She never stopped, ever,” Pardee said. “You always admire somebody like that.” 

Clifton’s paintings often started with a trip up the Haines Highway, where she photographed  landscapes and wildlife. Eventually she became known for those photos as well, said longtime friend, Teresa Land. Land met Clifton in 1973 when asked to play piano in her home studio. 

“She thought I was going to play a two-bit thing, but … I just let loose,” playing a concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, Land said. 

It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship built on music, art and gardening.  

Friends say creativity spilled into every corner of Clifton’s life, from towering nasturtiums at her Beach Road home, to handmade Christmas cards, embroidery and carved fishing corks she gifted to family. 

She seemed to find joy in using her talents to make life brighter for others, her son said. And, for many in Haines, that included creations that emerged from her kitchen. 

“She loved making cream puffs and dropping by and surprising folks,” Kim said. “They were always little masterpieces, her cream puffs are just legendary.” 

Over time, Clifton became Haines’ de facto cake maker — something nearly every friend mentioned. Friends described them as  fluffy, textured, highly stylized: they could have flowers, pearls, ribbons, you name it. She also made puff pastries and a special almond bread for Christmas. 

“That stuff that people don’t like to make themselves but they like to eat,” Pardee said.

Alongside all of that creative energy Clifton used humor to connect with her friends, teasing them, making them laugh. 

“She called it loving on them,” Pardee said. “She would tell you the truth and she was not afraid to give you a barb if she thought you needed it.’ 

She also took great joy in telling people about her faith, something that deepened immensely in spring 1981, according to Kim. 

The family spent much of their early time in Haines attending the Presbyterian Church but toward the end of her life, she attended the Haines Christian Center — Assembly of God church. Kim, who is a pastor in the Houston area, said the two bonded over their spirituality. 

“She shared her faith freely with anyone and everyone,” Pardee said. “If you knew Carol Clifton, you knew where she came from, what she believed and what she stood for.” 

In her immediate family Carol was preceded in death by her husband, Jerry, and brothers, Don, Carl and Ralph Hakkila. 

Carol is survived by her six children—Jerry, Kim, Van, Christine (Clifton-Thornton), Kelly and Ralph Clifton — as well as her sister, Pennie Peterson, eight grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held July 3, 2026 at 6 p.m. at the Haines Christian Center. 

A retrospective showing of her paintings at the Haines Sheldon Museum with an opening reception is scheduled for Friday, May 1. 

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ADUs

After a year of consideration and reconsideration, accessory dwelling units have officially been voted down by the assembly. 

The arguments on each side are well worn at this point, and Tuesday was no different. 

There was some talk of amendments to make the proposal more amenable to skeptical assembly members and residents. 

One was a set of recommendations from the planning commission to increase minimum lot sizes for ADUs in Mud Bay. That failed to get support from assembly members.  

Another possibility came after assembly member Gabe Thomas named a number of changes he wanted to see in the proposal. Thomas’ ideas included aesthetic guidelines, a requirement that the property owner live on the property, and a limitation on use as short-term rental. 

But when asked by mayor Tom Morphet if he wanted to propose any of those suggestions as amendments, Thomas declined. 

After assembly member Kevin Forster went ahead and proposed one of those changes, a requirement that property owners live on the property, Thomas voted against it. 

“I’m not going to vote for this, period, the way it changes zoning,” Thomas said. 

In a final vote on allowing ADUs, Eben Sargent and Forster were the only votes in favor. 

The vote might be the end of ADUs in code for now, but not in practice.

Borough planner Chen Wu said at the meeting ADUs were widespread in the borough, rented out illegally. 

Residents get permits to build structures on their property as sheds or carports — both allowed uses — before later adding kitchen and bathroom facilities and renting them out without borough permission, Wu said. 

Wu said he’s seen evidence of the practice in permit applications, Facebook groups advertising rentals, and in conversations with residents who had previously lived in such structures. 

Planning commissioners this month said they agreed with Wu’s assessment.

Severance Tax 

The assembly agreed unanimously to reintroduce a severance tax ordinance after it failed to pass last meeting. It was a long road to get there. 

The main complication was Sargent asking for a commitment from assembly members that they wait to take a final vote on the proposal until all assembly members were present at a meeting. 

That came after last meeting, where assembly members voted down the ordinance with only four members present. Sargent said he was frustrated by the action given how much time had gone into developing the proposal.

“What I heard last meeting from Gabe (Thomas) was ‘I’m gonna kill it,’ after we asked to postpone,” Sargent said during discussion Tuesday. 

Not everyone was amenable to being asked to make such a commitment, namely Thomas and Smith. “Why wouldn’t we have that agreement for everything?” Smith said. “This is classic projection.” 

The lengthy and loud back and forth ended with middle-ground proposals from Forster and Stickler. Forster proposed a version of the tax structure roughly splitting the difference between the two proposals brought to the meeting: the previously-considered version, from the commerce committee, and a new version from Smith. 

Stickler proposed scheduling the proposal for two public hearings, with two more to follow if necessary. 

The amendments carried unanimously. 

Unfortunately, the discussion on procedural issues didn’t resolve any of the stickier questions about the actual tax structure — a question to be ironed out in coming public hearings. 

In numerous public hearings and committee meetings in the past year, as well as hearings in past assemblies, the severance tax has failed to reach a consensus to pass. 

Still to come

The assembly voted to close its Tuesday meeting at 10:30 p.m., with some of the agenda left for a Wednesday night addendum. Here’s what was bumped over to that meeting:

The cost of playing ball

The borough has received a $34,000 check from telecommunications company GCI for improvements at the Oslund Park baseball fields. 

The payment comes as the company considers applying for a cell-tower project, calling into question whether the borough can ethically accept the donation.

The GCI cell towers have for over a year faced strong opposition from residents.  

Tanani Bay sewer outfall

The assembly will vote whether to authorize a sewer maintenance service area for residents at a Tanani Bay development. 

The development’s sewer outfall is out of compliance with state regulations, and there’s debate over who’s responsible for addressing the issue. Developer Don Turner Jr. says the borough agreed in principle to assume ownership of the sewer system decades ago but never followed through. The borough’s attorney said the borough does not currently own the development’s sewer system. 

What is clear is that residents who have built new houses connected to the outfall want a solution fast, as the sewer issues are preventing them from moving in. 

If the assembly votes to approve the new service area, residents connected to the development’s sewer system who are registered to vote in Haines will then vote on establishing the service area. 

Seasonal sales tax and plastic bag ban

More discussion will come on two familiar topics. The assembly will consider a citizens’ petition to lower the seasonal sales tax rate for coming months in response to high fuel prices and elevated cost of goods downstream of those fuel prices. 

Also up for discussion is re-introduction of legislation to fully ban plastic bags in the borough, such as the ones used at Olerud’s. Identical legislation was voted down last assembly meeting, notable with only four members present, and has been brought back at the start of the legislative process. If introduced, it will need to go through a fresh round of public hearings before being eligible for another vote. 

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