Gold Dust
An Original Feature Length Screenplay
Inspired by a True Story
As BISH stood on the mountaintop, he wondered, “How much further could it be?” The All-Canadian Route to the Yukon had proven to be a hoax. Bish and his team had left Edmonton a year ago. They were now stranded high up in the Mackenzie Mountains.
Their ton of supplies was nearly gone. This was a blessing really. Hauling a ton in 200 pound increments across the wilderness was enough to drive a man mad. And most had gone insane. Their corpses littered the trail, most of them resting in eternal peace with their rifles in their mouths.
One man took the time to scratch a note on the rock before he pulled the trigger: “If hell’s any worse than this trail, I’ll take my chances.”
There was no point in turning back, it would take a year to return to Edmonton. Bish, and his dog, Wheeler, carried on with the mismatched group of men they accumulated on the way: the crazy Scotsman, the nervous banker, the con man Reid, and his best friend Skelly, the American. Six months later their tiny raft arrived in Dawson City. But more than gold waited for him on these famous gold fields. This is where he would find his true love, LAURA DODD.
While Bish struggled across the wilderness, Laura was living a safe, civilized life in Victoria, B.C. As a nursing student she was high up on the social ladder, and many men had their eyes on her.
That is, until the night that took away her face and her life as she knew it. As she made her way home from the hospital after the late shift, she was unaware of the stalker following her. When he attacked, it was fast and brutal. He shot her several times, but she deflected the bullets with her hands, leaving them scarred for life.
Undeterred, he pulled out a scalpel and went to work. Slashing her face in long, smooth strokes, she became unrecognizable. Finally, in desperation he slashed her throat, slashed his neck, and died at her feet.
Laura, only 21, held her neck together and walked back to the hospital. The nuns were able to save her, but the scandal rocked the town. Laura became an outcast. The nuns asked her to go to their hospital in Dawson City. They were desperate for nurses in the north, and everyone there was scarred.
Robert W. Service called them ‘The Men That Don’t Fit In’. Now Laura was going to join them. Her first patient was Bish. His hand had just been pulled off in an accident on the dredge.
Bish, a maimed and broken man, was sure his life was over. Little did he know that the angel without a face who sat with him night after night would save him.
Together they would conquer their demons, heal their wounds, and make a life for themselves on top of the world.
They found their gold. Their story is true. |
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