As autumn dawns, the Yukon’s piano man is facing tragedy with a spring in his step.

“What do you do when all your money was burnt up and everything you own is gone in less than 10 minutes?” Dwayne Kelly asked in a phone interview last week. “You don’t even have enough money to eat.”

Kelly was living on a 27-foot boat in Dawson City when the motor blew on Aug. 14 and set the craft on fire. His possessions were destroyed and two of his dogs killed.

It wasn’t Kelly’s first experience of loss.

In December 2018, the houseboat he’d called home for 30 years was similarly destroyed by fire.

In the dead of winter, he was left with nothing but the sweater on his back. The Dawson community was quick to rally around him.

“The first time it happened, I was so shocked at the amount of things I’d received. I was bawling all the time because I wasn’t used to that kind of thing,” Kelly said.

A few days after his home burned, his mother died.

“It’s hard to describe,” Kelly said. “It snowballed. It was like, ‘wow, what else can happen?’”

That winter, Kelly was put up at Dawson’s Downtown Hotel while he recovered, and donations of clothing and dog food poured in. An online fundraising campaign was set up in his name and raised almost $2,000 in a mere few weeks.

Later that year, a friend purchased the second ill-fated boat for Kelly. He began to rebuild his life, only for the devastating event to repeat itself.

On Aug. 14, Kelly said, he lost the equivalent of $30,000. Some items – including a flute, a guitar and two pianos – are irreplaceable.

It hasn’t taken long for the Yukon community to stand behind Kelly once more. A GoFundMe campaign was set up in his name and has so far raised $1,495. He was gifted two pianos so he can continue to make a living playing music.

Kelly purchased a van to sleep in and parked it on a friend’s property near Marsh Lake. His three surviving dogs live there alongside him.

He was offered the space indefinitely, so he’s building a cabin “with a chainsaw and whatever is around” in preparation for the winter.

There are lots of felled trees on the property which are perfect in size for cabin-building, he said, and he’s using moss to fill the gaps between the logs.

When the Star spoke with Kelly last weekend, he had just finished the base of the structure, and was beginning to stack the logs into walls.

When his cabin is the correct height, he’ll cut out a door and window.

Despite the arthritis in his hands posing a challenge to the project, Kelly insists the rest of the build will be “fairly easy.”

Things are looking up, he said.

Every Monday and Wednesday, Kelly travels to the Gold Pan Saloon in downtown Whitehorse and plays his keyboard from 7 to 9 p.m. He sings oldie tunes and some originals, cheerfully demanding requests from the audience.

His CD, The Northern Lights Are Out Tonight, is selling fairly well. A friend wrote a book about him, set for release soon, and he stars in a Travel Yukon mini-documentary, Piano Man, which is making the rounds in Europe.

“Things are happening,” he said. “But, it’s like being up in the air and not knowing where you’re going to land.”

Kelly said there are plans to turn the Marsh Lake property of his residence into a boarding house for horses. Kelly will work at the house, utilizing the 27 years he spent employed at the race tracks in Calgary and Edmonton.

“I know everything about a horse you can imagine,” he said.

Even with these promises of opportunity, Kelly is lacking in necessities.

His GoFundMe page includes a call for the donation of a gas chain saw, which he will need to finish his cabin.

“I need a generator really badly,” he said, because his solar panels were lost in the fire.

“I need food. My biggest problem right now is a lot of arthritic pain.”

Still, Kelly’s optimism is infallible.

“It’s uphill, but I’ve done it so many times now, you just take it in stride,” he said. “When an opportunity comes, you take advantage of it.”