Visitor Information

Calendar

Comforts

What to see & do

Weather

History
- Sullivan Roadhouse
- Richardson Highway
- Our City Name
- Alaska Highway
- Three Pipelines
- Stories of Delta
- Pioneer Vacation

Facts

 Business/Relocation

 Local news

 Site Map

Purchase the Milepost here.  Click the image for more information.

Chapter XVI
Leaving the Lodge - Heading Outside

Next morning a storm cloud was blowing across the Lake, smudging out the northern hills. And as I stood on the shore watching the boats flounce restlessly at their moorings a flight of Canada geese swept unerringly southward, the first dark arrow of winter from the North.

The previous night Mitch had asked me where I was going to stay in Dawson Creek. I had no idea I replied. “Then why not go to our folks?” he suggested, meaning Norma’s parents. To my protests that they might not wish to be troubled by a complete stranger descended on them, possibly late at night, he had replied with the calm assurance that they would be delighted – they were used to sudden and unheralded arrivals, and I could give them news of Norma, himself and the baby. He clinched the matter by scribbling their address on a bit of paper.

“That’s the street,” he announced, handing it to me “but when you get to the bus station there’s a man there who drives a taxi – a big chap, you can’t mistake him. He knows Norma’s brother. Just tell him you want to go to Ed’s Dad’s place – he’ll take you there all right!”

Despite his thoughtfulness and the friendliness of all at the Lodge who clustered on the steps to see me off, regret for what I was leaving filled me afresh, the sight of every milepost seeming only to intensify the difference between the afternoon I had driven with Floyd knowing I would return, feeling almost a part of it. Now I had become again a wayfarer - not knowing what might lie ahead.

There were four other passengers on the bus when we left the Lodge at 10.30am. A middle-aged man with whom I shared the front seat asked my destination and hearing it was England eventually, had insisted on changing places with me. “You’ll see so much better if you sit in the window,” he said, “I know it all.”

Near the end of Floyd’s stretch of Highway a grey haired man on a grader hailed to ask the bus driver if he had brought out a .22 rifle for Al? The driver, a powerfully built young man whose eyelashes would have caused a film star to envy them, shook his head. He knew nothing of it. Oh well, replied the grey haired man cheerfully, probably it would be coming out on the next bus – Al had told him to ask. He climbed back on his grader, and Barney the driver, gave him four items of news finishing with the information that it had been snowing hard in Whitehorse when he left there this morning.

A few miles further an approaching truck slithered to a stop at Barney’s signal, and the two boys on it ran back to collect a pack of mail which he handed through the window.

“O.K. Barney!”

“O.K. Chuck!”

Construction of the Highway was begun in April 1942, southwards from the supply base at Whitehorse, and in the following months northwards from the supply base in Dawson Creek B.C. which was also the northern terminus of the Northern Alberta Railways. In June, a further part of the Highway started southward again from Big Delta Alaska, already connected by the Richardson Highway with Fairbanks, and supplied by the Alaska Railroad from the sea of Seward. Its route was chosen to follow as nearly as possible the line of airfields from Edmonton Alberta to Fairbanks in Alaska, and so provide a supply line for the airfields in addition to serving as a guide for planes on the Alaska run. Between Edmonton and the Alaska Boundary, this air route covered twelve hundred air miles, with large airfields at Edmonton, Grand Prairie, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake and Whitehorse. In addition, a number a smaller, intermediate airfields, and eight emergency landing strips were built by the U.S. Army along the Highway.

Throughout its total length of fifteen hundred and twenty-eight miles, four fifths of which are in Canada and the rest in U.S. territory, the Highway was marked by telegraph poles carrying the copper wires installed by the U.S. Army to provide communication between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Helena, Montana, while every hundred miles repeater stations provide telephone and telegraph communication with practically any city in the states of Canada.

We crossed the Teslin River Bridge, seventeen hundred and seventy feet long and high enough for ships to pass beneath it. In 1942 British Yukon Navigation Company steamers had brought about six thousand tones of Highway supplies from Whitehorse to Teslin Lake.

A mile beyond the southern end of the bridge we passed Johnson’s Crossing named after an American Army officer. Here the pipeline bringing oil from Normal Wells far up in the North West Territories, branched from the Highway beside which it ran between this point and Whitehorse. Here too, the road to Norman Wells branched from the Highway.

Thirty three miles further we stopped at Teslin Post, a little cluster of buildings overlooking Nisutlin Bay, an arm of Teslin Lake and the headquarters of the Teslin Indians. There was also a Mission, two trading posts and a handful of settlers. Barney told us of one woman who had lived here twenty years, but now, her husband having recently died, she was talking of moving away since nowadays Teslin had become too crowded for her taste!

Here my friendly seat companion said goodbye, and the rest of us went to have lunch in the Lodge overlooking the Lake. There were now four passengers: A slight, fair young woman returning to her home four hundred miles farther south of Smith River after a month in the hospital at Whitehorse; a soldier returning to one of the Army Maintenance Camps, and a young girl with green eyes set in a provocative little face framed by a shock of wild dark hair, and with finger nails matching her scarlet coat. Her destination she told us, was Fort St. John, forty miles north of Dawson Creek.

They asked how far I was going, echoing “to England!” with the incredulous surprise the people of the Yukon speak of a place they know exists but is too remote to be imagined. The young girl Nancy continued to eye me with revived curiosity as though, presented with the strangeness of my destination, she must address me afresh. After the enveloping roar of the bus, the small sounds of scraping plates and rattle of cups rang thin in the large room with its several long tables and spotless, scrubbed floor which seemed permeated by the immeasurable outer silence. Despite the water dappled sunlight filtering on the log walls, it seemed chilled and rather comfortless. I thought again of the warm, peaceful room at Marsh Lane where it must also be dinnertime and wondered who might be dropping in – perhaps the two boys who had stopped to collect their mail from the bus.

The meal over, I strolled up to the trading post against which two Indian youths I had noticed on our arrival still leant in the same attitude of infinite leisure. The back of the long, low building served as a Post Office; its front half lined with shelves filled with prints and ginghams, shoes and groceries. There were beautifully beaded moccasins bordered with silver fox or Arctic hair, and hanging rows of fringed caribou jackets, brown moose hide moccasins and mukluks.

At two o’clock we went on, following the Lake shore, and a mile after leaving the Post crossed an arm of it by the longest bridge on the Highway, Nisutlin Bay Bridge – two thousand three hundred feet long, built on wooden piles. Looking back from it the tiny white settlement clustered about its toy-like church wore a bold air in the sunlight. A sudden bend effaced it and from the hilltop beyond, the Lake’s full majesty was revealed as if defiant of its setting: A glittering expanse reached far beyond the site off into mountains. Eighty-five miles long, part of it lies in Yukon Territory and part in B.C. In Gold Rush days it had been part of the Klondike Trail known as the Stikine Trail, an alternative route by which some of the hunters came up the coast to Wrangell and from there by boat for a hundred and sixty-three miles by the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek. Overland for yet a further hundred and fifty miles to the headwaters of Teslin Lake, where they built boats in which to continue their journey to Dawson City by the Teslin and Lewes Rivers.

About an hour after we had left Teslin a blue car appeared, drawn up on a bend ahead, its lights winking on and off. As we approached a figure stepped from it to stand in the middle of the Road, gesticulating for us to stop. It looked vaguely familiar and when we stopped I saw it had a clerical collar and recognized the priest I had seen in Whitehorse several days before, in animated conversation with the garage proprietor.

“Hullo Father!” Barney greeted him, opening his door.

“Hullo Barney!”

Pouring out a torrent of quick clipped speech the little man scrambled up into the bus beside him. Youngish with a round, eager dark face, he wore a worn, shiny blue serge suit, his dog collar frayed and the conventional black hat, dusty from long use, cocked carelessly on his head.

“Look! I just ran away with the keys from Watson Lake – I am so stupid! I thought just now if I waited I should catch the bus and ask that you take them back – yes?”

The words tumbled over each other as he handed Barney a bunch of large keys, his whole being radiating an irrepressible bonhomie. Then he caught sight of the pale fair girl.

“Mrs. Kennedy! – Hullo!” Delightedly, they shook hands. “So you are out of hospital? And you are better – yes? How good it is to see you again!” She seemed equally glad to see him and told him she had been to look him up at Teslin.

“It's too bad that I have missed you. But you see, I have been away a few days, down at Watson lake – I am just now on my way home. And your husband? He is well? – and you will be sure to give him my best wishes and now you, too, will keep well this time – yes? So!” He turned again to Barney. “and you will give Don the keys when you think about it? Thank you so much – cheerio everyone! I hope you have a pleasant trip!” His smile embraced us all and running down the steps he stood waving from the roadside.

“O.K. Father!” Barney raised his hand in a parting salute as he slammed the door. “Gee!” he observed approvingly over his shoulder to Mrs. Kennedy as he let in the clutch, “We sure have got a swell bunch of priests in this country!”
His comment was explained further to me later when, at Mile Post 710 we stopped for coffee in the Post of Rancheria and Mrs. Kennedy told me something of the cheery little man who bore the official trappings of his calling so light-heartedly.

Father Drian, or as he was known locally, Dryan, was French, and when he had first come to the Yukon ten years before he could speak scarcely a word of English she told me. “He’s just been home now for a trip, the first time he’s been back since he came here – his home’s in Brittany.”

He was in charge of the Catholic Mission at Teslin, she continued, where the Indians thought much of him.

“Before my husband bought the store down at Smith River a year ago, we lived there, and he was so good to us! You can’t think how kind he is to everybody. We thought the world of him. My! He’s got a lovely home too”, she added admiringly. “I wish you could see it; and he built it himself – cut the timber and everything – the Indians helped him. There was nothing before he came out!”

The coffee shop at Rancheria was home for two little boys in tweed pants and brown lumber jackets whom we had picked up twenty three miles back at Swift River Maintenance Camp where there was one of the two schools on the Highway built for children of the Maintenance workers.

“You chaps goin’ to 710 ain’t you?” Barney had asked as he set their small bundles on the rack. They shyly assented.

Every Monday they went up to school on the northbound bus Mrs. Kennedy told me, and came home on Friday evenings. They had sat silently during the journey but when we arrived they tumbled out and chattered joyfully to the kitchen, followed by Barney. I could see him now through the open door, chatting with their mother while he played with their younger sister, a lively small being in breeches and check shirt, whose fair hair stuck out in two brief pigtails on either side of her head.

Mrs. Kennedy said she was hungry and chose a large slice of cake with her second cup of coffee. She was hoping her husband might be able to meet her at Lower Post, our destination tonight, and drive her on from there to their home at Smith River. It was another ninety miles from here to Lower Post, and from there on to Smith River another hundred. Four hundred miles on her first day out of hospital! Surely that was too much I protested. Mrs. Kennedy admitted ruefully that probably she would be dreadfully tired, but she would be so glad to get it over and be home!

It was nearly five when Barney turned Pigtails a final somersault and declared it was time to be on the Road. Before long we were crossing the Little Rancheria River by a steel bridge, a replacement of the original wooden one constructed during the War, Barney told me. Some miles on, we crossed the Upper Liard River to reach camp where we left the soldier. His mates, who were constructing a new bridge nearby, came out of the huts to cluster round the bus for mail and news.

Now, with Barney, we were four. On and on we went in the rich, cloudy sunset, through stretches of forest and mountain patched endlessly with orange and golden swamps, the sense of surrounding solitudes intensified as the light drained away. Once Barney spotted a moose feeding on the far side of a small lake, but before I had followed his pointing finger it had merged into the darkening willows.

Seventy-five miles beyond Rancheria the dusk flowered unexpectedly into a cluster of lights – Watson Lake Camp. Barney jumped out with a packet of mails and Father Drian’s keys. Nancy, whose interest along the way had been focused on the various camps and their inmates and who had been dozing since the departure of the soldier at the last one, woke up to peer out, but except for one man who came out of a nearby hut to receive the mail, no one was visible, and after a brief conversation with him Barney returned.

We pounded on, in the darkness now, for the open tracts of swamp and lake and distant hills had given place to completely dense forest, the Road being between impenetrable dark walls. As we sped downhill, swung around bends on some level stretch or slackened speed on a steeper rise, they reeled from the path swept by our headlights. A streak of pale green sky above the treetops was like the gash in a black sleeve.

Grinding up one hill our lights momentarily lit a white board marking the Yukon-British Columbia Boundary Mile Post 627 – we were ‘Outside’! The realization stabbed me with a dull pang.

Our progress had become seemingly endless as, beckoned by our light the serried ranks of tree trunks advanced and then receded suddenly like figures in some maze-like dance. Without warning they were dispelled by the lights of Lower Post! We stopped, to climb out half dazed and stumble into the light streaming from the Lodge doorway.

Built by the Company operating the bus service, the British Yukon Navigation Company had served as the modern equivalent of the Post Houses of the past. After the menacing darkness of the forest it seemed a veritable haven.

Lower Post, or Fort Liard, its original name, had been established by an American, Robert Sylvester in 1872. Four years later the Hudson’s Bay Company took it over and a couple of years afterwards two of its officials saved the Post from a raiding party of two hundred Taku Indians. Being near the junction of the Liard and Dease Rivers, in the early days its suppliers were transported via the Liard. Later they had come by sea from Vancouver to Wrangell, up the Stikine River, overland from Telegraph Creek to Dease Lake, crossed this by boat and on down the Liard River. Now the Post was supplied by the trucking service up the Highway from Dawson Creek.

Mrs. Kennedy’s husband had sent word that he was unable to get up to fetch her tonight, so we all had supper together and I listened to talk of the Highway, which up here was as absorbing and inexhaustible topic of conversation as business or politics elsewhere. For these people it was not just an artery for supplies and communications, but it was the background of their lives, interwoven with all the characters and events, hardships and toil, amusement and adventure they knew.

They spoke tales of cold and breakdowns and repairs; of games and hunting and fishing; accounts of bears and wolves; of the two fighting bull moose which had held up Barney’s northbound bus one evening, and of the vast herds of migrating caribou streaming across the Road. Mentioned were hazards of floods and snowdrifts; memories of travelers stranded without money, of kindness and debts repaid; of quarrels, occasional murder and of ‘wanted’ men known to be Inside and harmless since they dared not come out, themselves secure as long as they remained. Stories of the Mounties and in particular of one Kildare – which was not his real name – held in universal awe throughout the Yukon.

Reminiscences of other well-known characters and of the men who had helped to build the Road – Barney had himself spent two winters inside the Arctic Circle driving loads of dynamite for rock blasting and of those who used it and lived beside it - the majority followed its unwritten law of giving help to other wayfarers, and of the few who ignored it and by reason of their rarity were notorious and shunned. For news travelled the Highway with uncanny speed and a man was known, and judged, by his deeds. Barney told of the car that had overtaken him, his bus stranded with engine trouble one bitter night. He had hailed it, hoping to get a message through to the next Post, but the driver, ignoring his signal, had driven past without stopping. Some weeks later, Barney, going in the opposite direction, had come on him foundered in his turn, and had stopped to make enquiries. It happened he had on board the part necessary to repair the man’s engine, but did not divulge this, but left him either to wait until morning on the unlikely chance of some other car appearing, or to walk to the next post, twenty miles on.

“I’m not vindictive”, concluded Barney seriously, scraping his plate, “but he’d got to learn – and there’s only one way you can teach some people!” His listeners murmured their approval.

“I wouldn’t have passed him without stopping to find out what was wrong,” Barney continued, “I wouldn’t do that to anyone on the Road, whoever they were. But when I knew he was alright – not hurt or anything – well, I figured he’d got to learn a lesson. Twenty miles he would have to walk – and I had the part he needed! And, on boy!” he finished reminiscently, “was it raining too that night!”

No sooner did he finish recounting one story than Mrs. Kennedy capped it with another, and so it continued, each prompting the other, with Nancy now and again chiming in with some rumour or question that started them off afresh. All was about the colour, adventure and romance that a road gathers and inherits – and what a Road!

Twenty six feet at its widest, with no grade exceeding seven per cent, it ascends the Continental Divide, breaches three mountain ranges, and by one hundred and thirty-three bridges totaling seven miles, it spans great rivers, many unknown before it’s construction. Carved through canyons, hacked from overhanging cliffs and clinging to the brink of bottomless lakes, it had pierced a wilderness of forest and muskeg, mountain and swamp, hitherto unexplored save in the few places where it followed old trails of Indian fur-traders or gold seekers. It was a Road, which was in parts already being shouldered aside by the stealthy movement of submerged ice.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

End of the Alaska highway HOME | Visitor Information | Business & Relocation
Local News | Calendar | Site Map | Links