STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Bill Miner—Canada’s Most Polite Bandit

Bill Miner—or “Grey Fox” or ‘Gentleman Robber” or “Gentleman Bandit”—invented the phrase, “Hands up”. A claim to immortality? I would say so.

Link to another story “Sleeping Standing on their Heads”

Born in Michigan he made his way to California and began his sterling career, finding himself in prison three times between 1866 and 1901. Upon his release from San Quentin in 1901, he moved his base of operations north to Canada, and three years later he staged what some historians identify as British Columbia’s first train robbery.

Later, with two accomplices, he thoroughly botched a train robbery near Kamloops—made off with $15 and a bottle of kidney pills. No matter, the robbery inspired a massive manhunt. Caught and convicted because his pocket contained the kidney pills, Miner went to the BC Penitentiary.

Spectators lined the tracks as a train carried him to the penitentiary. The gentleman robber had caught the public imagination. And, more, the Canadian Pacific Railroad had few friends in the population.

Escaping from the BC Penitentiary in 1907, Bill Miner returned to the United States, continued his career, served more prison time, and finally died on a prison farm in Georgia.

In British Columbia, “Gentleman Robber”, remained a celebrity. Drinks, menu items and even pubs carried his name. A song, The Ballad of Bill Miner”—and a 1982 Canadian film, “The Grey Fox”, celebrated his exploits.

Tin Whistle Brewing Company, a microbrewery in Penticton, British Columbia, even produced an ale they called “Hands Up”.

Biography on Amazon

Ft Nelson, BC

Ft. Nelson, at the end of the incredible journey, Lt. Col Twitchell, assistant in command of the 35^th, wrote home, “Now we are safely encamped on top of a hill…overlooking the [Muskwa] river, in a clearing carved out of the woods. I traveled over 3,000 miles in two weeks, with only a few hours’ sleep each night…a mountain of supplies and gasoline, every ton of which represents a struggle to get here. We are housed in pyramidal tents heated by a new type of army stove. We have 80 tons of fresh meat in an ice house…a field bakery…powdered milk and eggs…dehydrated potatoes…We are going to live the life of Riley until our supplies run out some time this summer.”

Looks like a lot but the 35th had over a thousand men.

Link to another story “A Crow, Flying a Straight Path”

Colonel Twitchell didn’t write about the other side of the unfolding saga—the Canadian side. The sudden arrival of two thousand soldiers in March of 1942, overwhelmed tiny, isolated Ft Nelson as it had overwhelmed every other village and settlement they had barged through.

Arthur and Lodema George had settled in Ft. Nelson in the spring of 1938. They operated a small store, restaurant and post office. “…the Americans came in spring of 1942 and they took over,” said Lodema, “…they had the money.”

Arthur elaborated. “Everything went just fine. We had the only place that anyone could go for a meal…they were sick and tired of Army fare. They came over to eat and just about mobbed us. We had lots of fun with them.”

Lodema remembered the effect on her small post office. “I had the Post Office and we only had mail once a month…when the Army came in we had mail 6 to7 times a week, 18-20 bags. They sent a man down to pick it up.”

Fort St. John Today

Tough and Courageous

Tough, courageous men and women settled the North Country and the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century brought the most dramatic men and women of them all—the bush pilots. Even as bush pilots and their planes penetrated Alaska, their brothers penetrated Northern Canada.

Link to another story “Marvel Crosson—Lady Bush Pilot”

“Bush Pilot with a Briefcase”, Grant McConachie’s biographer, Ronald A. Kieth called him. A brave tough and skilled pilot, McConachie also proved to be an astute businessman. In 1941 he sold his company to Canadian Pacific Airlines—and became its head honcho.

When the U.S. Air Corps flew a bomber group north in January 1941 three of the six planes got lost, crash landed in deep snow on the Yukon, BC border in the “Million Dollar Valley”. Hired to support a salvage effort, Les Cook flew a dismantled caterpillar tractor to the site and ferried in an Army salvage team.

Les flew in support of the Corps of Engineers throughout 1942; became a hero to the men on the ground and to General Hoge who commanded the project. He died in a crash in Whitehorse late in the year.

Explorenorth.com on The Million Dollar Valley

Grant and Les were just two of the heroic band who plied their trade in the forbidding North Country.

Standing on Their Heads to Sleep

Standing on their heads to sleep, the men of the Canadian company, Tomlinson Construction, would end a brutal 12-hour shift by going to sleep in a bunkhouse mounted on a crew sleigh. The sleigh typically rested nearly vertically on a steep mountainside, chained to a tree.

Link to another story “Cooperation built the Alcan”

Canada went to war more than two years before the United States and Canada responded earlier to the Japanese threat from the west, knew that to meet it, they would have to get men, weapons and supplies across more than a thousand miles of northern Canada to Alaska.

Northwest Staging Route Airfield Construction Tomlinson Construction Photo

In 1940 the Canadian government authorized a string of airfields across Alberta, British Columbia, and Yukon to Alaska—The Northwest Staging Route. With her soldiers already fighting and dying overseas, Canada built the NWSR with civilian contractors, and their experience presaged and informed the one lying in wait for the United States Army Corps of Engineers when they came to build a land route—the Alaska Highway—in 1942.

From Dawson Creek in the early spring of 1941 Tomlinson ran head-on into a gargantuan problem. Supplies and equipment came from Edmonton to Dawson Creek by rail. From Dawson Creek, though, the Tomlinson men had to get it all over heavily wooded mountains, across the Sikanni Chief River and on to the airfield site at Ft. Nelson.

With D8 Cats growling ahead gouging a path through the timber, D7’s towed a convoy of ten gigantic sleighs—five for freight and five for crew. The D7’s would tow sleighs to catch up with the D8’s and then go back for more. Progress through the frozen landscape was slow and incredibly difficult—but steady—until they reached Sikanni “Hill”—a steep drop down to the banks of the Sikanni Chief River. That last mile to the river took three agonizing days.

And then there was the river itself. It was still frozen, thank God, so the D7’s with their sleighs could make their way across. But then fifty feet from the west bank a tractor plunged through rotten ice to the bottom. The crew spent three days rigging a makeshift tripod of logs and cables to lift the tractor and get it to land where it could be dried out under a makeshift canopy and returned to service.

Tomlinson Today

Still a long way from Fort Nelson, they struggled up the steep grade on the west side of the river and on through the deep forest to Ft. Nelson—standing on their heads to sleep. Getting through the never ending cold, ice, mud over some of the most unforgiving terrain in North America took four months.

Brutal Challenge of WWII

Black Soldiers Boarding Train Camp Livingston, LA Timberlake Collection

Brutal Challenge reveals truths about human nature—about us. As the history of WWII gradually recedes from our collective memory, we risk forgetting those truths. We forget them at our peril and that may be the most important reason for keeping that history alive.

When the world exploded, things got mean. People revealed an ability to do cruel, vicious, and depraved things to one another. But brutal challenge had another effect. Millions of ordinary men and women stood up to the challenge of death and destruction. Epic challenges inspired epic responses—heroism and achievement.

The construction of the Alaska Highway stands as just one example.

The war had already stripped Canada of most of its young men and many of its young women—dispatched them to war fronts all over the world. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, thousands of American soldiers and civilians descended on the sparse population of Territorial Canada. They ripped into towns and communities, tore through virgin forest, changed life in that remote part of the world profoundly and forever.

The Dock, Alaska Avenue, Turn Right on the Richardson

Down in the States, the war ripped thousands of young men out of their lives, turned them into soldiers. And some of them found themselves in Northern Canada and Alaska. They suffered and some of them died just like other soldiers in other theaters of the war. The project, the incredible geography and weather of the subarctic north, dropped challenges in their path. They responded, mostly, by doing their duty, trying not to let their fellows down and, most important, by enduring.

In the end, ordinary men built an extraordinary road

Heat Meant Fire

Tents made comfortable as best they could

Heat, on the Alcan Project, came from fire. And God knows, the soldiers needed heat. But the soldiers lived in canvas tents. An escaped live coal smolders on canvas and then ignites it with obvious consequences.

Link to another story “Bivouac in the Woods”

From a company bivouac, soldiers ‘commuted’ daily to their work on the road. The company mess followed them with portable kitchens on log sleds towed by a bulldozer. But they built road fast, and every three or four days a company of soldiers had to pack up their bivouac and move.

Tents came down and went into the back of trucks along with soldiers’ sleeping bags and barracks bags. Most of the soldiers had “private boxes” with family photos, letters, and other treasures. In their tents they slept in sleeping bags on the floor or on canvas cots without the luxury of mattresses or pillows.

Each tent had a stove and the heat quickly thawed a dirt floor into slimy mud. Soldiers festooned their tents with strings, ropes and rigging from which hung clothing, rifles, photos–anything the soldier did not want on the ground. Less valuable gear they jammed under the cots. Boots got the most precious storage spot in the tent–tucked into sleeping bags to keep warm.

For heat the army supplied kerosene heaters, but a chronic shortage of kerosene inspired creativity. Soldiers pulled out the kerosene heater and threw it away; kept the top half of the stove with its fittings for stovepipe. From an empty fifty-five-gallon fuel drum they fashioned a replacement for the bottom half and in the converted drum they burned wood.

Company commanders created permanent three-man firewood details, rotating the duty weekly. The detail wielded crosscut saws, axes, and machetes to make stove wood out of the detritus of the road, stacking it next to or inside each tent.

To vent smoke from the stoves, the soldiers penetrated the canvas with stovepipe, installing a spark arrester on top of the ‘chimney’. Live coals, though, escaped the arrester all too easily. B Company of the 93^rd lost over half their tents in one spark fire.

Spark Arrestor

The most important guard duty on the highway was the fire guard mounted at every bivouac.

The Liquor Store

The liquor store, of all the buildings in Whitehorse, had the longest line out front. To former Lt. Bill Squires that made it the most esteemed building in town.

April 1942 had brought the 18^th Engineers to Whitehorse, but they camped on the high ground above the city; and, as soon as their heavy equipment arrived, they headed out, building Alaska Highway north toward Alaska. A few weeks later more regiments came up to Yukon, and General Hoge located his headquarters in Whitehorse.

White Pass and Yukon Railroad trains arrived several times a day to offload cargo onto steamboats that carried it out to soldiers in every direction. And Hoge had the Public Roads Administration (PRA) bring in thousands of civilians to build a new city.

Link to more on “Whitehorse Yukon 1942”

Buildings sprouted everywhere.

The WP&YR also ran a barge and ferry system

Headquarters housed administration, logistics, management of the airport and railroad… Along with supplies and heavy equipment for the line companies, trains pulled hundreds of carloads of supplies and equipment for the administrators and for the PRA civilians. Camps went up all over town to house the ‘Cheechakos’. Barracks sprouted everywhere. The Army rented city hall for $25 a month; renovated it into a temporary hospital.

Lt. Squires remembered that “Whitehorse was a firetrap. The higher ups banned smoking, but the soldiers widely ignored the ban. Squires remembered sleeping at the Whitehorse Inn on one of his many trips to Whitehorse, “I could smell smoke and Cpt. Dickson on the top bunk said ‘that’s me’. He never stopped smoking”.

In time, to replace the makeshift medical facility at city hall, the PRA built a new 100 bed hospital with kitchens, dining rooms, nurses’ and doctors’ quarters and a central heating plant. They erected forty or more prefabricated buildings to house a fire station and assorted garages. And they installed power, sewer, and water systems.

Liquor sales were limited to one bottle of whiskey and twelve bottles of beer a month per person. But, like the smoking ban, the soldiers widely ignored those limits.

Lt. Squires recalled that “Canadian Club was [the most] popular liquor. An officer in Whitehorse on business was expected to bring back as many quarts as possible. “It sure enhanced the Saturday night poker game.”

Whitehorse Today

Stop a Steer Head On?

Stop a steer head on and wrestle it to the ground? That’s just one story from the legendary life of Canadian cowboy John Ware. He could ride, shoot—and eat–as befits a legend. Some said he could cross a herd of cattle on their backs and easily lift small cows.

No wild horse could throw him and when he invented a way to stop a steer from atop a horse instead of meeting it head on, it became a rodeo event. Steer wrestling is still highlight of the annual Calgary Stampede.

Born a slave, either near Georgetown, South Carolina or somewhere in Tennessee, depending on your source, newly free John headed to Texas immediately after the Civil War made him free. He quickly learned the skills of a rancher, riding, roping, handling cattle and horses. He helped drive a herd of cattle from Texas up to Montana then, in 1882 Northwest Cattle Company hired him to bring 3000 head up to Alberta.

One of the first black men in the region, John didn’t escape racism. He also refused to let it bother him.

He found work with several Alberta ranches and then established his own ranch near the Red Dear River. He married Mildred Lewis and together they raised five kids.

They moved their operation from the Calgary region to Duchess, Alberta, and when a spring flood destroyed their home they rebuilt on higher ground and kept going.

In 1905 pneumonia took Mildred.

Just a few months later, John’s horse found a badger hole the hard way, tripped and fell crushing and killing the cowboy legend.

Morley Bay Yukon

Morley Bay, today a beautiful body of water with quiet woods along its shore, teemed and bustled with soldiers and equipment in 1942. Ship dock, supply dump, motor pool—a sizeable military installation occupied the spot where two small, isolated houses now sit.

Link to a story from Morley Bay “Dear Pop”

The operations of the 93rd Engineers and the 340th Engineers in Yukon centered at Morley Bay as they worked their way south toward the Canadian Rockies and the regiments working north from Dawson Creek.

Food and supplies came to Morley Bay and drivers carried them out to the soldiers working on the road. The motor pool at Morley Bay fixed everything from jeeps to bulldozers—and deadlined the ones they couldn’t fix. Keeping other equipment running required cannibalizing parts from equipment on the deadline.

And the motor pool dispatched mechanics and welders with jeeps and trailers to help maintain equipment in the field.

A regiment locates its motor pool and supply dumps where it can support all the field companies. Motor pool and supply had worked out of Jake’s Corner for weeks, but in August the line companies they supported dispersed. Two companies had moved back north of Carcross and the rest had moved across Nisutlin and on to the east. Over a hundred miles of rough road separated the two elements of the 93^rd.

Colonel Johnson, commander of the 93rd, left some supply and vehicle support at Johnson’s Crossing, but he moved the bulk of it to Morley Bay.

A letter from the officer in charge of the motor pool at Morley Bay to his girl back home, describes life there from his perspective. ‘Up at seven and in a plane for a 150-mile ride to sector headquarters [Whitehorse] to look over some equipment and then a return trip back to a bay some 60 miles from our supply base to look at a couple of bad tractors and then a flying trip back to our base here by 4:30.”

The Bay today

River after River

River after river crisscrossed the path of the Alaska Highway. Smaller streams got quick timber bridges, larger ones brought out the barges and Ferries.

Link to another story “Barge “Bridges”

The black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers, tasked with building an access road for the white soldiers of the 340th from Carcross Yukon to the Tagish River came almost immediately to the Teslin River. A unit came right behind them hauling a barge through the woods and met them at the Tagish. A bridge would come later, much later.

And, of course, their mission took them to the Teslin River. The white soldiers of the 340th followed so close behind them that the soldiers building and the soldiers accessing reached the Teslin all but simultaneously. Civilians would bridge the Teslin much later. In 1942 the soldiers of the 340th boarded barges to carry them down to Teslin and Morley Bay.

And right out of Teslin, directly in the path of the Highway, Nisutlin Bay required barges. Civilians bridged Nisutlin Bay long after the soldiers of the Corps had moved on.

To the south, right at the beginning of the Highway out of Dawson Creek, the first soldiers in country, the 35th found it frozen and crossed on the ice. After that? You guessed it, barges.

The soldiers of the 341st made it a few miles north of Dawson Creek to Fort St. John then ran into sucking mud. They tried to use barges on Charlie lake to bypass the mud. On the very first trip a storm on the lake capsized the barge and drowned seven of them.

North of Whitehorse the 18th made it all the way to the southern tip of Kluane lake, where it meets the river that flows down out of a glacier. Some of them started a bridge, but the rest had to keep going. Mindful of the recent drama at Charlie lake, they crossed nervously and very cautiously. But they crossed.

At the northern end of the Highway the soldiers of the 97th had to cross the Tanana River to build Highway south along the north shore to meet the 18th at the Canadian border. Civilians would bridge the Tanana later. The soldiers used barges and an old civilian steamboat.

Boats in Alaska