At the million-dollar valley, the North Country collected three bombers from the US Army Air Corps in January 1942. Flying over the Far North required a unique skill set. But the Air Corps didn’t know that, and nobody thought to ask the bush pilots who did know. They were, after all, the Air Corps and …
Tag Archives: Northern Canada
A Mortal Threat and the Irony of History
A mortal threat to America from Japan, inspired Canada to build the series of airfields north to Alaska known as the Northwest Staging Route. The NWSR would at least get some defense material north, and it established a rough path for the land route to come—the Alaska Highway. By 1943 the Japanese, permanently on the …
Heavy Equipment Breaks
For the 93rd Engineers in Yukon in June the motor pool’s first frantic mission, getting heavy equipment through and out to the road, rapidly morphed into an equally frantic ongoing mission—supporting the line companies in maintaining and fixing it once they got it. With heavy equipment, especially the big Caterpillar bulldozers, finally in hand, the …
Swimming in the Subarctic North
Swimming? Not a topic you would expect in a story from the Alaska Highway Project, but here it comes… Near the end of June, with the critical task of getting the 340th to the Teslin River behind them, Headquarters moved up to Squanga Lake. One day, when the air temperature climbed to 80 degrees the …
Moldy Hay
Moldy Hay, the only bedding available proved better than nothing to the soldiers of the 341st Engineers. Actually, no one slept much, and their lives wouldn’t get easier anytime soon. They had slept on the train on their first night in Dawson Creek. The next day with the temperature below zero they constructed the camp …
Gateways to the Alcan
Gateways… The Alaska Highway that General Hoge and the Corps proposed to build in 1942 would traverse some of the most remote mountains and forests on earth. And if men traverse the North Country on primordial paths, they access those paths through equally primordial gateways. Of the seven regiments that Hoge launched into the North …
Jerry Potts, A Mountie’s Mountie
Jerry Potts, born to an Indian mother and white father in Montana, learned to fight early. Good thing. Tough, smart, expert with pistol rifle or any other weapon that came to hand, he lived at the heart of a violent and murderous time in the Canadian and American northwest. Link to another story “A Quest …
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. …
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 …
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 18th Engineers to Whitehorse, but they camped on the high ground above the city; and, as soon as their heavy equipment …