Alaska Highway House Interpretive Center

I've been reading about the history of the construction of the Alaska Highway. Many of the people I grew up with knew someone who worked on the construction. Maybe you do too.

Thousands of men living together had to overcome, improvise and adapt to the harshest climates and wilderness in North America.

• How would you like to eat 3 meals a day out of a can for 9 months?
• How would you like to wash your army issue, green wool underwear in ice-cold water and hang them on a line to freeze-dry?
• How would you like to sleep in a tent on a cot without a mattress night after night?
• How would you like to be eaten alive by mosquitoes and flies for months on end?

Not much of a recruitment poster is it? But that is exactly what the thousands of troops and civilians signed up for when they came to Dawson Creek to lend their skills and strength to the enormous task punching a road through some of the north's most rugged landscapes in extreme temperatures.

When you come to Dawson Creek, make sure you take an afternoon to visit the Alaska Highway House Interpretive Center and learn about the history of this project that brought so many thousands together in very adverse conditions.

See for yourself what that green wool underwear looks like and imagine wearing it, check out the actual Willy Jeep on display and imagine bouncing around in it for 18 hours a day over corduroy roads... take a close look at the cans of 'food' and imagine eating it... check out the pictures of what being eaten alive by mosquitoes or incapacitated by frost bite actually looks like...

Then... say a big thank you to anyone you know who worked on the Alaska Highway. I know I do...

Alaska Highway House Interpretive Center

Dawson Creek, WWII and the Alaska Highway

My Mom came to the Peace River Country as a young woman in 1939 with her family. They were political refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. She found work at the original Dawson Creek hospital where the nuns taught her to speak English.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the leaders in Washington decided they needed to have a supply route to Alaska. They wanted it done in less than one year. They needed men and equipment and lots of both.

Mom remembered the arrival of the US troops and Canadian civilians along with all the equipment that came to build the Alaska Highway in 1942. She said the quiet agricultural town burst at the seams overnight. There were soldiers and equipment and noise and mud everywhere.

My Dad was one of the civilians who came here as a young man to operate heavy equipment on the construction of the highway. They met at a dance hall on a Friday night.

There are great original photographs of the period at the Alaska Highway House downtown by the Mile "O" Post and also at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery.

The Sudetan Hall at Pioneer Village also houses a great collection of original photos of the Czechoslovakia pre and post WWII as well as the building of a new community in a new land.

Dawson Creek, WWII and the Alaska Highway

Help Wanted 1942: There's Plenty of Work on the Alaska Highway

I read the following Help Wanted Ad in an old recruitment notice for the building of the Alaska Highway.

"Men hired for this job will be required to work and live under the most extreme conditions imaginable. Temperatures will range from 90 degrees above zero to 70 degrees below zero. Men will have to fight swamps, rivers, ice and cold. Mosquitoes, flies and gnats will not only be annoying but will cause bodily harm. If you are not prepared to work under these and similar conditions, do not apply."

I wonder how excited the men who considered the ad were about the prospect of getting the work.

I went to the Alaska Highway House in Dawson Creek and looked at the artifacts and original photos of daily life on the highway construction project. Some of the words that immediately came to mind were: brutal, harsh and unimaginable.

Even with today's equipment, the project would be awesome. But the crude equipment, the challenges of the untamed wilderness, and the harsh climate made the realities and scope of the project unbelievable.

The recruitment poster said a lot, but for the rest of the story, make sure you check out the Alaska Highway House Interpretive Center when you come to Dawson Creek. See for yourself what the day to day life was like for the builders of the highway.

Help Wanted 1942: There's Plenty of Work on the Alaska Highway