The North-West Staging Route
Part 5/7
(reprinted from the June 1957 issue of The Roundel)
By Flying Officer S.G. French
(In Part Four the author left Watson Lake, and he is now on his way south back to Edmonton —Editor.)
At Smith River, now operated entirely by the Department of Transport, I spoke to Little Louis, a prospector and trapper who was flown in a Fairchild into Lake Toobally in 1937. Little Louis told me that, “when the Smith River airport was built, all of the supplies, including the bulldozers and a sawmill, were flown into Toobally Lake, at the head of Smith River. At the turn of the century a tribe of Indians camped on this lake and, for reasons known only to themselves, called it “Tea-Boiling Lake”. Eventually ‘Tea-Boiling’ became ‘Toobally’. A rough camp was established there, but before any actual construction began, an aerial photograph showed a far better site further down the Smith River. The cats made a road down to the present site, and all the supplies were hauled down on sleighs. The sawmill was left at Toobally, and the logs were cut there and sent down the Smith River. When they unloaded the radio equipment at Toobally, it fell into the lake and would not work for a long time. There were Americans, D.O.T., and R.C.A.F. people here all this time, but I can’t remember any of their names.”
About fifteen miles straight east of the Smith River airport there is a valley with a curious name, the Million Dollar Valley. In 1943, three B-26s were winging their way north from Edmonton, when suddenly the pilot of the lead aircraft noticed that his fuel gauge registered zero. He radioed to the other two aircraft and told them to continue on to Whitehorse, as he was going to attempt a landing. They signaled back: “We aren’t going on without you. We’ll follow you down.” The three aircraft. landed in perfect V-formation, two of them with their wheels down, and the crews all climbed out without a scratch among them. Ironically, the lead aircraft was not out of fuel; the gauge registered zero because of a short-circuit in the wiring.
Smith River is only an hour or so by air south-west of the famous Nahanni Valley. The Nahanni Mountains, unexplored to this day, lie sixty-odd miles west of Fort Simpson at the junction of the Liard and Mackenzie Rivers. Not many years ago, it was still believed that somewhere among them lay a valley where prehistoric monsters still survived amid warm pools and tropical vegetation.
To this valley, so the stories run, have gone many fortune-seekers who newer returned. Willie and Frank McLeod, for instance, were murdered there in 1906, later to be found by their brother Charlie with their heads missing. In 1928, Charlie and a prospecting party were flown in by Doc Oaks, but all they discovered was a desolate cabin and the skeleton of some still unidentified white man.
Wop May, Leigh Brintnell, and Dal Dalzel have, at one time or another, all flown into the Nahanni (or Dead Man’s) Valley. Dal, who went there in 1936 to trap for furs, told me: “It’s a vast country. Its rivers are walled in by high glacier-covered canyons. The valley, which is full of sulphur hot-springs, is about ten miles long and five miles wide. It is completely surrounded by mountains, and the Nahanni River splits it down the centre. Because of the turbulence of the river and the high gorges surrounding it, it’s almost impossible to gain access to it on the ground. This leaves only the air, but the mountain peaks are still unmapped, and some of them rise to a height of 10,000 feet or more.”
It was in this vicinity that Leigh Brintnell discovered, surveyed, and photographed, the Nahanni Ice-Field. This is the largest known ice-field in North America, larger even than the Columbia Ice-Field in the Rockies.
Ted Holmes told me, after I returned to Edmonton, about a flight that he made with Major-General John Peter Mackenzie, the Canadian Army Inspector-General, in July 1944. Ted flew him to Dawson City to inspect the B.C. Mountain Rangers. This militia outfit consisted of sourdoughs and Indians, many of whom were over eighty years old. It was the first major inspection that they had led in their thirty years’ existence, “and man, did they look proud, standing on the square with their six bicycles.”
After inspecting a similar group at Aklavik, the General and Ted headed back toward Fort Nelson. North of the Nahanni ranges their Lockheed 10 was struck by a bolt of lightning. The lightning blew holes in one wing tip, and a hole in the tail end big enough to crawl through. Their radio was gone, and, of course, their compass. Flying by the disabled gyro and by clock, Ted allowed three degrees precession on the gyro every five minutes, and then cranked it back. After flying over (or around) the high mountains surrounding Dead Man’s Valley, they arrived at a point five miles east of Nelson in the dark. “It was, needless to say, quite an experience.”
On our drive from Smith River to R.C.A.F. Detachment Fort Nelson we crossed the second highest peak on the Alaska Highway, Steamboat Mountain. (The highest elevation is immediately north of the Snag cut-off, from which it is possible to see both Mount Logan and Mount McKinley.) The mountain actually does present the appearance of a steamboat, at least from a distance.
In the valley on the north side of Steamboat Mountain, there is a restaurant, about a hundred feet from which, right on the Alaska Highway, lay an R.C.A.F. Piasecki helicopter which had been hit by a down-draft when returning from the previous Air Force Day celebrations at Namao. In the valley on the south side of Steamboat Mountain, there is another restaurant. About a hundred feet from this second restaurant, right on the Alaska Highway, lay a US.A.F. Piasecki which had been hit by a down-draft on its way to Alaska. This coincidence provided my mystical experience for the day.
Arriving at Fort Nelson, a detachment under Namao, I went and paid my respects to its officer commanding, Squadron Leader V. T. Woods, D.F.C. He suggested that my best sources of information would be Mr. and Mrs. Arthur F. George, owners and proprietors of the fur-trading post across the Nelson River at Old Fort Nelson. We therefore drove down to the river bank, gave our horn three long blasts and, all of a sudden, an engine sputtered on the other side. Soon the ferryman came into view and took us across the river.
From Mr. and Mrs. George I heard the story of the station’s construction, and a remarkable story it was of difficulties met and overcome. Among others of the more humorous incidents in it was the episode of Old Macdonald, an Indian centenarian who helped to burn the brush off the runway. Scuttling here and there, gleefully lighting matches and setting fire to everything the old chap was in his element — until suddenly the flames got out of control and his own camp was razed the ground. Macdonald drew himself up, deeply offended. “Me work no more!” he said. Then, turning on his heel, he stalked off into the bush and was seen no more.
The work continued rapidly, so that Fort Nelson was fit for flying three months before Pearl Harbour. Where, only a year before, Yukon Southern had landed its aircraft on the river, a modern airport now stood. “It seemed like only a day,” said Mrs. George, “since we had an old Allis-Chalmers cat here pulling a home-mad log roller which packed the snow so that Yukon Southern’s two Barkley-Grows might land. Then, on almost the next day, an American paymaster took off from here in a C-47, bound for the north carrying the pay for all the American troops. This ’plane never did arrive over Watson. A big search was conducted, but not a trace was found. Three years ago, ten years after the loss, some hunters were looking for big game on Steamboat Mountain, when a few bills — paper money — blew against the flanks of their horses. The C-47 had crashed without catching fire. There was a fortune scattered about the clearing. Oh, we have fun in the North!”
Before leaving Fort Nelson, I stopped in at the hospital. The hospital answers all distress calls from people in the area between Fort St. John and Whitehorse, and every day is a busy one for it. Ambulances, run by the Army, are stationed at strategic points along the Alaska Highway. Often emergency advice is given by ‘phone or radio to isolated spots. All sorts of people are taken care of — Army and Air Force personnel and their dependents, civilians, tourists, Indians, trappers, prospectors, and patients from geological surveys and oil-drilling sites. The Indians are paid for by the Department of Indian Affairs. Civilians pay for their medical attention at Department of Veterans’ Affairs rates. Pre-natal and post-natal clinics are provided for northern mothers. In cases of extreme emergency, air evacuation is made to Edmonton or Vancouver. Emergency operations, of which a fair number are performed, are carried out only in cases of extreme urgency.
Once, when Joe Chipezia, Chief of the Prophet River Indians, and his son Alec were out making a tour of their trap-line, Alec was attacked by a black bear while he slept. Joe scrambled out of his blankets and ran at the bear. In a rage, the bear threw Joe ten feet through the air. Joe landed beside his knife, which he grabbed up, and returned to the fray. He stuck his left hand in the bear’s mouth and proceeded to stab with his right hand. The S.M.O. told me that Joe required quite a bit of sewing.
A few years ago, the S.M.O. at Nelson and a nursing sister crossed the Fort Nelson River to deliver an Indian woman’s baby. It was a stormy night, and the midwife and relatives were shouting and beating the outside of the tent to ward off evil spirits. They were apparently not very successful, for inside the tent complications developed. The doctor decided to take the mother back across the river in their canoe to the hospital. The violent storm and the rushing waters of the Nelson combined to overturn the canoe and its three (or four) passengers, but the doctor and the nurse somehow managed to swim with the canoe to Shore while holding on to the mother, Minutes after reaching Shore, a natural birth occurred, and soon a baby’s cries joined the thunder’s growls.
Leaving Fort Nelson, we set off for Beatton River, and were soon on the cut-off that leads from the Highway in to the airport. The cut-off is roughly of the same length and type as the one that connects the Highway to Aishihik; but there the resemblance ends. Gone, I found, were the dangerous hills, and the deep and precipitous slopes outside the car window. Game and fowl were less plentiful; trees were fuller and greater in variety; and the road was bordered with wild roses. Here and there the face of nature was scarred where men and their monstrous machines had driven side-roads in their search for oil.
At a point about sixty miles in, our road came to an abrupt end. The bridge across the Beatton River had been washed out that spring, and only its two ends remained. We abandoned our car, and a trapper — the only man for miles around — kindly rowed us across to the other side. There we were met by Mr. J. Sobolewski, D.O.T. Official in charge of the airport, who drove us on to our destination. He knew that we were coming because we had ‘phoned to the control tower from the Highway a few hours before.
As Mr. Sobolewski told me, the story of the building of Beatton River airport is not a particularly gripping one. Supplies were simply brought up the old pack-trail to Fort Nelson, and construction followed the usual pattern. From the point of view of metropolitan amenities, however, the former R.C.A.F. unit remains an exceedingly isolated spot.
This is as good a place as any at which to interrupt my narrative with a few words on communications along the Staging Route. Two days after Pearl Harbour, it was announced in Ottawa that radio range facilities along the North-West Staging Route were completed and in operation. This meant that the Route was ready to be flown in any type of weather. In addition to this, at the end of 1943 the R.C.A.F. began to organize, in Edmonton, an airways traffic control centre. The centre was responsible for all air traffic between the 49th parallel and the Alaska boundary, a distance of more than 1,500 miles of airway. The programme cost well over five million dollars, half of which was spent on the provision of telephone and teletype landline circuits between Edmonton and Snag, and the other half on the construction of a number of alternative radio channels.
Built by men of the R.C.A.F. signals and construction branches, the landlines were equivalent to those required for a telephone circuit between Calgary and New York, a distance of approximately 2,400 miles. The flying controller in Edmonton can get in touch immediately with any control towers along the Staging Route. Similarly, the man in the tower at Snag may simply pick up his ’phone receiver, dial one digit, and talk to his counterpart at Edmonton, or Beatton River, or any other of the units on the route. Communication is also possible between aircraft in the air and any of the stations on the ground.
Alternative channels of communication were built in order that all exigencies might be provided for. Should, for example, the landline break down, powerful radio transmitters were available for use. Some of these transmitters ran to 10,000 watts. Backing up the first radio channel was another, of lower power. Behind this there were others, less powerful again, but still strong enough to ensure that the North-West Staging Route would never be without a channel of communication.
Early in 1944, it seemed that work on the communication system might have to stop. Important equipment for the repeater stations, which amplify messages as they flash along the landline, could not be found anywhere in North America. Manufacturers stated the desired equipment could not be delivered for nine months. Then, as often happens in war-time emergencies, it was learned that there was repeater equipment in North Africa which had been installed there during the fighting in 1942 and 1943, but which was no longer required. It was immediately rushed back across the Atlantic and installed on the Route.
To return to Beatton River. Before the reader rows back with me across to our waiting car, he may be interested by a curious belief that appears to be prevalent among the ladies of that region of Canada’s northland. Stated with the decorum due to “The Roundel”, it is this: that the drinking of beer from a clear glass bottle will almost certainly result in the drinker’s becoming a mother.
And so, as Ezra Pound might have written:
On and on and on and on,
On we drove to Fort St. John.