The North-West Staging Route
Part 7/7
(reprinted from the September 1957 issue of The Roundel)
By Flying Officer S.G. French
(Part Seven brings the author from Fort St. John, in British Columbia, back to Ottawa and the end of his journey.—Editor.)
Having bidden good-bye to Mrs. Murray, the Powells, and our Department of Transport friends, we set out on the fifty-mile drive to Dawson Creek, where a Staging Route detachment existed in years gone by. Soon we were crossing the Peace River Bridge, which I have been given to understand is the seventh largest suspension bridge in the world.
At Dawson Creek I visited the old barracks put up by the R.C.A.F. during the war. There it was my good fortune to run into Sergeant Robert Whyte, who was formerly Supply Sergeant at the station and now operates a farm in the vicinity and drives the school bus. My talks with him, together with the information made available to me by ex-Squadron Leader Bob Maze during my stay in Edmonton, enabled me to piece together the following story.
One of the most distressing difficulties facing the R.C.A.F.’s detachments on the North-West Staging Route was the problem of supply. Neither the Alaska Highway nor the Staging Route was much use without motor vehicles and aircraft, and in 1942 these were not available in the quantity required. Some degree of hardship had, of course, been anticipated, but, by December of the year just mentioned, conditions were becoming intolerable.
Here are a few entries from the daily diaries kept by various units during this period.
“December 19th: Lockheed 7634 encountered severe icing conditions, and, on the south-bound trip, icing endangered the aircraft to such an extent that only superb piloting and a great deal of good luck prevented a crash and probably fatalities. It’s criminal that we should be asked to carry on northern flying without having aircraft properly equipped with de-icing and other winter equipment… Severe temperatures being experienced in the North and still no winter clothing for personnel. Someone has bungled badly.”
“December 2ist: Contrary to all rules and regulations, we are issuing flying-boots to all personnel, with the sincere hope that this will alleviate to some extent suffering from the cold.”
“December 23rd: Sqn. Ldr. Guest arrived. He reported intense cold at Whitehorse, average temperature 40 below zero. Personnel in desperate need of clothing and money. Both of these items on way, but weather delaying. Living-conditions at Whitehorse deplorable. Our personnel are living in our barracks without plumbing or adequate heat, and to get their meals they must walk 1 1/2 miles to the Contractor’s. Only one panel wagon available and it is kept running 24 hours a day — otherwise it would freeze solid.”
“December 25th: We opened the cartons supposedly containing some of our winter clothing, only to find it was just battledress. What a disappointment.”
It was at this time that Sqd. Ldr. R.M. Maze was brought to the Staging Route as Air-Rail Transportation Officer. He immediately set out with Sgt. Whyte on an experimental drive up the Highway, On this 2,500-mile seventeen-day trip they had twenty-two flat tires and they had to buy or scrounge a half-dozen new ones. ‘The drive’, Bob Maze told me, “was very interesting and, at times, quite exciting. I remember pulling into the Blueberry Mountain Maintenance Camp very late one night. We had had several flats and a few other such tribulations. We were very tired, very hungry, and covered from head to toe with dust. When we walked into the tiny kitchen, the short and stubby bull-cook looked us up and down, and said: ‘Just put the vegetables in the back door.’
“Almost all of the bridges at this time were of wood, hurriedly assembled and with only one lane. Just north of Watson we shot down the mountain-side towards one of them. As we drove on to it, our lights probing through the night fog, we suddenly spotted an Army truck speeding at us from the other direction. I don’t know how we made it, but we did. Both sides of Our Car were scraped, the left by the truck, the right by the wooden rail of the bridge.”
When Maze and Whyte returned to Edmonton after their trip, they set to work immediately to organize a Freight Transit Unit. By the autumn of 1943 a fleet of trucks was operating from the newly-built refrigerated warehouse at the end of steel to all the R.C.AF. detachments on the Route. Each detachment had the necessary facilities for repairing the trucks, as well as competent Service Mechanics to look after them. Major repairs were made in the large garage at Dawson Creek,
In 1944, several people in positions of authority complained that an Air Force debased itself by moving freight on the ground. To quiet these charges, someone figured out that an airman’s daily food supply, packed for shipment, weighed roughly six pounds. To have flown this package from Edmonton to Whitehorse would have cost $2.40 per man per day, but by rail and truck the cost of shipping the same package amounted to thirty-seven cents. The total poundage of freight carried during this year amounted to about five and one quarter million pounds.
The fleet of RCAF. trucks delivered freight consisting of rations, construction material, heavy machinery, technical equipment, petroleum products, and many other commodities. A convoy carrying non-perishables normally took between seven and nine days to make the round trip from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse and back again. Perishable rations presented another problem. With these they made 2 non-stop trip to Whitehorse in about thirty-six to forty hours. This was done by flying relief drivers ahead from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson and Watson Lake, locations which are respectively about one-third and two-thirds of the way along the road to Whitehorse.
Two examples will serve to demonstrate the ingenuity of the airmen who worked in the Freight Unit. Some sort of refrigeration for the trucks was necessary in the summer time, but it was soon discovered that the machinery of an ordinary mechanical refrigerator plant was too delicate for the bumpy Alaska Highway. The problem was solved by installing shelves inside the body of the truck and packing them with dry ice. During the winter months, with their extremely low temperatures, the problem was reversed: how to prevent the food from freezing. It was solved by connecting standard three-section radiators (such as might be used to heat an ordinary room) to the exhaust pipe.
I know from my own experiences that the driving must have been hazardous, especially in those early days when the Alaska Highway was far from completed. In the summer, rain can make the road as slippery as ice, and the spring brings flash-floods from the melting snows on the mountain tops. It is quite possible to be driving comfortably along the Highway at one moment, and the next to see a deluge of icy water come rushing around a bend between the mountains to wash away the road, one’s car, and oneself. Deaths from such causes are not too uncommon.
The winter months meant that the R.C.A.F. drivers were unable to gear down on the mountain sides lest they skid over the cliffs—and anyway, as Mr. Whyte explained, they needed as much speed as possible to get up the ice-covered hill which inevitably awaited them as soon as they had successfully reached the bottom of the previous one. The drivers always had one thing to look forward to, however. They used to stop for a swim at the hot springs near Smith River, even when the temperature was thirty-five below and the trees and the swimmers’ hair were thick with hoar frost.
Leaving Dawson Creek, a town now famous as a hub of transportation, and driving on towards Grande Prairie, we passed through Pouce Coupé.
It was near Pouce Coupé, so the time-honoured story goes, that an R.C.M.P. constable, after tracking a killer for a month through the winter cold, at last found him frozen to death in the snow. Wishing to have proof of the success of his search, the constable cut off the man’s head and put it in gunnysack. Then he boarded a ’plane for his return to Edmonton. A short time after take-off, a superstitious passenger remarked on the unhappy fact that there were only thirteen persons aboard. Our hero, a fearful-looking giant of a man, gave him an encouraging grin. “Don’t worry,” he said; and, opening his gunny-sack, he let its contents roll down the aisle of the aircraft.
During the war, Pouce Coupé was a vital source of liquor for those “inside”. Amongst the more prominent bootleggers of those days were (horrible to relate!) several R.C.A.F. personnel. Bob Maze told me about a tall and immense driver who one day walked into the garage at Dawson Creek to pick up his truck. The tunic of his battledress and his trouser pockets were bulging with what were obviously bottles. Unfortunately for many parched throats up the Route, he found himself confronted by Maze, who simply stared at him without uttering a word. Unabashed, the culprit returned his glance. “Just been to the hospital, Sir,” he said. My stay in Grande Prairie was 4 short one. The town itself lies on a broad, flat, and verdant plain. The skyline is broken only by grain elevators and the beacons at the airport. The Department of Transport took over the field from the R.C.A.F. in November 1950. Before the war regular flights had been established to and from Grande Prairie; bush pilots flew their aircraft off the level turf at the present site. During the thirties, the townspeople had proposed to build a school there, but the war put an end to such plans with the construction of the first Staging Route airport north of Edmonton. On 1 January 1944, as I have stated earlier, the North-West Staging Route was placed under the control of Western Air Command, with its headquarters remaining in Edmonton. Group Captain V.H. Patriarche, A.F.C., was placed in charge of it, with Wing Commander W. J. Winny, O.B.E., as second in command. A month later the Route was redesignated as No. 2 Wing, and the problems of accommodation, personnel, and equipment recieved
increased attention from A.F.H.Q. The U.S. forces were the principal users of the Route, and the volume of traffic passing over it was considerable. The R.C.A.F. was responsible for the control, maintenance, and defence of the route.
In May 1944, Secret Organization Order No. 193 was issued, establishing North-West Air Command. Many of its senior officers were men with experience In northern flying. The A.O.C., Air Vice-Marshal T. A. Lawrence, C.B., had conducted surveys for the R.C.A.F. up in Hudson Strait in 1927-28. Both the Chief Staff Officer and the Senior Air Staff Officer were veteran bush pilots, as were also, of course, many of the pilots engaged in flying R.C.A.F. aircraft over the Staging Route.
No. 2 Air Observer School, at Edmonton, having been disbanded early in ’44, N.W.A.C. was able to take over its buildings to accommodate the great increase in personnel which was necessary to administer the Route. The facilities which the Command and Station Edmonton occupied, and the large hangar space which they then had, were in marked contrast to the prefabricated huts and tents still in use at the beginning of 1944. The R.C.A.F. continued to make improvements until the end of the war. Notable among such improvements was the expansion of the airways traffic control centre to four times its original size.
The question of financial responsibility was settled in 1944. On 1 August, the Right Honourable W.L. Mackenzie King presented to the House of Commons an exchange of notes between Canada and the U.S.A. concerning the defence installations which the U.S. had either built or improved upon in Canada. This is what the Prime Minister had to say:
“The Minister of Munitions and Supply (Mr. C.D. Howe) informed the house in February of the Government’s decision to reimburse the United States Government for permanent improvements which they had made to airfields on the North-West Staging Route and in the north-west generally. Then, in April, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Ilsley) stated that, as part of an understanding which he had reached with the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States in connection with the Hyde Park declaration, the Canadian Government would reimburse the United States Government for permanent improvements which they had made to other airfields in Canada and for the telephone line from Edmonton to the Alaska boundary, which was also built by the United States. ‘It has been agreed that Canada will reimburse the United States to the extent of 76.8 million dollars. United States funds. This covers construction costs incurred by the United States Government of work of permanent value on the North-West Staging Route, the flight strips along the Alaska (Military) Highway, the flight strips along the Mackenzie River, the airfields in north-eastern Canada, the airfield at Mingan, Quebec, the airfield at Goose Bay, Labrador, and the telephone line from Edmonton to the Alaska boundary. An additional 13.8 million dollars spent by the United States on these projects is not being repaid by Canada, since, while necessary for the prosecution of the war, it represents war-time expenditure for United States purposes and provides nothing of permanent value; for example, temporary barracks and other housing facilities. However, all these works, whether of permanent or non-permanent value, are relinquished to the Canadian Government.
“I should also point out that, in addition to reimbursing the United States for the outlays under reference, Canada has assumed substantial expenditures for the construction of war-time facilities which were originally made on the understanding that we would be reimbursed by the United States. Our expenditures under this head in Canadian funds will total 34.7 million dollars. Thus, including our reimbursements to the United States and the expenditures which we are making ourselves, the amount expressed in Canadian dollars which the Canadian Government is spending on the airfields and related projects mentioned in the exchange of notes is of the order of 120 million dollars.
“Honourable members will observe that all of the foregoing expenditures were incurred in connection with defence installations in north-western and north-eastern Canada. Both are vital areas in the joint defence plans of the United States and Canada. Through the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, far-reaching defence measures have been taken to close these back doors of the continent against attack by Germany and Japan. In concept and in execution the defence plans for these areas represent one of the most effective examples of co-operation among the United Nations. At the same time these facilities have become links in the offensive plans of the Allies. ’Planes fly across the north-west to the Pacific theatre of war and across the north-east to Europe.
“In reaching this agreement for repayment for expenditures incurred for these defence facilities in north-western and north-eastern Canada and Labrador, it was believed that, as part of the Canadian contribution to the war, this country should take general responsibility for the provision of facilities in Canada and in Labrador required for the use of Canadian, United Kingdom, and United States forces. In the second place, it was thought that it was undesirable that any other country should have a financial investment in improvements of permanent value, such as civil aviation facilities, for peace-time use in this country.
“I am happy to say that our views on this subject were understood by the government of the United States, and the agreement which I have tabled is the result of this understanding.”
With my departure from Grande Prairie, my trip virtually came to its end. Between there and Ottawa only one episode occurred that is in any way deserving of mention — a haircut which I had in a small town just north of Edmonton.
Entering a seedy-looking building whose false front was adorned with the traditional blood-letter’s candy-cane, I found myself in a squalid snooker-room with one barber’s chair evidently thrown in as an afterthought. I sat in this chair somewhat nervously, while the proprietor and part-time barber took his seat on a little stool beside me. He was so low that he could hardly reach my neck; but, since he seemed to be completely disinterested in the whole proceeding, it didn’t matter anyway. When, eventually, I stumbled forth into the open Air, my scalp resembled nothing so much as a mosaic of the Staging Route.