Peace of the Past: He captured it all on film

By Karla Marsh

Ruby Schubert had one of the most interesting jobs a soldier could have on the Alaska Highway.

He spent his days on the Trail of ’42 working as a photographer.

Although born in Canada, Rudy travelled to the United States to join the U.S. Army. He had tried to enlist in the Canadian Army, but was refused by an officer who objected to Schubert’s German heritage.

But it wasn’t long before Rudy returned to Canada. His regiment, the 341^st Engineers, received orders to construct an all-weather road from Fort St. John to Fort Nelson. It was Rudy’s job to make a photographic record of the part his regiment played in the huge project.

One of the most difficult tasks for the army engineers was to determine a specific road location through what was then largely unmapped wilderness.

Rudy logged many hours flying over the proposed highway route, taking aerial photographs that would later be used by surveyors on the ground to mark the location of the highway.

When he wasn’t in a plane, he had the use of an army jeep and driver. He travelled countless miles back and forth over the rugged new road, keeping track of the regiment’s progress.

He recalls the jeep becoming hopelessly mired in knee-deep mud on more than one occasion, and when it wasn’t wet, there was another scourge to deal with…. dust.

In the 15 months Rudy was stationed on the Alaska Highway he took hundreds of black and white photographs. Many of the pictures were printed in “The Long Trail,” a book published by the 341^st Engineers as a keepsake for the men who worked on the highway.

The photographs depict the enormity of the project and the many different tasks performed by the men. There are pictures of men relentlessly bulldozing brush, carrying logs to lay down corduroy road, and building endless bridges.

Rudy also recorded the social lives of soldiers on the long trail. He took his camera along to the local country dances, ball games the men occasionally enjoyed in the evenings, and when the men got ahold of a few cases of beer, parties in the barracks.

After their mission on the highway was completed, the 341^st Engineers were sent overseas. When the war ended, Rudy returned to Fort St. John and married a girl from Montney who he had met during the highway’s construction.

Now  80 years of age, Rudy remembers he had some of the best times of his life taking pictures of the dust and mud on the famous Alaska Highway