Peace of the Past: Surveyors or oilmen, Rosie cooked for all

By Karla Marsh

Oil exploration was just beginning in the Peace country when the Americans arrived to build the Alaska Highway. It was 1942 and the derrick of the first drilling rig had been raised into the sky between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John.

Photo of Rosie and Nels Westergaard, Fort St. John North Peace Museum.

Rosie Westergaard was a cook for the first oil rig crew. She was busy turning out three square meals a day for oilmen when another crew stopped at the camp to see if they could eat too.

This crew of five or six men were surveyors with the U.S. Army, hard at work mapping out a route for the Alaska Highway.

At first, the head of the survey crew approached Rosie’s boss about the possibility of his men being accommodated. The boss didn’t see a problem with the soldiers joining the rig crew for meals, but thought it best if the cook herself was consulted.

In the end it was up to Rosie. As she was used to cooking for her own large family and threshing crews, she decided she could handle cooking for the ration-weary men.

When she wasn’t busy baking, cooking or cleaning up, Rosie found a little time to get to know the surveyors. She found it interesting that they carried a stand with them, which they would set up in the field to do their writing on.

She also remembered that they lived in a tent and slept on cots that folded up. They had eiderdown sleeping bags and told Rosie that when it was cold, they pulled them up so tight around their faces that only their noses stuck out.

As if she didn’t have enough on her mind with two crews to cook for every day, Rosie was surprised to find out that there were still others, downwind from the cook shack, who were hungry for her home cooking. They were large, black, and four legged and didn’t mind leftovers at all.

Bears were often wandering around the camp looking for garbage. One night, when Rosie awoke to an unfamiliar noise, she found a bear standing up against the trailer with his claws scratching on the window.

In spite of all the hard work and visiting bears, Rosie was happy for the opportunity to make a little money to take home to her family on the Halfway River.

She was especially pleased with the high pay given to her by the U.S. Army survey crew, who were tired of eating rations in a cold army tent, assured her that her cooking was “worth it.”