Peace of the Past: Working up north

By Karla MarshSpecial to the AHN

After almost 50 years, Anne Callison still remembers the rough and tumble trip she made to Fort Nelson in January of 1943. She was a young girl of about 20, on her way to a job at the Trading Post at old Fort Nelson.

(l-r) Frank Senz, Anne Callison and John Callison at a North Peace Pioneers event in 1975.

Anne had arranged a ride up the recently constructed Alaska Highway with a Public Roads Administration truck.

“We drove all night,” she recalls, “the road was terribly rough. Sometimes we only went 10 or 15 miles an hour. The road was crooked and narrow and we had to back up sometimes to let another vehicle pass.”

The trading post where Anne went to work, was also the local post office and a small restaurant. American soldiers and civilians, working nearby on the Alaska Highway, would often drop by for a bit of home cooking.

The restaurant had only one table but sat 12 to 15 people at a time and it was rarely ever empty.

Anne says: “They would eat pie like you wouldn't believe. I'd get up at five in the morning and bake 15 to 20 pies before seven and they'd all be gone by evening.”

In addition to pie and coffee, the men also dropped by the trading post to buy souvenirs, which they mailed to their sweethearts and families back home. Parkas and beadwork, made by the local native people, were very popular.

Good entertainment was hard to come by along the Alaska Highway in 1943, so a group of men who worked at the Fort Nelson airport decided to put on a play.

Anne was asked to play the part of a young girl whose mother was trying to find her a suitor.

The play was first put on for the construction workers at the airport. It was so well received and so many people wanted to see it, that they decided to build a stage in the airport hangar.

At a performance on New Year's Day 1944, the play drew such a crowd that the hangar was full.

That Christmas was also special for Anne. A few days before, several fellows that she was acquainted with arrived at the Trading Post with a sack. They proceeded to dump the contents of the sack on the floor, and, to Anne's surprise, out poured gifts from the customers she had served at the Trading Post. There were many lovely gifts, including a fur neck piece and wrist watch.

Most of the thousands of soldiers and construction workers who passed through Fort Nelson while working on the  Alaska Highway were well-mannered and courteous. But Anne says, “I was scared to go out by myself.”

Whenever she went to a social gathering, the lady who ran the Trading Post went too.  “She loved to go along,” says Anne, “it gave her a chance to get out too.”