Sleepy town underwent astonishing changes

By Karla Marsh

Special to the AHN

Photo of Bill McDonald supplied by the North Peace Museum

Bill McDonald was just a boy of eight in the summer of 1942.

His older brother had joined the army the summer before and he suspects his family was concerned about events overseas. But to Bill, “the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the war seemed like another world.”

Bill’s mother had taught school at Moberly Lake that year and when she and young Bill returned to Fort St. John at the end of the school term, they found that their once sleepy town had undergone some astonishing changes.

Thousands of American soldiers and construction workers had poured into the area that spring to begin building the Alaska Highway, and their presence on the streets of Fort St. John made quite an impression on Bill.

He recalls, “We caught a ride with a lumber truck into Fort St. John. Mother, the driver and the swamper rode in the cab and I rode on top of the load of lumber.

“We got into Fort St. John and there were construction workers and cars and trucks every place. There was a large tent city on the west side of town and two large construction sites between Fort St. John and Charlie Lake.

“There were MPs, or military police, with black arm bands packing pistols and billy clubs. They were policing the streets. I guess there was a tough crew in here. This really surprised me. It was like waking up in a strange country.

“The next year, my mother taught at Charlie Lake School and I was right in the thick of it. Charlie Lake was right at the start of the Alaska Highway, and naturally a lot was going on there.

“The kids from the Public Roads Administration camp and the construction camp went to school at Charlie Lake. Most of the kids I went to school with were American kids.”

How does Bill feel about the changes that took place with the building of the Alaska Highway?

“We made a giant step into the 20th century at that time,” he reflects.

“Things were never the same in the Peace River country after that. We had been living like the pioneers. We lived off the land. We grew a lot of our own food. We made our own fun. We had lots to eat but we didn’t have hardly any spare cash. We gained a lot of modern conveniences and money. We lost the laid-back attitude that we enjoyed so much.”

This photograph shows downtown Fort St. John during the construction of the Alaska Highway in the early 1940s.