Builders of the Alaska Highway
STORY BY PAIGE JASMINE GILMAR
Rarely does one of the world’s most popular magazines compare a construction project to a “task befitting Paul Bunyan,” but that was written in the August 1942 issue of Time magazine. And it indeed would’ve been easier if a giant-sized superhuman clad in plaid took on the project rather than the 26,000 Canadian and American civilians and soldiers who worked tirelessly to construct a 2,451-kilometre road from Dawson Creek, B.C., to Alaska in less than a year.
The most expensive Second World War project taken on by the U.S., and aided by Canada, the highway was completed on Oct. 28, 1942. It was “an enduring link to northern British Columbia and the Yukon,” C.W. Gilchrist wrote in a Canadian Encyclopedia article. “It contributed to the development of Edmonton which supplied the highway’s construction.”
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Royal Canadian Legion, US Branch #25 