Dempster Anniversary Draws a Crowd

by Dan Davidson

Politics mingled with history at the Dempster Corner on August 18 as a large crowd of visitors, locals and dignitaries gathered to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Dempster Highway. The event was organized by the Klondike Visitors Association, which has made the coordination of a number of several such memorials its summer project this year.

John Gould presents a framed photograph to Al Tink. Photo by Palma Berger.

Master of ceremonies for the event was Ken McKinnon,, a former Commissioner and territorial cabinet minister. He likened the original opening of the Dempster to a memorial to the Prime Minister who had begun the project.

“It was a memorial and a celebration of our Chief, John Diefenbaker, and his Roads to Resources Program,” said McKinnon, who recalled working with Alvin Hamilton, the DIAND Minister who was the man assigned to bring the Tory’s Northern Vision to life.

Yukon’s Premier Dennis Fentie spoke next.

“This highway was the product of the vision of John George Diefenbaker, who saw a new Canada, a Canada of the North. The Dempster brings many people to the tundra and the mountains of central Yukon. It travels through mountains that escaped glaciation, across rolling tundra where the Porcupine Caribou herd winters. It follow trails used by aboriginal people and the Northwest Mounted Police, intersecting the land of the Gwech'in people to the land of the Inuvialuit in the Western Arctic.

“As unforgiving as it is spectacular, this land gave life to its indigenous people and it took life from those ill prepared to face its challenges. So many lives have been touched by the Dempster.

“As a northern Canadian I can tell you that i am extremely proud of this northern highway. Not only does the Dempster provide a pristine Canadian experience to our visitors; not only does the Dempster provide access to resources; it also serves as a symbol of cooperation between two great territories as we share in its many benefits.

“Its riches go beyond the tangible. They are historic, they are scenic, and they hold the promise of a future for our territory. Little did Diefenbaker know, when he christened the Road to Resources, just how significant his vision really was.”

Member of Parliament Larry Bagnell, now Secretary to the federal Minister of Natural Resources, kept his remarks brief, focussing on history and the future.

“Dempster is tied into two stories which resonate through our history, that of the Mad Trapper of Rat River, and the Lost Patrol, both of which have been chronicled by journalist/historian Dick North.

“The Road to Resources is a great concept - not just mining, but oil and gas, frozen methane. Also the friendships built between us and the NWT. The other resource is tourism - the spectacular beauty. We have access to these resources and we must use them responsibly.”

Bagnell noted that in his many trips up and down the highway, he had never had a flat tire.

Elaine Taylor, the Yukon’s Minster of Tourism, focussed on the highway’s appeal to tourists.

The Dempster rates as a premier tourist attraction, both locally and internationally. Tourism working with KVA and City of Dawson to show the DH as a unique destination.

It has, she said, recently made the top 100 holiday destinations list in the United Kingdom, and is being promoted as one of the top thirteen scenic drives in country by Toyota Canada.

The KVA, she said, has done wonderful job organizing this celebration and the events from June on.

Glenn Hart, Yukon’s Minister of Highways and Public Works, spoke next.

“The road is a testament to the vision and incredible endurance of the first nations who established the first routes and settlements, and the Northwest Mounted Police who travelled back and forth protecting the citizens, and the forward thinking government officials who saw the potential and the opportunity in a place as far away as you could get from Ottawa.

“The decision to build this road helped the Yukon to be the most well-connected territory in the country. Our 4681 km of road bring economic opportunity; they open our beautiful territory to visitors and commerce and they keep us seamlessly connected to the south.

“We celebrate the many men and women who have endured whatever this highway handed them to make the journey possible. We salute the first nations who made this land home. travelled through its every corner and pioneered the paths across it. Thank you for sharing it and the stories that come from it.”

On behalf of those people Robert Alexie, a Community Elder from Gwech’in of Fort McPherson, brought greeting to the assembly, also speaking on behalf of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in contingent, who were absent due to a death in the community.

David Krutko the Minister of Housing for NWT, celebrated relationships between territories and the people, as well as noting that the job isn’t yet finished, The highway system still doesn’t reach the Beaufort Sea.

“For us in the NWT that’s a dream we’d like to see come to fruition. We are working with our federal counterparts, and I hope they’re here listening, because we definitely need more infrastructure funding.”

Al Tink was the Cat Train Crew Chief with Mobil Oil who brought the first rigs into Eagle Plains. He spoke of his early days pushing exploration rigs through the pass and along the valleys, and of the tremendous travel expense in terms of fuel consumption that helped to create the push for first, a winter road, and later, an all season route.

“Today is a day to pay tribute to the people of the Yukon,” Tink said. “They learn to live in a very unique and vast land in harmony with the vast land, the cold, the darkness and long summer days. They accomplish much. I saw this ... forty two years ago and it exists today.

“Driving up the Dempster Highway Sunday morning it was very evident. It was an excellent road from a construction standpoint when you’re aware of the conditions that existed when construction commenced in the 1950s.

“You learn to live with this land. You never beat it.”

Local historian John Gould presented a commemorative photograph to Tink,

Al Close is the Eastern Area Supervisor of Highways for YTG. His early career in the 1960s was spent on the Dempster. He recalled Al Tink getting trapped in a river when he was taking a highway’s constructed detour around an obstacle. Apparently he misjudged his distance from the edge.

“The next time I saw him he was out the door of his truck and there was water going in one side of him and out the other, and he was standing on the roof waving his arms.

Close remembered that the priority in his day was keeping the route open. If need be you would just punch a detour where ever it was needed.

“Nowadays, if you got out in the tundra with a D8 making a road ... they’d put you in jail for a hundred years.

As part of the event the KVA’s Harmony Hunter and Konrad Pluta performed a song called “Rush to the Klondike” which was penned by Walter Diefenbaker

George McConkey performed a Dempster song that he began working on over 25 years ago when he first saw the highway. He related being rescued by Harry Waldren while travelling with the band Yukon Jack one March.

The band members were trapped on the road during a storm with their engine idling to keep them from freezing in their van when Waldren, who was a grader operator when he wasn’t posing as the Keeper of the Arctic Circle, came along and found them.

Waldren explained his rescue philosophy in a few pithy words:

“Get the meat out; go back for the iron tomorrow. If somebody’s trapped in there you go get ‘em out.”

Willie Gordon then joined McConkey on violin for a few numbers while people chatted.

The formal part of the afternoon concluded with the singing of “O Canada,” led by Harmony Hunter.

McKinnon reminded people to donate something to the time capsule, enjoy the lunch on site, collect their certificates to mark the event certificates and make the trip to the Tombstone Campground for the Salmon Barbecue later that evening.

(Note: This article could not have been written without the help of John Gould, who packed a tape recorder to an event this reporter could not attend in person.)

Nielsen Recalls “the Chief,” Yukon Travel and the Reasons for Building the Dempster Highway

by Dan Davidson

Erik Nielsen admitted to being more than a little concerned about his health when he was asked to come help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Dempster Highway on August 18. After all his political mentor and hero, John George Diefenbaker, who had proposed the project in the first place, had died while trying to make this same trip in 1979.

Nielsen and Robert Alexie, a Gwechin elder, cut a ribbon to mark the 25th anniversaary of the highway. Photo by Palma Berger.

“When I asked him,” Nielsen said, “at the request of Public Works, to come to Yukon, to preside over the opening of the highway in 1979, he agreed to come.”

Nielsen and his Chief, took different routes to get here, and Diefenbaker stopped off at his home in Prince Albert.

According to Nielsen Diefenbaker actually had his fatal heart attack while reviewing the speech that he intended to give at the opening of the highway.

“He expired on the floor of his den in Prince Albert, with his papers scattered about him. Those papers are a jewel for any archivist who wants to include all of the factors leading into the construction of the Dempster Highway. They should be part of Yukon’s heritage as well.

“So when I got up this morning the first thing I did was to thank my lucky start that I was still on this side of the grass, because you can’t help but think about what happened to the Chief when he came up to cut a ribbon, and make it up to what’s happening to all of us in time.”

Nielsen had some early experiences travelling northern Yukon roads, which began shortly after he arrived here. he first came to Dawson as the campaign manager for George Black in 1952. He drove here in what was considered a modern automobile at the time, over a route he could only describe as a trail.

“There was no highway where you see it now. We went with the vehicle up to its hubs, over swamps like the one that you’ve just come through on the way back to Dawson.”

(The Klondike Highway is being rebuilt and widened near Dawson at this time, making some portions of it a bit messy.)

“All in all it was a very trying journey, but that’s all that was there. Since the Road to Resources program that the Chief pushed so hard we have the Dawson to Stewart highway now and other highway improvements ... and also bridges and other communications that were missing in those days and were so vital to the development of Yukon.”

There were times in the early days when he despaired of ever getting any of these things.

“It was so retarded - not the people, the country - when I first came her and was campaigning with George Black at the time. We were so hard up for development and at that time the Marshall Plan in the ruins of Europe was being given the gas. We thought, in the local Tory Party, that what we should do to advance the platform was that we should declare war on Alaska - and lose it and apply for aid under the Marshall Plan.”

Nielsen was surprised to get to Ottawa in 1956 and discover that the federal Tories already had a Road to Resources program in their platform and had been thinking about it for longer than the Yukon branch of the party had.

Both Diefenbaker, the party’s leader, and Alvin Hamilton, who would become the Minister in charge of the North, played a role.

Nielsen recalled a 1958 speech by his Chief in which the then Prime Minister expanded on the national vision of the nation’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald-

“Macdonald saw a Canada from East to West. The Chief said, ‘I see a new Canada, a Canada of the North.’ and he had in mind our rich resources of the north that day by day are emerging.”

Any great idea has its ups and downs.

“Yukon has suffered a setback or two,” Nielsen said, “but the NWT is going full speed ahead with diamond mines and all sorts of hope, where hope was disappearing.

That’s what the communications thrust was intended to achieve and Diefenbaker achieved it in marvelous form.”

There are other reasons for transportation and communications infrastructure though, he continued. Progress on the Dempster Highway stalled for a number of years after the Tories lost power to the Grits, and it took that other kind of motivation to get it finished. The Liberals needed a nudge to change their minds about the worth of the project. It came with the discovery of Arctic oil.

“The first requirement of any government is to insist on its sovereignty over the territory that they call home,” Nielsen said. “The Dempster was intended to access more immediate resources, and then along came Prudhoe Bay.”

The government of the day had to take a second look at a the road which which they had proscribed while they were in opposition as a “road to nowhere”, and also as a road “from igloo to igloo.”

“Well, the first igloo was at the corner there” Nielsen said, “and next one was at McPherson and beyond. It (the highway) came about because the government was afraid of possible encroachments over our sovereignty in our northern and arctic lands, afraid the rush for oil and its benefits in the Beaufort and on the North Slope would drown us in a serious fashion.”

As for the name of the highway, Nielsen said he always though ti was an appropriate choice.

“One of the last remaining vestiges of our heritage is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that, no matter where you go in the world, are known as one of world’s leading police forces. They, more than any other single element of our history, have ensured that our sovereignty throughout our country is respected.

“Dempster was one of a breed of those, the same as those who occupy that position of responsibility today. So it’s doubly fitting not only that the Prime Minister be remembered as well as the RCMP.”

Nielsen’s official function at the ceremony concluded with a ribbon cutting shared with Gwich'in elder Robert Alexie.

(Note: This article could not have been written without the help of John Gould, who packed a tape recorder to an event this reporter could not attend in person.”