Text Copyright © 2017 Lily Gontard.
Photographs Copyright © Mark Kelly, except where noted otherwise.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Lost Moose is an imprint of Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
Edited by Joanna Reid
Indexed by Kyla Shauer
Cover design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe
Text and map design by Roger Handling, Terra Firma Digital Arts
Epigraph, page 19 from “Say the Names” by Al Purdy, Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, edited by Sam Solecki, 2000, Harbour Publishing.
Printed and bound in Canada
Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gontard, Lily, author
Beyond mile zero : the vanishing Alaska Highway lodge
community / text by Lily Gontard ; photographs by Mark Kelly.
Includes index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55017-797-8 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55017-798-5 (HTML)
1. Hospitality industry—Alaska Highway—History—20th
century. 2. Alaska Highway—History—20th century. I. Title.
FC4023.9.A4G66 2017 917.19'106 C2017-900657-6
C2017-900658-4
Additional photo captions: Front cover, from top, left to right—Alaska Highway sign in Dawson Creek; Forty-Mile Lodge; Lum ’n’ Abner’s, Silver Fox Road House; highway at Mile 1167; Jack Gunness at Double “G” Service; sign outside Tetsa River Lodge. Back cover, from top, left to right—Willy Lou Warbelow, photo courtesy Cyndie Warbelow-Tack and Art Warbelow; Border City Lodge & RV Park; Sid van der Meer; vintage coffee pot from Transport Café; Summit Lake Lodge; hat collection at Toad River Lodge; sign outside Fireside Inn; Rancheria Lodge. Page 1—The aurora and tail lights combine for a light show along the Alaska Highway. Previous pages—A lone sign marks the site of a former Alaska Highway lodge.
This book is dedicated to all the people who have operated and worked in lodges along the Alaska Highway. Their hospitality and friendship, and help in times of need, have made the journey along the highway even more legendary, and often less scary.
We’d like to particularly thank Linda and Denis Bouchard, who run Mile 710 Rancheria Lodge. Linda and Denis were our first portraits and first interview for this project. Their generosity was the launching point, and we are deeply grateful.
Linda and Denis Bouchard, Mile 710 Rancheria Lodge.
”The hospitality of the people in the North is out of this world. In the early years you could go to any place, didn’t matter, and you were welcome there—you might have to sleep on the floor.”
Harry George (cited in North to Alaska! by Ken Coates)
Sheep Mountain Motel has been nearly reclaimed by nature.
Preface
Travelling from the “lower forty-eight” states to Alaska, or from southern Canada to the Yukon and Northwest Territories, is a journey that most people do on the Alaska Highway. Sure, you can take the Alaska Marine Highway ferry along the West Coast to Skagway or Haines, Alaska, or the Cassiar Highway through British Columbia, but eventually, you’ll end up on this historic road.
Alaska Highway lodges, such as Double “G” Service, pictured, have traditionally offered fuel, food, accommodation and most importantly, tire-repair services.
In the 1990s, Mark Kelly and I were both in our twenties when we moved (not together) to the North, and we each drove the Alaska Highway. My trip was made memorable by the first time I saw bison near Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, and by the fact that the windshield of the van I was travelling in was totally shattered by a rock that flew out of a dump truck just west of Teslin, Yukon.
Mark’s first journey up the Alaska Highway was for a canoe trip on the Dease River. Years later, he transported his life from Squamish, British Columbia, to the Yukon and strapped to the roof of the truck was the same canoe he took on the Dease trip. In 2004, Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park became the background for that fateful moment when Mark fell in love with his future wife, Brooke, as they watched the northern lights wash in waves through a winter sky.
For the most part, Alaska Highway lodge owners are a welcoming lot. Depending how long you stick around, you might get lucky and hear a tale or two.
In the 1990s, fuel along the Alaska Highway was more expensive than in Edmonton or Dawson Creek, and both Mark and I travelled with a twenty-litre jerry can strapped to the roof racks of our respective vehicles. We both stopped for fuel only when necessary, and sometimes we’d stop at one of the lodges for a meal or coffee and a slice of pie. We share memories of the gas jockeys, wait staff and cashiers slightly tinged with a crustiness, and it’s no wonder the service was less than enthusiastic: the 1990s saw the decline of the lodge community, after the heyday of the early 1980s.
The seed for Beyond Mile Zero was planted in late summer of 2011. Mark and Brooke’s son, Seth, was born in July of that year, and shortly after his birth, the trio drove to Calgary to visit family. As parents know, a road trip with a newborn means frequent stops, and these occurred conveniently at abandoned lodges. While Brooke fed Seth, Mark would busy himself by taking photographs. It was Brooke who first suggested Mark do a photo essay on the changing highway lodge culture. Three years later, Mark asked me for advice about what to do with the growing collection of photos he’d taken of abandoned Alaska Highway lodges. We met for coffee, and I said his photos would make a great book. But first, I thought I’d pitch a photo essay to Geist. That’s how the feature “The Vanishing Roadhouse” ended up being published in Issue 100 in 2016.
Initially,