Lillian Alling

by Susan Smith-Josephy

  Although overland passage to the Telegraph Trail was unavailable, it is likely that Lillian learned that the Cranberry Trail—a trading route used by the Gitxsan First Nations people—was the best route back to Hazelton and the Telegraph Trail. The Cranberry Trail network begins with a 12-mile (19-kilometre) hike up into the canyon of the Bear River and from there through the Bear Pass to Meziadin Lake. The next part of the trail follows the Nass River and then the Cranberry River to the head of Steven’s Lake. The final stretch lies alongside the Kispiox River then through the Kispiox valley to Hazelton.

  By the summer of 1928, Lillian had been travelling for a year and a half and had walked thousands of miles. But a good portion of that time had been spent in jail or within the confines of the city of Vancouver. Presumeably she was well rested, but probably also out of shape since her last attempt to walk the Telegraph Trail. Now her strength and endurance in the wild would be freshly tested. Most of the journey ahead of her would have been considered a moderate to difficult hike.7 Through the mountainous sections the terrain was rugged, to be sure, but in the river valleys the trails flattened out, and in the month of June they would have been dry as well. If she walked an average of 30 miles (48 kilometres) a day, it would take her about two weeks to make the journey from Hyder to Hazelton.

  However, Lillian did not stop when she reached Hazelton. She walked a further 38 miles (61 kilometres) southeast through the Bulkley Valley to the town of Smithers, arriving there on June 19. It would have been a much shorter trek for her to walk from Hyder to Hazelton, then head directly north, but she had apparently been told by Oakalla Prison authorities to check in with the Provincial Police in Smithers before heading north on the trail again.8 So she had walked the extra day into Smithers. Perhaps her unsuccessful encounter at Hyder, Alaska, had made her realize that, since the inland Canadian route was the only way north, she would have to comply with police requirements along the way.

  BC Police Officer Andrew Fairbairn

  Born in Scotland in 1888, Andrew Fairbairn arrived in Canada in 1908. After serving with the Investigation Department of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he joined the BC Provincial Police. His early postings included Telkwa, Smithers and Burns Lake; in September 1929 he was promoted to corporal in charge of the Hazelton District and transferred to Smithers. The next year he was promoted to sergeant. In 1934 Fairbairn was transferred to Cranbrook and in 1938 to Grand Forks. In 1941 he was placed in charge of the Courtenay District and two years later, promoted to staff sergeant. In February 1943 he transferred to Kamloops. Then on July 1, 1946, when the BC Provincial Police were amalgamated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he transferred to Williams Lake.9 He retired to Ladysmith in 1952 and died there at the age of eighty-five in August 1973.10

  Constable Andy Fairbairn of the British Columbia Provincial Police had been expecting Lillian, and he confirmed his encounter with her in an interview with Vancouver Sun reporter Donald Stainsby in 1963.11 Fairbairn had quizzed Lillian about her trip.

  “Did you bum rides?” he asked her.

  “I walked all the way. I tell you the truth,” she said. “I do not tell lies.” And this was partially true: although she had taken a ship to Hyder, she had walked from Hyder to Smithers.

  Fairbairn remembered that “her face was smooth and clear, her hair, under the inevitable kerchief, was black and shiny.” He told Stainsby that she must have averaged between 30 and 40 miles (48 and 64 kilometres) a day on her journey. She asked Fairbairn to let her continue on towards Siberia, and the officer realized that with her proven travelling speed—she had left Stewart on June 7 and it was now just June 19—she might barely make it to the Yukon before the weather got bad, but he was still hesitant about giving her permission to continue because she was so ill-equipped.

  “What will you eat? You have nothing.” Her packsack seemed woefully small.

  “I eat anything,” she replied. “Leaves, berries, grass. Please let me go.”12

  Another part of Fairbairn’s reluctance stemmed from the fact that an American hiker had attempted to walk the Telegraph Trail but had not made it very far. The Omineca Herald of June 20, 1928, reported:

  Owen C. Eastman of Salem, Massachusetts, who blew into Hazelton some time ago and posed as a hiker of some ability, en route for Paris, returned to Hazelton on Tuesday [June 19] a wiser boy. He got as far as the fourth cabin on the telegraph line when he decided to retreat.13

  Constable Fairbairn finally agreed to let Lillian go further north on the condition that she report in at every cabin on the telegraph line until she reached Telegraph Creek.

  ”I will,” she said earnestly. “I give my word.”14

  So Lillian headed west again toward Hazelton, where she would turn north up the Telegraph Trail.

  Notes

  (1) “The Gateway to the Mines of the Portland Canal District; the Mountain Anthracite Coal Fields and the Logical Railway Outlet for the Peace River Valley.” Pamphlet issued by the Stewart Advancement League, May 1928.

  (2) Potterton, L.A.N. Northwest Assignment. Kelowna, BC: Mosaic Enterprises, 1972, page 9.

  (3) Peter Caffall-Davis, email correspondence, March 21, 2009.

  (4) Potterton, Northwest Assignment, page 10.

  (5) Ibid., page 9.

  (6) Excerpt provided October 2006 by Margaret Vandenberg, Terrace, being a verbatim transcript from an eight-page report by T.D. McLean to the Assistant District Engineer, Department of Public Works, Province of BC, file 2-20-0, submitted to the Prince Rupert office on December 30, 1926. “Adopted 5 November 1953 on 104A, as identified on plans 14L23 and 16T293 [dates/titles not cited].” Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC’s Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office.

  (7) Interview, George Simpson, September 2009, author’s files.

  (8) By “Telegraph Trail,” we mean from Hazelton to Atlin. By “Telegraph Line,” we mean the entire line from start to finish.

  (9) Email correspondence from Eric Hallam, president of the British Columbia Provincial Police Veterans Association, March 3, 2008.

  (10) Ladysmith newspaper obituary, courtesy of Ladysmith Archive.

  (11) Fairbairn was retired and living in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island when the interview took place.

  (12) Stainsby, Donald. “She Walked 6,000 Miles to the Top of the World,” Vancouver Sun, Weekend Magazine, April 27, 1963.

  (13) Omineca Herald, June 20, 1928.

  (14) Stainsby. “She Walked 6,000 Miles.”

  Chapter Five: The Telegraph Trail

  Charlie Janze (left), with co-worker John Jensen. Janze outfitted Lillian for the trip by repurposing his own clothing. Hazelton Pioneer Museum & Archives.

  After meeting with Fairbairn in Smithers, Lillian immediately began backtracking to Hazelton. Her arrival there was noticed and reported in the June 20 edition of the Omineca Herald:

  Lillian Alling, an old friend of the police force, blew into Hazelton this week en route to Echo Lake. She is on foot and makes on average of twenty miles a day. Last year she was in Hazelton and after a reasonable stay she was charged with vagrancy and drew a six month term in Okala [sic] from the magistrate. Lillie is a small woman, wiry and quite capable of taking care of herself.1

  The route ahead of her was described by Winfield Woolf, who hiked up the Telegraph Trail a year after Lillian:

  The existing gravel road continued thirty-five miles north of Hazelton, then ended in the woods ten miles beyond the last ranch. I soon found myself following a very faint trail over sharp ridges with only the Dominion Telegraph Line overhead to guide me. Nothing in all the forests and mountains surrounding me had been touched by the hand of man except the trail itself and the telegraph line. I knew that six or seven hundred miles of wilderness lay between me and the town of Atlin. Seven-thousand-foot snowy, glacier-laden peaks rose above me.2

  Constable Fairbairn sent a message to Ruxton Cox, the head telegrapher at Hazelton, who then tapped out a message to the lineme
n in the second, fourth, sixth and eighth cabins—the only cabins that were manned after 1925—to look out for Lillian, who would be walking north along the trail they knew so intimately. As she reached each cabin, the men tapped out a return message to Cox to say that she had come and gone safely.

  In northern BC the long days of midsummer would have allowed Lillian to cover great distances in one day, but this trip could not have been easy. Even though the Telegraph Trail from Hazelton to the Yukon border offered an established route, it was really no more than a rough mule trail through hundreds of miles of mountains, valleys and rough terrain. Of course, it was never intended for use as a walking track. It was constructed for the use of the men who repaired the line and for the annual pack trains delivering provisions to the telegraph cabins, although after it was established, certain sections of it were also used by First Nations hunters, trappers and some big-game hunters.3 Lillian would have had to ford creeks, clamber over rock falls, climb through narrow passes and cross rivers. On a good trail she walked fast, but in these conditions she probably made no more than 10 miles (16 kilometres) a day.

  Lillian used up a lot of calories walking eight or more hours a day up and down mountains and fording streams along the way, but even though she must have purchased some supplies in Hazelton, her pack could not hold a month’s worth of food. By most accounts she carried no more than the basic fare of bread and tea, though she must have had some way to boil water for her tea and perhaps carried a small pot or kettle in her pack. This meant, of course, that she made herself a fire each night when she was on the trail. There is no evidence that she ever caught fish or small game, though they were plentiful throughout the area and other Telegraph Trail hikers recount fishing, trapping or shooting their food. Instead, Lillian reported eating berries, and fortunately they would have been in abundance in summer and well into the fall. She could have found plenty of huckleberries, bush cranberries, soapberries, bear or thimble berries and saskatoons. It is also known that she accepted meals from people she met on the way, and it is certain she would not have survived without this help.

  As she called at each telegraph cabin, she would have begun to understand Constable Fairbairn’s request that she report to the men along the line. The food, shelter, company, encouragement and human contact she received at these cabins must have helped to keep her going. In fact, the telegraph men with their wood cookstoves and shelves of foodstuffs would have been critical to her survival.

  The telegraph men chatted back and forth over their wire to check in with each other and pass on messages, and they, of course, passed on news of Lillian’s condition and her pace as she walked her way north from Hazelton. They began taking turns to meet her on the trail halfway between the cabins. This involvement helped to make Lillian’s progress an interesting story not just for the linemen but for the area newspapers as well, because they used the telegraph to send and receive stories. It would have been natural that the Whitehorse Star and other area newspapers would pick up the story of the woman who walked the Telegraph Trail. Amazingly, there are no accounts of her complaining even when she was exhausted to the point of collapsing. She apparently accepted the physical and mental hardships without a word of complaint. She kept up with the winter-hardened telegraph operators and linesmen of the Yukon Telegraph, and they must have respected her for that and been spurred on to help her.

  By the time she reached Cabin Eight, 150 miles (240 kilometres) from Hazelton, it was the first week in July and she was exhausted, bug-bitten, sunburned and hungry. She had been walking for about two weeks and it had been a struggle even for someone as fit as she was. Greeting her at Cabin Eight were telegrapher Charlie Janze and lineman Jim Christie, who described Lillian as being nearly incoherent upon her arrival.

  Vancouver Sun reporter Donald Stainsby, in his 1963 article about Lillian, wrote:

  Janze and Christie were astonished at her appearance. Her dress and blouse were in shreds, her shoes battered. Her smooth complexion, which Fairbairn had noted in Smithers, was now pitted by the bites of mosquitoes, blackflies and other insects. The wind and sun had tanned and roughened it. The way she dropped her knapsack and slumped into a chair told the men how completely exhausted and hungry she was.4

  They gave her food, and Janze, who thought her trip was foolhardy, tried to persuade her to stay at the cabin and rest for a few days. Tough though she was, the walk, the environment, the lack of food, and the insects had all taken a toll, and she needed rest in order to survive the next leg of the trip. Janze warned her of the dangers of the high water and creek runoffs that she would be facing on the trail ahead. The conditions were awful and he did not want to see her risking her life, but she was determined to press on, and as was the way of the telegraph men, they were courteous and offered their guest as much assistance as possible. Janze, being the smaller of the two men, fashioned a pair of sturdy trousers for Lillian using an old pair of his own. He also gave her two shirts, a kerchief for her head, a hat, a pair of boots and two pairs of socks to make the boots fit. The men were curious about her, but she did not reveal much.

  Winfield Woolf, who came this way one year later, described the route after Cabin Eight:

  The scenery became more wonderful as I went on. From the eighth cabin the trail really began to climb. Above timber line for ten miles and working my way through a steep gorge along the side of a creek to its very beginning, I emerged upon a snow-covered upland plateau or pass, which at the highest point of the trail is 7,500 feet in elevation. Like giants seated in a circle around a mighty table, the smooth white heads and shoulders of encircling mountains rose a thousand feet higher than the edges of the plateau. Clouds, some white, others grey, were seething around their foreheads. Where the clouds were grey, I knew that it was snowing up there. I tried to hurry my steps in order not to get caught at such a high altitude without blankets in a blizzard. I was glad to get down in the lowlands again, even though the scenery up there seemed the most impressive of my entire trip.5

  Lineman Jim Christie offered to escort Lillian partway to the next cabin, and it was decided that Christie would walk with Lillian over the Nass Summit and past the abandoned ninth cabin to a refuge cabin 27 miles (43 kilometres) south of the Echo Lake station.6 He telegraphed this information ahead and learned that lineman Cyril J. Tooley was relieving the regular lineman, Bob Quinn, at Echo Lake. Tooley and telegraph operator Scotty Ogilvie, stationed at Echo Lake, expressed their willingness to help Lillian, but first Tooley had to head north to deal with some line trouble. Something—probably fallen trees—was preventing transmission. He cleaned up the cabin and headed north. On the morning of July 8, fifty-year-old telegraph operator Scotty Ogilvie strapped packs on his two dogs and walked south to meet Lillian and Jim Christie. They were fated never to meet.

  *

  Charlie Janze was still reluctant to let Lillian continue north to Echo Lake because it was spring runoff time, making it especially dangerous to cross rivers and streams. But Lillian wanted to be on her way and Janze was slightly comforted by the fact that lineman Jim Christie would accompany her part of the way. The trail after Cabin Eight was very steep, and Lillian and Christie would have had a steady climb. The next part of the route was above the timber line and ran alongside some creeks,7 but eventually Christie and Lillian got over Nass Summit and passed the abandoned ninth cabin, stopping at last at the refuge cabin south of Echo Lake.

  Meanwhile, it took Cyril Tooley a few hours to correct the line trouble north of Echo Lake, after which he stopped for the night at the refuge cabin about 8 miles (13 kilometres) north of the station. From there he tried to call his partner, Scotty Ogilvie. Concerned when he received no answer, he contacted Telegraph Creek where Jack Wrathall, the wire chief, confirmed Tooley’s worst fears. Ogilvie had not reported in since early that morning when he had told Wrathall that he and his dogs were leaving Echo Lake to meet Lillian Alling and Jim Christie on the trail.

  The next morning, Tooley headed south
past the Echo Lake station and continued on toward the refuge cabin 7 miles (11 kilometres) south of the lake. There he came upon the sad sight of Ogilvie’s two dogs sitting close together on the cabin’s stoop for warmth and comfort. They were still wearing their packs and they were soaking wet. He took care of the dogs the best he could and then tried to get them to go with him. When they wouldn’t budge, he followed their tracks and soon found Ogilvie’s tracks, too. They led to the bank of the river where there were signs of a recent collapse.

  Tooley returned to the seven-mile cabin to use the telegraph. This time he reached Christie. Tooley asked him to leave Lillian at the refuge cabin and meet him on the trail the next day. Once they met up, Tooley and Christie walked north to the Ningunsaw River, where the flooding forced them to make bridges out of fallen trees and old logs. The route was hazardous, wet and time-consuming, but they kept going, determined to find Ogilvie. Then, in one of the flooded channels as they slipped on the mud, moved water-soaked logs and heaved aside sharp branches, Tooley was shocked and saddened to discover the body of Scotty Ogilvie pushed against a big cottonwood tree. He had died the day before, July 8.8

  Tooley later wrote: “With heavy hearts Jim Christie and I moved the body to a small island in mid-stream. Scotty had apparently struck his head when he fell in and broke his neck.” Christie and Tooley wrapped Ogilvie’s body in a Hudson’s Bay blanket, made a makeshift stretcher and carried him to the edge of the river. There they dug a grave and buried him with a short and sad prayer.

  After this long and distressing day the two men headed for the refuge cabin where Christie had left Lillian and were pleased to find that she had a roaring fire going. Tooley recalled Lillian’s devastation over Ogilvie’s death. “Like us,” he wrote, “she was deeply moved by the tragedy.”