Lillian Alling Read online

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  It is possible that Lillian did walk from Pouce Coupe to Hazelton, but the route was by no means easy at that time. There were no highways in northern BC. Between Grande Prairie and Pouce Coupe there was a country road that farmers and other country folk used to travel between the two provinces. From there old pack trails existed that had evolved from the original First Nations trails. If Lillian made it through the Peace River area, then she could have used the northern fur trade routes to get to Fort St. James, from which pack trails led directly to Hazelton, her next known stop. This route also had the advantage of ferries across the larger lakes.

  R.G. Harvey, former deputy minister of Highways for British Columbia and an expert on early travel routes in the province, agrees that “if she came through Pine Pass [which today is the route of the John Hart Highway (#97)] in 1927, she must have used the Indian trail. It was one of the many trails used by the Indians of the Interior to come to the coast to trade buffalo hides for salmon and oolichan [oil]. From there she could either have gone south to Fraser Lake and followed the [Canadian National] railway to Hazelton … or she could have gone north to Germansen Landing and then west by a trail to Hazelton … This trail was built in the 1870s to give access to the Omineca gold field and was a continuance of the old Hudson’s Bay Brigade trail [and was] probably quite usable in 1927.”3 Although Mr. Harvey says that “he would like to think she took the miners’ trail,” the route via Fraser Lake and the railway line seems the most likely one as it is shorter, and she is known to have stopped in the village of Evelyn, just west of Smithers on the Canadian National line.

  Alternatively, Cooper may have been misinformed and Lillian may not have gone so far north as Grande Prairie, instead walking along the rail line through Jasper and the Yellowhead Pass. It was a well-maintained line and very popular with tourists by that time. The Omineca Herald of August 5, 1927, reported that “the special summer excursion run by the Canadian National Railways from Vancouver return to Vancouver via Jasper Park and Prince Rupert, passed through here last Sunday morning. It was well patronized.”4 And finally, it is possible that she took the route through Banff and the Kicking Horse Pass, although this would have added many more miles to her journey.

  The summer of 1927 was the hottest on record in the Hazelton area,5 but fortunately by September when Lillian would have been tramping through the Bulkley Valley the weather had cooled, temperatures topping out at 25oC. It is here, almost 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from Winnipeg—the last place east of the Bulkley Valley I can verify that she visited—that I was able to pick up Lillian Alling’s trail again. People were becoming curious about the lone woman hiker and extended hospitality to her. Northwest of Smithers, in the farming community of Evelyn, Mollie Rolston, née Owens, was just six years old when Lillian Alling stopped at her family’s home. In an interview with David Gordon Duke, published in the Vancouver Sun on October 13, 2010, she recalled that

  A lot of people travelled the railway … We lived right on the railway, and people dropped in because they wanted a meal or place to stay … Of course, in my day six-year-olds didn’t listen to adult conversation.

  But Mrs. Rolston did remember Lillian’s appearance on that occasion.

  She wasn’t blond. She had a head cloth that she used to protect herself from the insects. She was given clothes by people along the way. She had a very plain face, and she was lucky if she was able to wash herself much. When she came to us, she had long hair and wore ordinary tennis shoes. No doubt she wore out boots as she went, but she was in tennis shoes then. She carried a cardboard box that she had everything in, about the size and shape of a beer case; she had a rope or something around it. And she wore a dress.6

  While I was researching her journey, I often wondered if she was ever afraid, and I realized that she probably was. But by the time she got to Hazelton, she had been about nine months on the road, and as her physical abilities became stronger and she honed her bushcraft, fear had most likely turned to confidence. She seemed barely bothered by trials that would challenge even the most seasoned of hikers. She had walked up mountains, through rough terrain where there was no path, through floods, freezing weather and searing hot sun. Canada is a cold and snowy place in the winter, but in the summer the daily temperatures can reach 40oC with no wind. Yet on she walked. She had become a true survivalist in every sense of the word.

  Notes

  (1) Cooper, Richard W. “Lonely Woman Headed Home the Hard Way,” Western People, WP4, January 3, 1985.

  (2) Ibid.

  (3) Email correspondence from R.G. Harvey, April 22, 2008.

  (4) Omineca Herald, August 5, 1927.

  (5) “The Hottest on Record. Official Records for Fourteen Years Shows only 94 Degrees in 1917,” Omineca Herald, August 4, 1927.

  (6) Duke, David Gordon. “Mystery surrounds the real Lillian Alling,” Vancouver Sun, October 13, 2010.

  Chapter Three: Fall and Winter 1927

  The Gitxsan people have called the area near the confluence of the Bulkley and Skeena rivers home for centuries, but after European settlement began there in the 1860s, the newcomers named this place Hazelton after the many hazel bushes that are found in the area. For many years it served as the terminus for the sternwheelers that brought goods and passengers up the Skeena River, but that traffic ceased in 1912 after the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was completed to Prince Rupert.

  Lillian Alling seems to have arrived in Hazelton in early September 1927, but she was not the only woman hiker to have turned up there that summer. The Omineca Herald, published in the nearby village of New Hazelton, reported on August 27, 1927, that:

  Nell Walker blew into town last Tuesday [August 23] and announced herself the world’s champion walker and she appeared at the Hazelton theatre that evening and again proclaimed herself champion and showed some pictures and gave a talk to prove it. She has been on the wing, or foot, for two and a half years and has gained considerable weight and experience in that time. She aims to visit all the capitals of the world within five years, hence her visit to these parts. She figured on going back to Smithers and thence to Prince George. She had better head south pretty soon or the going will not be so good when the wind begins to blow and the snow begins to fall.1

  Unlike Nell Walker, Lillian Alling did not announce her arrival to the people of Hazelton nor was her presence heralded by the local newspapers. Instead, she quietly turned her steps northward and began to follow the Telegraph Trail, the rough foot trail along the telegraph line that went to Atlin and from there to Dawson City. Her journey took place in the twilight years of the Trail. In 1925 six of the eleven stations situated between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek had been closed, leaving only stations two, four, six, eight and Echo Lake manned. The closures meant that the distance between the operating stations was now approximately 50 miles (80 kilometres)—according to Bill Miller in his book, Wires in the Wilderness, the average distance would have been 40 miles2—and this meant twice the work for the linemen who had to fix breaks in the line. From the station a lineman could tell the direction of the break but not its exact location. So the linemen from the two stations on either side of the break would walk toward each other. If it could be fixed quickly, they would soon be back in their respective stations; if not, they would stay overnight in one of the refuge cabins constructed at 10-mile (6-kilometre) intervals on the line. Though smaller than the main telegraph stations, they were equipped with stoves, beds and emergency provisions.

  The Yukon Telegraph

  In 1858 the Atlantic Telegraph Company, owned by Cyrus West Field, laid the first undersea telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. When it broke three weeks later and further attempts were unsuccessful, entrepreneur Perry Collins approached the Western Union Telegraph Company with the idea of an overland line from San Francisco north to Alaska, across to Siberia and thence to Europe. Work began in 1864, and before winter caused work to cease in late 1865 the British Columbia section had been comple
ted along the Fraser River to Yale and northward beside the newly completed Cariboo Road as far as Quesnel. When work resumed the following spring, the line was pushed northwest for another 400 miles (645 kilometres) to the Kispiox and Bulkley rivers. By July 27, 1866, they had reached the junction of the Bulkley and Skeena rivers, where the new settlement of Hazelton was created, and word came that Cyrus Field had successfully laid an undersea cable across the Atlantic. As the Collins Overland Telegraph Line was now considered obsolete, work was halted on February 27, 1867.

  Thirty years later this failed line provided a surveyed and tested route for the construction ofthe Yukon Telegraph Line, which was initiated by the federal government during the Klondike Gold Rush years in order to provide overland communication with the north. The new line began in Ashcroft where the trans-Canada telegraph line lay alongside the CPR main line. It then followed the old Collins line through to Hazelton, and from there to Atlin and on to Dawson City in the Yukon. It was completed in 1901.

  In order to maintain the 300-mile-long (500-kilometre) line through the wilderness between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek, fourteen cabins were built about 25 miles (40 kilometres) apart and each cabin was manned by a lineman and an operator; the lineman patrolled 12.5 miles (20 kilometres) north and 12.5 miles south while his partner relayed messages between cabins and with the outside world. Smaller refuge cabins were built between the main cabins. Food and other supplies were brought in once a year by pack train from Hazelton to the first nine cabins and to the remainder from Telegraph Creek.

  By 1936 shortwave radio had proven more effective than the telegraph for distance communication, and after heavy snows brought down much of the line that winter, the entire line was shut down. The following summer floods washed out more sections of the line. It was never replaced.

  The first place Lillian stopped on the Telegraph Trail was the tiny settlement of Kuldo, north of Hazelton, and there she met Irene Woodcock. In an interview in 1990, Woodcock remembered that meeting:

  She was a rather short, squat person. I was in my twenties, and I figured she was older than me. I couldn’t figure out how she’d found our house, but there she was. I asked her in and talked her into having dinner with us, instead of eating the bread she carried. That’s all she carried, a loaf of bread and a big stick. The bread to eat, and the stick so that no one could stop her from going where she wanted to go. She talked English pretty good—it was broken, but I had no trouble understanding her.

  Woodcock then recalled Lillian telling her that she had served as a domestic for a doctor and his wife before deciding to walk home via Alaska and Siberia. “Years later I heard somewhere that maybe she made it. I always hoped she did.”3

  On September 19, 1927, when Lillian arrived at Cabin Two, 50 miles (80 kilometres) up the Telegraph Trail, she was tired and bedraggled. Bill Blackstock, the Yukon Telegraph operator at Cabin Two, didn’t get many visitors, especially this late in the year, but Telegraph Trail etiquette required him to provide hospitality to all visitors and Lillian was no exception. He fed her and then asked where she was going.

  “Siberia,” Lillian said.

  This was a surprising statement. But Blackstock knew she wouldn’t make it more than a few hundred miles up the trail, at most, at that time of year. While it was only late September, the high altitude of the route ahead made for dangerous travelling conditions, and winter would be closing in very quickly. Fearing for her safety he telegraphed the Provincial Police detachment at Hazelton and told them about her. Constable George A. Wyman arrived at Cabin Two at 12:30 a.m. on September 20. He arrested Lillian and brought her back to Hazelton.

  George Wyman had only joined the force in January of that year, and began his duties as a junior constable at the Hazelton Detachment on January 12. Thirty-six years later he recalled his arrest of Lillian Alling in an interview with journalist Donald Stainsby.4

  I was so surprised to see that woman there. She was so scantily clad and had no firearms or anything to see her through that country. She was about five foot five and thin as a wisp. When I first saw her, she was wearing running shoes. She had a knapsack with a half-dozen sandwiches in it, some tea and some other odds and ends, a comb and personal effects, but no make-up. I had a time getting her name; she wasn’t going to say anything to anybody. But I finally got it, and when she said she was going to Siberia, I couldn’t say anything. I thought she was out of her mind.5

  Lillian came back to Hazelton with Wyman without protest. Once there, Wyman called his superior, Sergeant William J. Service, at Smithers, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometres) southeast of Hazelton. Although Lillian’s English was good, Wyman found it difficult to get information out of her.

  “Feed her and see if she’ll talk,” said Service.6 Then he suggested they charge her with vagrancy in order to save her life from the upcoming winter.7

  Wyman recalled in his interview with Stainsby that Lillian had finally told him that she had come to New York City from Russia, but she would not tell him why she had come. He also remembered that she had told him she had been a maid in New York and after she realized it was impossible to save for a steamer ticket fare back to Russia, she looked at the maps of North America in the public library and decided to walk.8 “She was the most determined person I’d ever met,” Wyman said.9

  The only record of Lillian’s arrest I was able to find was in a 1941 issue of True Magazine, a journal that published outdoor adventure stories for men. As part of an illustration on one page of the story, there is a photographic copy of Lillian’s arrest record. The archivist at the Brown University Library, where I located this issue of True, said the magazine was too fragile to photograph, but he was able to photocopy it for me. The arrest record is for Rex v. Lillian Alling of Winnipeg, Manitoba. This was the first official, written record I found in which Lillian had stated her last residence as Winnipeg.

  Wyman and Service decided to lay a vagrancy charge against Lillian, so the next day, Wednesday, September 21, she was brought into Provincial Police Court in Hazelton in front of William Grant, a local Justice of the Peace.10 The charge reads that Lillian Alling, “not having any visible means of subsistence, was found unlawfully wandering around at 30 Mile, Yukon Telegraph Line in the County of Prince Rupert.” The report form goes on to say that she was arrested and placed in the Hazelton lockup by Constable G. Wyman. However, there was one problem with charging her with vagrancy—she had twenty dollars on her person and was therefore not a vagrant. Fortunately, it was then discovered that she had an iron bar concealed in her clothing, and Justice of the Peace Grant was able to charge her with carrying a concealed weapon.

  Policing British Columbia

  In the 1920s, policing was in transition in British Columbia. In 1919 the North West Mounted Police, forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, had replaced the Dominion Police in the four western provinces as the enforcers of federal laws. They were responsible for such jurisdictions as Indian Affairs; Immigration; Customs and Excise; and War Measures.

  In 1924 the British Columbia Provincial Police, formed in 1871, took over the responsibility for enforcing many of the federal statutes as well as provincial laws. With this change in status, the Provincial Police, who had worn civilian clothes to this date, were finally issued uniforms. This change was not without controversy, however, because some members were concerned that the uniforms made the police less approachable by the public. In 1950 the British Columbia Provincial Police were merged with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

  Wyman recalled:

  [S]he stood silent through the hearing. Grant explained the charge to her and told her, if she wanted to say anything on her behalf, she only had to swear on the Bible to tell the truth. She stood mute. He explained it again, a third, a fourth time. Lillian finally did speak, four loud clear words, astonishing in their obscenity.11

  Grant, with great forbearance, found her guilty only of the [carrying a concealed weapon] charge and not the contempt of court w
hich she had committed. He fined her the abnormally heavy amount, for that time and place, of $25 and $1.75 for costs, with the alternative of two months in Oakalla Prison Farm in Vancouver.12

  Wyman’s 1963 account is backed up by his original report with only a small discrepancy in the court costs; his 1927 report stated that Lillian pled not guilty but was found guilty and fined twenty-five dollars plus seventy-five cents in court costs or two months in Oakalla.

  Apparently Lillian said nothing more in court.13

  Bill Kilpatrick, grandson of William Grant, says that the tale of Lillian and her encounter with his grandfather has been passed down through the generations. “My grandad put her in jail so she wouldn’t freeze to death,” said Bill.14

  After Lillian had been put in the Hazelton jail, another police officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman T.E.E. (Ern) Greenfield, was called in to assist Constable Wyman. In a letter to the Province newspaper, published on May 2, 1973, Greenfield recalled that:

  Constable Wyman had to go out of town on an urgent matter and he asked me to do the gaol guard duty until his return. I happened to be in Hazelton on patrol duties and it was not infrequent that members of the R.C. Mounted Police were asked and readily gave the necessary assistance to the provincial police.

  He then described Lillian’s appearance the first time he saw her.

  Lillian’s effects consisted of a man’s heavy cloth overcoat that hung to ankle length in which she slept. She carried an iron bar about sixteen inches long for defence purposes. She had a landing card showing her arrival at New York early in 1927 and showing her to be Polish. Her name on the card was spelled Ailing. She wore a pair of men’s eight-inch top boots.