Lillian Alling Read online

  Greenfield’s recollections do not correlate with other known facts. The landing card issued in New York could not have been dated early in 1927 because her entry into Canada at Niagara Falls was dated December 24, 1926, and Greenfield is the first person to suggest that her name was something other than Alling. His letter to the newspaper was, of course, written some forty-four years after Lillian’s arrest in Hazelton, which may account for the discrepancies. Three years after his letter to the Province, Greenfield wrote a book, Drugs (Mostly), about his professional experiences and Lillian rated a mention in it as well. This time he said that “she wore a stout dress, heavy walking boots, a bulky winter overcoat and carried a small bundle wrapped in a kerchief.”15 If this description is true, she had acquired this clothing since Constable Wyman first saw her on September 20, when she was inadequately clothed and wore running shoes. Greenfield’s nephew, Harley Greenfield, remembers his uncle’s stories about Lillian. “Uncle Ern had pretty mixed feelings about having to apprehend this lady, but she had no idea of the area or the territory,” said Harley. “This was a gritty woman. She was an amazing lady, a great hiker.”16

  Wyman’s arrest report, dated September 24, 1927,17 shows that Lillian was moved to Smithers, BC, and from there taken to Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver. According to journalist Donald Stainsby, Mrs. Bud (Isabelle) Dawson, who with her husband operated the Omineca Hotel in Hazelton, was sworn in as a special constable to escort Lillian there.18 Greenfield, on the other hand, remembers Lillian being escorted to Oakalla by prison matron Constance Cox. According to the Hazelton newspaper, the Omineca Herald, when prisoners from Hazelton needed to be escorted to prison in the Lower Mainland, they were taken by train to Prince Rupert and travelled south from there by boat. In his book, Drugs (Mostly), Greenfield explained that he and William Service of the Provincial Police often took prisoners on the Canadian Pacific’s SS Prince Rupert,19 so it is possible that Lillian was taken to Vancouver on the CP’s Princess Louise, which left Prince Rupert on September 30, 1927, and arrived in Vancouver on October 2.20 However, no passenger records exist for domestic travel,21 and I found no mention of Lillian Alling’s travels through Prince Rupert in the Prince Rupert Daily News or the Evening Empire newspaper for August, September or October 1927.22

  I have also been unable to locate any records of Lillian’s time in Oakalla Prison. My requests to the British Columbia Archives revealed that they had “received several requests over the years for records concerning Lillian Alling. Our archival holdings were thoroughly searched but no such records were ever found.”23

  In 1927, when Lillian served her jail time in Oakalla, there was still no separate prison for women. She would have been placed in the general prison population, though the women and men spent the night in segregated cells.24 It was a brutal life for anyone to endure, but Lillian, having spent so much time outdoors, must have found it a sad contrast to the freedom she had previously enjoyed. Although Greenfield stated in his 1973 letter to the Province he was convinced that “after five days had elapsed Lillian was released immediately,”25 George Wyman said that:

  At Oakalla Lillian Alling was considered a cooperative prisoner by the matrons and was liked by her fellow prisoners. She won her release on November 11, 1927. This was just ten days before her sentence was to expire.26

  After serving her sentence, Lillian appears to have spent the next six months or so in the Vancouver area, working, saving money, and biding her time until the travel conditions were favourable. By May 1928 she was on her way north again.

  Oakalla Prison in the 1920s

  Oakalla Prison, which had opened in 1912, was run by the Provincial Gaol Services, a branch of the British Columbia Police Administration. BC’s gaols had adopted the American “Auburn” Prison philosophy of hard work, strong discipline and silence. This system, which was developed at the Auburn prison in New York State, was predicated on the idea that criminal habits were learned and reinforced by contact with other criminals. Therefore, prisoners were subject to brutal discipline, forced to work in silence during the day and segregated in separate cells at night.27

  By 1927, Oakalla Prison had developed a particular reputation for harshness as Earl Andersen, author of Hard Place to Do Time, descibes:

  By the end of the Roaring Twenties, lavishness and free-spirited prosperity prevailed in cities throughout North America, and Vancouver was certainly no exception. However, within the walls of Oakalla, only a few miles away in the tranquil suburb of Burnaby, conditions were still austere. The wardens maintained a tight rein of control over their prisoners.28

  Notes

  (1) Omineca Herald, August 27, 1927.

  (2) Miller, Bill. Wires in the Wilderness. Victoria: Heritage House, 2004, page 205.

  (3) “Woodcock Remembers Siberian Girl and Telegraph Trail,” Yellowhead / Stewart / Cassiar Times, April 24, 1990.

  (4) He remained at Hazelton until January 1, 1929, when he was transferred to Smithers. He spent the years following in various provincial detachments, and in 1950, when the Provincial Police changed over to the RCMP, he was in Victoria at QuarterMaster Stores.

  (5) He was interviewed by Donald Stainsby for a Vancouver Sun article that was published April 27, 1963. At that time, Wyman was an inspector for the BC Liquor Control Board. Stainsby, Donald. “She Walked 6,000 Miles to the Top of the World,” Vancouver Sun, April 27, 1963.Wyman, quoted in Stainsby.

  (6) Wyman, quoted in Stainsby.

  (7) He died July 4, 1938, in Prince Rupert, two days after his forty-fifth birthday, from a gunshot wound from a .38 calibre revolver fired by American Mike Gurvich. Service had spent twenty-five years on the force.

  (8) Wyman, quoted in Stainsby.

  (9) Ibid.

  (10) Ibid.

  (11) Ibid.

  (12) Ibid.

  (13) Ibid.

  (14) Phone interview with Bill Kilpatrick, March 4, 2009.

  (15) Greenfield, T.E.E. Drugs (Mostly). Meaford, Ontario: The Knight Press, 1976, page 11.

  (16) Telephone interview with Harley Greenfield of Meaford, Ontario, February 25, 2009.

  (17) Bennett, Martin L. “She Walked from New York to Russia,” True Magazine, November 1941.

  (18) Wyman, quoted in Stainsby.

  (19) Greenfield. Drugs (Mostly), page 13.

  (20) Canadian Pacific Railway Company schedule for 1927, Alaska Service. Source: CP Archives.

  (21) Email from CP Archives, July 2, 2009.

  (22) Email from Kathleen Larking, Prince Rupert Public Library.

  (23) Letter received from Mac Culham, Manager, Corporate Information and Records, Royal BC Museum, February 24, 2009.

  (24) Andersen, Earl. Hard Place to Do Time: The Story of Oakalla Prison: 1912–1991. New Westminster: Hillpointe Publishing, 1993, page 46.

  (25) Koshevoy, Hymie. “More on Lillian Ailing,” Vancouver Province, May 2, 1973; also follow-up letter from T.E. Greenfield.

  (26) Wyman, quoted in Stainsby.

  (27) Andersen. Hard Place to Do Time, page 13.

  (28) Ibid., page 28.

  Chapter Four: Hyder, Alaska, to Smithers, BC

  In the 1920s, the most efficient way to travel from town to town along the coast of Brit- ish Columbia was by ship. Three or four boats called in every week at Stewart, which sits right at the head of the Portland Canal, the 70-mile-long (115-kilometre) fjord that forms part of the US/Canada boundary in the north. The line runs right up the centre of the canal; everything on the east side is in Canada and that on the west side is in the US. A tourism booklet from 1928 says that those travelling the 700 miles (1,100 kilometres) between Vancouver and Stewart will:

  [S]ail through a system of enclosed waterways having no parallel elsewhere in the world, with all the comforts of a trans-Atlantic liner. Canadian National and Union Steamship Companies’ steamers are noted for their comfort and safety and make the round trip in six days.1

  It was probably on one of these ships that Lillian arr
ived in Stewart at the beginning of June 1928 on her second attempt to get to Siberia. Travelling up the canal, she would have seen its spectacular beauty, as described by L.A.N. Potterton:

  The mountains were steep-sided with ice-eroded valleys, some of which contained living glaciers. They were covered with lush green timber reaching high towards the heavy blanket of snow which covered the high peaks that gave birth to scores of milk-white streams and waterfalls.2

  When Lillian arrived by ship at the beginning of June 1928, the towns of Stewart and Hyder, BC, and Hyder, Alaska, plus the surrounding mining communities, had a total population of about a thousand people. After disembarking at Stewart, she set off along the boardwalk to walk through Hyder, BC, and into Hyder, Alaska. The date was June 6, and at the United States Customs and Immigration Office at the entrance to the American town, she met Colonel Edwin R. Stivers. He had opened an office there on March 31, 1921, and although his main job was the collection of customs duties, over the years Stivers had also taken on responsibility for immigration inspection.

  Stewart, BC, c. 1920s. University of Washington Libraries AWC2933.

  The decision that the international boundary between British Columbia and Alaska should be located at the centre of Portland Canal was finalized in October 1903, although the treaty was not officially signed until May 14, 1910. However, even before that decision was made, the towns of Stewart and Hyder, Alaska, had been founded at the head of the Canal in response to the discovery of enormous mineral wealth in that area. The first lode mineral claims in the area were staked at Bitter Creek by D.J. Rainey in 1899. He also staked out forty acres on the mud flats of the Bear and Salmon rivers, which empty into the head of the canal, but as he was not sure if he was in Canada or the US, he recorded his claims in both countries. In 1903 prospectors Robert M. and John W. Stewart arrived, secured a portion of Rainey’s holding and staked the townsite of Stewart at the farthest end of the canal between the mouth of the Bear River and the international boundary. (This town has the distinction of receiving the greatest average annual snowfall of any town in Canada—18.75 feet or 572 centimetres.) The new town gave miners access to mines on the Canadian side of the line and experienced its first boom in 1910. However, its real economic success came with the opening of the Premier Mine, 15 miles (24 kilometres) north of the town. This mine operated from 1919 to 1953, producing gold and silver ore and paying out thirty million dollars in gross earnings.

  The American town of Hyder, named after Canadian mining engineer Frederick Hyder, was established 2 miles (3 kilometres) south of Stewart. It sits on a point of land between the Portland Canal and the mouth of the Salmon River, although part of the town was constructed on pilings pounded into the mud flats. (This portion of the town was destroyed by fire in 1948.) In its early days, Hyder was primarily an access point to the Riverside Mine, north of the town, where gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc were extracted between 1924 and 1950, but the town’s boom years occurred between 1920 and 1930. Although a few ships called at Hyder when they had freight for the mine and some of the smaller passenger vessels from Ketchikan stopped there on a more or less regular basis, most of the passenger vessels that came up the canal were Canadian and their port of call was Stewart.3

  A third town, Hyder, BC, was established between Hyder, Alaska, and Stewart, initially as a place to accommodate a dock and a 4,000-ton bunker to store concentrate from the Premier Mine. The 12-mile-long (19-kilometre) aerial tramline that connected it to the mine was the second longest on the continent. This tiny town, which also provided accommodation and entertainment for the mine workers, was built entirely on pilings driven into the mud flats, and its dozen or so buildings faced landward, their backs to the sea. They included a few hotels, a restaurant, two brothels and the offices of the Canadian Customs Service. Today nothing but a few piling stubs remain to show that Hyder, BC, ever existed.

  Stivers did not allow Lillian to enter Alaska. According to the official record from the United States Department of Labor, which was in charge of immigration, Lillian Alling, a citizen of Poland, aged thirty-two, female, who had arrived in Hyder “by highway” was “debarred” from the United States because she had no visa. (The term “highway” refers to the 2-mile (3-kilometre) stretch of boardwalk between Stewart and Hyder.)

  There was actually no formal entrance policy into the United States at Hyder during the years between 1920 and 1930, so it is possible that she was rejected because she was neither American nor Canadian. According to her own statement at the Canadian Customs office in Niagara Falls, though she had lived in Canada from 1915 until 1921 and had apparently worked in New York State between 1921 and 1926, she had not applied for citizenship status in either country. And if she had held a visa at any time during that period, it was obviously no longer valid.

  Changes had occurred in both US and Canadian immigration and travel rules subsequent to Lillian’s first entry into the United States from Canada. Although there had been a continuous undocumented movement of people back and forth between Canada and the States during the early 1920s, both countries had tightened regulations for people from Europe. In 1921 the US Quota Act had limited the number of immigrants from Europe to about 350,000 per year, and in 1924 the National Origins Act reduced that European quota to about 165,000. In addition, the United States had introduced Prohibition in 1920, and as a result border controls had gradually become tighter: the production and sale of liquor remained legal in Canada, and the US was struggling to prevent smuggling activity at the border.

  However, it is quite possible that Stivers turned Lillian back at Hyder simply because she had announced that her ultimate destination was Siberia. He would know that she could not possibly reach it by travelling north by land. Hyder is situated on the Alaska Panhandle, that strip of Alaska that divides northern British Columbia from the Pacific Coast. It is a wilderness of mountains and glaciers, thousands of inlets and rivers and streams, gullies and cliffs. Even today, there are no roads and no trails. The only way to get from town to town along this coast is by boat. Walking it would be a physical impossibility. Stivers knew that once Lillian entered Hyder, she had either to stay there, go 14 miles (22.5 kilometres) north to the Riverside Mine or turn around and go back to British Columbia.

  Having dealt with the British Columbia Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, enduring months in prison and losing an entire year on her journey, it is little wonder Lillian wanted to leave British Columbia and Canada. Thus, she must have been very unhappy to be turned away at the US border. But she had learned an important lesson in Hyder. By attempting to cross the international border there, she found out she would never get into the United States through an established boundary crossing. Any future attempt at entry from Canada would need to be clandestine.

  After being refused entry into Alaska, Lillian needed to make both short-term and long-term decisions. Short-term included where to spend the night, and her obvious choice was Stewart, which was a rather rowdy town at that time. A man who had served there as the local policeman in those days said:

  [T]here were three licensed hotels situated on the main street, and as soon as they opened up for business, they filled up as fast as a church rummage sale, and with the same amount of enthusiasm. The only thing different was the language that was being used.4

  The government liquor store did the most business in the town. In 1928 it “sold more liquor than any other individual liquor store in the province of British Columbia.” L.A.N. Potterton wrote:

  The whore-houses perhaps came next in the line of big business, followed closely by the gambling tables. The local bank manager once told me that his best customers at the savings account level were the girls from the red-light district … The whole town seemed to be involved in gambling and drinking—everyone was making money and spending it just as fast as they made it.5

  Lillian’s long-term options were few. She could wait for a ship in Stewart that would take her north to Skagway,
Alaska, and thence over the Whitehorse and Yukon Railway to Whitehorse, but having been turned down at Hyder because she had no visa, she would expect to be turned down in Skagway as well. It is also quite possible that she did not know of the railway’s existence. Alternatively she could take a ship back down the coast to Prince Rupert, follow the rail line to Hazelton and begin a fresh attack on the Telegraph Trail. However, she may have been unable to afford the fare. Her third option was to make her way to Hazelton by land.

  It is not possible to walk from Stewart directly to the main line of the Telegraph Trail as the terrain is too steep and dangerous. Two years before Lillian arrived in Stewart, surveyors had attempted to lay out a route from Hyder through the Bell-Irving River valley. The report of their endeavours is noteworthy:

  We discovered a freshly blazed trail, and having followed it, we met a party of Indians camped on Bell-Irving River. These Indians, Gunanoot and party, have trapped in this country regularly for a number of years and know it thoroughly … they told me they did not think it feasible to build a trail up the west bank of the Bell-Irving because as one approaches the Telegraph Line, the country is subject to very bad snow slides … my intention was to go up the west bank of the Bell-Irving to the Salmon [Teigen] Creek, cross that stream, stay a night at the shelter cabin on the Telegraph Line at this point and then return along the east bank of the Bell-Irving. But when we arrived at the junction of the Salmon [Teigen] and Bell-Irving about a mile from the Telegraph Line, the rain was falling in torrents and the river was extremely high, consequently … we had to return as we had come, by the west bank. However, I found that the information given me by the Indians was amply verified. For 5 miles below the junction of the Salmon [Teigen] and Bell-Irving the snow slides run clear from the top of the mountains into the river and at times block it up; consequently it would be impossible to maintain a trail here.6