Walking the Line

The remote wilderness of the NWT’s Canol Heritage Trail can be hauntingly beautiful and frighteningly indifferent to trekkers who challenge it.

“Weather’s changing fast—I want to fly you boys in tonight.” Photojournalist Colin O’Connor and I had barely touched down in Norman Wells, N.W.T., when a concerned Stan Simpson, owner of Ram Head Outfitters, rushed over to greet us with this news. It didn’t get any better. “Can you be ready in a couple hours? If we don’t go now you could be stuck here for days.”

I thought Colin and I would have the evening to purchase last-minute supplies, double-check the equipment that would be our lifeline, and send a final message home before dropping off the map. Robbed of time, we rushed to pack the three crucial food caches that Stan, a virtuoso bush pilot, would later drop at strategic points along our route through the remote northern wilderness. Any mistakes and we could end up hungry, cold—or worse.

Soon, the desolate grey peaks of the Mackenzie Mountains were towering all around us with stony gloom as Stan followed the twisting river valleys, seeking holes in the cloud cover and a safe passage through the storm. His hands were calm on the controls as the tiny Cessna dipped and shook on invisible currents, buffeted by erratic winds that caused my stomach to plunge and roll.

Beneath us, the earth’s surface was gashed open like a dried-up wound. “Dodo Canyon,” Stan shouted over the engine drone as we banked hard left. “That’s the road over there.”

He was referring to the Canol Road, or the Canol Heritage Trail as it’s known to serious wilderness enthusiasts in search of the ultimate challenge. On and on it went, stretching 355 kilometres to the Yukon border. All I could think about was how long it really was outside the abstract pages of a book. The farther we flew from the Mackenzie River, the farther we’d have to walk back.

The Canol pipeline was considered the greatest construction project of its time, but it remains a shamefully forgotten period of Canada’s war years, largely overshadowed by the concurrent Alaska Highway project.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Allies suddenly faced a new threat: an invasion along the Aleutian Island chain, culminating in occupation of Alaska and a push south. German submarines were sinking oil tankers in the Atlantic at an alarming rate, and the U.S. navy couldn’t guarantee the safety of such vessels on the West Coast.

The War Department believed that an inland supply route was urgently needed and Canol—short for Canadian oil—was to provide a secure source of fuel for aircraft and vehicles operating in the northwest.

Starting in May 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, including many troops from the south who had never seen snow, carried out much of the initial backbreaking work on Canol. A consortium of three oil companies did the rest. Despite setbacks and the harsh climate, the project was completed in February 1944. Including distribution lines, nearly 2,700 kilometres of pipe—more than twice the length of the Alaska pipeline—were laid in less than two years.

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