Blazing A Trail

In 1942 a new road ploughed through the remotest parts of Canada’s Yukon to connect Alaska with the lower 48 states. 75 years on, we hit the road...

- Phoebe Smith

When I first came here there were no footpaths,” walking guide Brett Liddle’s words oozed out of his throat like thick treacle, his voice filling the wooden cabin with tones as rough as the tree trunks that held the room together. “Back then, it was a brand new national park, and part of my job was to designate the trails.” He wore the stoic expression of a man who had told his story many times, but still seemed to linger over every word, as though laying the groundwork for something more.

Here in Kluane National Park, deep in Canada’s remote Yukon Territory and some 35 years on from Brett’s trailblazing days of the 1970s, there are still just 15 marked footpaths. Given that this park stretches an area spanning more than 22,000 sq km – larger than Wales – it shows just how difficult establishing those early routes had been. But then, nothing comes easy to the residents of the Yukon, the north-westernmost of all Canada’s provinces and territories. I asked Brett, who lives 30 minutes’ drive from a hamlet called Haines Junction, where he did his weekly shop. The answer: 187km away in Whitehorse.

But such distances are considered easy by today’s standards. Before the 1940s, it was a different story altogether. Then, to travel from what would become Haines Junction to the capital of the Yukon would have taken several days’ ride on horseback through thick forest. And the only ones making that journey would have likely been members of the First Nations, Canada’s indigenous people. But that all changed in 1942, as the realities of the Second World War hit North America.