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Tough and resourceful, with skills formed early and honed on roads that sometimes weren’t really roads at all, guys like Albert Hamilton and Fred Lorenzen are true pioneers. Both of these Albertans risked life and limb to haul freight to the Northwest Territories in the 1940s and early 1950s along what came to be called the Mackenzie Highway.

The Mackenzie started life in the early 1820s as a Dene hunting and trapping trail and missionary route. By 1938 work had started on a 610-mile winter road that would be used by “Cat trains” pulling freight by bulldozer from the railhead in Grimshaw, Alta., to Hay River, NWT, on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake. By 1948 the “road” was formally named the Mackenzie Highway, and it eventually went another 400 miles to Yellowknife on the other side of the lake.

But the trucks couldn’t wait for real roads. Early in the 1940s they were moving with the Cats on a trip that could easily take several days. The trucks were tiny by today’s standards: single-axle straight trucks, often Internationals, with gas engines producing 100 horses and little more. Their drivers were young and fearless, and I’d guess they all saw an adventure as much as some of them saw a business opportunity.

Nowadays you get to Hay River from Grimshaw in about seven hours. And while there still isn’t much in between, 50 or 60 years ago there was nothing. You lived by your wits. And the hospitality of anyone you might meet en route.

Around these parts, people like Albert and Fred and dozens of others are part of local lore. To me, they’re legends at the very core of our country’s spirit.

Albert Hamilton, now 82, revels in telling stories of those glory days. He hauled gravel to help build the Mackenzie and then formed Grimshaw Trucking & Distributing in 1949 to haul freight from Peace River and Grimshaw up to Hay River. Great Slave Lake provided the early backhauls, namely fish, and Hamilton built a thriving company that employed as many as 140 people before he sold it in 1972 and retired (only to launch another trucking outfit two years later which he ran for the next 25 years). Hamilton also forged a trail–in 1954, he built a 400-mile winter road from Enterprise into Yellowknife and charged users a toll.

Fred Lorenzen started driving truck when he was 14. Three years later, in 1942, he did his first run north along a bulldozed trail in a two-ton Ford. He bought his own truck in 1945, a 1940 International DS30, moving six tons of freight into Hay River for 40 bucks a ton. He formed a gravel-hauling and oilfield-service company, and says proudly that he put gravel down on every mile of the Mackenzie.

Lorenzen’s always ready to tell a tale, but he and his wife Bernice have gone one better. They built a museum in Grimshaw to help them do the telling. The Mile 0 Antique Truck Museum is full of 1940s- and 1950s-vintage trucks, assorted memorabilia, and–in a van trailer that should itself be designated a historic site–displays that tell the story of the building of the Mackenzie.

When the highway turned 50 a few years ago, Bernice organized a cavalcade of veteran drivers to travel the entire highway in recognition. More than 170 vehicles took part, and towns all along the route threw parties in their honour. As well they should, for the highway remains a lifeline for those outposts.

For the last nine years, Bernice and Fred have hosted a weekend reunion of Mackenzie truckers at the museum. I had the pleasure of joining them in August. It was no small affair–200 people attended the dinner and dance on Saturday night.

I found myself wishing that there were more such events elsewhere in the country. These folks are proud of what they accomplished, as they ought to be, for they proved that trucking is the glue that holds Canada together. It was that way 50 years ago. It still is

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Rolf Lockwood is editor emeritus of Today's Trucking and a regular contributor to Trucknews.com.


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