The Alaska Highway in World War II: The US Army of Occupation in Canada's Northwest

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University.

This is not so much a history of the Alaska Highway as it is a history
of the changes it brought to the Canadian northwest. The authors argue
that the “tens of thousands” of American soldiers and civilians who
built the highway during World War II constituted “the most
substantial [foreign] occupation” in the nation’s history. Such an
occupation, which they place in an international context, changed the
environment and way of life of the Native people, and created new
communities while transforming others. It also brought serious
challenges to Canadian sovereignty, despite American attempts to respect
Canadian sensitivities.

Pictures and statistical tables enrich this easy-to-read book, and
there are many interesting facts. The authors report that 25 percent of
the American servicemen in Canada’s northwest were black. Residents of
the area had little input as to the route the highway would take, and
the U.S. military police could be arbitrary enforcers of American law on
Canadian soil. Several pages deal with sexual activities during the
occupation, and with the waste of unused construction materials. Beer
became a more useful currency than cash.

The authors are well qualified to deal with this subject. Coates lived
for 10 years in one of the transformed communities, Whitehorse, and
studied Yukon history at the University of British Columbia. Morrison
has written about the RCMP and earlier challenges to Canadian
sovereignty in the North. As observers sympathetic to the North, the
authors regret the indifference of Canadian authorities. “Ottawa
refused to accept responsibility for the road a day before it was
legally obliged to do so—six months after the final Axis surrender,”
and then neglected it for some years.