Lillian Alling
Page 8
By now readers of the Whitehorse Star and the Dawson News were becoming anxious for word of the “mystery woman.” The weather had been blustery ever since the storm that had held Lillian up for three days at the mouth of the Stewart River. But most of them knew exactly how long it took to float down the Yukon from there to Dawson, and she was definitely overdue. Where was she? The Dawson City News reported:
Lillian Alling, “mystery woman” hiker, who reached Ogilvie Monday night [October 1], and who pulled out by small boat from that island, fifty miles above [south of] Dawson, the following day has not yet reported here.15
Then on October 6 the Dawson News was able to report that all was well. Lillian had been “held windbound at Swede Creek for two days” and then “finally set sail Friday morning [October 5].”16 As Swede Creek is just a few miles from Dawson, readers could expect her to arrive in Dawson any moment. And she did.
The Dawson City News then recapped Lillian’s journey for its readers:
She braved the perils of the overland trail through the Yukon arriving safely at Stewart Crossing from which point she made the balance of the journey to Dawson by small boat. Unaccustomed to oars and unfamiliar with the tortuous channel of the mighty Yukon, forced to endure the biting wind and frost of an impending winter, the woman traveler spent the most trying and uncomfortable hours of her long trip in making the last lap, from Stewart City to Dawson.17
Notes
(1) Coates, Ken S. and William R. Morrison. Land of the Midnight Sun. Edmonton, AB: Hurtig Publishers Ltd., 1988, page 198.
(2) Berton, Laura Beatrice. I Married the Klondike. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2006, page 136. Originally published: McClelland & Stewart, 1961.
(3) “Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson,” the Whitehorse Star, October 19, 1928.
(4) “The Mystery Woman,” the Whitehorse Star, September 7, 1928.
(5) Carmacks is named after George Washington Carmack. He and his brother-in-laws, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found the Discovery claim in 1896 while fishing on the Klondike River. Their discovery was the spark that kicked off the Klondike gold rush.
(6) “The Mystery Woman.”
(7) “Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson.”
(8) “The Mystery Woman.”
(9) Frank, Jutta. Abenteuer an Pelly und Yukon oder 6 Eier bis Dawson. 2003 traveldiary.de, Reisliteratur-Verlag. Jens Freyler, Hamburg, page 61.
(10) “Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson.”
(11) Coutts, R. Yukon: Places and Names. Sidney, British Columbia: Gray’s Publishing, 1980, page 82.
(12) Satterfield, Archie. After the Gold Rush. Philadelphia & New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1976, pages 11–12.
(13) Yardley, Joyce. Yukon Riverboat Days. Hancock House Publishers Ltd., 1996, page 88.
(14) Reed, J. Irving. “Did She Reach Siberia?” Alaska Life, June 1942.
(15) “No Report of Mystery Woman,” Dawson News, October 4, 1928.
(16) “A Hazardous Trip: Walked Every Step of Way Hazelton to Stewart Crossing,” Dawson News, October 6, 1928.
(17) Ibid.
Chapter Nine: Dawson City
Whether Lillian was hiding from the camera or just camera-shy, it is clear she was not going to take the time to pose. Detail of photo taken by Clifford Thompson. Dawson City Museum 1991.46.2.
Lillian Alling, having left Whitehorse on the morning of August 28, finally made it to Dawson City on Friday, October 5, and the Whitehorse Star reported that “practically all of that time she must have slept in the open.”1 The next day the Dawson News announced her arrival to the residents of that former gold rush town who had been eagerly anticipating her arrival.
Lillian Alling, “mystery woman” hiker, reached Dawson by small boat Friday forenoon, thereby completing one of the most hazardous and unusual overland treks for a woman that has ever been recorded in the Northland … [she] finally completed the last lap of her long journey shortly after 11 o’clock when she moored her frail craft to the south of the old Klondike Mines Railway bridge. Word that the long-expected woman adventurer had arrived here spread quickly, and few Dawsonites who saw the short, slight figure as she stepped briskly down Fifth Avenue into the center of town, where she sought food, but realized that this was the “mystery woman.”2
Thirty-seven years later the moment of Lillian’s arrival in Dawson city was still fresh in the mind of former Dawson News reporter Archie Gillespie when he told the Yukon News,
I was a reporter on the Dawson News at the time and happened to be walking along Front Street when I first noticed the tiny craft drifting down the Yukon River. It was unusual for a boat to be seen heading into Dawson at this late season of the year. My curiosity led me to walk down to the beach to see who was landing. It was hard to believe that anyone would be making the cold river journey in an open boat long after navigation had closed.
The last steamers had left for the south and few small craft had ventured out on the wind-swept river. Most of the flotilla of small boats had been pulled up on shore and anchored for the winter. So it was all the more surprising when a small rowboat rounded the bend above Dawson City and drew into the shoreline. Out of the small boat, which was no bigger than a skiff, stepped a small, thin woman, fatigue showing in every line of her haggard face, her tired eyes and the stoop of her slight shoulders.3
Local banker Clifford Thompson was also on hand that day and took two photographs of her shortly after she docked her boat:
I arrived in Whitehorse in May 1928 to work in the Canadian Bank of Commerce during the summer and to go on to the Dawson Branch in September of that year. During that summer we heard reports about Lillian Alling, and about August she appeared in Whitehorse. I saw her in Whitehorse and she was very tanned and dark coloured. I heard she had left Whitehorse before I embarked for Dawson City in September. Mr. J.D. Skinner of the Whitehorse Star requested me to send him a weekly news bulletin by telegraph about any interesting news in Dawson and he particularly asked that I look out for the arrival of Lillian Alling in Dawson. One morning as I was going to open up the Bank, I saw Lillian Alling coming up the ferry slip, which in those days ran alongside the Bank. To the best of my knowledge this was early in October and I reported this news to Mr. Skinner. I got my camera and took two pictures of her, which I have in my possession. I endeavoured to have a talk to her but she became very angry and refused to talk.4
This and the photo on page 150 are the last known images of Lillian. Detail of photo taken by Clifford Thompson. Dawson City Museum 1991.46.1.
Clifford Thompson also noted that as soon as Lillian arrived in Dawson City, she checked in with the police.
She was headed for the RCMP barracks and I later confirmed thru a member of the RCMP that she had reported in that morning. Later on in October I was told by the same RCMP member that she was to be detained in Dawson over the winter as the ice was forming in the river and it was not considered safe for her to travel downstream.7
Dawson City
When Lillian Alling floated down to Dawson City, which lies at the junction of the Yukon and Klondike rivers, she was in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nations people, speakers of the Hän language. As the Klondike River is famous for its salmon, they had a settlement at that junction long before Europeans arrived in the 1890s looking for gold. The town the gold seekers established was named after Dr. George Mercer Dawson, explorer and scientist, who was the director of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada from 1895 until his death in 1901.
In 1898, at the height of the gold rush, Dawson City’s population was about forty thousand, but the stampede for gold was soon over, and by the time the city was incorporated in 1902 most of the newcomers had left and the population had dropped to five thousand. By World War I, its economy had been weakened by the waning of the gold mining sector; it was further dampened by the loss of 125 residents in the sinking of the SS Princess Sophia in the Lynn Canal near Juneau, Alaska, in October 1918. Tha
t same year the US removed its consulate, and two years later the Dawson Daily News ceased daily publication and became a weekly. Businesses gradually closed, people moved out of town or died and by the end of the 1920s, Dawson City seemed ready to die.5 As a result, it was very much a bare-bones town that Lillian entered in the fall of 1928. Only the hardiest of northerners had remained for the oncoming winter.
Isobel Wylie Hutchison, who passed through Dawson a few years after Lillian was there, described it as:
a quiet little town of a few hundred residents, with echoing wooden sidewalks (whose loose or missing planks are a trap for the unwary), closed premises, tumble-down buildings and deserted cabins. Enclosures where houses once stood are piled with untidy lumber—old iron bedsteads, barrels, broken pots and pans.6
The police were well aware that travellers in the north, especially lone hikers, could easily get into serious trouble if they were not warned of or prepared for the harshness of the winters. In Lillian’s case, the Dawson detachment had likely been told she was on her way and had already decided to detain her in town until the spring.
After she checked in with the police, said the Dawson News, “she stepped into the City Café on Second Avenue, owned by Adam Rystogi, where she enjoyed her first meal in the gold metropolis.”8 The News also recounted Lillian’s method of travel, the distance she had covered, her overall condition, where she slept and what she ate. Even her clothes were a subject of great interest.
Garbed in a pair of brown khaki overalls, a badly torn black coat, with a man’s heavy rubber boot strapped on one foot and a galosh on the other, the whole outfit topped off with a faded brown hat, the quaint figure of the daring woman could not be mistaken.9
As Lillian was prohibited from travelling any farther, she needed a job to replenish her wardrobe and support herself until the spring melt came. Archie Gillespie told the Yukon News in July 1965 that one of Lillian’s jobs that winter was at the Fournier Dairy and Roadhouse:
As it happened she was able to get a job cooking at a dairy ranch some fifteen miles up the Klondike River from Dawson. The old-timer who ran the dairy, Archie Fournier, needed a cook for the winter, and when he heard of the plucky girl’s predicament, he kindly offered her the job for the winter. Lillian Alling was very happy to get the cooking job. She had done this kind of work before so the job posed no problem for her. By accepting this job for the winter she was assured of a warm home, plenty to eat and, besides, she would be able to save most of her wages for the fresh start on her journey the following summer.10
But Lillian’s employment with Fournier seems to have been short-lived and only one of several jobs she held that fall. By December she was working at St. Paul’s Hostel in some domestic capacity. A letter from Charles F. Johnson, the principal there, to Bishop Isaac O. Stringer early in 1929 gives one of the most detailed first-hand impressions of Lillian’s personality on record.
January 5th 1929
My Dear Bishop,
We have with us what is known as the “mystery woman.” She is a Polish peasant woman who walked all the way from Telegraph Creek to Dawson, arriving here just as winter was setting in. She tried working in several places but people soon got rid of her as she is not much use. We took her in and gave her a home and thought that we might be able to straighten her up and polish the rough corners off her a bit but it is an uphill job. She is uncouth, proud and ignorant and of uncertain temper and there is very little she can do. However, she irons and sews after a fashion so that she earns her board. Every little bit that she does is a real help and relieves the others just that much.11
St. Paul’s Hostel
St. Paul’s Hostel was a residence established by Anglican Diocesan Bishop Isaac O. Stringer in 1920 in order that children from the outlying areas could attend the combined elementary and secondary school that had been established in Dawson City in 1900. Most of the boarders at St. Paul’s were the children of mixed parentage, the fathers usually white, so they were “non-status” and therefore not eligible to attend the residential schools in the area. The hostel received no government funding. Instead, support came from St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Dawson City (established in 1897 to address the religious needs of the gold miners), missionary societies and local businesses (especially the Bank of Commerce). Parents who could afford to pay also contributed twenty-five dollars per month for each child. The hostel operated at first in a remodelled private home, but in 1923 it was moved to the former Samaritan’s Hospital. Both the school and St. Paul’s Hostel were closed June in 1952.
While Johnson’s letter sheds light on Lillian’s general temperament, it also demonstrates how difficult it was for this socially awkward, reclusive woman to spend her winter in Dawson cooped up with other people. Perhaps in some ways this captivity was as difficult as the physical ordeals she had already suffered on her journey. She had been used to dropping into a settlement in the wilds for a few hours to eat and buy supplies. Here, she had to see the same people every day and form relationships with them.
Johnson’s correspondence with the bishop indicates his constant worry over funding and staffing,12 so while he probably kept Lillian on at St. Paul’s Hostel for charitable reasons, it is also possible that a shortage of staff made employing her quite necessary. And although he pointed out the inadequacy of the work she performed, he still felt it merited payment. On March 25 he wrote to the bishop to say,
We still have the so-called mystery woman with us, and while she is not much good, she does a certain amount and thereby relieves the others. Don’t you think it would be only fair and just if I gave her a check for fifty dollars when she leaves here?
On April 17, less than a month later, Johnson reported that Lillian and St. Paul’s Hostel had parted ways.
We are all well here and the work is going on as much as usual. I had to get rid of the mystery woman. The girls got on her nerves and she “ran amuck” amongst them, so I had no choice in the matter. I am disappointed in her, we had hoped to be of some help to her but she would not respond to anything we tried to do for her.13
Alex Van Bibber, who was living at St. Paul’s Hostel at that time, recalled that the children had made fun of Lillian’s accent.14 Lawrence Millman,who wrote a story for the Yukon News in December 2007, also tracked down a ninety-five-year-old nun who had worked with Lillian at St. Paul’s. Sister Anne-Marie told Millman that Lillian had stolen sugar from the pantry. The nun didn’t know why she wanted the sugar, but she did tell Millman she thought Lillian was “a troubled soul.”15
Ruth and Bill Albee, who travelled north two years after Lillian and who had followed in her footsteps since Telegraph Creek, found that the people in Dawson City were still fascinated by Lillian, but once again the stories they recounted held more fiction than fact:
We found people talking about a mysterious Russian woman whose appearance among them carrying a stuffed fox terrier under her arm had caused much comment two winters before. Were Red spies really after her? Was that why she had tried to keep out of sight, washing dishes all winter in a secluded mining camp?16
But former Dawson News reporter Archie Gillespie had good memories of Lillian. In 1965 he wrote:
During that winter in Dawson she was able to pick up quite a bit of the English language and she made a number of friends who were astonished at her courage and determination.17
*
After a long winter, the breakup of the Yukon River is a magnificent sight. Everyone anticipates the sounds of ice pans cracking and the water flowing, and the whole town makes bets on the exact hour and minute that the breakup will occur. In her book I Married the Klondike, Laura Berton describes the scene:
The sight of the ice moving was a spectacular one. The great cakes, three to eight feet thick, roared down the river, smashing and grinding against each other with the noise of a dozen express trains. Often entire cakes would be hurled into the air until the banks on both sides of the river were piled with them, sometimes to the height of f
ifty feet. Occasionally, caribou could be seen clinging to the ice blocks as they swept by, or floundering in the water between them. Uprooted trees and the odd empty boat jammed into the ice would go sailing past the town.18
In 1929 the ice broke up in the Yukon River in mid-May. Lillian wasted no more time in Dawson. She had put in her time there, she had survived being cooped up all winter, and she wanted to be on her way as soon as she could. She had no second thoughts about continuing her journey and no hesitation. Archie Gillespie describes her parting:
After the river cleared and navigation got under way for another season, she was again on her way, still deeper into the north. Only, on this occasion she was much more warmly dressed and much better prepared.19
The Dawson News told of Lillian’s departure in their issue dated May 21, 1929:
The boat has been lying off the river bank all winter and this was her means of departure. She gave it out before departing that she was going to Nome and across to Siberia.20
She was alone again and on her way down the broad Yukon River toward Alaska.
Notes
(1) “Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson,” the Whitehorse Star, October 19, 1928.
(2) “A Hazardous Trip: Walked Every Step of Way Hazelton to Stewart Crossing,” Dawson News, October 6, 1928.
(3) Gillespie, Archie. “The Girl Who Walked the Telegraph Trail,” Yukon News, July 28, 1965.
(4) Letter from Clifford Thompson to Candy Evans, Research Librarian at the Dawson Museum and Historical Society, August 2, 1989.
(5) Coates, Ken S. and William R. Morrison. Land of the Midnight Sun. Edmonton, AB: Hurtig Publishers Ltd., 1988, page 203.