Sunday, July 8, 2012

The big gap closes!



From a 1959 issue of Happy Motoring, an Esso publicity publication.  The story is about the closing of the gap in the Trans-Canada Highway between Agawa Bay and Marathon.

Turns out that surveying this stretch was one of Mister G's father's first jobs when he came to Canada! 

Further north, another stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway between Hearst and Longlac remained gravel for a long time and was called "The Stretch" by truckers.  In his book Every Highway.  Riding Shotgun on the Big Rigs (Toronto:  McClelland & Stewart, 2006), Dave Feschuk interviewed one trucker who remembered:
"In the dead of winter it would reach forty or fifty below.  When you left Hearst, there was a checkpoint there and you'd give them your licence number and your company, and if you didn't make it to the middle checkpoint, they'd come to look for you so you didn't freeze to death."

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