John Denisen is credited with building the first ice roads. I met John in 1974, he died a few years ago in Kelowna British Columbia. He was a retired RCMP that use to travel the north with a dog team.
I'll try to find some history on John and post it here.
January 10, 2001: Ice Road Engineer Dies - John Denison helped engineer the NWT's first ice road, -Yellowknifer
John Denison began building an ice road leading to a Great Bear Lake silver mine in the late 1950s. The road was aptly nicknamed the Denison Ice Road and in 1998 he received the Order of Canada for his involvement and ingenuity in building winter roads.
Denison died on the evening of Jan. 6 in Kelowna, B.C. He was 84.
Working with Byers Transport, a company that pioneered the building of ice roads in the North, Denison and his road crew worked through the darkest, coldest days of winter building the 520-km road from Yellowknife and beyond the Arctic Circle to Great Bear Lake.
The former RCMP officer first moved to Yellowknife in 1946 to work at the local detachment.
He left the Mounties a year later after conducting a long search on the Barren Lands for a missing trapper.
"During that search he froze his fingers, his feet and face and decided that it was just too much, being a Mountie in the North," said Denison's widow, Hannah, from her Kelowna home.
The couple left Yellowknife later that year, bound for Edmonton where they married.
Only a few years passed before Denison, in search of work, returned to the North, putting his background in mechanics to use in the Northern transportation industry.
Once the ice road work was complete - he also worked on a road to Tundra Mine and Discovery Mine - Denison returned to Kelowna, where his wife and four children were living.
He stayed in the Okanagan until his death last weekend.
A book, Denison's Ice Road, was written by Edith Iglauer detailing his adventures while at work.
Dawson Creek: Northern Trucker Named to Order of Canada, Vancouver Sun, August 18, 1998
A former Dawson Creek resident has been named to the Order of Canada for his work in helping to open up the Far North in the 1960s.
John Denison, 82, was instrumental in building a winter truck route north of Yellowknife that followed the frozen but fragile lakes up to Coppermine on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake. "I felt a little embarrassed about it but I'm not anymore," he said from his home in Kelowna where he is now retired.
Denison's exploits were the subject of a CBC television documentary and a book, Denison's Ice Road, written by New Yorker magazine writer Edith Iglauer. Both came out in the 1970s.
Known as "Big John," Denison first started trucking in 1947 when he and his brother, Harry, bought an old army truck and covered a route from Peace River, Alta. to Hay River, N.W.T. In 1952, he moved to Dawson Creek where he spent nine years working on the Alaska Highway.
Wikipedia will be a start I guess:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Denison_(engineer)
Edith Iglauer - Denison's Ice Road
The author's account of a very chilly journey with Canadian, John Denison, and his crew, when they were opening the annual winter ice road from Yellowknife, the capital ...
edithiglauer.com/work2.htm - Cached
Ice Roads
John Denison and his crew waited for the coldest, darkest days of winter every year to set out to build a 520-kilometre road made of ice and snow, from Yellowknife in ...
www.thedieselgypsy.com/Ice%20Roads-3B-Denison.htm - Cached
Ice Road Truckers - Denison's Ice Road
Denison's Ice Road is about the building of a 325-mile winter road above ... ravine on foot to show the men where to break the new road. The sun was going down and John ...
astore.amazon.com/ice-road-truckers-20/detail/1550170414 - Cached
<LI id=yui_3_3_0_1_1301187507780401>Ice Road Truckers (TV 2000) - IMDb
Directed by Andy Papadopoulos. With Beau Billingslea, John B. Denison, Edith Iglauer.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0354642 - Cached
Ice roads-3B-Denison-2
... 125 centimetres = 49 1/5 inches, or just over 4 feet ) The Ice Roads of today have certainly evolved, since the early pioneering days of John Denison and his winter road ...
www.thedieselgypsy.com/Ice%20roads-3B-Denison-2.htm - Cached
CM Archive
DENISON'S ICE ROAD. Edith Iglauer. ... The cold mechanics of ice, trucks, and machinery are balanced by her warm portrait of the ailing, often cantankerous John Denison
www.umanitoba.ca/cm/cmarchive/vol11no2/denisonsiceroad.html - Cached
Ice road trucking
Discussion in 'Questions From New Drivers' started by Cristiana, Mar 23, 2011.
Page 10 of 14
-
-
Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.
-
-
-
-
you'd have to ask her husband for permission
American Trucker -
He said its ok...maybe..ok prob not but its my dream
-
Good point of view!
You are actualy the first to say something like that. My mother told me she's dissapointed when she found out that I'm considering becoming a truck driver. That she invested so much money in me to go to school...
And my friends... Half of them didn't believe me and the other half said I'm out of my mind. It even took me a while to convince my husband. And nobody knew about ice road trucking 4 months ago when I decided to do this. Not even me.#
So, my answer is no! I don't consider myself cool, I don't love the danger that much, and I didn't make this decision to piss somebody off ( this is kind of an answer to one of my friend's question). I made this decision because all the jobs that I had in the past, (even though I was payed farely well) I couldn't do them anymore.
The freedom that I have right now is ireplaceble. It's a good thing I love it
otherwise it would've been very hard.
Yes it's a demanding job, but it's also very rewarding. I finaly get to see the country! And it is an amazing country !!!
Now, about the money and the ice road trucking. Wouldn't be nice to work 6, 8 months a year? Because it sounds lovely to me! So when I did my math, I figured that by doing this, it may be possible for me to take a longer vacation and go home so I could spend more time with my grandparents, who are old an sick. (and they mean the world to me). I am not afraid of getting my hands dirty, and I don't think I'm gonna dye,( especially if I know what I'm #doing). So like I said before, I'm not doing this untill I am fully prepared. And it's gonna take some time.... -
-
-
Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.
Page 10 of 14