July 8, 1944 

   “Up in the Yukon, on a spot where two years ago there was nothing but snow and ice, spruce trees and moss, there is now one of the most important junctions of the northwest. That spot is Johnson’s Crossing, where the great Canol road from Norman Wells on the Mackenzie river meets the 1,523 miles of the Alaska highway.

   Whitehorse, 80 miles to the north, and connected with the outside by the puff-puff efforts of the little White Pass & Yukon Railway, was an administrative centre for the Canol Project. But it is Johnson’s Crossing, high on a bluff overlooking the point where the Teslin River leaves Teslin Lake, that was more nearly the centre of the actual construction operations of the Canol Road and pipeline. Both Canol and the Highway have each been separately included among the great engineering feats of the day.

   They have both been considered as contributing tremendously to the development of the North country. It is at Johnson’s Crossing that they touch shoulders.

   Brigadier General Ludson D. Worsham, formerly commanding general of the Northwest Service Command under whom most of the Canol Project was carried out, paid particular tribute to the builders of the connecting links between the oil wells 595 miles to the north with the refinery at Whitehorse.

   ‘It would be redundant of me,’ he said at the dedication of the Canol Refinery, ‘to describe the hardships which were borne with great fortitude by those who built what I believe to be one of the great engineering feats of all time, the construction road and pipeline between Johnson’s Crossing and the Canol Camp across the Mackenzie River from Norman Wells.'”

(Edmonton Bulletin – Edmonton, Alberta)