The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1961, Page 33

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
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are Thorsteinn and Palina Gislason,
formerly of Steep Rock and now of
Oak Point. Lorna has received this year
a total of $840.00 in scholarships and
other awards. For picture and further
details see last issue of The Icelandic
Canadian. In that report she was cred-
ited with an Icelandic Canadian Club
scholarship which should have been
a Good Templars scholarship. Lorna
Sigurdson is taking First Year Arts at
United College.
Father Of Alaska Highway Mile Post
“Ellis Gislason is the father of the
granddaddy of Alaska Highway mile
posts”, wrote Jim Peacock of the Can-
adian Press in September in a dispatch
from Dawson Creek, B.C., which ap-
peared in several Canadian newspapers.
Mr. Peacock’s story is an interesting-
sidelight of the career of a young Ice-
lander from Saskatchewan who “went
north”. Mr. Peacock describes him
thus:
He’s the builder and keeper of the
10-foot-high Mile 0 pole that sprouts
in the centre of this city’s main inter-
section.
“I was in the sign business and a
member of the Junior Chamber of
Commerce at the time, so I got the
job,” he explains.
The job was to come up with a
publicity-attracting symbol for tourists
heading north on the 1,523-mile high-
way which runs from Dawson Creek,
400 miles northwest of Edmonton, to
Fairbanks, Alaska.
The Jaycees decided upon a large
mile post, considerably more elaborate
than the 1,522 others between here
and Fairbanks on the famous high-
way built in two years by the U.S.
Army during the 1941-42 Japanese
threat to Alaska.
In 1946, Mr. Gislason constructed
the original—a square wooden post 10
feet high with a rectangular flat-sur-
faced board atop it listing the high-
way mileages. It’s set firmly in a con-
crete base.
In the ensuing years, he’s maintained
it, frequently repainting it and repair-
ing the damage done by axe-wielding
drunks, souvenir hunters and sharp-
shooters who shot out the gas lamp at
its top so often that the lamp was
abandoned.
“The post has proven itself a tour-
ist attraction”, said Mr. Gislason, now
52, as tourists scampered over the as-
phalt to photograph the flag-bedecked
post.
To the residents here, it’s become a
symbol of the life bread of the city,
which grew from a population of 800
in 1940 to its present 12,500 because
of the highway.
Mr. Gislason, a 20-year resident of
the community, having come here in
1943 from Humboldt, Sask., to open
a body shop and then the Mile Zero
sign company, has made the mile post
pay off financially, too.
Since 1948 when he first began mak-
ing miniature posts for sale to tourists
and collectors, he’s sold nearly 50,000
of them at $1.75 and up.
“A Japanese firm wanted to get
rights to make the posts a while ago,”
Mr. Gislason said. “But the junior
chamber holds the copyright on the
design and they thought it was better
that it be made locally. I think so, too.”