Lillian Alling (9 page)

From Echo Lake, Lillian walked north, passing two named cabins—Iskut and Raspberry—as the trail turned northwest toward the village of Telegraph Creek. She had now walked 350 miles (560 kilometres) through the wilderness from Hazelton.

Lillian's very brief stop in Telegraph Creek was remembered—and wildly embellished—in 1930 when a California couple, Ruth and Bill Albee, visited the little settlement. When the Albees talked to the locals, they were given a remarkable tale about her:

The talk veered to a Russian woman of about thirty-five, who, with her little fox-terrier, had stopped briefly at Telegraph Creek the previous fall, and whose mysterious behaviour in shunning everyone there still formed a juicy morsel of gossip among people starved for excitement. Except for her little dog, she seemed utterly friendless.

Taken together, the rather nebulous bits of description volunteered by our hosts left no doubt as to the woman's physical charm. She was a small, slender brunette with clear-cut Russian features, nervous hands and jet-black hair coiled beneath the handkerchief she wore, peasant-like, on her head. They thought it doubtful she had come clear from San Francisco, as some said. Yet the bedraggled appearance of her expensive breeches, leather jacket and worn hiking boots certainly pointed to endless miles afoot.

But what had impressed everybody even more than her startling beauty was the fanatical gleam in her black eyes—a gleam which brooked no fooling.

After a few days, with winter at hand, she and the dog had silently started north along the Telegraph Trail, leaving a seething mass of rumours behind.

Some were sure she was a White Russia refugee in a desperate dash to rejoin her husband by crossing over from Alaska. Anyhow, they pointed out, she was headed that way. Others, remembering her constant, furtive glances, were equally certain that she was being pursued by spies. The whole yarn sounded so fantastic that there came times in the telling when we wondered if Telegraph Creek itself were a bit “touched.”
¹

T.E.E. (Ern) Greenfield, the RCMP officer who assisted Provincial Police Constable George Wyman with Lillian's arrest in September 1927, later insisted that Lillian made it only as far as Telegraph Creek, where she settled down.

One year later I received a letter from Lillian Alling at Telegraph Creek thanking me for delaying her a year from meeting her “beloved.” She had reached Telegraph Creek through the Cariboo from Vancouver and had travelled at nights through the Bulkley Valley and Hazelton. Beyond Hazelton she was the guest of the telegraph linemen every forty miles. Finding her beloved had departed from Telegraph Creek, she wrote me that she had fallen in love with a kindly settler there and had married him.
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But Lillian had not lingered long in Telegraph Creek. She was soon on her way north again, still following the rough trail under the telegraph line. Thirty-eight miles (61 kilometres) beyond Telegraph Creek, she passed by the Shesley Station, and after another 47 miles (75 kilometres) she was at Nahlin. Joe Hicks, the lineman at the Nahlin telegraph cabin, kindly turned it over to her so she could sleep under shelter. Speaking with the Albees two years after Lillian's visit, he said, “Mighty glad you brought your husband along. I'm sick of getting turned out by lone women just so's they can sleep in here themselves.”
³

Lillian left Nahlin, and just about 30 miles (48 kilometres) south of Atlin she walked across the O'Donnell River using Nate Murphy's wooden foot bridge. It was Nate's wife, Marie, who took two of the few known photographs of Lillian Alling. These photos show a young woman in worn clothes. Atlin author Diane Solie Smith said of the photograph that “it is impossible to look at that old black and white image and doubt that Lillian Alling would reach her destination.”
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Although Marie Murphy was known as a hospitable hostess and kept an extensive diary, she made no mention in it of Lillian visiting the Murphy homestead or of providing her with a meal or a night's lodging.

When Lillian left the Murphys, she headed for the picturesque town of Atlin. The
Whitehorse Star
later reported, “Upon her arrival at Atlin she was in a bad way for footgear, and there she purchased a pair of canvas shoes with rubber soles.”
⁶
Atlin was Lillian's last stop in British Columbia, but the newspaper does not mention how long she stayed there.

Having purchased her shoes, Lillian apparently wasted no more time in Atlin. Following the lakeshore and then using the telegraph line to guide her, she crossed the 60th parallel into the Yukon Territory.

 

• (1)
  Albee, Ruth and Bill.
  Alaska Challenge
  . London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1941, page 149.
  
• (2)
  Greenfield, T.E.E. Letter to the
  Province
  newspaper, May 2, 1973.
  
• (3)
  Albee and Albee.
  Alaska Challenge
  , page 140.
  
• (4)
  Hollmann, Dietger. “Mystery Woman—Der weite Weg der Liliane Alling.” Unpublished manuscript (in German).
  
• (5)
  Smith, Diane Solie. “The Legend of Lillian Alling: The Woman Who Walked to Russia,” Atlin Historical Society, 1997, page 11.
  
• (6)
  “Mystery Woman Reaches Dawson,” the
  Whitehorse Star
  , October 19, 1928.
  

It was August 24 when Lillian finally arrived in Tagish, her first stop in the Yukon.
¹
In the long days of August with a good trail underfoot, by averaging nine hours of walking per day she should have been able to travel the 70 miles (113 kilometres) north from Atlin in just two days. But Winfield Woolf, taking the same route in 1929, indicated that this was actually a very difficult stretch of the trail. “Without any trail at all,” he reported, “I went on to Tagish—climbing over windfalls with logs criss-crossed almost every foot of the way.”
²

In spite of her efforts to keep a low profile, Lillian Alling had by now become something of a celebrity across the north. Since the population of the entire Yukon Territory was, according to the 1921 census, just 4,157 and comprised of twice as many men as women, this lone woman walking to Siberia could not escape notice, and the newspapers picked up even the smallest details of her story. For example, on August 31, the
Whitehorse Star
reported that “at Tagish she was taken over the river by Ed Barrett.”
³
The river in question was the Six Mile and Ed Barrett was the owner of the Tagish Trading Post (not to be confused with Tagish Post, which was farther south). He made a portion of his living by ferrying travellers across the river in his boat.
⁴

Lillian seems to have spent the night at Tagish but wasted no time on the tourist sights there as she embarked on the 19-mile (30-kilometre) trek to Carcross early the next morning. Although it is southwest of Tagish, it was the logical way to go: there was no direct trail north from Tagish to Whitehorse, but a wagon road had been built over the traditional foot trail between Tagish and Carcross, and a well-travelled road led from there to Whitehorse. The
Whitehorse Star
reported on her progress in its August 31 edition:

On Saturday last [August 25] she arrived in Carcross and had a meal at the Caribou Hotel. Mr. Skelly frankly admits that he had never seen or heard of her before; nor was he able to get any information from her. She left Carcross the same afternoon, travelling in a northerly direction.
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