RCAF Air Traffic Control

Memories of Whitehorse

I was transferred to Whitehorse in October of 1957. I got a ride on USAF C-47 from Edmonton to Whitehorse. There were approximately 100 RCAF personnel at this station of which eight were Air Traffic Control. There were four officers and four airmen. A "day shift" was staffed with one officer and one airman. An officer worked the evening shift and an airman worked the midnight shift. We were limited to VFR operations at the time. IFR clearances were obtained from Edmonton. We got got lots of PX's from all over the north at night as we sometimes were the only agency the aircraft could contact. We lived in barracks on the station. The Control Tower was on the other side of the field. We would walk to Flight Planning and get a ride across the field to the Control Tower.

Snow removal was not too much of a problem. Lights were on a stand and we had to drive the airport putting the lights on top of the snow banks. This was a great job when the temperatures were 30 below zero. We controlled both military and civilian traffic. Military traffic was mostly USAF. It was a fixed tour of two or three years. As most of the traffic was civilian the MOT took over and the RCAF ATC personnel were all transferred out. The last couple of weeks we did our shifts in tower and then we went out to fight a big bush fire that had been started by military. There was a large Army base there as well and they looked after the highway.