Alvin Allison  (1924 - 2004)

Al Allison was born in 1924 near Senlac, Saskatchewan and raised in Paradise Valley, Alberta. He had various jobs around western Canada and then served in the Second World War for four years. After the war he came to the Yukon as a truck driver for the Army on the Alaska Highway in the Kluane area out of the Destruction Bay camp.(("Obituary." //The Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 20 August 2004.)) 

Al met Gloria in 1952 in Whitehorse where she was working in the Bank of Montreal after recently arriving from Calgary. They married in 1953 and spent the next years on Al's construction jobs on the Haines-Fairbanks pipeline and bridge construction for General Enterprises. Al was bridge supervisor on the Slims and Duke rivers bridges. They had a child near school age when the Fairdale store came up for sale in late 1958. The store was built by Bill and Frances Theriault in 1953 near the current location of the “muffin”. The centre of Haines Junction at that time was between the police station and the weigh scales where the school, community hall, curling rink and skating rink are located. The town was a lot smaller and for years the population was 200. The Fairdale Store contained the post office, was a fur buying post, and had propane service. Al was one of two Justices of the Peace and was a coroner for the area. He and Gloria operated the store from 1958 to 1968 when they sold it and moved to British Columbia.((Gordon Allison, "Dad Stories" in //From First We Met to Internet: Stories from Haines Junction's first Sixty-Five Years as a Settlement.// Yukon College, 2007: 9.)) 

The family moved to Kamloops, where Al owned a hardware store and worked for a crane company before Al retired to Shuswap Lake. Gloria died in 1989 and Al started spending winters in California. He moved to Salmon Arm in 1992. He said the best years of his life were spent in the Yukon. His ashes were buried beside Gloria in the Haines Junction cemetery.((Alvin Allison Obituary. //The Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 20 August 2004.))