Lillian Alling (b. ~1896)

Lillian Alling was born in Poland. She told a friend that she had been brought to New York as a domestic by a doctor who did not treat her well and did not pay her enough to save for her passage home. She told authorities that she had lived in Toronto from 1915 to 1921 and was employed as a housekeeper in Rochester, New York before crossing the border back into Canada in 1926. At the border she gave her destination as Niagara Falls and did not mention that she intended to return home using an overland route. She took three years to walk more than 9,659 km from New York through Alaska to Siberia. She may have received a letter reporting that her family had been sent to a Siberian prison camp, and she always told people that her destination was Siberia, not Poland.((Susan Smith-Josephy, //Lillian Alling: the journey home.// Caitlin Press, 2011: 18-20, 33, 34.))

On the Telegraph Trail she checked in with the linemen and they communicated with each other and even accompanied her on parts of the trail. The newspapers picked up the story and the //Whitehorse Star// was reporting on her progress before she crossed the territorial border. Alling arrived in Tagish on 24 August 1928. //The Whitehorse Star// reported that she was taken over the river by Ed Barrett, the owner of the Tagish Trading Post. She travelled over the wagon road to Carcross and had a meal at the Caribou Hotel on August 25 before heading north. At the end of September, she was at Stewart Crossing where she was given a rough raft called a “float-me-down.” At Stewart Island she was given a boat by a kindly sourdough. She arrived in Dawson on 5 October and the police stopped her from travelling further as ice was starting to form on the river.((Susan Smith-Josephy, //Lillian Alling: the journey home.// Caitlin Press, 2011: 94-95, 127-134, 144, 147, 151, 160.))

Archie Fournier hired Alling to cook at his dairy ranch for the winter. The ranch was about fifteen miles up the Klondike River from Dawson. However, the job only lasted a short time and by December she was ironing and sewing at St. Paul’s Hostel in town. She left her employer in April 1929 with a cheque for fifty dollars for her winter’s work. After the ice broke on the Yukon River, and a few days before 21 May, Alling took her boat down river heading for Nome and then across to Siberia. She lost her boat in late July when an incoming tide floated it away in the Yukon River delta, and she walked back to Kotlik where she arranged passage to St. Michael.  She arrived in Nome on 31 August. Some believe her strength and determination enabled her to reach Siberia although there is no proof.((Susan Smith-Josephy, //Lillian Alling: the journey home.// Caitlin Press, 2011: 160 – 166, 16, 175, 180-182, 193.))