Robert McCleery (1893-1934)
Robert McCleery was born in Ireland. He was a corporal in the Royal North-West Mounted Police, pre-1920. He and Laura Susan Helen Taylor, daughter of Barrington Taylor, were married in Atlin in 1923.1) The couple lived in Atlin and then Teslin, where McCleery was posted with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).2) McCleery retired from the RCMP in Teslin, and he built and managed the Nisutlin Trading Post in 1926.3) Before the Alaska Highway was built, Atlin was the nearest town, connected by an eighty-mile trail. Harold Miffin met Mrs. McCleery on the trail in 1933. She had her two infant daughters bundled in furs on a dog sleigh as she tended to the trap line she and her husband ran. During the highway construction they gave up the trap line and ran a dining room, serving six thousand meals to Public Roads Administration (PRA) workers. Their two teenage daughters worked in the dining room so Teslin was a popular place to eat. The area was very busy at this time and people from Atlin were moving to Teslin and Whitehorse.4)
During the construction of the Alaska Highway, one of the construction crews used a trading post building as an office and bunk house. The two daughters were away at school in Vancouver so Mrs. McCleery did all the cooking and housekeeping without help. The table setting was English china and fine silver with full place settings. She was a gracious hostess and he was well turned out in grey flannels and a fine shirt, but he did not “radiate the same glow” as she.5)
The McCleerys built a hotel, the Nisutlin Bay Lodge, with cabin accommodation for twenty people.6) In 1949, the Lodge was an unusually striking log structure with a spacious lounge overlooking the lake, cheery fireplace and charming dining room. It was lauded as one of the most outstanding and delightful lodges in the north with modern plumbing and lighting, and tastefully appointed rooms. McCleery offered big game and fowl hunting, fishing, boating, bathing, stream fishing, local handicrafts, gas and oil service. There was a modern airport nearby, thanks to the highway construction, and there was a seaplane base on the lake. The nearby trading post, established in 1898, was also operated by McCleery in 1949.7)