Gertrude Seidel (1920 - 1993)
Gertrude Seidel was born in a border district of Czechoslovakia that was ceded to Germany in September 1938. Gertrude’s father escaped to England and eighteen-year-old Gertrude was put in jail as a political prisoner. She was in a high security prison at Dresden for one month before her father could engineer her release. Her family was included with the relocation of 1,000 Sudetan German refugees to Canada in the Peace River district. Gertrude left for Edmonton where she worked as a housekeeper and learned English. She enrolled in a business school in the spring of 1942 and then was hired by J. Gordon Turnbull, architect engineers for the CANOL pipeline project.1)
Gertrude was one of the first two women the company selected to work on the CANOL project.2) The plane north stopped at Fort St. John where she visited her father who was working on the Alaska Highway construction. She arrived at Whitehorse when the community had a winter population of only 400 people. The winter of 1943 had some very cold spells, and she was stranded on one expedition to Carcross.3)
Gertrude went on to become a secretary to the officer in charge of the CANOL Project, Major Parsons. She later married Stewart Gillis and lived in Whitehorse with their children Susan and Stewart Jr. until 1991. She died in White Rock, British Columbia.4)
The Gertrude (Seidel) Gillis fond at the Yukon Archives consists of photos graphs documenting Seidel’s experiences in the Yukon during the construction of the CANOL project.5)