The Yellowknife Expeditor

​Here are several old photos of a noteworthy northern ship with an Edmonton connection.

This is the Yellowknife Expeditor. Brought from Vancouver around Alaska and into the Mackenzie River watershed for the US Navy in World War Two, the vessel was acquired by Edmonton-based Yellowknife Transportation Company Ltd. after the war.  

In 1950, YT launched a twice-weekly passenger-freight service between Hay River and Yellowknife using the Expeditor to cross Great Slave Lake. The seven hour (one-way) trip crossed about 190 km (120 miles) of the deepest lake in North America.

Later, sixty feet of bow was removed, and tall wooden barge pushers attached, converting it to a tugboat; . 

When I first saw the Expeditor, in the summer of 1969, she was dry-docked at Bell Rock shipyards near Fort Smith, NWT.  She plays a part in my new book, 

(With thanks to Jim DeLancey and Terry Haight; photos starting with N- are courtesy of the NWT Archives).