As a catskinner in the A Company of the 35th Engineers, Chester Russell worked with 14,000 other soldiers in northern B.C. and Alaska to construct the Alaska Highway and the CANOL Project during the early years of WW II. Approximately 50 years later he recorded his memories for Tales of a Catskinnner: A Personal Account of Building the Alaska Highway, The Winter Trail, and Canol Pipeline Road in 1942-43 (Fort Nelson: Autumn Images, 1999, 2003), edited by Joseph Ehardt and published by Earl L. Brown. A one-man play by Cynthia Livingstone, based on the book and bearing its title, premiered in Dawson Creek in July of 2002.

[BCBW 2005] "War" "Theatre"