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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Two of the hands that worked so hard to build Yellowknife in the early 1950s and '60s were those of Adolf Duesterhus.

Adolf Duesterhus left Germany and arrived in Quebec City on April 25, 1953. He came to Yellowknife soon after and lived in the NWT's capital until his death last week. - photo courtesy of Ray Weber

Yellowknife's introverted ice road trucker and closet physicist died at 3 a.m. Friday at the age of 85 after deciding not to continue dialysis.

Duesterhus, who resided at Aven Manor during the past two years, had been admitted to Stanton Territorial Hospital three weeks prior to his death after suffering from severe pain in his right side. Though painkillers provided some relief, he was unable to to sit up or move around.

"He had a living will that he didn't want to live like that," said Ray Weber, Duesterhus' neighbour of 50 years and close friend.

Looking back at over half a century of memories, Weber recalls a tough, private man who was always willing to help out with a project any time, any conditions.

He said Sunday evening coffee chats gradually became a routine for the two neighbours, especially after Duesterhus retired 25 years ago.

Weber recalls one story shared over evening coffee, where the highly private Duesterhus, a native German, talked about his time as an armourer in the Luftwaffe on a Messerschmitt aircraft.

"(The squadron) wound up on the Eastern Front and he was captured and spent time in a Russian prisoner of war camp and was liberated by the Americans," Weber said. "The Americans got there and all these prisoners were there and they just turned them loose. Adolf walked home from wherever he was on the Eastern Front to, I can't remember the name of the town, but it was more central Germany. All he had for food with him was a little can of butter and a pocket full of sugar."

Duesterhus arrived in Quebec City on April 25, 1953. In his unpublished book, Driving Northern Byways: Memories of Northern Ground Transport in the Fifties and Sixties, he describes his arrival in Canada as the realization of a five-year dream. Duesterhus had spent hours teaching himself English by trying to read short stories and looking up each word until he could understand the text. He walked off the ship in Quebec City with a suitcase, a change of clothes, eight American dollars, and a train ticket to Edmonton.

By May 4 Duesterhus was living and working in Yellowknife, after answering a Giant Mine employment ad in an Edmonton newspaper.

The mine paid for the $95 ticket to Yellowknife on a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC3 flight that took six hours after stops in Fort McMurray, Fort Smith and Fort Resolution.

"I had made it!" states Duesterhus as he recounts the memory in his book. "Less than two weeks after arriving in Canada I had a job."

After a year at Giant Mine, Duesterhus left and worked for Curry Construction, a company he stayed with for many years as an ice road trucker and operator of many other vehicles.

He describes Yellowknife in 1953 as "a friendly town, a town of doers."

"After the war ... Germany wasn't his home anymore," said Weber. "He adopted Yellowknife and Canada. That's where he spent the rest of his life, here."

Duesterhus ends his book – which reflects on the trials and tribulations of ice road truckers, the companies who employed them, and the people who worked closely along side of them – by thanking those who had made Yellowknife the home he loved.

"All of these good people helped make Yellowknife and the surrounding region what it is today," he states, "I salute them all – those who have passed on and those who, like myself, are still lucky enough to be here to enjoy what we worked so hard together to build."

Duesterhus is survived by two adult nephews living in Germany.

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