Death of Albert Johnson

Albert Johnson was a loner, a deadly shot, who in 1932 triggered a gruelling manhunt that has become an Arctic legend. For over six weeks, amid blizzards and numbing cold, he eluded a posse of trappers, First Nations and RCMP, who for the very first time used a two-way radio and an airplane in their search.

Johnson was involved in four shoot-outs, killing one policeman and gravely wounding two other men before being shot to death. Over a half-century later, an intriguing mystery remains: Who was Albert Johnson?

Born in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1919, Frank W. Anderson was orphaned at 18 months and grew up in foster homes, reform schools and jails. At age 16, he was convicted of killing a prison guard and was sentenced to death. This was commuted to life and he spent the next 15 years in a penitentiary. There he completed his high school education and became the first prisoner in Canada to take university courses behind bars. Paroled in 1951, he completed a BA and an MA in social work from the University of Toronto. He then joined the John Howard Society and became a parole officer. He developed a two-year course in human behaviour that was adopted by several colleges, and he was appointed to the National Parole Board in 1974, placed in charge of the region covering Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. He held this position until he retired. In 1998, the University of Ottawa created the Frank W. Anderson Archives of Criminology to serve as a resource centre for students across Canada. He married Edna Marshal in 1955 and they had two children. He moved to Saskatoon after retiring and managed Frontier Books, publishing more than 100 books on Canadian history written by himself and other authors, including Ken Liddell and W.O. Mitchell. He also wrote a book about women who were executed in Canada, A Dance with Death: Canadian Women on the Gallows. Although he was later based in Calgary, Frank wrote, edited and produced numerous titles pertaining to British Columbia.

Art Downs, once described as "the first of the environmental editors," became one of the forefathers of the B.C. publishing industry.

Arthur George Downs was born in 1924 in England and emigrated with his parents at age five. They settled in northeastern Saskatchewan, where he grew up during the Depression. "I attended a typical one-room rural school," he recalled, "with a frustrated teacher attempting to teach grades 1-8 to some 50 impoverished farm boys and girls." His father joined the Canadian Navy during the Second World War and the family came to the west coast. In 1943, Downs joined the merchant navy and worked for seven years, mainly as a radio officer. Unable to pursue his hopes of becoming a reporter due to his lack of experience, he returned to help operate his father's ranch in the Quesnel River Valley in the Cariboo. "Our ranch was the same as about 90 percent of Cariboo ranches," he said. "The owner needed an outside job to support the operation. I reluctantly abandoned ranching but left with a double legacy--the knack of stilling a potent beverage christened 'Quesnel River Screech' and an incurable malady known as Caribooitis. The most noticeable symptom of the latter affliction is an unsettled feeling when the victim is anywhere else except the Cariboo."

His first published story, "The Saga of the Upper Fraser Sternwheelers," appeared in 1950 in the Cariboo Digest, a regional magazine published in Quesnel since 1945. With Wes Logan, he bought the Cariboo Digest from Alex Sahonovich in 1955 and became its editor. It evolved into BC Outdoors, a successful blend of history, wildlife and conservation that served a broad readership. He didn't believe in fishing derbies or trophies, but he recognized the importance of tourism. He deplored clear-cut logging and was a tireless conservationist and grassroots organizer. Selling BC Outdoors in 1979, he and his wife Doris turned to publishing books by BC writers and for BC readers under the name Heritage House. Downs eschewed the city and affected a down-to-earth bluntness that disguised his sophistication. Along the way he served as president of the BC Wildlife Federation, director of the Canadian Wildlife Federation and a member of the Pacific Salmon Commission. He died at his home in Surrey on August 13, 1996.