American soldiers kill time on one of the barges used to carry pipeline supplies down the Slave River, across Great Slave Lake and down the Mackenzie River as part of the CANOL Project during the Second World War. Photo courtesy of PWNHC.

During the 1940s, Black and white American military battalions were stationed together in the Northwest Territories, one of the coldest and most desolate parts of Canada. The soldiers’ interactions across racial lines generated friction and hostility, in sharp contrast to the nurturing attitude offered by the Aboriginal peoples of the region. This episode of Historians Recount tells of the surprising events discovered by playwright Ben Nind when he investigated the origins of the evocative photo above—a story in which all of the protagonists were defined, when all was said and done, as human beings.