Supersized Sights of Canada

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Topic spans: 1975 - 2006

Supersized Sights of Canada

A giant hockey stick. A big nickel. An historic covered bridge. A history-changing oil well. People pass by these attractions all the time on their travels throughout Canada. Sometimes, tourists trek for days to just to catch a glimpse. Some attractions are monumental, others merely quirky. They are all the stuff of local legend. CBC Digital Archives goes province to province to admire the big things in our big country.

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Watson Lake's Sign Post Forest

Broadcast Date: Jan. 21, 1988

The signs of homesickness are everywhere - 10,000 of them, and growing. It began during the Second World War, when a soldier working on the Alaska Highway erected a marker showing the distance to his hometown. The Watson Lake Sign Post Forest has expanded ever since, as visitors from around the world leave behind souvenirs of their far-flung origins - official road signs, sunhats, even hubcaps. As we see in this 1988 CBC-TV clip, the "forest" has grown to become the town's 100-metre-long guest book.

Watson Lake's Sign Post Forest

• This clip attributes the first signpost in 1942 to "an unidentified U.S. soldier." But the town's website identifies the man who started it all as Carl K. Lindley of Danville, Ill., Company D, 341st Engineers. In 1990, the 10,000th sign was placed. Lindley and his wife returned to the site in 1992 to celebrate its 50th anniversary. A time capsule was placed at the event, to be opened in 2042.

• The Watson Lake Sign Post Forest was selected as one of four sites to be featured in Canada Post's Canadian Roadside Attractions stamp series, issued on July 6, 2009. The other stamps feature the Pysanka Easter egg in Vegreville, Alta., the Inukshuk in Hay River, N.W.T. and "Mr. PG", a giant log man in Prince George, B.C.

• The Alaska Highway was a huge Second World War construction project linking military bases in Alaska to mainland America. Then known as the Alcan Highway, it opened on Nov. 20, 1942. The highway is more than 2,000 kilometres long and was worked on by approximately 11,000 men. Watson Lake is located at mile 635, near the B.C. border in southeastern Yukon.

Other prominent roadside attractions in Canada's north include:
• World's Largest Goldpan in Burwash Landing, Yukon
• Entrance Sign in Dawson City, Yukon
• Prospector and Dog in Whitehose, Yukon
• Inukshuk in Hay River, N.W.T.
• Igloo Church in Inuvik, N.W.T.
• Inukshuk in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut

Watson Lake's Sign Post Forest

Medium: Television

Program: The Journal

Broadcast Date: Jan. 21, 1988

Host: Susan Harada

Duration: 1:01

Last updated:
Aug. 18, 2009

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