I met Ray Johnson through his son, Ken Johnson, who is one of Canada’s most effective Arctic engineers and a fellow writer on the history of Canadian engineering. He first described his father to me when we were in Whitehorse, Yukon, at a commemoration event for the construction of the Alaska Highway. We are both surveyors by descent, in spirit if not in practise. While Ray’s son decided to focus his career on civil engineering, with a specialization in Far North community infrastructure. I avoided my father’s encouragement to study engineering but could not stray far from the profession that both defined our family history and that shaped the development of Canada. My historical research focused for decades on northern Canadian history, with numerous studies of the construction of the Alaska Highway and northern infrastructure generally. When Ken asked me to talk to his father about helping him produce a book on his professional life, I was happy to do so - words from Ken Coates. PhD, Historian.
