I asked this question several years ago, but never got the right answer, and I'm hoping that another crack at it will help.

The book was non-fiction, a travelogue recounting a young Australian journalist's hitchhiking journey around North and South America. One of the early events in the book is that the author travels from Vancouver, North through British Columbia to the Alaska highway and up to Alaska.

While the whole book was interesting, it is this specific passage that makes finding it again valuable to me, as it specifically mentions my home town of Prince George, British Columbia. This is also the most helpful event I can recall for dating the book as it took place specifically at the time when the Alaska highway was being opened (the author gets a ride North to Dawson with the Mayor of Prince George who is going to attend the ceremonies), presumably that sets the events either in 1943, when the highway was completed, or in 1948, when it was officially opened. The book then, is most likely a product of the 40s or 50s, certainly no earlier than 1943, and I would assume not too much later, but it might be.

The book continues (I think -- the dog part might be from another book) with the author getting a dog, who aids him in hitchhiking, travelling back south to Vancouver, then across to the East coast of the USA, then back through to the West, down through Mexico and and Central America and through the Darien Gap and on into South America, eventually ending up in Brazil for Carnival.

I got the book rather randomly -- it was set out in a pile of free for the taking books at my University in Toronto in 1998 or so. It was bound in plain orange, looked like a library binding, but not a library book (no indexes, stamps, markings, etc).