The distant whistle blows immediately my three-year-old daughter excitedly grabs her grandfather’s hand.
The ground begins to tremble and the whistle draws closer. She can see the magnificent iron horse appearing around the bend, and is wiggling with anticipation. Her soft ice cream has been forgotten and is becoming a river of sticky cream dripping to her elbows.
“Look, Grampa! The train!” She screams with delight as she has so many times over the past three years since her and her grandfather first began to watch the trains. For now she is silent, not an easy task for her, she feels the sudden rush of wind from the moving train. This momentary silence is cradled by the clickety clack of the wheels on the track. Her eyes show an excitement that won’t be easy to replicate.
The train speeds into the horizon and I know her thoughts have returned.
“Where is it going, Grampa?” He pauses and I know he’s composing himself. This is one of the few tracks that trains still travel across but it may not be long before it, too, will be gone.
The Canadian National Railway (CNR) line that still passes through this quiet village and our former home of Edgerton holds a common link to Canada’s past. Formerly the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was laid down and arrived at its destination (36 kilometres west of Edgerton) of Denwood, now Wainwright, Alberta, in 1908. In an article written by the Wainwright & District Chamber of Commerce they acknowledged that this railway was to be a “major divisional point that would extend from here to such places as North Battleford, Medicine Hat, Calgary and the Peace River area. These intentions triggered a quick growth of Wainwright, which became a Village in 1908 (pop. 450) and was incorporated as a Town on August 14, 1910 (pop. 1,000). Although the plans of the GTPR did not materialize, Wainwright maintained its position as a railroad center and became the major service center for the surrounding agricultural industry.” Now the lonely Edgerton railway station, complete with CN caboose, Rural Battle Valley School, and first Methodist Church stands like a memory against the backdrop of the prairie. Between its walls, that holds everything from “Tea Cups to Tractors”, it is keeping alive the memories of pioneer days of the village and the stories of the railway days gone by.
The condition of many provinces entering confederation was due to the promise of a transcontinental railway system from “sea to sea”. In a CN Pensioners Association (CNPA) website document titled History of Railroads in Canada they stated, “It is doubtful whether Confederation would have been consummated if the undertaking to build the Intercolonial Railway had not been given”. In fact Nova Scotia, in 1867, British Columbia, in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873 were given such guarantees. Thus began the arduous task of construction on Canada’s first public transcontinental railway almost immediately after confederation (July 1st, 1867).
With these promises, the railway line became a reality and the Intercolonial was opened for traffic between Halifax and Levis on July 1st, 1876, and by 1885 the Canadian Pacific Railway had completed its line from Prince Edward Island to British Columbia. The long road to the development of Canada began; the line that was 130 kilometres (km) in 1850 had expanded to 27,350 km in 1900. The last spike of the National Transcontinental was driven in 1913. As other lines also opened up, such as the Canadian Northern in November 1915, the year my grandfather was born, it encompassed three railway systems and 56,315 km of track.
I feel the steel lines were important for many reasons. They created employment to thousands of workers. They became a unification tool, the glue that attached one end of the country to the other. In time it opened up new agricultural and mining regions. For my ancestors and many others, it was an easier way to cut into the wilderness and prairies than foot, wagon or stagecoach. This form of transportation then encouraged the masses to populate the west. According to facts gathered from Collections Canada, in the West, whole towns were created, over 2000 communities in the three western provinces by the outbreak of war in August 1914, around the site of railway stations and immigrants came in droves; it was like the golden touch to a town or region.
The building of our railway was not an easy task in any part of Canada. In the late 19th century the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) hired over 15,000 Chinese workers to complete the lines to British Columbia over the Rocky Mountains. They worked for cheap wages, $1/day, and in dangerous conditions. About one third died due to rock explosions, collapsed tunnels and drowning and another third were injured. It is a common historical statement, “for every foot of the Fraser Canyon (Hell’s Gate) that was built, one Chinese worker lost his life.”
Building Canada’s railway system was an expensive venture for Canadians. Many companies went bankrupt trying to complete the lines. This meant the government was “left holding the empty moneybags.”(Collections Canada: The Ties That Bind: A Brief History of Railways in Canada) Eventually those times of financial misfortune made the government act; it consolidated four large independent railways, Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR), Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), and Grand Trunk Pacific (GTP) into two transcontinental services CNR and CPR. One such undertaking saw the government giving CPR a grant of 25 million dollars, 25 million acres of land, waving surveying costs of $37 million and exempting them from property tax for twenty years (Collections Canada: The Canadian Pacific Railway). And that was just a portion of one of these railway lines. The Canadian railway system had eventually incurred a $1.5 billion debt according a Royal Commission on Transportation report dated July 4th, 1952.
But the heyday of rail travel is over for Canada. 95,670 km of track have now been reduced to 48, 683 km (2004 figures). On my frequent travels across Alberta, I see tracks torn up or abandoned and trucks taking over our highways.
The tracks that go through my town of Marwayne have been torn up throughout the countryside, usually at points where the roadways intersect them. Further north, the former CN line, now run by an American shortline company, RailLink Ltd., that runs the line extending from St. Paul Junction, immediately north of Edmonton, to Boyle and northeast to Grand Centre and Heinsburg, has also been torn up, and replaced with snowmobile and ATV trails. This is part of the same tracks that run through my hometown of Elk Point, connecting Heinsburg to Waskatenau, a 200 km run. Ironically they kept the name, Iron Horse Trail. Apparently they have failed to notice the “Iron Horse” no longer comes this way.
What has this done to us? Well the country folk have paid a high price! David Orchard, a runner up in the ’98 Federal Progressive Conservative Party leadership race, noted such damage with the following comment, “The countryside is being depopulated, railway tracks ripped up, grain elevators torn down and rural communities devastated.” How could our rural communities have become devastated? According to a Canadian Transportation Agency article, in 1991 there were more than 1,539 primary grain elevators located across western Canada. By August 2003, this number dropped to 389. As of the end of the 1996-97 crop year, Alberta had lost 1,428 elevators leaving 327 still operating (Alberta Provincial Museum). It should be noted that many of these inland grain terminals operating now have a greater capacity starting at one million bushels and up.
The closure of the elevators made grain delivery a tiring job with the farmers, my husband included, having to truck their grain an average of 50 km one way, some up to 100 km, just to sell one load or pay the price to have semi trucks haul it for them. This has lead to near destruction of some communities where farming was their only industry. Unemployment soared forcing some people out of their community and into larger cities.
My family could not exist without our supplemental incomes; farming has become a hobby, not a livelihood. The dismantling of our railways has affected our agricultural history. Now children won’t see first hand how the railway and agriculture go hand in hand. They will have to go to museums and log onto the Internet to get a second hand version of the story that was the unifying tool for our nation for so many years.
It is perplexing why some of the rail lines are being dismantled across this nation while other countries keep expanding theirs. In 1930, six years before my father’s birth, “there were over 90,000 km of railway in Canada. This changed little until 1985, when the total was 95,670 km. Since then, total trackage has been reduced by 22% to 74,950 km. In 1980, the rail network in Saskatchewan and Manitoba totaled 21,565 km, of which 4,506 (21%) were main and secondary lines and 17,059 (79%) was branch lines. Since then, a further 3,058 km have been abandoned and 2,334 km have been sold to short line operators.” (OmniTRAX Inc. Submission to Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, Oct. 3, 2000, Edmonton, Alberta) What part of the puzzle am I missing here?
The European lines have improved their railways because the public has relied on them. They have even completed a costly venture of connecting England with the continent with a rail line under the English Channel. In a time where saving the environment seems to be a pressing issue you would think that the railway system would be the next best bet.
It’s hard to believe but the railway system upon which Canada was built and which cost millions of dollars and thousands of lives to build may possibly become a thing of the past, relegated to old movies and moving songs. It is sad to think that young Canadian children will soon be robbed of the delightful exhilaration of the rush of train wind and the mystic sound of its whistle.
“Can we pleeeease walk on the train tracks?” My daughter and now a sister to two brothers cries excitedly as we near the tracks. Although her Grandfather is still alive the trains have died along the set of tracks she now lives by.
I take my son’s hand and say, “I don’t see why not.”
“When is the train going to come?” my young son asks.
“It will never come down this track again.” I say as we plod along.
References:
Wainwright & District Chamber of Commerce
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r064.html
http://www.utu-canada.com
http://www.cn.ca
http://www.collectionscanada.ca , Ties that Bind: A Brief History of Railways in Canada
http://www.trainscan.com
http://www.railwaysincanada.net
http://www.examenltc-reviewcta.gc.ca/Submissions
http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca
http://www.cnpensioners.org
http://www.geaps.com
http://www.tc.gc.ca
http://www.woodengrainelevators.com
The World Factbook http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html
The ground begins to tremble and the whistle draws closer. She can see the magnificent iron horse appearing around the bend, and is wiggling with anticipation. Her soft ice cream has been forgotten and is becoming a river of sticky cream dripping to her elbows.
“Look, Grampa! The train!” She screams with delight as she has so many times over the past three years since her and her grandfather first began to watch the trains. For now she is silent, not an easy task for her, she feels the sudden rush of wind from the moving train. This momentary silence is cradled by the clickety clack of the wheels on the track. Her eyes show an excitement that won’t be easy to replicate.
The train speeds into the horizon and I know her thoughts have returned.
“Where is it going, Grampa?” He pauses and I know he’s composing himself. This is one of the few tracks that trains still travel across but it may not be long before it, too, will be gone.
The Canadian National Railway (CNR) line that still passes through this quiet village and our former home of Edgerton holds a common link to Canada’s past. Formerly the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was laid down and arrived at its destination (36 kilometres west of Edgerton) of Denwood, now Wainwright, Alberta, in 1908. In an article written by the Wainwright & District Chamber of Commerce they acknowledged that this railway was to be a “major divisional point that would extend from here to such places as North Battleford, Medicine Hat, Calgary and the Peace River area. These intentions triggered a quick growth of Wainwright, which became a Village in 1908 (pop. 450) and was incorporated as a Town on August 14, 1910 (pop. 1,000). Although the plans of the GTPR did not materialize, Wainwright maintained its position as a railroad center and became the major service center for the surrounding agricultural industry.” Now the lonely Edgerton railway station, complete with CN caboose, Rural Battle Valley School, and first Methodist Church stands like a memory against the backdrop of the prairie. Between its walls, that holds everything from “Tea Cups to Tractors”, it is keeping alive the memories of pioneer days of the village and the stories of the railway days gone by.
The condition of many provinces entering confederation was due to the promise of a transcontinental railway system from “sea to sea”. In a CN Pensioners Association (CNPA) website document titled History of Railroads in Canada they stated, “It is doubtful whether Confederation would have been consummated if the undertaking to build the Intercolonial Railway had not been given”. In fact Nova Scotia, in 1867, British Columbia, in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873 were given such guarantees. Thus began the arduous task of construction on Canada’s first public transcontinental railway almost immediately after confederation (July 1st, 1867).
With these promises, the railway line became a reality and the Intercolonial was opened for traffic between Halifax and Levis on July 1st, 1876, and by 1885 the Canadian Pacific Railway had completed its line from Prince Edward Island to British Columbia. The long road to the development of Canada began; the line that was 130 kilometres (km) in 1850 had expanded to 27,350 km in 1900. The last spike of the National Transcontinental was driven in 1913. As other lines also opened up, such as the Canadian Northern in November 1915, the year my grandfather was born, it encompassed three railway systems and 56,315 km of track.
I feel the steel lines were important for many reasons. They created employment to thousands of workers. They became a unification tool, the glue that attached one end of the country to the other. In time it opened up new agricultural and mining regions. For my ancestors and many others, it was an easier way to cut into the wilderness and prairies than foot, wagon or stagecoach. This form of transportation then encouraged the masses to populate the west. According to facts gathered from Collections Canada, in the West, whole towns were created, over 2000 communities in the three western provinces by the outbreak of war in August 1914, around the site of railway stations and immigrants came in droves; it was like the golden touch to a town or region.
The building of our railway was not an easy task in any part of Canada. In the late 19th century the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) hired over 15,000 Chinese workers to complete the lines to British Columbia over the Rocky Mountains. They worked for cheap wages, $1/day, and in dangerous conditions. About one third died due to rock explosions, collapsed tunnels and drowning and another third were injured. It is a common historical statement, “for every foot of the Fraser Canyon (Hell’s Gate) that was built, one Chinese worker lost his life.”
Building Canada’s railway system was an expensive venture for Canadians. Many companies went bankrupt trying to complete the lines. This meant the government was “left holding the empty moneybags.”(Collections Canada: The Ties That Bind: A Brief History of Railways in Canada) Eventually those times of financial misfortune made the government act; it consolidated four large independent railways, Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR), Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), and Grand Trunk Pacific (GTP) into two transcontinental services CNR and CPR. One such undertaking saw the government giving CPR a grant of 25 million dollars, 25 million acres of land, waving surveying costs of $37 million and exempting them from property tax for twenty years (Collections Canada: The Canadian Pacific Railway). And that was just a portion of one of these railway lines. The Canadian railway system had eventually incurred a $1.5 billion debt according a Royal Commission on Transportation report dated July 4th, 1952.
But the heyday of rail travel is over for Canada. 95,670 km of track have now been reduced to 48, 683 km (2004 figures). On my frequent travels across Alberta, I see tracks torn up or abandoned and trucks taking over our highways.
The tracks that go through my town of Marwayne have been torn up throughout the countryside, usually at points where the roadways intersect them. Further north, the former CN line, now run by an American shortline company, RailLink Ltd., that runs the line extending from St. Paul Junction, immediately north of Edmonton, to Boyle and northeast to Grand Centre and Heinsburg, has also been torn up, and replaced with snowmobile and ATV trails. This is part of the same tracks that run through my hometown of Elk Point, connecting Heinsburg to Waskatenau, a 200 km run. Ironically they kept the name, Iron Horse Trail. Apparently they have failed to notice the “Iron Horse” no longer comes this way.
What has this done to us? Well the country folk have paid a high price! David Orchard, a runner up in the ’98 Federal Progressive Conservative Party leadership race, noted such damage with the following comment, “The countryside is being depopulated, railway tracks ripped up, grain elevators torn down and rural communities devastated.” How could our rural communities have become devastated? According to a Canadian Transportation Agency article, in 1991 there were more than 1,539 primary grain elevators located across western Canada. By August 2003, this number dropped to 389. As of the end of the 1996-97 crop year, Alberta had lost 1,428 elevators leaving 327 still operating (Alberta Provincial Museum). It should be noted that many of these inland grain terminals operating now have a greater capacity starting at one million bushels and up.
The closure of the elevators made grain delivery a tiring job with the farmers, my husband included, having to truck their grain an average of 50 km one way, some up to 100 km, just to sell one load or pay the price to have semi trucks haul it for them. This has lead to near destruction of some communities where farming was their only industry. Unemployment soared forcing some people out of their community and into larger cities.
My family could not exist without our supplemental incomes; farming has become a hobby, not a livelihood. The dismantling of our railways has affected our agricultural history. Now children won’t see first hand how the railway and agriculture go hand in hand. They will have to go to museums and log onto the Internet to get a second hand version of the story that was the unifying tool for our nation for so many years.
It is perplexing why some of the rail lines are being dismantled across this nation while other countries keep expanding theirs. In 1930, six years before my father’s birth, “there were over 90,000 km of railway in Canada. This changed little until 1985, when the total was 95,670 km. Since then, total trackage has been reduced by 22% to 74,950 km. In 1980, the rail network in Saskatchewan and Manitoba totaled 21,565 km, of which 4,506 (21%) were main and secondary lines and 17,059 (79%) was branch lines. Since then, a further 3,058 km have been abandoned and 2,334 km have been sold to short line operators.” (OmniTRAX Inc. Submission to Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, Oct. 3, 2000, Edmonton, Alberta) What part of the puzzle am I missing here?
The European lines have improved their railways because the public has relied on them. They have even completed a costly venture of connecting England with the continent with a rail line under the English Channel. In a time where saving the environment seems to be a pressing issue you would think that the railway system would be the next best bet.
It’s hard to believe but the railway system upon which Canada was built and which cost millions of dollars and thousands of lives to build may possibly become a thing of the past, relegated to old movies and moving songs. It is sad to think that young Canadian children will soon be robbed of the delightful exhilaration of the rush of train wind and the mystic sound of its whistle.
“Can we pleeeease walk on the train tracks?” My daughter and now a sister to two brothers cries excitedly as we near the tracks. Although her Grandfather is still alive the trains have died along the set of tracks she now lives by.
I take my son’s hand and say, “I don’t see why not.”
“When is the train going to come?” my young son asks.
“It will never come down this track again.” I say as we plod along.
References:
Wainwright & District Chamber of Commerce
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r064.html
http://www.utu-canada.com
http://www.cn.ca
http://www.collectionscanada.ca , Ties that Bind: A Brief History of Railways in Canada
http://www.trainscan.com
http://www.railwaysincanada.net
http://www.examenltc-reviewcta.gc.ca/Submissions
http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca
http://www.cnpensioners.org
http://www.geaps.com
http://www.tc.gc.ca
http://www.woodengrainelevators.com
The World Factbook http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html