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The Towns

Nearly every town, city, and village across the Prairies — including the numerous ghost towns — owe their heritage to the railways that created them. As part of the government’s incentive package for the CPR, the railway received twenty-five million acres of free land. The tract consisted of every odd-numbered section to a depth of thirty-six kilometres from its route. In turn, the CPR sold more than two million acres to the affiliated Canada Northwest Land Company to create townsites along the line.

While the CNo was granted land for townsites, the Grand Trunk Pacific received no land grants and was obliged to acquire land for its eighty-six towns.

After the sites had been chosen, the next step was to attract buyers, not just to the towns, but to the farmland as well. With most potential settlers using the Canadian West as little more than a channel to the U.S., both the CPR and the Canadian government went into high gear to attract settlement. Interior Minister Clifford Sifton targeted the British in particular but also eastern Europeans, believing these “men in the sheepskin coats” were best-suited to adapt to the harsh prairie winters. Some of these groups included Icelanders, who were given their own “Republic of Iceland” in Manitoba; Scandinavians; and Russian Jews, who were allowed to create their own centralized settlements located away from their farmland.

The CPR had attracted 185 Hungarian families to the Qu’Appelle Valley as early as 1885. By the turn of the century, the CPR was using posters, excursions with editors, colonization companies, and, later on, even film promotions. Its booklet, The Last Best West, may not have been a “best-seller,” but it drew the immigrants.

By 1920 the West had welcomed two million new settlers — a dramatic rise from the 400,000 in 1901. But not all were welcome. Non-whites were turned away through such devices as the Chinese head tax, agreements with foreign governments (Japan), the continuous journey requirement (south Asians), and medical “exams” (African-Americans).[2]

Townsite locations had little to do with geography and more to do with the simple economics of moving grain. During the days of horse-drawn grain wagons and wretched roads (even then), the distance that the horses could endure was about twelve to fifteen kilometres. And so that is how the railways located their towns. The grain companies would erect their elevators at these intervals, and here, too, the railways located their stations, around which they laid out the towns. While all townsites required at least a seven-hundred-metre passing track, alternate towns also included a water tower, section house, and a 350-metre business siding.

Townsites were usually identical, with a grid network of streets. If the main street did not run directly back from the station, it sometimes ran parallel to the tracks. A standard plan devised by Sandford Fleming depicted a grid, but one in which the streets were laid out diagonally to the tracks. Towns like Indian Head and North Battleford, both in Saskatchewan, adopted this layout.

Although the historic station is now boarded up, the tracks in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, remain in use as a divisional point

The railways also specifically dictated how the towns would develop. Streets were to be twenty metres wide, with no space specifically allocated for businesses worth less than $1,000. In fact, the railways always ensured that the prime locations went to banks and hotels. The bank buildings were often prefabricated in British Columbia and shipped in pieces to be reassembled on the main street. Even the street names were often dictated by the railways, with sometimes imaginative results (mentioned later in the section on names).

Railways had the ability to dictate the land-use pattern, especially in large cities. Such tactics as donating parcels of land for hospitals, police stations, and town halls, and the laying out of upscale residential areas such as Mount Royal and Sunalta in Calgary, all helped direct the urban shape. The Grand Trunk Pacific went even further and introduced a crude form of zoning in its townsites.

Often, the railways provided the only parks in the little villages, in the form of station gardens. To challenge the notion that the Prairies were little more than desert, the railway companies established nurseries that provided plants and shrubs to the station agents. Some the more impressive gardens in the Prairies were to be found in places like Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat.

Because the steam engines could only travel 150 kilometres before refuelling, larger towns known as divisional points were established at these intervals. Such centres enjoyed larger or more decorative stations, bunkhouses for the train crews, roundhouses, and coal docks. Where two or more rail lines converged, the town grew even larger — places like Regina, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat, Yorkton, Melville, Prince Albert, and Edmonton, all of which developed into important rail hubs.

The peak period of the smaller prairie towns was between 1920 and 1930. During this time, the CNR had assumed control of the bankrupt CNo and GTP and began to add more branch lines. To compete the CPR had to follow suit, but with the Depression and a long period of drought, village growth stagnated, and once-bustling communities began to wither.

Following the Second World War, cars and trucks began to replace rail travel. Steam locomotives were shunted into scrap yards as the railways rolled out their new diesel engines. This meant that trains could be longer, and there would be fewer of them. Diesels could travel farther with less fuel and, importantly, no water. This eliminated many of the railway functions that the towns and villages depended on, such as water towers, coal docks, and even stations themselves. With greater distances between divisional stops, every other divisional town lost those functions. Roundhouses and bunkhouses were demolished, workforces reduced.

Where tracks still exist, a number of former divisional points have retained a small workforce of railway workers. Places like Humboldt, Wilkie, Bredenbury, Medicine Hat, Wynyard, Biggar, and Melville, as well as dozens more, remain busy railway communities and have even constructed new facilities for their workforces. In other communities, such as Kerrobert, only a few sidings remain and the station sits vacant. Lanigan, Big Valley, Hanna, and Wainwright are examples of one-time divisional points where sidings have been lifted and stations closed.

In the face of truck competition, and centralization of grain elevators, many branch lines proved uneconomical and were abandoned. Stations and elevators vanished by the hundreds.

This was more than many of the little trackside towns could bear, and many shrivelled into ghost towns. Businesses were shuttered, children bussed to distant schools, and jobs fled to the cities — a situation the federal government is exacerbating by ending the Canada Wheat Board.

The Names

It seems that many of the railway companies rather enjoyed the prospect of naming the stations and the towns that they created. The Grand Trunk Pacific is well-known for alphabetizing its station names, and it managed to get through the alphabet three times in the Prairies and at least once in Ontario. The names between Winnipeg and Prince Rupert included Atwater to Zelma, Allan to Zumbro, and Bloom to Zenata.

While the Canadian Northern preferred to name its towns after its own employees and executives, it did venture into the literary world by naming the townsites between Bienfait and Maryfield, in southeastern Saskatchewan, after poets such as Lampman Browning, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Cowper, Service, Parkman, Mair, and Ryerson. After naming the town of Mozart after the great composer, the CPR set about naming streets after Liszt, Schubert, Haydn, and Wagner, among others. Loyalty to the crown also figured prominently in the CPR’s “Empress” line, with Monarch, Empress, Duchess, and Princess. Consort, Throne, Coronation, Sovereign, Veteran, and Loyal were all so-named on a line built by the CPR in 1911 to celebrate the coronation of King George V. A military-fealty theme came with Major, Ensign, Forward, Federal, and Hussar — again, all CPR towns.

Sometimes, the railways would blend provincial and even state names, coming up with such combinations as Alsask, Altario, Mankota, and Mantario.

The most common names, however, were reserved for railway employees or executives. In 1908 a special GTP train made its way across the new line, with three executives on board: Charles Melville Hayes, William Wainwright, and William Hodgins Biggar. They were seeking locations for the line’s divisional points, and it came as little surprise that those locations should bear the names Melville, Biggar, and Wainwright. The divisional point of Rivers in Manitoba was named to honour Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, chairman of the GTP’s board of directors. In at least one case, the CPR chose to spell an employee’s name backwards, Retlaw (Walter). Near Drumheller, the CPR reversed the letters of its Rosedale Junction station, calling it Eladesor Jc.

The Canadian Northern Railway, though, was the only railway to actually name a town after itself. Canora uses the first two letters from each of the railway’s three names: Ca-No-Ra.

Body parts also served as inspiration, with Elbow and Eyebrow in Saskatchewan (although Elbow referred to a bend in the river) and even the delightfully named Owlseye in Alberta and Birdtail in Manitoba. International diplomacy received its due consideration in Togo, Saskatchewan, named after the Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo, who defeated the Russian fleet at the battle of Tsushima during the Russian-Japanese war of 1904–05 (the name was chosen because of Britain’s support of Japan). The town of Mikado was also named in support of Japan. Russia, meanwhile, earned its share of recognition with the name Makaroff, after the vice-admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy during the same conflict.

Perhaps the two most intriguing communities, with regard to their names, are Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat. The latter likely derives from longer “Medicine Man’s Hat.” Oral tradition suggests that, during a battle between Cree and Blackfoot tribes, a Cree medicine man dropped his hat in the South Saskatchewan River. Taking this as a bad omen, the Cree fled the battlefield. When the Blackfoot found the hat, in celebration they named the location Medicine Hat Crossing. When the CPR arrived in 1883, it simply adopted the English translation of the local name for its station.

As early as 1857, surveyor John Palliser marked the name “Moose Jaw Bone Creek” on his map of the dry southern prairies. This likely referred either to the shape of the river at this point or that a moose’s jaw was found here. Records don’t indicate which. Again, the CPR used this existing local name when it established a divisional point here.

Cities

The concentration of railway activities turned some towns into the Prairies’ major metropolises. These included Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Calgary, often at the expense of towns with earlier promise, like Fort Macleod, Battleford, and Emerson. Major regional centres developed at Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat, Brandon, Lethbridge, Prince Albert, Red Deer, Estevan, Yorkton, and Dauphin.

Winnipeg

The forks of the Red River and the Assiniboine River had been a focal point for settlement long before the trains arrived, and indeed even before European settlers crept in. The first, of course, were the settlers of Lord Selkirk’s Red River colony, who arrived in 1813 at Douglas Point (the 5th Earl of Selkirk, Lord Selkirk’s actual name was Thomas Douglas.) At around the same time, across the river in 1818, in what is today Saint Boniface, Father Joseph Norbert Provencher was creating a Roman Catholic mission.

Steamers plied the waters of the two rivers connecting the Red River colony and the mission. Travel to eastern Canada required a journey by steamer or stage to a railhead, then taking a train through the U.S.

Railways first reached the region in 1879, when the Pembina Branch laid its tracks from Winnipeg into Grand Rapids Minnesota, upstream on the Red River. Clearly, the newly created government of the Dominion of Canada believed that an all-Canadian route was in the country’s best interests.

Following its groundbreaking in West Fort William in 1875, the CPR remained effectively stalled until the government of John A. MacDonald, the line’s main supporter, was re-elected. Eventually, in 1883, the first CPR trains began operating in Winnipeg. At first, the CPR had proposed to bridge the Red River farther downstream, at North Kildonan, but when the Winnipeg city council offered the railway company free land and tax relief, the CPR altered the route to pass through Winnipeg. Nearly 20 years would pass before the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific railways joined forces to build one of the Prairies’ grandest urban stations and lay out their yards and shops at the Forks. As it was also the home of the wheat exchange, and the capital of the new province of Manitoba, Winnipeg quickly evolved into western Canada’s “Chicago.”

Although the railways play a lesser role today in the city’s fortunes, both the CNR and the CPR maintain major marshalling yards in the city. Both companies’ grand urban stations have survived, as has the CNR hotel, the Fort Garry, although the CPR’s Royal Alexandra Hotel has not. While the CNR has moved its yards from the location, many of the early railway buildings have been converted into markets and museums, with walkways following the rail beds and bridges. Now known as the Forks, this area constitutes a popular attraction for tourists and locals alike.

Saint Boniface developed around the church and mission, as railways played a small role in the community. The Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway did, however, place its terminal here — a fine stone building that yet serves as the headquarters for that single-purpose railway.

Transcona

Transcona was one of those rare communities that depended entirely upon the railway for its economy. When Canada’s prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier at the time, decided that Canada needed yet a third major rail line across the country, a joint construction effort began. The government-owned National Transcontinental would handle the eastern portion, and the Grand Trunk affiliate, the Grand Trunk Pacific, would be responsible for the western portion. The two routes met midway at Transcona, east of Winnipeg.

Construction on Transcona and its facilities began in 1908 and was finished by 1912. By 1916 it had become Manitoba’s second-largest town; massive yards and important maintenance facilities provided work for the entire town.

Pandora and Bond Streets mark the centre of the town, where the gates to the historic “Midway” allow workers in and out of the vast network of shops. Many of the earlier railway buildings line this private street. Above the entrance, an iron gate announces transcona shops, but the site is off limits without special permission to enter. Outside the gates at this intersection are two of the earlier places of accommodation for the workers: a boarding house next to Transcona Television and the Pandora Inn, originally the Palma Hotel. The Transcona Historical Museum is in the 1926 Bank of Toronto building a block away. The town’s oldest bank, however, is the former Canadian Bank of Commerce, the prairie standby, built in 1915. Both are located on Regent Street.[3]

Regina

As the CPR continued building its tracks westward, it originally intended to cross the Wascana Creek farther north, closer to Fort Qu’Appelle, where a Hudson’s Bay post had already attracted the nucleus of a small settlement. However, after land speculators had acquired many of the key properties, the CPR — with no fanfare — moved the alignment farther south to Pile o’ Bones Creek, so-named for the mass slaughter of buffalo in the area, now Wascana Creek (the name is from the Cree word Oskana, meaning “bones”). The flatter terrain here promised to make track-laying easier.

Another factor was Edgar Dewdney, lieutenant governor for the Northwest Territories, who made the decision to relocate the capital of the territories from Battleford to the new railway alignment. It may only be coincidence that Dewdney was part of a syndicate that owned a nearby parcel of land, but this drove the railway to actually locate its station site farther north from the creek where Dewdney’s land was located. Dewdney nonetheless chose the creek as the location of the new legislative buildings and his official residence. Finally, the railway further snubbed the landowners of Regina by rejecting it as its divisional point in favour of Moose Jaw.

Saskatoon

Saskatoon’s origins lay not with the railways but with the temperance movement. In 1883, responding to government incentives to settle the west, a Methodist temperance group boarded a train and headed for Moose Jaw, and from there they travelled north to the banks of the North Saskatchewan River and created their temperance community.

In 1898 the first railway arrived in the form of the Qu’Appelle, Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railway (QLL&S), which located its station on the other side of the river from the existing settlement. Naturally, growth shifted to site of the station. In 1906 the CNo assumed control of the QLL&S and began to build its line from Saskatoon to Calgary, locating its Saskatoon station at the west end of 2nd Street. The CNR later replaced the building, adding the castle-like Bessborough Hotel at the opposite end of the street. In 1908 the CPR arrived and established a village known as Sutherland. It would then cross the North Saskatchewan River on a high level bridge and build a grand station. With rail lines converging on the booming community, Saskatoon developed into a major rail hub.

However, urban sprawl beginning in the 1950s has greatly diminished the influence of the railway on the city’s landscape. In the 1960s, the CNR relocated its downtown station to the fringes of the city, and in its original place now stands a downtown mall. The facade of the mall is a replica of the Canadian Northern station. It faces east along 2nd Street, where the CNR’s former Bessborough Hotel dominates. In between, a number of heritage businesses line the street, which itself has been turned into a pedestrian mall featuring cafes and restaurants, with streetscaping such as benches and trees.

Edmonton

Alberta’s capital did not have its origins rooted in the railways. Fort Edmonton, on the South Saskatchewan River, was established for the fur trade, and travel was by steamer on the river. When the Calgary and Edmonton Railway did arrive, it located its station on the south side of the river, around which the town of Strathcona developed. Here, in 1891, the CPR (then the Calgary and Edmonton Railway) added several buildings at Whyte and 103rd Street, including the station, section houses, engine house, and a hotel called the Edmonton House. It was renamed in 1899 when the town changed its own name from South Edmonton to Strathcona.

It was not until 1913, when the high level bridge crossed the deep valley, that the CPR added a new urban station at Jasper Avenue and 109th Street in Edmonton itself. Earlier, the CNo’s builders, Mackenzie and Mann, had obtained the charter of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway, using it to obtain federal funding for a bridge across the river to link the C&E with Edmonton.

In 1905 the CNo had completed its own line from Winnipeg and built a station at 101st Street and 104th Avenue, with its yards to the west of that location. In 1928 the CNR replaced that classic station with a more modern structure, which in 1966 gave way to a CN office tower nicknamed the “CN Tower.”

All evidence of Edmonton’s earlier railway heritage has gone from the downtown. The CPR tore down its station in 1978 and the CN has relocated its office tower operations to the Walker yards. Only the Hotel Macdonald, at the south end of 101st Street, reminds us of Edmonton’s once-vital days of rail.

With the removal of the CPR tracks over the High Level Bridge in 1995, Strathcona has reverted to its role as the CPR’s northern terminal and has once more become Edmonton’s main display of railway heritage. Here, the 1908 CPR station still dominates the townscape with its prominent polygonal tower above the operator’s bay window. Close by, the historic Strathcona Hotel complements the station’s railway heritage. Much of the downtown core, too, dates to the days when Strathcona grew with the railway. A replica of the first C&E station is located on 86th Avenue and houses a museum. Even the CPR itself has constructed a new crew facility south of the station in a style which is reminiscent of a heritage station.

All of this heritage was threatened in the 1970s when the city proposed a short-sighted plan to level much of the old town to build a freeway to Edmonton. In response, the citizens formed the Old Strathcona Foundation and succeeded in having the area, with thirty heritage structures, designated a heritage district. In addition, fourteen additional properties have received individual designations. As a result, Old Strathcona has become a busy attraction for tourists and locals alike. A railway heritage lives on.

Lethbridge

Despite its heavy dependence on the CPR, Lethbridge owes its origins to what lay beneath: coal. The early Siksika First Nations people knew of the exposed seam, calling it the “black rocks.” As Canada’s first finance minister, Alexander Galt was anxious to encourage settlers to move to what were then called the Northwest Territories. His son, Elliot Torrance Galt, familiar with the outcropping, urged his father to open a mine.

In 1881 Galt founded the Northwestern Coal and Navigation Company to begin the operation. First known as Coalbanks, the community grew and became the town of Lethbridge. The coal was at first shipped out by steamer, but the shallow waters made that method somewhat perilous. To facilitate the movement, the CPR arrived in 1905 and established a divisional point in Lethbridge with one the Prairies’ most impressive railway stations. Today, Lethbridge has evolved into southwestern Alberta’s main city, offering health, educational, and municipal services to a wide area of the province. While the CPR maintains a yard in Kipp, north of the city, the grand station has become a health centre. It and the soaring railway trestle over the Oldman River have become heritage landmarks and celebrate the former prominence of the CPR.

Moose Jaw

To confound the land speculators in Regina, the CPR rejected the new territorial capital as a divisional point and opted instead for Moose Jaw, sixty kilometres to the west. With its several hundred kilometres of yard tracks, Moose Jaw had no fewer than ten rail lines radiating out at its peak. The Italianate 1928 CPR station, the third on the site, with its grand tower and plaza, dominated the main street and the urban skyline.

Such a town, with a large and virile male population, naturally invited members of the world’s oldest profession to set up shop, and River Street, a block north of the station, grew into a row of well-frequented hotels, among them the Brunswick Hotel.[4]

During the 1990s, the city council designated the Brunswick, Moose Jaw’s oldest hotel, as a heritage property and installed decorative sidewalks and street lighting, as well as a wrought-iron gateway, to announce the entrance to River Street’s historic hotel row. But in some communities, development can trump heritage, and the plans of a developer to erect a boutique hotel convinced the town that heritage didn’t matter, and the historic block of hotels was demolished. As of late 2011, River Street remained a series of parking lots, although the iron gate and decorative light standards still stand bizarrely in place.

Moose Jaw’s main street remains dominated by the CPR station.

Tunnels discovered beneath the streets fueled speculation that they either were part of a prohibition-era rum-running operation (Moose Jaw was linked to Capone-era Chicago by means of the Soo Line) or were hideaways for Chinese railway workers. And so, to promote this unexpected story, the city now offers “Tunnels of Moose Jaw” tours with the nearby “Capone’s Hideaway” Motel, a ’30s-era bus, and a Capone-style yellow Rolls-Royce automobile to round out the image.

Although the CPR’s grand station has closed its doors to passenger service, it is now “Station Square,” dominated by a liquor store, and still stands grandly at the end of the main street. Beyond the station, the CPR still maintains an extensive area of sorting yards, although fewer lines radiate from the city now.

Calgary

Before the CPR arrived on the banks of the Bow River, Calgary was little more than a small settlement clustered around Fort Calgary. The first railway station was added a distance away from the settlement, forcing the few merchants at the fort to uproot and re-establish themselves by the station. That first building was a mere converted boxcar but was quickly replaced with a more substantial structure. In 1912 the CPR established its Ogden yards across the Bow River, and the city became a major repair centre for the railway.

Downtown, the CPR added is elegant Palliser Hotel, beside which it built a solid three-storey station, the fourth on the site. A busy downtown evolved along Stephen Avenue, two blocks from the station. When that station was removed, passenger service moved into the ground level of the hotel.

Neither the CNo nor the GTP built stations of their own, moving instead into existing structures — the CNo into a Catholic parish hall and the GTP into a Mountie barracks. With the elimination of VIA Rail’s passenger service by the Mulroney government in 1990, the station facilities closed down. Today, tourists board the magnificent Royal Canadian Pacific tour train through a new facility in the renovated former post office. The CNo station still stands but is now a ballet school, although its former role had no influence on the urban form around it.

The Palliser Hotel still offers luxury accommodation, while the earlier station grounds are now the site of the Calgary Tower. Stephen Avenue continues to reflect its roots in Calgary’s rail-related growth and is now a designated heritage district. Here, a pedestrian mall passes historic structures, and heritage plaques recount those early days of rail.

The Ghost Towns

The prairie towns were born of the railways and died with them. They dotted the main lines and the branch lines every ten to fifteen kilometres. Most of the smaller communities remained utterly dependent upon the trains that carried their residents to visit other towns, that carried their mail, and most importantly that hauled their grain. Even after the Canadian National Railway took over the failed Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern Railway lines, it added still more branch lines.

Depression and drought, however, took their toll, and branch lines began to become uneconomical. But the big move to abandon rail operations came in the 1950s and 60s with the switch to diesel from coal and the advent of automated signalling. Larger grain companies moved to more centralized terminals, and many of the elevators fell into disuse. Improved roads turned most people to cars and away from rail travel. All of these factors combined to doom the little railway towns, and very quickly they shriveled to a mere handful of people or emptied completely.

Strewn across the Prairies and along the vacant rail beds, there today lies a litany of ghost towns too numerous to list in this volume, although there are some concentrations. The southern portions of Saskatchewan harbour what may even be considered a “ghost town” line, with a string of such desolate places. Others stand out for retaining a certain railway feature, such as a grain elevator or even a station.

To celebrate the ghost town heritage of the Prairies, however, is too painful for those who had to surrender homes, businesses, friends, and indeed even lifestyles, and few places wish to acknowledge their status. Proposals by the “Harper” government to kill the wheat board will create even more. Surprisingly, then, there are some that have chosen to promote their ghost towns.

Alberta

Heinsburg

This quiet hamlet, on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River north of Lloydminister, bills itself as Alberta’s “liveliest” ghost town. It is a community that has been working to celebrate its railway heritage. While the main street of empty storefronts puts it in the “ghost town” category, the preservation of both the village station and the wooden railway water tower underlie a lively community.

Heinsburg began life as a ferry crossing. It was not until 1928, however, well after the Canadian National Railway had taken over the bankrupt Canadian Northern, that the tracks finally reached Heinsburg, making it that line’s terminus. With its two grain elevators, Heinsburg grew into a focal point for the many First Nations and European settlements to the north and east.

Dieselization put the tower out of use in the 1960s, and road improvements rendered the line itself uneconomical, and, in 1983, the tracks were lifted. Today, the community is a terminus of a different sort, being the jumping-off point for the popular Iron Horse Rail Trail (described in a different chapter). Partly as a result, the water tower and the 1950s-era Canadian National railway station are preserved on their original sites. Meanwhile, lurking on the once main street, the sagging ghostly shells of former businesses remind us of Heinsburg’s days as a vital rail terminal.

“Rowleywood”

The ghost town of Rowley in central Alberta gave itself this ironic nickname because of its role in such Hollywood blockbusters as Bye Bye Blues and in various documentaries and commercials. The quiet community has only a few occupied homes, while the main street buildings, although vacant, are kept in repair. In fact, the last Saturday of each month, the community hosts a pizza night. The town has also managed to retain its Canadian Northern railway station and three Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevators. Buildings that formerly served as a bank and hospital still stand on these silent streets, and the site is now known as the Yesteryear Artifacts Museum.

Wayne

Tucked into the gullies of Alberta’s Drumheller badlands, Wayne may not declare itself to be a ghost town, but it doesn’t hide the fact either. What remains of its once busy main streets lies scenically at the foot of the layered, eroded wall of Rose Deer Valley. Here, in 1912, the Rose Deer Coal Mining Company began to access the coal deposits, which were intermingled with the ancient eroded bedrock of the badlands. Soon, the town of Wayne could count 1,500 residents, most of them working at the coal mines. A small station stood by the tracks, which ran down the main street. By the 1930s, the coal mines were closing down, and by the 1950s, only a handful of residents remained in the town. But the still-functioning Rose Deer Hotel’s cowboy-style Last Chance Saloon, with its prairie-style facade, contains photos that recount the town’s early heyday.

The authenticity of the saloon and street has lured Hollywood filmmakers to the site, including the makers of Shanghai Noon, starring Jackie Chan. Each summer, the ghost town comes to life for the Wayne motorcycle rally. Otherwise-empty streets and a few scattered homes and cabins remain, as do a few samples of railway equipment from the coal-mining days.

One of the more scenic of the prairie ghost towns is the former coal town of Wayne, lying below the gullies of the Drumheller Badlands.

Dorothy

Of the thirty-four working coal mines and more than 130 registered mines in the Drumheller Valley — mines which yielded fifty-seven million tons of coal — the best preserved is the Atlas Coal Mine. It closed in 1979 and is now a National Historic Site. Here, the old structures and equipment adorn the museum and interpretive centre.

At the ghost town of Dorothy, a derelict grain elevator rises above the valley floor. When the CPR arrived in the 1920s, Dorothy grew to 150 residents and contained a station, store, school, two churches, and three grain elevators. Those photogenic churches are set against a backdrop of the colourful layers of the eroded Badlands gullies, while most of the few village streets are now silent. Dorothy is sometimes described as one of Alberta’s most photogenic ghost towns.

Heinsburg bills itself as a “lively” ghost town, due to its successful efforts to preserve the station and water tower.

Endiang

This “almost” ghost town near Hanna celebrated its one hundred years of existence in 2010 by erecting a heritage plaque along its quiet streets. One of the few structures to survive the rail lines’ closure is the Endiang Trading Company, which existed from 1925 to 1982. Today, it has become the Our Home Kitchen tea room and is the only early building to remain on what was once a bustling main street, which was dominated by a two-storey CNR station at the end. The grain elevator lasted until 1983 and was the hamlet’s last link with its rail roots. The railway roadbed today is only scarcely visible.

The elevators are now gone, as is most of the main street, leaving it with a ghost-town look.

Retlaw

Here is another example of a ghost town that seems to celebrate its heritage. “Retlaw” is Walter spelled backwards, to honour the CPR official Walter Baker. By the 1920s, the town’s main street could boast of a pool hall, hotel, shops, and a station. But the nearby town of Vauxhall was closer to a new irrigation project, and Retlaw fell silent, with nothing left today save a small handful of vacant buildings and foundations. The church has been restored, and many foundations now have historic plaques to help visitors visualize the town’s heyday and appreciate its heritage.

Manitoba

Mowbray

This little Manitoba ghost town on the North Dakota border is at the end of the line in more ways than one. In 1902 a branch of the CPR extended to this border, where it built one of its large Western Line Stations. Opposite the tracks was a modest main street of boomtown-style stores and a pair of grain elevators. Children from North Dakota would stroll across the unfenced border to attend Mowbray’s Boundary School and then back home for lunch. The little main street also contained a general store, blacksmith’s shop, pool room, barber shop, and dance hall. The Mowbray Hotel, which stood near the station, did a booming business with train passengers, especially during the days of U.S. prohibition. However, American border patrols, combined with the local temperance movement, brought business to a standstill.

During the 1930s, train service was reduced to one per week and then abandoned altogether. Today, all that remains are three vacant houses and, surprisingly, the station, which is now a neatly tended dwelling, still displaying the CPR red paint and the hand-painted name on the end. Even though children no longer cross the border to attend Mowbray’s school, it survives today as a provincial heritage landmark, its furnishings still intact. Opened in 1887, class was finally dismissed in 1956. But don’t wander too close to the invisible border with our southern neighbours — you may find yourself peering up at a Homeland Security helicopter, even in a Manitoba ghost town.

Port Nelson

At 810 kilometres in length, the Hudson Bay Railway has been around since the 1930s and carries the many vital supplies that the roadless communities in northern Manitoba require, as well as more major commodities such as wheat and mining and petroleum products.

Having an ocean port on Hudson’s Bay had long been an ambition of both the Manitoba and Canadian governments, but controversy swirled over whether the port would be located at Churchill, the present location, or at Port Nelson. While Churchill was farther and tundra needed to be crossed, Port Nelson offered a superior townsite but an inferior harbour. In 1912 the federal government of Robert Borden decided on Port Nelson and work began the following year. To help overcome the harbour limitations, an artificial island was built and a seventeen-span trestle extended to it. Port Nelson became a busy construction camp, with upwards of one thousand workers housed in its bunkhouses.

By 1918 the war had halted any further construction. With costs of constructing the port climbing to a staggering $6.5 million, an inquiry in 1919 learned that, despite the decision of the government, the project engineer had never approved of Port Nelson as the terminus. In 1927 the government reversed its decision and chose Churchill instead. By 1928 Port Nelson had become a ghost town, with the engineering office, wireless building, and several homes standing vacant. Meanwhile, the port of Churchill was completed in 1929 and trains began running in 1931. Today at Port Nelson, concrete wharfs, foundations, and a seventeen-span trestle still stand as a testimony to the folly of the original decision.

The CPR’s Ghost Town Line

It has been said by ghost-town hunters that to find such places one need only to follow a prairie branch line. While that may be a hit-and-miss endeavour, there is one line that does yield a greater abundance of abandoned places, and that is a southern CPR line that stretched from Souris in Manitoba to Stirling in Alberta.

Construction began in Souris in 1890 and continued to Reston, where a former CPR engine house yet stands. Then, from Reston, the route continued in 1900, reaching Forward and Assiniboia in 1910. By 1914 it had reached Attawan in southwestern Saskatchewan. The western section had been completed from Stirling to Manyberries in 1915, with the final link being broached in 1922. With rolling grasslands and cattle ranches, the route was not particularly profitable, and by the early 2000s, no tracks remained between Foremost and Consul. The lifting of the tracks and the disappearance of the grain elevators resulted in many of the little railway communities withering, many disappearing altogether.

In Saskatchewan, some of the more photogenic ghost towns include Maleval, Mayronne, Khedive, and Vidora, which had its own electrical grid and now consists of a pair of vacant structures on private land. Robsart could boast of its own hospital, town, council, and thirty businesses. The vacant hospital still stands, as do a number of abandoned main street stores. Being close to the American border, Senate and Govenlock enjoyed a brief period of prosperity during the days of prohibition. Whiskey would arrive by train to the Govenlock Hotel, which held a festive occasion known as the Bootleggers Ball. Today, only a plaque survives to mark the town. Scotsguard has fared a little better. Known as “Little Chicago,” it could once boast a population of 350, with a hotel, theatre, town hall, and six elevators. That had plunged to six residents by 1987. A few derelict buildings, including a church, are scattered among the vacant streets.

Manyberries, Alberta, while described by some as a “ghost town,” remains a populated place. The station, restored as a house with track and a caboose in front, still stands at the end of a now nearly vacant main street, although the Ranchman’s Inn can still offer lodging and a meal. The area’s ranching heritage is reflected in the many cattle brands that decorate the inn’s walls. Orion, the next on the line, used to boast of a main street with three general stores, a pool hall and hotel, as well as grain elevators. Today, Orion provides many vacant buildings and overgrown lots, as does Nemiskam, while Skiff and Wrentham fall within the “partial” ghost town category. Notably, Skiff retains its elevator, where a string of boxcars and a caboose stand on a siding. Foremost, today’s eastern end of rail, serves as a busy regional centre. (It is worth pausing in Etzikam, not a ghost town, to view the rather unusual windmill museum).

The main street of Manyberries, Alberta, still ends at the back door of its preserved CPR station.

With the abandonment of hundreds of kilometres of branch lines and the removal of the elevators, nearly every rail line can count dozens of ghost towns, or hamlets that resemble them, with overgrown streets, vacant false-fronted stores, and sagging houses. Few prairie ghost towns retain any component of their railway roots. However, lurking within a few of these ghostly remnants — places in Saskatchewan like Alvena, Jedburgh, and Parkerview — are grain elevators and stations. Mowbray in Manitoba and Manyberries, Heinsburg, and Rowley in Alberta are ghost towns, or partially so, and they retain their stations in their original locations. In Saskatchewan, grain elevators still stand silently in ghost towns like Fusilier, Sovereign, Bents, and Peterson; in Alberta, Rowley and Dorothy; and Brandenwarden in Manitoba.

Heritage Towns

All across the Prairies, a number of railway towns are becoming heritage attractions on their own, communities like Radville, Vilna, Strathcona, Ogema, and Empress. In Alberta more than two dozen communities have undertaken main street upgrades under that province’s Main Street program. Manitoba’s Hometown Main Street Enhancements program helps fund streetscape improvements in communities across that province. In April 2011, the province of Saskatchewan announced a similar program. Although such improvements may not necessarily incorporate rail heritage features, nearly all main streets in the Prairies owed their origins to the railways and the stations that stood at the foot of those streets. Some of the more exciting heritage communities are listed here.

Empress, Alberta

Located in the Badlands of Alberta, Empress began as a CPR divisional town on what became known as the “Empress” line, named in honour of the late Queen Victoria, who had been the empress of India. With its small but distinctive station and divisional facilities, the town developed into a busy community. But the station closed in 1972, and the tracks were lifted a few years later. The town was on the verge of becoming a ghost town.

Then, it was “discovered.” A number of artists have located their studios here or nearby. Sagebrush Studios has moved three historic churches onto its property to serve as additional studios. Another, the Knarls and Knots studio, features handmade furniture. The most active of the new businesses is “That’s Empressive” — a tea room and gift shop situated in the former Bank of Commerce, which was built in 1919 and remained in business until the CPR closed its divisional point operations; for a time it served as a boarding house. The TD moved into the building, which remained a bank until 1997, when a jeweller bought it for his studio. The building was then purchased by Pat and Ross Donaldson to sell artwork. Since then it has become the focus of the community, with its tea room and gift items, as well as being the town’s only convenience store.[5]

Radville’s main street contains a heritage bank and a heritage hotel, as well as the preserved station at the end of the street.

Vilna, Alberta

Shortly after taking over the CNo and the GTP, the newly formed CNR began to expand into the area northeast of Edmonton to help open the area to settlement, especially for soldiers returning from the First World War. At the site of today’s Vilna, the CNR established a station and a community quickly grew. The main street contained a hardware store, bank, hotel, post office, and a pool hall, among other businesses.

Despite the removal of the railway line, Vilna’s main street has remained largely intact. In fact, so much so that the Alberta Main Street Program has helped fund the street’s revitalization. More than twenty main street buildings have been improved or fully restored, many dating back to the village’s boom years in the 1920s to the early ’30s.

But the best known of the main street buildings is the pool hall and barbershop. Built in 1921 by Steve Pawluk, it remained in use as a pool hall and barber shop until 1996. In that year, it was purchased by the Friends of the Vilna Pool Hall and Barbershop Historical Society, who succeeded in having it declared a provincial heritage property. The interior still retains its barber shop and pool hall fixtures, making it Alberta’s oldest pool hall. Although no railway structures have survived, the railway right of way forms part of the popular Iron Horse rail trail. Vilna’s heritage main street attracts many day-use visitors from places like Edmonton. It goes to show that heritage, when preserved, can be an economical benefit — a notion too many prairie communities don’t seem to get.

Old Strathcona, Alberta

The Old Strathcona heritage district of Edmonton owes its origins to the 1891 refusal of the CPR to build its Calgary and Edmonton line over the South Saskatchewan River. As a result, the town grew up around the CPR station and its yards. The CNo acquired the charter of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway and built the “low level” bridge over the river, finally connecting tracks on both sides. With the opening of the High Level bridge in 1913, the CPR itself crossed the mighty valley and built its own station in Edmonton, and Strathcona became part of the city.

Many of the early buildings have survived, and today five city blocks have been designated as a heritage district, with a number of buildings along Whyte Avenue dating from the railway’s heyday. Nearly two dozen individual buildings are designated as well, including the Gainers Block, the Princess Theatre, the old post office, and the Douglas Block.

Two of the more prominent structures are the Strathcona Hotel, built in 1891 as the Edmonton House, and the massive CPR station itself, built in 1909. With its polygonal tower above the operator’s bay, it was one of only five like it across the Prairies. A replica of the first C&E station is now a museum on 86th Avenue NW and contains a working telegraph, just as was used when the original station was in operation. Similarly, Okotoks has revitalized its “Old Town” and has incorporated a gallery and tourism office into its unusual CPR station, located on North Railway Street.

Ogema, Saskatchewan

This community began around 1912, when the CPR laid its tracks through the area and planned the site for a town. Since it was the end of the tracks at that time, the inhabitants decided on Omega as a name, as that is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. However, a post office already had that name, and so, with a minor shift in letters, it became Ogema, which is also the Cree word for “big chief.”

Ogema is a town that actively celebrates its roots. In addition to a CPR station, which has been relocated from a farm back to the end of the main street, many heritage buildings line the main street, including a rare example of a brick firewall halfway along. This was built following a devastating fire in 1915 in order to prevent future fires from spreading so rapidly. Opposite is a brick fire station, erected in part for the same reason. One of the more unusual structures, another rare building, is a 1925 BA “filling” station, now a municipal heritage property. The 1923 butcher store is now the C & C Supermarket. The station will become the boarding point for Saskatchewan’s newest tour train on the Southern Prairie Railway.

Radville, Saskatchewan

Here in southern Saskatchewan lies yet another heritage treasure: Radville, with historic buildings lining a main street that ends, as it should, at the back of the CNo station. In 1909 the CNo, which was busily building yet another of its branch lines, chose Radville as a divisional point. It erected a water tower, roundhouse, and a standard class-2 divisional-point station. (The railways classified their stations by the importance of their functions. A class 2 was a larger “divisional” station with sorting yards and maintenance facilities, as well as the usual waiting rooms.)

In choosing Radville, the CNo bypassed another community, Brooking, which had hoped to attract the divisional functions. Today, that community is a vanished ghost town. While the Radville station has become a museum, a number of other heritage buildings stand as well. Most prominent among them is the Canadian Bank of Commerce, now the CIBC. It was prefabricated in British Columbia and assembled in Radville in 1911. Across the street, the Empire Hotel, now the Long Creek Saloon, dates to the same year. The Radville Senior Citizens club occupies what was the Province Theatre, built in 1925, which lost its second floor as a result of a fire in 1943. The tourism office on the main street has prepared a walking tour of this historic railway town.

Rouleau, Saskatchewan

While Rouleau still retains a grain elevator, it is not the town’s name that appears on the side. Rather it is “Dog River,” the name that made Rouleau famous. In 2003 Tisdale-born comedian Brent Butt and CTV location scouts selected this prairie town as the setting for the popular TV sitcom Corner Gas. And it fills the bill. With its grain elevator, its flat treeless prairie landscape, and a modest main street, it became Canada’s ultimate typical prairie town. Although the cast and crew have since departed, the grain elevator has retained its fictional name, as have at least two of the iconic fictional buildings on the main street, namely the “Dog River Hotel” and the “police station.” Corner Gas aficionados continue to arrive at the police station, which is now a snack bar and gift shop selling Corner Gas paraphernalia. The set, with the gas station and The Ruby diner, was still there in late 2011, but it’s actually a kilometre west of the town, and The Ruby’s sign is now in the gift shop. Rouleau itself developed along the CPR’s Soo Line in 1895 and prospered thanks to the high quality of the surrounding farm land. The former Rouleau CPR station is now a residence on a village side street.

Corner Gas fans will recognize these Rouleau landmarks as being the set for the popular TV show.