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Celebrating the Legacy

The Canada we know today was largely built around railways, but how easily the country ignores that heritage. We demolish stations, we toss aside vital rail passenger service, and we have raised a younger generation that has never ridden a train.

Before the rails arrived in the 1830s, we were a widely dispersed population, clustered around ports, mill sites, farm hamlets, or, in the case of our First Nations, relegated to scattered settlements. But railways linked those places to the rest of Canada and provided access for everyone. As the rail network expanded, new communities were created. This growth was most notable across the Prairie provinces and through northern Ontario and Quebec, where entire towns appeared thanks to the railways. Speedy rail movement allowed the economy to boom. Rail towns became bustling commercial hubs.

Railway expansion lasted more than a century. The first trains began their work in the coal fields of Nova Scotia in the 1830s, using wooden steam engines that survive today in Stellarton’s Museum of Industry. These industrial spurs expanded into longer rail lines that opened up large tracts of eastern Canada. Major rail lines — the National Transcontinental (NTR), the Canadian Northern (CNoR), and the Canadian Pacific (CPR) — made their way west from the east coast, while regional lines like the Intercolonial (ICR), the Grand Trunk (GTR), and the Quebec Central Railways (QCR) created a spider’s web of steel throughout the hinterlands of Quebec and the Maritimes. Railway charters by the hundreds came and went, many amalgamated into or assimilated by ever-larger rail corporations. Meanwhile, the island provinces of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland (then a colony) enjoyed their own separate rail lines.

Rail lines created a special landscape. Divisional points appeared at 150 kilometre intervals to provide assembly yards for the trains, maintenance for the engines and rolling stock, and housing for railway employees. Water towers, coal chutes, grain elevators, and warehouses became part and parcel of the emerging Canadian landscape. Everything hinged upon the railways.

Charny was a major railway hub created by the Grand Trunk Railway. The large roundhouse and yards are visible in the foreground. (Photo courtesy CN Rail.)

But the face of the railways were the stations. A city’s main street often led straight up to the door of the station. Here, the rail lines put to work some the era’s leading architects to create attractive, even spectacular, station buildings intended to lure travellers from competing lines. It was here, after all, that the townsfolk picked up their mail, listened to news on the station wire, bade farewell to loved ones going to war, and, if lucky, greeted them upon their return. Everything — from mail to milk to livestock to Christmas presents — was shipped from these important points.

The decline of railways began in earnest in the 1950s. Automobiles became universal, and for families, businesses, and farms, far more adaptable and convenient than the limited schedules and routes the railways provided. Modern technology made for fewer (but larger) trains that required less maintenance and eliminated the need for stations and agents every twenty kilometres. Lines were abandoned, stations demolished, employees laid off, and passenger service virtually eliminated. Sadly, even popular tour trains were impacted by insurance rules, poor track maintenance, and ineffective marketing

Only a handful of stations survive in their original role, and these are found mostly in remote, roadless communities, such as those found in northern Quebec. Ticketing must now be done by phone or online. Except for luxurious tour trains, railway tourism opportunities are ignored. Other railway structures, once vital, have vanished from the landscape. How many water towers, coal chutes, and roundhouses survive? Scarcely any.

This work is an effort to encourage you, the reader, to celebrate the railway age — to visit the heritage railway stations that recall the golden age of rail travel. Many museums offer displays of steam engines and coaches once used to carry Canadians wherever they needed to go. Better still, board a VIA train or a tour train and enjoy a traffic-free trip. Some of eastern Canada’s most dramatic scenery comes from the seat of a train coach, not a mall-lined highway.

Even lines that are now abandoned offer an opportunity to hike, cycle, or ski the old routes on some of eastern Canada’s rail trails.

This book provides the first comprehensive exploration of the railway legacy of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, and the ways in which both the modern and the railway generation can celebrate that legacy. So, “All aboard.”