Trains of Recollection / Drawn from Fifty Years of Railway Service in Scotland and Canada, and told to Arthur Hawkes

by D. B. Hanna

We have seen how the Davis firm had the charter for the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company—and did not finance it. The Manitoba South Eastern was a project that seemed still-born. We connected with Lake Superior by buying the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western—the Poverty, Agony, Distress and Want, as you may remember.

Eastern connection with the prairies was effected on the legs of the Ontario and Rainy River Railway, the original authority for which was held by Port Arthur men like D. F. Burk and Jim Conmee, the latter of whom became well known as far east as Toronto through his membership of the Legislature, and the Conmee Act.

There were two heralds of what was to happen in the eastern section of Ontario and in the farther West, which the uninformed onlooker supposed were peculiar phenomena indeed—the disordered offspring of some misguided promoter with an itch to lay rails which began Nowhere, and ended in a less important place. Nobody now hears of the James Bay Railway—I mean the railway of that designation, and not a railway to James Bay. Not so many years ago, though, flat cars bearing the name were seen in the Don Valley. Another railway whose name has gone the way of forgetfulness was the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific. Not long since, a facetious writer, having the fact though not the name of this enterprise in his mind, described it as the Edmonton, Yukon and Aurora Borealis.

It was customary when railway charters were legislated into existence to provide that construction must start within two years, or the charter would lapse. Once construction began, it was comparatively easy to induce Parliament to prolong the charter’s life, however fine the thread on which it seemed to hang. Toronto men obtained a charter for a railway to James Bay, and hoped to build it. Among their assets was a secretary, W. H. Moore, whose accomplishments included an assistant editorship of the Monetary Times, a lectureship at Toronto University, and a call to the Ontario bar. The steel approach to the Bay lagged in view of the Ontario Government’s undertaking of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, the construction of which produced the discovery of the Cobalt silver mines. The James Bay charter was acquired by Mackenzie and Mann. Mr. Moore moved with it, and in 1904 became secretary of the Canadian Northern, and so remained till the great change.

To sustain the charter, the James Bay Railway was begun on a four-mile line from the Grand Trunk, southeast of Parry Sound, into that town. Parry Sound was off the rails of the old Canada Atlantic, which ends at Depot Harbour. The four miles of the James Bay line gave the town its first railway connection with the world. Regular service was maintained, with the engineer, Jack Findlay, as practically the general manager, passenger and freight traffic agent, superintendent of operation, and repairer-in-chief of the whole system. Jack was a great success; and I have sometimes thought that, if he had been on administrative duty in his youth, when his scholastic education could have been somewhat improved, he would have risen high in the service.

All the time Jack was running the James Bay Railway no problems in motive power reached the head office. He kept his engine in wonderful shape, looked after whatever repairs became necessary, and was as cheerful as Mark Tapley. But there came a day when the Canadian Northern Ontario swallowed the James Bay, and connected Parry Sound with Toronto, at James Bay Junction. Then Jack must have a round house and his faithful engine must be repaired by other hands. From being an all-round genius he became a trade unionist, in spirit and in truth. Those who were associated with him when he kept time on a four-mile system always think of him with grateful joy; and if ever there is a reunion, on any plane, of the pioneers of the Canadian National System, Jack must be there, of indefeasible right.

The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific, was reminiscent of the Klondyke rush; and a steel record of the seeming diversion of Horace Greeley’s gospel which appeared at first to be the motive of the Mackenzie-Mann ventures into railway-owning company. “Go north,” was the impulse of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal venture. “Go north” was the urge of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific. There is something peculiarly fateful about this pull to the Aurora. From one of the eminent journalists whom we conveyed through the West, it produced a fascinating discourse on “To the Pole by Rail”. It has made Stefansson famous. Through its possession of him it has brought Wrangel Island into the dreams of an aerial and submarine route that will shorten travelling between London and Tokio by seven thousand miles. But operating surpluses haven’t yet been common to farmost northern railway transportation. The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific was like the James Bay—it held territory, and it produced a short line that gave a great city its first railway station.

The Calgary and Edmonton on which Mackenzie and Mann were contractors, ended at Strathcona, across the noble valley of the Saskatchewan from Edmonton, then almost hidden among the poplar groves of the northern bank. To build a steel bridge across the valley was a very expensive job. Indeed, at that time to go right into Edmonton would not add enough to the revenue derivable from Edmonton to pay interest on the cost. Competition was a dozen years, and hundreds of miles away.

To hold the E.Y. and P. charter, then, our people built a line eight miles long, from Strathcona to Edmonton, going down a long ravine, crossing the river by a team-and-train bridge, which was in large part a public work, climbing into Edmonton, past the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort and the site of the future Parliament Buildings, and getting into the straggling town through lands that were very much of a backyard, but which have developed into property that is now worth millions of dollars to the Canadian people.