Rails Across the Prairies. Ron Brown
luring a fresh influx of farm settlers.
The Unusual Brooks Aqueduct
East of the bustling town of Brooks, Alberta, and a few kilometres south of the busy Trans-Canada Highway, stretches one the Prairies’ most unusual railway structures — the Brooks Aqueduct.
Completed in 1914, the aqueduct extended more than three kilometres from the Bassano dam, and at the time it was the largest concrete structure in the world. In all, more than three hundred labourers poured nineteen thousand cubic metres of reinforced concrete, and they even included a siphon, which carried the water under the CPR line and back up again. In operation the aqueduct could move seventy cubic metres of water per second along the 3.2-kilometre system.
Within three years, pieces of concrete were falling off. To remedy this, a material known as gunnite was added, and by 1934 rehabilitation of the aqueduct was complete. But by then, the effects of the depression were hampering the CPR’s ability to continue to operate the aqueduct, and a farmer’s cooperative was formed to operate the valuable watering system. It had, after all, turned one of the driest parts of Alberta into one of its most fertile. In 1969 the federal and provincial governments assumed operations of the Eastern Irrigation District, and upon discovering that the aqueduct was quickly deteriorating, they decided to demolish it. But the new management board for the district recognizing the heritage value of this rare structure and lobbied to retain it, fencing if off to protect the public.
The Brooks Aqueduct forms an unusual image on the landscape but was vital to irrigation in this dry corner of the prairies.
Until 1979 the aqueduct had irrigated the vast area, but finally the water trickled to a halt. Just four years later, it was declared a National Historic Site, and today it is an interpretive centre with early photographs to show this remarkable feat of construction to astonished visitors. A pathway follows the remaining portion of the aqueduct to the west, while to the east the CPR now passes through a gap in the structure.
The Bassano Dam
Equally impressive, however, is the Bassano dam, constructed to provide the water for the aqueduct. Located eight kilometres southwest of the town of Bassano, the 2,100-metre long earthen dam required 567,000 cubic metres of earth to build it. The concrete centre portion is 220 metres long. The dam was refurbished in 1984, and today is almost as popular an attraction as the aqueduct itself. The site offers a viewing point and picnic facilities.
Chapter Two
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