Rails Across the Prairies. Ron Brown
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