Cover
This photo taken in Sharbot Lake, Ontario, depicts the CPR’s Van Horne Station, that line’s first station style. Photo courtesy of the Dave Shaw Railway Memories Collection.
Acknowledgements
Research for this book extended over several years and many kilometres. It involved visiting railway stations from one side of Canada to the other, and ploughing through libraries, museums, and archives of all descriptions. In addition, I placed a nationwide call for former railway employees and others who had a direct connection with their stations to share their memories with me. Many replied and they are acknowledged throughout the book.
I would like especially to thank the staff of the following vital institutions and organizations for supplying photos, manuscripts, and a wide variety of railway rule books and publications. These include:
Algonquin Park Museum
Archives Nationales du Québec
British Columbia Archives
The Canadian Press
Canadian Transport Commission
City of Ottawa Archives
City of Toronto Archives
City of Vancouver Archives
CN Rail, especially Loren C. Perry, Doug MacKenzie, and Connie Romani
County of Bruce Museum
CPR Corporate Archives, especially Paul Thurston, B.C. Scott, and Nancy Battet
Glenbow Museum Archives
Gravenhurst Archives Committee
Hamilton Public Library
Heritage Scarborough
Lake of the Woods Museum
Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives
London Public Library
McMichael Canadian Collection
Medicine Hat News
Metro Toronto Library
MuchMusic, especially James Woods
Muskoka Pioneer Museum
National Archives of Canada, Picture Collection
Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum
The Oil Museum of Canada
Ontario Archives
Ontario Media Development Corporation, especially Donna Zucklinski
Ontario Ministry of Culture and Communications, especially Margo Teasdale and Richard Moorehouse
Ontario Northland Railway Archives, especially Lorne Fleece
Parks Canada, especially Lawrence Friend and Janet Martin
Provincial Archives of Alberta
Provincial Archives of Manitoba
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick
Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador
Provincial Archives of Prince Edward Island
Queen’s University Archives
Saskatchewan Archives Board
St. Lawrence Parks Commission
Sudbury Public Library
Thunder Bay Museum
Todmorden Mills Historic Park Archives
VIA Rail Canada
Victoria City Archives
Yukon Tourism, Heritage Branch
All heritage enthusiasts should be inspired by the tenacity of the late Jacques Dalibard, who led the fight to save stations, and who, as head of the Heritage Canada Foundation, raised awareness among Canadians across the country of their vanishing heritage landmarks. The work of those like him is also acknowledged here. And, finally, I want to thank my family: my wife June and daughters Jeri and Ria, for enduring more “station hunts” than they care to remember. And to my late father, Arnold Robert Henry Brown, who never refused our persistent requests, as kids, to take us to the Leaside station or the Bathurst Street railway yards to indulge our fascination with our railways. It is to his memory that this book is dedicated.
Ron Brown, Toronto, April 2014
The train display and preserved Grand Trunk station at Memory Junction Museum in Brighton, Ontario, is a labour of love by Ralph Bangay and his hard-working volunteers. Photo by author.
A steam engine known as Bullet Nosed Betty leads a display train at the northern Ontario Railroad Museum and Heritage Centre in Caperol, Ontario. Photo by author.
1
What is a station?
Confusion often exists between the terms “station” and “depot.” As defined in railway timetables, a “station” is a “stopping place” and need not be a structure. In fact, it may be nothing more than a siding, a platform, or a mail hook. “Depot,” an American term, refers to the building itself. Nevertheless, in Canada the word “station” popularly refers to that wonderful old building, with its semaphore, its bay window, its platform, and its waiting room full of memories.
No matter what it was called, the station was vital for train operations and for customers. On the operational side, it housed offices for administrators, provided sidings and yards for rolling stock, maintenance and fuel for the locomotives, equipment for the orderly movement of trains, and shelter and food for the train crews. The station was a place to work, to live, and to play; it was the architectural pride of the community, and was the building that, more than any other, determined the layout of the community. But its fundamental role was to serve the railway and to serve the customer, and everything about the layout, the location and the equipment of the station, supported these two functions.
For its customers, the station was where they shipped parcels, bought money orders or sent telegrams; it was where they picked up their mail or loaded their farm produce; it was where they hurried down a meal during crew changes; it was where they bought their tickets for a trip around the world or just to the next town, and it was where they awaited the train that would take them there.
Clearly, a station could be many things, and the number of functions it had determined what kind of station it was. A station could range from something as simple as shelter for passengers with a platform for freight and a mail crane, to a large urban palace with everything from executive suites to shoeshine stands. In between were the divisional stations, and the most common of all, the way stations.
The Country Stations
Also known as way stations, or operator stations, it is the country stations that many small-town residents still remember. After all, nearly every town had one. All the jobs the railway had to perform in a small town were there, packed under one roof. They remember the agent’s office with its barred window, the large oak desk with its typewriter, telegraph and telephone, and the piles of forms everywhere. Outside, they remember the wooden semaphores perched at various angles, the water tank looming down the track, the farm products piled high on the platform, and the canvas bags bulging