Size, however, had little to do with a station becoming a union station. The delightful little wooden station at Jarvis, Ontario, hosted the Great Western’s “Air Line” and Hamilton and Lake Erie railways. The Grand Trunk station in Brockville and the Canadian Northern station in Belleville both hosted CPR trains, while the Grand Trunk station in North Bay was also the home base for the Ontario government’s Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway trains. The smallest union station in Canada, however, was that on the London and Port Stanley Railway. About the size of a large outhouse, this “Union” station never served more than one railway line at a time. Rather, it was named after the nearby village of Union.
The “Grand Centrals”: Canada’s Grand Urban Stations
The most specialized stations of them all, those that occupied the top of the pyramid, were the city stations, the “Grand Centrals” of Canada. Indeed, these were cities unto themselves. In them a person could buy a newspaper, have a haircut, and then relax over a seven-course meal served on china and silverware at tables covered with linen cloths. One could spend a day in them and never see a train.
The operations here were complex. With hundreds of trains huffing in and out each day, tracks had to be allocated, baggage sorted and passengers pampered. An army of personnel, two thousand in Toronto’s Union Station alone, bustled along corridors, platforms, and secret passageways to ensure that baggage met the right train, that parcels got to the post office, and that crew members showed up on time. It was a city that never stopped.
In 1915 thirty cents bought a full meal at the Winnipeg station lunch counter. Photo courtesy of CPR Archives, A 1120.
One of the busiest organizations to inhabit the urban station was the Travellers’ Aid Society. This wonderful organization, an offspring of the YWCA and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, helped the hungry and the helpless. On one occasion, staff of the Travellers’ Aid spotted a mother with four children waiting to board a westbound train, carrying only a few loaves of bread to feed themselves. Thanks to the network of Travellers’ Aids, she was cared for throughout her journey. During the war the society helped soften the stark cultural shock suffered by arriving British war brides, and, in the years that followed, they welcomed trainloads of confused immigrants. From a wartime high of one hundred thousand travellers helped, the Travellers’ Aid was helping fewer than five thousand annually less than three decades later.
Among the swirling crowds that converged onto the train platforms were pickpockets and pimps. Young girls fleeing the dead-end monotony of rural Canada were particularly easy prey for the bordello runners. These confused newcomers were susceptible to a smiling face and soothing words that led only to a cruel life of sexual slavery. Pickpockets also found countless victims, as strange surroundings and jostling crowds distracted arriving passengers from the light fingers that dipped into their purse or pocket. But among the crowd was another army, the railway police and security staff, alert and ready to pounce.
With as many as twelve platforms to sort and shuffle trains, switching was no simple matter. In the sprawling yards around the stations, signal towers controlled the all-important shuffling of the right trains onto the right tracks. Although computer technology has greatly simplified the process, signal towers still puncture the skylines of the railway yards at Toronto’s Union Station and in west-end Montreal.
If any Canadian station has changed very little, it is the urban station. Although trains are faster and fewer, Gare Centrale in Montreal and Union Station in Toronto remain as active urban hubs, but with a few new wrinkles. The traveller may still find a meal, a shave, and reading material while electronic voices intone train departures, but they may also shop in a vast underground city of stores and then ride home on a subway, all directly from a station.
Flag Stations
If the urban terminal marked the apex of the pyramid, the flag stations were the base. Passengers travelling on lightly used branch lines, or leaving quiet country areas, were more likely to say their farewells from a flag station than from a busy operator station. Railway companies seldom spent money where it wasn’t necessary and areas that didn’t need operators didn’t get them. Because these stations lacked agents, passengers were left on their own to stop the train. To do this they waved a green-and-white flag at the approaching train.
TOP: Deep in the Rocky Mountains, vacationers wait at the Mount Robson flag station. Photo courtesy of CNR Archives, X 20165. BOTTOM: An umbrella station, which served passengers travelling the Thousand Islands Railway, has been preserved in downtown Gananoque along with the last of the railway’s motive power. Photo by author.
Many places that started with flag stations grew large enough to earn a full operator station. The Prince Edward Island Railway initially designated forty-seven of sixty-four stations as flag stations. Within a few years public pressure and increased business were strong enough to have most these upgraded. Conversely, many operator stations were downgraded to flag stations, the product of railway amalgamation and fewer trains.
Some flag stations were hardly larger than outhouses: unheated cabins with a door, bench, and window. Others had modest freight sheds attached and were heated by small stoves.
Kingston’s downtown Grand Trunk station still stands. Today it serves as a restaurant. Photo by author.
Although the small size left little room for architectural imagination, the dizzy days of station building and competition did produce a wide array of pleasing and occasionally elaborate little shelters. Some of the more unusual, and several yet survive, are the little wooden umbrella stations of the Algoma Central Railway, so-called because they consisted only of benches beneath a canopy. They were otherwise open to the elements and were built where summer tourist traffic prevailed.
The preserved Peavey Station is typical of boxcar-sized stations. Photo by author.
Among those passenger routes that wind through remote regions of Manitoba, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, travellers must still stand beside the simple shelter or the foundation of rubble where the operator station used to stand, and flag down the train. But, on the busiest lines, computers have replaced the little green-and white flags and alert the engineer to passenger stops ahead.
It has been easier to rescue the little flag stations from demolition. Their small size made relocating costs modest and many were hauled away behind a horse or tractor to become a storage shed on an adjacent farm. Several others ended up in local museums where Canadians can still stand and imagine a distant whistle echoing across the forest of the waving wheat fields.
Fortunately, because of their size, flag stations were fairly easy to preserve, providing of course that they survived what were often their early closings. Among countless others, such depots may yet be found in Ontario where Garnet and Moulton rest in private yards as does the delightfully named Owlseye in Alberta. Sturgeon Bay, Crombies, and Moulinette, in Ontario, and Percival, Saskatchewan, and Peavey, Alberta, form part of local museum displays.
Millet, Alberta, displays a typical station landscape. Photo courtesy of Archives of Alberta, B-A 487.
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STATIONS AND THE CANADIAN LANDSCAPE
The Railway Towns
Canada’s most prolific town planners were the railways. The