One hundred years ago, on April 7, 1914, two rail crews faced one another, each on either side of a mile-long gap of nearly empty land. They sat just outside the town of Fort Fraser, B.C., and were about to compete in a race to finish laying the track of the final section of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
Construction of the line had begun in 1908, five years after the federal government loaned the Grand Trunk Pacific Company money to lay tracks from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, and the line quickly proved to be one of the most difficult ever laid in North America.
Blasting space through the Rockies, combined with bad weather and chronic labour shortages meant it ended up costing the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway company about $112,000 per mile.
Crews worked from both the east and the west, and the April 7 race marked the day they finally met. The race was a short one, and the crew from the east won by a thin margin. When the track was completed, the president of Grand Trunk Pacific, Edson Chamberlain, hammered the final spike home in front of a huge crowd.
A few days later, on April 9, a special passenger train reached the Prince Rupert end point, completing the first ever journey of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
Earlier this month, a group of rail enthusiasts passed through Jasper on a train ride marking the 100th anniversary of the line鈥檚 completion. Local resident and retired rail worker Harry Home was on that train. He said at least 150 people took the trip, some coming from as far away as Halifax.
And while several of the passengers were history buffs, many, like Home, were also retired rail workers. For Home the trip was especially significant, because he spent part of his career working on the line.
Like most rail vets, Home has nearly endless memories of those days, but one of his favourites is the day he arrived to work to find an unusual set of orders.
鈥淥ne train order read 鈥榙o not exceed 10 miles an hour on mileage so-and-so and watch for fishing boats crossing the track,鈥欌�� he recalled.
Home thought someone was playing a prank on him but when he asked the engineer about it, the man told him to just wait and see.
As they reached the mile marker the orders referred to, they got a signal telling them to stop the train, 鈥渁nd we came around the corner and there was a fishing boat moving across the track,鈥� Home said. The area was a dry dock, and boats were getting wheeled across the track for repairs.
Before Home or anyone else began driving those trains, however, the tracks had to be laid, and that happened on the backs of hard labourers.
The Grand Trunk Pacific was constructed at a time when the rail industry was booming. Railroads had not yet been nationalized under one company, and rail companies competed fiercely with one another. As the Grand Trunk Pacific was being laid through B.C., the Canadian Northern Railway was laying track mere metres away.
As Brenda Gainer writes in The Human History of Jasper National Park, surveyors from both companies were constantly trying to sabotage one another by moving or pulling their stakes and reference points.
But while surveying teams were scampering about pulling hijinks, the real work of laying rails was being done by laborers, and it was a difficult, dangerous and dirty job.
J. Burgen Bickersteth was an Anglican minister who spent time in the work camps. His letters contain his impressions of them, and they are less than flattering.
鈥淚 wish you could have seen the men. They came in covered in mud from head to foot 鈥he floor was soon as muddy as it was outside, with men coming in and out, and, of course, everyone spat where they wished. When you see the conditions under which these men live, you could hardly be surprised if the outlook which many of them have on life is little better than a beast鈥檚. They work like horses, eat like pigs, and sleep like logs,鈥� he wrote.
Because conditions were so difficult, alcohol abuse was rampant, and even though liquor was illegal in the camps, bootleggers made a fortune keeping the laborers supplied. Bickersteth mused in his letters that considering the conditions the men lived in, it was no wonder they so often turned to drink.
Shorty after the line was completed war broke out, and Home鈥攚ho has just as many stories about the railroad鈥檚 history before he began working there as he does about after鈥攅xplained that the proceeding depression saw the line fall into a state of almost complete disuse.
The line decayed so badly that by the time the Second World War rolled around and the tracks were once again needed, repair crews were shoveling rotten ties out of the dirt rather than tearing them up.
The Second World War saw the tracks鈥� use ramp up incredibly, with 鈥渢remendous effort of movement of traffic between Winnipeg and Prince Rupert,鈥� after the Japanese launched a campaign against the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, Home said.
The military was so worried that the track would be bombed they started running armored train cars along the track.
鈥淚t鈥檚 quite a story,鈥� said Home.
These days, the Grand Trunk Pacific Line is used primarily to move freight. And while Home is worried about the future of passenger travel along the line, he thinks the tracks will still be around for years to come, cultivating an even richer history.
Trevor Nichols
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