KREW KUTS: Trains grounded - leaving earthly memories

By Bernie Krewski

Two centuries ago, railways replaced waterways as an effective means of travel and transport. Then highways replaced the railway. Advances in technology continue to dominate and govern our lives.

The Goose Lake Line’s fifty-year life span brought thousands of people to the prairies, “neighbors” for Aboriginal people who lived here for 13,000 years. Their respective historical experiences and stories became deeply intertwined, not always comfortably, but occurred, nonetheless. The process of Reconciliation continues.

Settlers from eastern Canada, United States, Britain, and Europe seeking new places to live established landmark communities along the Goose Lake Line. They “found a way of life” on “the Golden Wheat Belt,” as the Calgary Herald reported in a feature article on July 20, 1940. “In spite of the hardships of pioneering, these people settled these marginal lands, some to carry on through the ups and downs of poor crops and adverse economic conditions to wrest from the wilderness homes for themselves and their descendants.”

Fortunately for historians, these “Goose Lakers” left acres and acres of memories in writings, material objects, and stories for future generations to absorb, defining who they were and how they lived. These have been the foundations of my recent contributions to The Echo.

A brief article in the Calgary Herald on July 9, 1937, alluded to a “Goose Lake Picnic” at Sylvan Lake: “The second annual picnic of former residents of the Goose Lake Line, now residents of the Sylvan Lake area, was held in the provincial park here Sunday afternoon when 134 people who had previously lived on the Goose Lake Line met to renew acquaintances and recall old times.” Charles Dunford, the founding editor of The Oyen News (1914-1935), who had moved his printing press to Sylvan Lake, was likely the initiator of this event.

My father died in 1962 when the first red flags about the future of the Goose Lake Line were waving. An emigrant from Eastern Europe, he proudly wore the ambience of a “railroader” after sixteen years of homesteading.  From him I learned about trains No. 9 and 10, respectively, westbound from Saskatoon and eastbound from Calgary. It was part of the everyday railway conversations of my childhood.

A news item in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on Feb. 20, 1962, said the CNR was appraising passenger usage on trains No. 9 and No. 10 operating between Winnipeg and Calgary. While approval to discontinue this service required input from the Board of Railway Commissioners, postal services were already being reduced to three days per week. A year later, the end of passenger service was confirmed.

News coverage of these developments began with a story in the Calgary Herald on May 6, 1963. Mrs. Hugh Beynon Biggs, 81, was a 57-year resident of Rosebud Valley, near Drumheller. She had snapped a photo of first train that passed through Springfield ranch in 1911. Learning this, CNR officials gave her a complimentary round-trip ticket to Calgary to commemorate this event - “Old Timer Takes ‘Last Journey’ on Rail Line Killed by Progress.” Before leaving her ranch that morning, she took another photo of the last train at Beynon Siding, named after her husband.

Two days later, long-time Herald reporter Ken Liddell wrote about “My Favorite Train” in his regular column. It was about travelling from Calgary to Saskatoon, enjoying the comfort of a sleeping car – taking a walk along the platform at Drumheller and having  breakfast on the train before arriving in Saskatoon. It was a long 12-hour trip, but “you knew you had been into the country, not on a flight into the spaceless, empty yonder.” A railway buff, his book, “I’ll Take the Train,” was published in 1966.

At the other end of the Line was this headline in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on May 15:  “Part of the Old West Fades Tonight as Last Goose Lake Line Train Leaves.” There were no plans to acknowledge this event in Saskatoon, Rosetown, or Kindersley. According to the Star Phoenix, the loss of passenger service was “missed more by the men who lived the era than the communities it fostered” – the rail line was still “magic” to them. Several retirees recalled memorable events – a train stuck in a snow at Marengo for seven days and the death of the engineer on the first train to Alsask who was later killed in an accident on another rail line.

The last verse of a tribute poem written by a former railroader summarized the views of many: “So here we pay tribute to all those men/Who have served through the years on ‘Nine and Ten’/But I fear the passing of old number Nine/Foreshadows the end of the Goose Lake Line.”

While the roar of the passenger trains ended, the legacy of the Goose Lake Line endures.

Hanna in its beginnings became a major railway centre on the Goose Lake Line because it had a roundhouse, built in 1913. It was unusually shaped, hence its name, designed to service and store locomotives. It was decommissioned by the CNR in 1961. From 1974 to 1994 it housed an auction mart.

A group of history-conscious volunteers took steps to preserve this building, forming the non-profit Hanna Roundhouse Society in 2010. It was designated a “provincial historic resource” – unveiled at a celebration on August 15, 2015.

A few days ago (May 9, 2024) , the Society announced in a new release published in the East Central Alberta Review that it has been awarded $550,000 to complete Phase I of a rehabilitation project. What might follow is beyond imagination!

Down the road, but more modestly, a rail yard in Oyen has been festering for the last seven years. It began as an economic project initiated by the Special Areas Board and the Town of Oyen in 2017. The Keystone pipeline came and then departed – resulting from the complexities of international politics. Like the pioneers of this district discovered, the train and the rain eventually came - but seldom on time.  

The historical train whistles of the Goose Lake Line still being heard!

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