End of an institution - Last passenger train on the Canadian Pacific Railway
Last edited Mon Dec 21, 2020, 05:03 PM - Edit history (7)
Edited to add: Canada still has transcontinental passenger train service & it is still possible to go from Toronto to Vancouver by train. The last run depicted in the video was merely the last train on the Canadian Pacific Railway. VIA Rail still operates passenger service on the Canadian National route. The end result is that instead of two transcontinental train routes, Canada now has one.
Thought I'd clarify as there might have been some apparent confusion
Good Sunday evening, fellow DU'ers,
Hope everyone is keeping well & safe out there.
For those interested, below is a link to a short 20 minute documentary I found about the very last passenger train to operate on the Canadian Pacific Railway:
It was Jan 14, 1990 & the newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney & his Conservative party had enacted a series of severe funding cuts to VIA Rail's budget, resulting in draconian cuts to service including it's most famous train - the transcontinental "Canadian' which ran from Toronto to Vancouver and through the majestic Rockies of Banff national park.
It didn't matter that 1/4 of the country's population used VIA Rail.
It didn't matter that the cuts left many remote communities stranded with no other reasonable public transportation alternative - much less an airport.
And it certainly didn't matter that passenger rail received less than 1% of the funding given to other modes - roads, airports, marine terminals, sidewalks, ect - modes that weren't expected to pay their own way much less operate at a profit.
The killing of the train service was a crooked operation and we all knew it. As Calgary Alderman Ron Leigh states in the video, it was done for no other reason than to punish those in Liberal ridings, like Calgary, by removing service through their communities while retaining service in Conservative ridings like Edmonton.
Kind of like a Canadian version of Christie's "bridgegate" - proof that no matter which side of the border you're on, you can't spell "conservative" without "con".
However, as it turned out, at least VIA's Canadian didn't die completely. The train was later put back into service from Toronto to Vancouver, but via a different route, after the old steam heat systems on the cars were converted to electric heating.
So it's still possible today to ride the Canadian, complete with all it's original 1955 vintage rolling stock, across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver - but now passing through the majestic Rockies on the Canadian National route via Jasper National Park instead of the once-fabled Canadian Pacific mainline through Banff National Park.
(For the tourist-still an amazing trip either way, but not so good for the many local communities on the former route that lost their only form of public transportation)
For me, this video is a melancholic reminder of what we lost when the Canadian called for the last time at Thunder Bay and Regina, Calgary and Banff. Hope you find it as interesting as I did.
Best Regards, (and Merry Christmas / Happy Hanukkah / Happy Kwanzaa / Season's Greetings / Happy Festivus to my fellow DU'ers - whichever applies! )
Pete
= new reply since forum marked as read
My wife & I also love Jasper National Park/ We were there just last year in the summer of 2019, by train in our case, we stopped over in Alberta and got a rental car and drove through Jasper & Banff National Parks along the Icefields parkway and stayed at the Banff Springs hotel, before taking the train to Prince Rupert, BC and then by ferry along the inside passage to Vancouver Island.
We like Glacier Park too. Would like to take Amtrak there one day, stopping at either Essex or East Glacier and checking out the Going-to-the-sun road by rental car...
We passed by the Izaak Walton Inn on Amtrak back in 2016 on the way to Whitefish where we detrained and picked up our rental car to visit Yellowstone National Park, great memories! 
Another one on our bucket list! (The train to Churchill). Because I often took the train to work, I have enough VIA preference points (like air miles) for a free trip. We plan to take a trip to Churchill one year, and go to Vancouver another (the Canadian's new route, like the former one, is still very scenic). Only dilemma is which trip to pay for and which to use my points on. We'll probably wait for the covid situation to be resolved first-i.e. when they put the sleeping cars back on the train. Thanks for the vid, I'm watching it as I type...Happy Holidays!
and then he's riding a railroad speeder across Canada...
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They were a vicious employer . . .
didn't really help my future by being the most aggressive Health and Safety Rep they'd ever encountered - took them 3 years to get rid of me . .
China realizes the benefits of rail - heck, they got over 20,000 kilometres of high-speed rail passenger service- we got zip
China also has a better grip on this virus thing . . .
Maybe we should be paying attention?
W
Good for you for standing your ground when it came to the welfare of your co-workers & shame on CP for forcing you out. I don't think they'd be any less vicious now, not after having Hunter Harrison at the helm (until he passed away recently). I worked at CN as a technician in signals & communications when he was there and they were no better than CP.
I couldn't agree more with you more, China took this thing far more seriously and are doing a lot better than we are . IMO our Federal government is trying but problem is our provinces have too much autonomy in their coronavirus responses. I'm in Ontario where the second wave is turning out to be far worse than the first and fucking Ford still hasn't enacted a state of emergency.
As for passenger rail including high speed rail, every industrialized country in the world including the US (who at least have the Acela in their northeast corridor) is ahead of Canada 
There's still freight trains - no shortage of them in fact - so Snidley's still in business...
