and the most convincing argument they could place before their shareholders whenever it was time to again expand.
Unlike the CPR, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, the precocious builders of the Canadian Northern Railways, assembled their land holdings not from the government but by purchasing existing railway charters — charters with land grants included. In less than ten years they could lay claim to more than 4.1 million acres of land, most of it prime prairie black soil. By 1906, the duo had created more than 132 villages through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
The latecomer was the Grand Trunk Pacific. Although it was the darling of the Laurier Liberals, who built most of the line, it received no aid. But by building through virtually virgin territory, the GTP was able to assemble eighty-six townsites at bargain prices. Each town plan was identical. In 1909 one newspaper headline read, “Towns made to order.”
“We will put a town here,” said the engineer in charge, “there was no ceremony, no one to applaud … These towns-to-be would grow up straight and orderly according to a formula, the parks labelled, the marketplace determined. The main street always runs down to the railway station, 80 inches wide and no building costing less the [sic] $1000 can be erected upon it.”
Before the town was developed, the station presented a forlorn appearance on the bare prairies. As W.W. Withrow noted in his classic Our Own Country (1888), “In some places the station house is the only building in sight. At one such place a couple of tourists came out onto the platform as the train came to a stop. ‘Which side is the town on anyhow?’ said one to the other. ‘The same side as the timber of course,’ replied the other. The point of the joke is that not a solitary tree was to be seen on either side.”
By controlling the disposition of the land in the town, the railways could control its appearance. Anxious to show to the world the commercial boom that they brought to the prairies, the railways ensured that the lots most visible from the station, along the main street that led to the station and those that paralleled the track, were all sold for commercial uses. They even endeavoured to ensure that large hotels were located conveniently just across the road from the station.
As the prairie towns grew, wooden false-fronted stores lined the wide main street that unrolled from the rear door of the station’s waiting room. The design was far from accidental. By dominating the main street, the stations would remind the residents daily of the railway company’s pre-eminence. Conversely, an arriving passenger’s first view was of a commercially prosperous main street, a deliberate orchestration by the railway companies to reinforce their own importance in the development and economy of Canada’s towns and villages. The tactic certainly impressed W.W. Withrow: “The railway stations through the province of Manitoba gave evidence of life and energy. At many of them are 2, 3 or even 4 capacious steam elevators representing rural wheat purchasing companies and frequently a number of mills … stations succeed each other at intervals of 5 or 8 miles and many of them are surrounded by bright and busy towns.”
In eastern Canada, station planners had to contend with towns that already existed. Changes to the landscape, however, were often no less spectacular than they were upon the undeveloped prairies. Factories and warehouses appeared by the track while hotels, stores, and even flower gardens clustered behind the station. More than any other building, railway stations shaped the appearance and the destiny of eastern Canada’s small towns.
An aerial view of the town of Temagami shows how the village grew around the ONR station. Photo by author.
Until 1853, when the Great Western Railway constructed a new suspension bridge across the Niagara River, the village of Elgin consisted of only a handful of cabins. The instant access provided by the bridge brought 280 town lots onto the market, ranging in price from $150 to $300. In just three years Elgin had boomed into “an enterprising, brisk and lively town with upwards of 100 inhabitants, 14 or 15 grocery stores and 20 saloons and hotels.” In 1879, the original wooden station was replaced with “a large brick structure of Victorian gingerbread and ornamental woodwork [whose] massive wood parallel entrance doors made it the envy of the frontier.” That little “frontier” village today goes by the name of Niagara Falls, and the station still stands.
The preserved station and grain elevator in Unionville, Ontario, represent a typical station landscape. Photo by author.
Not far away, a similar story was unfolding. In 1873, when the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railway replaced the ferry service across the Niagara River with a new bridge, a new town sprang up on the flat shoreline that surrounded the new station. Stores, taverns, and churches crowded the 250-lot town plot. In the words of a contemporary visitor, “Victoria, the new town, is the terminus of the Grand Trunk, the Great Western and the Canada Southern railways. It is contemplated that Victoria will become a suburb of Buffalo [which] can be reached in a few minutes. Victoria already has good hotels stores and neat cottages with unsurpassed facilities for all classes of manufacturing and mercantile businesses.”
The town became “Bridgeburg” in 1894 and then amalgamated with Fort Erie. The Grand Trunk station with its conical “witch’s hat” waiting room was demolished; however, another of the Fort Erie stations was relocated to a nearby museum.
A station located apart from an existing village created an equally indelible imprint upon Canada’s landscapes: the station village. Most were tiny satellites to the parent village and typically consisted of a hotel or two, a store, a café, and a handful of houses for railway employees.
A few station villages, however, boomed and completely overwhelmed the parent. Canterbury Station in New Brunswick was one. It developed around the station of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway, a dozen miles from the original settlement on the St. John River. Within a decade it had matched the old site in size and then, when the water-powered industries of the decaying old town became outmoded, Canterbury Station became the more important of the two.
Maynooth Station is an example of such a station location sparking a new satellite village. Photo by author.
Even more dramatic was the growth of Killaloe Station on the Ottawa, Arnprior, and Parry Sound Railway in Ontario. As early as the 1840s and 1850s, Killaloe was a small but busy mill village. However, in the 1890s, John Booth and his railway builders chose a route three kilometres north, and the station village quickly outgrew the old mill village. Today, Killaloe Station is simply called Killaloe and claims a population of over six hundred. The older village has shrunk to a tiny clutch of homes huddled around the old general store and mill.
But the impact of the railway station upon the urban landscape can just as easily be overstated, for often there was none. Along branch lines with little activity, stations were mere flag stops. Structures were little more than enclosed shelters, and, if the passengers were fortunate, equipped with a stove. More usually, however, they were unheated and about the size of an outhouse. Here the station remained alone on the landscape, often a solitary silhouette against an open sky.
Station Landscapes
Despite the different shapes that the railways created in towns east and west, the landscapes that immediately surrounded the station were more or less similar. They had to be.
Part and parcel of Canada’s station landscape were the water tanks. The steam engines’ heavy appetite for water meant that a reliable and frequent water supply was essential. The tanks themselves were steel, a bulbous barrel atop stocky legs and pipes. Throughout
