and turned it into an industrial spur to serve the huge nickel smelters. Because of the enormous flow of traffic, the station became one of the busiest in Canada. In the 1980s the old wooden structure was replaced by one of aluminum, serving only as a shelter for maintenance workers.
In 1912, the CNoR laid out a huge industrial and residential area northeast of Toronto’s then urban fringe. It would later develop into the upscale village of Leaside, one of Canada’s first railway-planned towns. To access the industries, the railway obtained running rights over CPR trackage and, in the shadow of the factories, built an industrial station. A functional but solid brick building, CN’s Leaside station retained its railway function until the early 1980s before becoming a retail office. That structure now serves as an office for Safe Passage Canada. Meanwhile, the CNoR’s former engine repair shop, long abandoned, was designated as a heritage building and now houses a Longo’s supermarket. Much of the interior still reflects its original purpose.
Special Operations
Some special stations were added for specific operational functions. Port Union, Ontario, a small lake port, sat at the base of steep grades in both directions. Engines strained to haul long trains up the hills. To ease the operation, the Grand Trunk built a station and yards to store special helper engines that supplemented the power of the regular engines. While a new GO station stands nearby, the site of the GTR station and yards have been replaced by new suburban development.
The Canadian Northern station in Rainy River Ontario was built at the border with Minnesota. Photo by author.
Customs Stations
With the world’s longest undefended border existing between Canada and the US, dozens of railway lines once crossed from one country into the other. Customs and revenue procedures needed to be followed. All border crossings therefore needed facilities for customs and revenue officers, even though the stations may not be needed for revenue or operational purposes. At many of the prairie crossings, stations literally sat across the invisible line from each other. Solid brick customs stations built by the Canadian Northern Railway occupied opposite sides of the Rainy River, in Baudette, Minnesota, and Rainy River, Ontario.
Lacolle, Quebec, boasts a unique castle-like station built by the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Being a customs point for incoming US tourists, the company splurged on a chateau-esque stone “castle” that they believed would give their passengers a flavour of old Quebec.
Possibly the widest range of uses found in what was otherwise a simple small-town station were those contained in the White Pass and Yukon Route railway station in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Built from Skagway to Whitehorse in 1900, the railway actually crossed into Canada near a place called Carcross. However, because most travellers were bound for Whitehorse, the customs offices were located there. Possibly to conveniently apprehend miscreant Americans trying to flee into the sanctity of Canada, the RCMP located their offices in the station as well, and backed up their regulations with a jail.
Straddling the border between Alberta and Montana, on what was then the Great Falls and Canada Railway, stretched a long wooden customs station. This elongated structure not only fulfilled the role of a point of customs entry, but was also a restaurant to feed those waiting clearance. The two-storey station, with extensions on each end, was built in 1890 and continued to fill this role until 1917. In 2000, it was moved to Stirling, Alberta, and resides now in the Galt Historic Railway Park, where its history preserved for visitors.
Other customs stations, including those at Lacolle, Quebec, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, have processed passengers travelling on cross-border Amtrak trains from Montreal and Toronto respectively, en route to New York City. A former customs station still stands on the CP line at Emerson, Manitoba.
Union Stations
Many Canadians may remember their stations as being “union” stations, stations shared by two or more railway lines. To the railway companies, union stations were as welcome as a shotgun wedding and were in some ways similar.
Fiercely independent and highly competitive, the railway companies preferred their own stations. Through the architecture and/or the location of their stations they were able to advertise their prominence and their independence. But high land values and the economics of train operations often produced reluctant bedfellows.
As urban Canada boomed in the 1890s, cities grew, railways arrived, and stations soon needed replacing. Skyrocketing land values, or simply the lack of downtown land, forced competing railways to pool resources and build a common station that both could use.
Passenger convenience was another, although secondary, consideration. It was much easier to change trains within the same building than to retrieve luggage and endure foul weather and traffic to reach a separate station to catch a connecting train.
TOP: An early painting depicts Toronto’s first “Union” station. Courtesy Metro Toronto Reference Library. BOTTOM: Toronto’s next union station was much more grand. Photo courtesy Metro Toronto Reference Library, T 12190.
Canada’s first “union” station was built in Toronto in 1855. A modest board-and-batten building, it served the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railways. Shortly thereafter, the Great Western moved out and, in 1866, built a station of its own on the west side of Yonge Street. The first Ontario, Simcoe, & Huron station was a simple wooden building that lacked even a train shed. The first Grand Trunk was a two-storey brick stub station, small, but at least with a train shed. The Northern, likewise, had a shed but with a through track rather than a stub. By far the most elaborate of the three first stations was that of the Great Western, with four tracks emanating from beneath Romanesque arches above.
But it would be short-lived, for Toronto was booming. In 1858, a second station opened to replace it and, in 1872, a third. However, passengers still had to scurry between seven other downtown stations. Then, in 1876, a large stone station with three domes replaced the seven stations. Despite extensive additions in 1895 — extensions that obliterated its original charm — it too became obsolete.
The great Toronto fire of 1904 cleared several blocks of downtown land for redevelopment. A parcel just east of the station (that had not been damaged in the fire) was ideally situated for a new union station. To build the new station, the GTR and the CPR formed the Toronto Terminals Railway Company. As was often the case, the two companies could agree on very little. While the CPR wanted the station to be a stub station with the tracks at ground level, the GTR wanted a through station with elevated tracks, a design that would reopen Toronto’s lost waterfront to its populace.
In the end, the Board of Railway Commissioners approved the GTR plan. As construction dragged interminably on, the CPR, impatient at the delays, stalked out and built its own station, the beautiful North Toronto station, a considerable distance north on Yonge Street, and far from what was then the centre of the city. Completed in 1916, the striking stone building with its Italianate clock tower also functioned as a “union” station, with operations shared between the CPR and the Canadian Northern Railway.
After several years of delay, the new union station by the lakefront was finally ready for use, On August 6, 1927, the Duke of Windsor, in what was probably the briefest opening ceremony for a station anywhere, declared the station open in a thirteen-minute ceremony and then boarded a train for his ranch in Alberta.
