interior still retains its barber shop and pool hall fixtures, making it Alberta’s oldest pool hall. Although no railway structures have survived, the railway right of way forms part of the popular Iron Horse rail trail. Vilna’s heritage main street attracts many day-use visitors from places like Edmonton. It goes to show that heritage, when preserved, can be an economical benefit — a notion too many prairie communities don’t seem to get.
Old Strathcona, Alberta
The Old Strathcona heritage district of Edmonton owes its origins to the 1891 refusal of the CPR to build its Calgary and Edmonton line over the South Saskatchewan River. As a result, the town grew up around the CPR station and its yards. The CNo acquired the charter of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway and built the “low level” bridge over the river, finally connecting tracks on both sides. With the opening of the High Level bridge in 1913, the CPR itself crossed the mighty valley and built its own station in Edmonton, and Strathcona became part of the city.
Many of the early buildings have survived, and today five city blocks have been designated as a heritage district, with a number of buildings along Whyte Avenue dating from the railway’s heyday. Nearly two dozen individual buildings are designated as well, including the Gainers Block, the Princess Theatre, the old post office, and the Douglas Block.
Two of the more prominent structures are the Strathcona Hotel, built in 1891 as the Edmonton House, and the massive CPR station itself, built in 1909. With its polygonal tower above the operator’s bay, it was one of only five like it across the Prairies. A replica of the first C&E station is now a museum on 86th Avenue NW and contains a working telegraph, just as was used when the original station was in operation. Similarly, Okotoks has revitalized its “Old Town” and has incorporated a gallery and tourism office into its unusual CPR station, located on North Railway Street.
Ogema, Saskatchewan
This community began around 1912, when the CPR laid its tracks through the area and planned the site for a town. Since it was the end of the tracks at that time, the inhabitants decided on Omega as a name, as that is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. However, a post office already had that name, and so, with a minor shift in letters, it became Ogema, which is also the Cree word for “big chief.”
Ogema is a town that actively celebrates its roots. In addition to a CPR station, which has been relocated from a farm back to the end of the main street, many heritage buildings line the main street, including a rare example of a brick firewall halfway along. This was built following a devastating fire in 1915 in order to prevent future fires from spreading so rapidly. Opposite is a brick fire station, erected in part for the same reason. One of the more unusual structures, another rare building, is a 1925 BA “filling” station, now a municipal heritage property. The 1923 butcher store is now the C & C Supermarket. The station will become the boarding point for Saskatchewan’s newest tour train on the Southern Prairie Railway.
Radville, Saskatchewan
Here in southern Saskatchewan lies yet another heritage treasure: Radville, with historic buildings lining a main street that ends, as it should, at the back of the CNo station. In 1909 the CNo, which was busily building yet another of its branch lines, chose Radville as a divisional point. It erected a water tower, roundhouse, and a standard class-2 divisional-point station. (The railways classified their stations by the importance of their functions. A class 2 was a larger “divisional” station with sorting yards and maintenance facilities, as well as the usual waiting rooms.)
In choosing Radville, the CNo bypassed another community, Brooking, which had hoped to attract the divisional functions. Today, that community is a vanished ghost town. While the Radville station has become a museum, a number of other heritage buildings stand as well. Most prominent among them is the Canadian Bank of Commerce, now the CIBC. It was prefabricated in British Columbia and assembled in Radville in 1911. Across the street, the Empire Hotel, now the Long Creek Saloon, dates to the same year. The Radville Senior Citizens club occupies what was the Province Theatre, built in 1925, which lost its second floor as a result of a fire in 1943. The tourism office on the main street has prepared a walking tour of this historic railway town.
Rouleau, Saskatchewan
While Rouleau still retains a grain elevator, it is not the town’s name that appears on the side. Rather it is “Dog River,” the name that made Rouleau famous. In 2003 Tisdale-born comedian Brent Butt and CTV location scouts selected this prairie town as the setting for the popular TV sitcom Corner Gas. And it fills the bill. With its grain elevator, its flat treeless prairie landscape, and a modest main street, it became Canada’s ultimate typical prairie town. Although the cast and crew have since departed, the grain elevator has retained its fictional name, as have at least two of the iconic fictional buildings on the main street, namely the “Dog River Hotel” and the “police station.” Corner Gas aficionados continue to arrive at the police station, which is now a snack bar and gift shop selling Corner Gas paraphernalia. The set, with the gas station and The Ruby diner, was still there in late 2011, but it’s actually a kilometre west of the town, and The Ruby’s sign is now in the gift shop. Rouleau itself developed along the CPR’s Soo Line in 1895 and prospered thanks to the high quality of the surrounding farm land. The former Rouleau CPR station is now a residence on a village side street.
Corner Gas fans will recognize these Rouleau landmarks as being the set for the popular TV show.
Chapter Three
The Stations
The local nerve centres of the railways were the stations. They served many more functions than today’s generation could imagine, and the man (usually) in charge was the railway station agent. Therefore, one of the building’s main roles was to house the agent and his family, and this was almost always in an upstairs or rear apartment. The agent had to issue passenger tickets, as well as organize (and often solicit) freight shipments. To keep the trains moving, he issued train orders by “hooping” them up to the engineer on a long curved or forked stick known as a hoop. He also fixed the signal in front of the station to indicate to the engineer if he needed to slow down, stop, or continue through. Preparing the mail sack was still another duty for the agent, as many trains contained a mail sorting car right on board.
Agents also enjoyed a more aesthetic role — maintaining the station garden. Some of the earliest and largest gardens were those laid out beside the stations in Regina, Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, and Calgary. The CPR’s first nursery was established at Wolesley, Saskatchewan, under the direction of Gustaf Bosson Krook, a Swedish-born horticulturist who held the position for twenty years. During the First World War, the gardens switched from flowers to vegetables, and after the Second World War, to parking lots. Between the wars, greenhouses in Winnipeg, Calgary, and Moose Jaw were providing 125 different varieties of flowers and shrubs.
While a community’s first station was more likely than not to be either a converted boxcar or passenger coach, Canada’s railways quickly got down to building more substantial stations. How big depended upon the business emanating or projected from that location. Once the designs became more elaborate, the railway station became the signature of the rail line that was building it, which each line having distinctive patterns.
The CPR was the first railway to cross the Prairies. In its haste to reach the Pacific coast, which was the goal behind the company’s creation, it very quickly erected stations. Its first president, William Cornelius Van Horne, sent a common station plan to contractors along the line: a very simple full two-storey building with gable ends, usually with a single storey freight wing. These served for twenty years or so until the CPR, to attract more business, devised a greater variety of more aesthetically pleasing station designs, primarily for small-town
