What are 3 pre-teen children doing at 11 PM on a hot Central Station platform? They are standing by the 4132 and 4149 which will be pulling the first leg of their vacation train trip across Canada.
Our traditional practice of 'getting a good seat' and walking up to see the power, stems from taking numerous steam fantrips from Central Station. Fans who were well-behaved and arrived early were often invited to safely step into the cab ... from the radically conceived (for Canada) floor-level platforms.
The total ticket cost for two half-bedrooms (4 beds) to Vancouver and return was $680.40. Using the inflation multiplier of 8.35, this means the total cost of the trip was about $5680 in 2023 dollars, and this included meals in the dining car.
At Capreol, on the following morning, we had the scheduled one-hour stop so that cars from the Toronto section of the Montreal-Vancouver Panorama (Train 105) could be added to our consist.
LC Gagnon booked his family on this trip by using the CNR travel office in Montreal and the tickets were mailed out to us.
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In 2023, most of Canada's 'railway hotels' are quite a few financial transactions away from their original railway owners. Until at least the 1920s, destination resort hotels in areas of scenic Canadian wilderness were seen as a way to increase passenger train business. In Canada, the CPR began this trend in the Canadian Rockies with sites such as the Banff Springs Hotel.
This post looks at a misadventure we had in our quest to see a historic railway lodge. The Jasper Park Lodge grew to resort size as a result of the vision of the US-born CNR President Sir Henry Thornton.
In the 1950s, my parents had had their own individual western Canada trips. My father, a CPR employee, went out in 1950. My mother went out in 1954 with her mother - there was a strong CPR influence in her family.
Both of their trips can be found in: Index 2 - Short Subjects, scroll down to the CPR section, and then look under those years. Both of them travelled on the CPR and neither of them stayed in any of the traditional railway resort hotels, as I recall.
Here is the pamphlet which describes the 1968 features of the Jasper Park Lodge. I suspect Miss Guenette was a Lodge employee who gave us this pamphlet and who helped us after our misadventure. It is not uncommon for members of our family to write letters of thanks to employers, citing our appreciation for the help and kindness of particular staff members during our travel.
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| from: Jasper Park Lodge; Cyndi Smith; 1985; self-published. |
Above is a sketch of a proposed resort which the Grand Trunk Pacific intended to link with the Miette Hot Springs - located 'timetable east' of Jasper. It was intended to imitate and compete with the Banff Springs Hotel. I think the design has startled the horses pulling the 'Tally Ho' from the GTP station.
The low profile of the main building of the Jasper Park Lodge - it burned down in 1952 and was rebuilt with a similar external appearance - was intended to blend in with its surroundings.
Reminder: The inflation factor is x8.35 - in case you want to calculate prices in 2023 dollars.
The spouse of one of my bosses worked here as summer staff in university.
Another boss longed to live here and work at a Jasper retail pharmacy he noticed during a 1980s vacation.
This day was followed by perhaps the most memorable day of the vacation.
It was the trip to the Columbia Icefield (circled above).
... Signs at the glacier's ablation zone said the glacier had been receding since the 1950s.
They also indicated that it was unknown why this change was happening.
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Walking from the town, Jasper Park Lodge was our objective. I'm not sure which trails we followed but we were quite tired by the time we pressed on to reach the Lodge by road.
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Here are all the old-timey paper artifacts used to execute and evidence financial transactions before the internet. There are also paper souvenirs of businesses which some citizens of Jasper may remember. They are part of the two-scrapbook trip account.
The room cost in 2023 dollars was $167. We were only there for one night. After our ice field trip, we were shoehorned into our reserved drawing room at 20hr for the remainder of our journey to Vancouver via the Super Continental.
Like militia crossing the ice of Lake Superior, bridging the gaps where the CPR had not yet been completed ... we must have started our hike in high spirits, singing popular ditties of the era.
Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules ...
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.
...
There is another better slide photo of the 6060, but it contains people whom we don't know and the photo above shows the yard.
A postcard appears below instead. The green 'moss' must have been inadvertently put there as part of the green-over-accenting processing of the postcard image - it appears on other internet iterations of this postcard.
Mount Edith Cavell is the snow-covered peak at the left.
Observe the body language as we look down on a small branch of the Athabaska River.
This slide always brought a grim laugh at a family slide show. At that age, I'd sometimes cycle 50 km on a round trip between our home in Lachine and St Anne's via Lakeshore Road. It was never as tiring as this hike. The Lodge is still very far away, as we must still cover half of the circumference of Lake Beauvert.
Perhaps after we were welcomed with great sympathy by the saintly Miss Guenette - employee of the Lodge - a couple of photos were taken of our objective to prove we had reached it. A scheduled bus eventually took us back to the townsite and our motel. Postcards document what we might have seen had we still been sentient at that point.
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Edith Cavell
While we were at Jasper, I remember reading an account of Edith Cavell's experiences and I was shocked by what I read.
A surrealistic series of postcards was published to commemorate important people of the Great War.
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| 'A reply to Dr Albert Zimmermann, Germany's Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs' (70pp) |
Similar to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, methods of 'keeping order' during the German invasion of Belgium (a postcard of Senlis, France - just north-east of Paris - is shown below as an example), and the burning of the library of the Catholic University of Leuven ... The execution of Edith Cavell provoked outrage.
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| Undated, unused postcard. |
The postcards seem surreal. I just re-read Cyndi Smith's book on Jasper Park Lodge, and my spouse and I found a particular fact surprising or shocking - after my recent decades of reading about the history of the Great War. It all depends on your 'judgement' of a historical figure - how you react ...
In 1925, the Jasper Park Lodge golf course was opened by Douglas Haig (1st Earl Haig), commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front for most of the War.
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The pamphlet below portrays CNR's late 1960s vision of Jasper Park Lodge.
The last two pages of photos
(showing dancing/entertainment and train equipment)
are historically interesting.
The train equipment page is enlarged for your delight.
The link below connects to Cyndi Smith's updated Jasper Park Lodge book at archive.org
It made a perfect historical souvenir of Jasper
when my spouse and I spent two days there in the late 1980s.
(It can be 'borrowed' on-line using an archive.org account)
Cyndi Smith had a fascinating career as a National Park Warden, retiring in 2012.
There is an illustrated 4-page transcription of an 'oral history' interview about her experiences.
You'll read interesting accounts of working with horses, people and wildlife.
The link below goes to Page 1 of 4.
National Park Warden Alumni Society
