GNRC 1902 Great Northern Railway of Canada - Hawkesbury to Joliette

Performing one of his intensive and thorough searches on particular historical topics, Jim Christie was probably looking for references to a hard metallic carbide. Instead he found an advertisement for flammable calcium carbide in a book entitled: Amidst the Laurentians; NM Hinshelwood; 1902; Montreal Herald - A link to the book is provided below.

 Jim was kind enough to share the reference with people interested in the region. 

The book's main subjects are the Great Northern Railway of Canada, and Shawinigan Falls.

The book's descriptive account of the attractions along the western section of the line follows below.

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Here are the key legislative dates in the short life of the GNRC.

1883 

The Great Northern Railway Company was incorporated to build from St Andrew's [East, Quebec] to a point on the North Shore Railway via Argenteuil, Two Mountains, Terrebonne, L'Assomption, Montcalm, Joliette, Berthier, Maskinonge, St Maurice and Champlain Counties.

1884

An agreement with the Carillon and Grenville Railway Co was authorized.

1896-1898

Absorption of Lower Laurentian, Quebec and James Bay, Montfort & Gatineau Colonization, railways authorized. 

1899

Name change to Great Northern Railway of Canada authorized.

1905

Canadian Northern Railway allowed to lease the GNRC and to guarantee its bonds.

1906

GNRC, Chateauguay & Northern, Quebec New Brunswick & Nova Scotia, railways authorized to be reorganized to form the Canadian Northern Quebec Railway Company.

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GNRC Map and Related Links

Book link: Amidst the Laurentians

The text says that the Joliette to Montreal line of the GNRC was not yet completed.

To review the Moreau Street terminal, along with the other terminal stations which the CNR inherited ...

you may wish to check my earlier effort to organize them in my own head ...

Earlier post on the evolution of CNR's Montreal Terminals

This map conveys a lot of information with the informality of a pen and ruler.

Horse-drawn binders harvest the richness of the Prairies, as labourers 

(often new immigrants) stook the sheaves of wheat to dry.

Somewhere in the centre-distant urban coal smudge is the way west. Only small canal boats can ascend the Lachine Canal on their way via the St Lawrence, and its small Canadian canals, to the Great Lakes. 

At the extreme right, the Bonsecours Market (primarily farm produce) is in full operation. 

To the Market's left, in the distance, boxcars on the Grand Trunk harbour tracks empty their freight into dockside freight sheds, for loading onto coastal and ocean-going ships. 

At the water's edge, a line of carriages awaits passengers alighting from the shallow-draft paddleboats. A spectacular excursion for tourists is offered by one of them on the page below. Other boats will travel to ports along the St Lawrence and its tributaries ... and up the Ottawa River canals.

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Below: Notre Dame Basilica's twin spires, grain elevators and the Victoria Bridge are seen against the St Lawrence.

Above: The Bank of Montreal head office (with its fluted pillars), where Donald Smith and George Stephen could often be found.

I purchased this photograph of a postcard at a railway show. This view looks down the Ottawa River with Quebec and the Grenville Canal on the left bank. This canal is the waterway which some of the Montreal Harbour paddleboats would have travelled. Hawkesbury, Ontario is on the right bank. 

The closer bridge is the Perley (road) Bridge. The distant bridge is that of the GNRC/CNoR, later the CNR.

The Perley Bridge

Jim Christie recalls that his father (about age 10) was, without prior arrangement, deputized to help cut the ribbon to open the Perley Bridge in 1931 at its official opening ceremony. 

The project was originally promoted by Argenteuil MP George Perley (1857-1938) in 1909 ... and was named after him when it opened. Perley served as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Minister of the Canadian Overseas Military Forces during the Great War.

The bridge was finally constructed in 1930-31 as a 'make work project' early in the Great Depression. The bridge was re-constructed to raise it by 10 feet or so in 1961 as a result of the building of the hydro dam at Carillon (12 miles downstream, built 1959-1964). This reservoir raised the Hawkesbury water level by about 10 feet.

I often travelled over this bridge on weekends in the late 1970s and its age (almost 50 years old), narrowness, and added height provided a certain sense of ... adventure ... when the bridge was shared with one of the many heavily-loaded trucks engaged in interprovincial commerce!

While the railway bridge was designed to carry that kind of weight, large diesel-powered (often overloaded) semi-trucks had not been foreseen in the 1930s. And a traffic light right at the foot of the long, steep bridge ramp on the Quebec side kept everyone on their toes.

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Below, this view of the railway bridge is from the Hawkesbury, Ontario side, looking up-river.

Above: The up-river (left) and down-river views of the Wilson Paper Mills dam on the North River.

Port of Vancouver (Vancouver Harbour) in 1923

This federal publication provides data for both sea and inland harbours. While basic maps are provided, it is assumed that the user has access to the appropriate nautical charts. The photographs come from this publication.

Included below, from other sources, are maps from 1915 and 1927. The latter is a bird's eye view map with many local features labelled - it is the last image in this post. 

As always, it is often necessary to run the slider bar to the right to see the entirety of large images.

Postcard mailed 1916 Vancouver to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The sender had come through the Rockies, with a day at Lake Louise. 'With the Orient ahead!'

from: Government of Canada Atlas, 1915.

from: Vancouver, The Way it Was; Michael Kluckner; 1984; Whitecap Books.

A 'bird's eye view' style map from 1927,

Vancouver Railway Landscape 1915-1930

Here are a few images showing Vancouver railways as other lines began to follow the CPR into the city.

Above is one version of the Second Narrows bridge crossing to North Vancouver. Apparently, autos were first to use it in 1925, followed by trains. The Pacific Gatherer collided with the centre span on September 19, 1930 and that was the end of getting across this bridge until June 1934 when it finally reopened. You can easily find some interesting photos of this collision elsewhere on the internet - the damage is quite impressive. 

Except for the map immediately below (from a Government of Canada Atlas from 1915) the other images are from: Vancouver, The Way it Was; Michael Kluckner; 1984; Whitecap Books.

The Great Northern terminal (left) was built 1915-1917 and demolished in the 1960s. The Canadian Northern terminal (right) was built 1917-1919 ... according to the book identified above. This view dates from the 1920s.

The illustrated map above (from 1927) shows a number of new railway features.

NTR 1920 Notes by the Way, Part 2 - Cochrane to Winnipeg

 

Maps, maps, maps! The newly-granted ability to present a large map as a large image has become the theme this time.

Along with the circa 1920 description of the National Transcontinental, Cochrane to Winnipeg, I am enjoying the ability to present very large maps from a 1915 Canadian government atlas which match the territory ... so you can see the details.

After we 'reach' Winnipeg in the booklet, you'll find a similar map of Manitoba, ranging out to Rivers, Brandon, Dauphin and down to the border.

As always ... this is a very large atlas so the images are generally composites of numerous partial scans and the Cochrane area is printed over the atlas 'gutter'. So there is some blurring and darkening in certain spots.

The post containing the first half of this booklet is here:

NTR 1920 Notes by the Way, Part 1 - Quebec to Cochrane

The pages which set the stage for the westbound trip through Ontario are repeated below. So you may have already read the content of the first couple of images below.

Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, 1920s - The Former CNoR Route

The route the Canadian Northern Railway assembled and built between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto is explored here using CNR guidebooks from the 1920s and maps from a 1915 Canadian government atlas. 

Two Canadian National guidebooks.
Left: circa 1922; Right: circa 1926.

By mixing and matching route segments from the two guidebooks above, it was possible to assemble a westbound trip from Montreal to Ottawa, and an eastbound trip from Toronto to Ottawa. 

One of the books indicated that the former CNoR route was not followed west of Brighton by CNR passenger trains.

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Some spelling correction and a better-researched, broader perspective of history - almost a century later - would alter *how these descriptions are written today. However, producing wayside stories for the many different lines inherited by the CNR system would have been a significant accomplishment during the challenging years of post-war consolidation.

* A fairly neutral example is that Adam Dollard may have been a bit of a brigand - not necessarily the saviour of Montreal. In the 1960s in a Quebec school, they were still telling us about his gallant stand. Reinforcing the idea that education is a life-long process ... I learned from MusiquePlus in the 1990s that the Fête de Dollard (as the Victoria Day weekend was then known) was the earliest fashion-police-approved date for Quebec girls to wear white shoes. But I digress ...

Montreal Tunnel Terminal (undated postcard)
Notice that an artist has changed 'Canadian Northern' to 'Canadian National'.

For regular visitors, this form of map is very familiar by now.
The Canadian Northern 'territory' colour can be seen along the Ottawa River in the Oka, St Andrews, Hawkesbury area.

The Quebec sheet was used above - it shows Hawkesbury, Ontario.
The Ontario sheet is used below - it shows Grenville, Quebec.
A westbound would cross the Ottawa River from Grenville to Hawkesbury.

One of the 1915 city maps is shown below.
You can see the Canadian Northern Montreal-Toronto lines in the south-east corner, I believe.

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The Route from Toronto to Ottawa

Once out of Toronto, the Canadian Northern runs north of the GTR and CPR, through Orono.
Between Brighton and Trenton, the CNoR route moves to the south - to pass through Deseronto.

It would not have been Canadian Northern's intention to operate the eastbound trip to Napanee over a six hour period. 

With Canadian National now operating both routes, it is clear that the former Grand Trunk double-track line is preferred for intercity travellers who don't want to make a thorough study of a route's milk can commerce.

from: Desperate Venture (COR); James Plomer; 1979; Mika Publishing.

First Canadian Northern passenger train at Trenton - for Toronto, 1914.

from: The Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More; Ron Brown; 1991: Broadview Press.

The CPR/Canadian Northern Railway station at Belleville. (no date)

from: Lost Horizons (Rathbun Co); Donald M Wilson; 1983; Mika Publishing.

The Rathbun Company car building at Deseronto, circa 1892.

The Bay of Quinte waterfront is behind the building.

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We continue onward from Napanee to Ottawa ...

The hotel opened on June 12, 1912 - so the card must commemorate a personal date of the card's original owner.

My current reading of The Death of a President (1967) by William Manchester, brings me to this comparison ...

The Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto route of the Canadian Northern Railway ... once it was completed for through passenger service ... was operated by that railway for a period which was perhaps a few months longer than the presidency of John F Kennedy.