CPR 1939 Peninsula (Marathon), Ontario. A Royal Tour Stop

With our humidex reaching 40 degrees Celsius (around 104 degrees Fahrenheit) for a few days, I have been putting my energy into managing the legacy 'Stacks/Archives' in the basement which my parents accumulated. This major diversion of energy explains this week's abbreviated post. 

Looking back over 80 years of now 'historical' files accumulated by teachers, one also sees items which should be shared broadly using the available technology. With my particular interest in the north shore of Lake Superior, I found one to present immediately.

Before Facebook, there was Scrapbook.

Long before the internet, people collected images and stories from newspapers and magazines and 'curated' collections of items which interested them. Using mucilage, the items were glued into scrapbooks. So far, today's source scrapbook has endured for 83 years. It will be interesting to see if on-line Pinterest collections are still around in the year 2105. Do let me know, will you?

I don't know which side of the family filled a 15 x 11 inch scrapbook with clippings of the 1939 Royal Tour. Certainly my father's family actually attended or saw elements of the tour in Montreal.

My mother was 6 years old at the time. The careful adult effort put into the book, suggests it was not hers. However, the brand of scrapbook used matches others in her collection - so perhaps her older sister, or father (a veteran of the Great War), or her mother assembled this collection.

The clipping below has dimensions of roughly 5 inches by 13 inches. Many of the clipping photos are very large, making them attractive to newspaper readers, or people who wished to frame them afterwards. However, it often takes more than one pass of the scanner to digitize them. You can see elements of 'photoshopping' by a newspaper photo artist if you look closely.

The subject of the clipping is part of a simple, brief conversation between the King and Queen and a local resident of Peninsula (later Marathon) Ontario. Their typical interest in the citizens they encountered is evident in the exchange. Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) reflected afterwards that 'the Tour made us'.

... The 1939 Tour really marked the beginning of their roles as public relations ambassadors for, and wartime leaders of, Britain (and the 'Empire'/Commonwealth) during the Second World War. 

With the demanding schedule they followed, their knowledge of their Canadian 'subjects' increased, as did their PR skills. As these skills were refined, adapted and applied on the Tour ... their popularity with Canadians (Americans and Newfoundlanders) increased. 

... So the Tour made them effective and popular leaders - particularly when Britain needed all the help it could get early in the war - when Hitler's armies occupied most of western Europe.

From Peninsula, the Royal Train would be climbing the Ruling Grade to Neys - so a 'pusher' was being added to the headend. The Marathon Company pulp mill at Peninsula would soon be in constructed - providing forestry, log driving/log boom management, and mill jobs for the area in the years that followed.

from: Pic, Pulp and People; Jean Boultbee/Jesse Embree; 1981; Township of Marathon.

Looking timetable west, here is the station area as those on the Royal Tour would have seen it in 1939.

*  *  *

More information on the Royal Tour of 1939 can be reached via the 'radio button' above:

Railway Technology & Systems 04

... under the heading ...

Royal Tour of 1939

Ontario, Grain Transportation, Industry, 1927 - 'People Like Maps'

 

Postcard mailed from Ottawa to Massachusetts on September 12, 1929.

Printed by Photogelatine Engraving [sic], Ottawa.

The postmark advocates buying a Dominion Annuity at the Post Office.

And the stock market crash was coming in a month or so.

*  *  *

The following maps come from this textbook. 

It may have been used by LC Gagnon during his studies.

However, we've been known to 'collect' the odd textbook, so one never knows for certain.

Canada was (over)building a lot of 'infrastructure' at the beginning of that century ...

*  *  *

The last map (below) illustrates distribution of the revolutionary technology of electricity.

... aka The People's Power in Ontario.

In addition to reducing farm drudgery (e.g. by replacing cow milking by hand with milking machines) 

'hydro' also extended a 'metropolitan corridor' into the countryside via interurban electric railways.

Capreol, Sudbury, Ignace - Places Along the Way, 1989

In September 1989 we made our usual western trip.
Some railway features along the way are the focus of this post.

While our schedules seldom permitted lingering at intermediate towns,
I'm glad I invested in locally-produced town histories when I could find them.

... Over decades, as fewer citizens have been employed by railways at these smaller railway centres,
the cultural awareness of local railway operations has eroded quite quickly in many cases.

Often, the local public library maintains a valuable cache of railway heritage information.


*  *  *

CAPREOL - JUST NORTH OF SUDBURY
(Originally a Canadian Northern division point)

This location is known in 2018 as the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum & Heritage Centre. In 1989, here at Capreol, we spoke to one of the women volunteers who was very knowledgeable about local history and the railway. 

How long ago was this? Another person was interviewing a potential employee and he asked her if she had ever 'burned a CD'.

We dropped by at 20hr on the evening we arrived at Sudbury to see the museum site.

... Via Google maps in 2018, the Centre seems to be doing really well today.

On that same evening we also visited Capreol yard.
Above, looking west ... below, looking east.

*  *  *

SUDBURY

On the morning of our easiest day of travel,
between Sudbury and Schreiber,
we had a quick look at Sudbury yard.

This photo above is over-exposed because I wanted to get some detail of the station.

This hand-coloured postcard was mailed to Ormstown, Quebec in 1912.

*  *  *

MAP OF NORTHERN ONTARIO FROM 1912

Atlas of Canada; WJ Roche, Minister of the Interior; 1912; Govt of Canada.

*  *  *

IGNACE

... The first CPR division point west of Thunder Bay.

A postcard mailed in 1984 looks toward the west end of Ignace.
The station is beyond the right edge of the photo.
You can see a large, turquoise CPR bunkhouse radiating south from the power track.

These photos were taken on our return trip - between Portage la Prairie and Thunder Bay.
I believe we are at the west end of the yard.
Taken at 16hr, my photo caption jokes that the track crews were playing 'tie plate soccer'.
... At least, they were skirmishing over something that heavy on the ground.

I never found the modern iteration of the Ignace station particularly attractive.
I believe this is the south side.
The fish-eye treatment of my lens makes it difficult to match the two halves well.

Cover image detail from: Ignace, A Saga of the Shield; Elinor Barr & Betty Dyck; 1979; The Prairie Publishing Company.

The Winnipeg to Fort William section of the CPR line was doubled between 1905 and 1909 (source:Wiki) to accommodate grain traffic. The strange-looking mounting of the train order signal at the 'back' (south side) of the station was a bit of a puzzle. I would love to see a 'ball signal' hanging beyond that dog, but it is probably just a yard light.

Passage from Ignace, A Saga of the Shield :

'Crews completed doubletracking in 1908. Allied work at Ignace included enlarging the railway yards substantially. The CPR houses, now blocking the proposed crossover south of the station were shifted back on to basements poured behind each building.'

The station no longer exists, but the company housing with its hip rooves still appears in a 2012 version of Google maps ...

from: Google 2018 - Image from 2012.

The view above is on Front Street with the tracks beyond the houses and to the north.

from Bing maps circa 2018

The former CPR houses can be seen above on Front Street.
Between them and the light grey 'island' where the station was located,
is the 'new' south main track which displaced them circa 1908.

This interesting summary of the first CPR facilities at Ignace comes from Ignace, A Saga of the Shield:

'The CPR finished constructing its facilities in 1887. The 12-stall roundhouse and hand-operated turntable dominated the less pretentious buildings surrounding them. Nearby a coal shed 280 feet long paralleled a side track, and the platform-fronted station hugged the main line. To the west stood a water tank, with its eye-catching windmill; to the east, a fenced field where prairie cattle broke their journey.'

from: Ignace, A Saga of the Shield; Elinor Barr & Betty Dyck; 1979; The Prairie Publishing Company.

Before its purchase by the CPR in 1910, this building was a hotel built during the Sturgeon Lake gold rush.

Ignace, A Saga of the Shield; Elinor Barr & Betty Dyck; 1979; The Prairie Publishing Company.

Caption from: Ignace, A Saga of the Shield :

'An Ignace crew prepares this woodburner for duty as a doubleheader.'

The engine seems to be 'cold' so its crew probably has not been ordered for duty. This may show the locomotive in the process of having its coupling system and pilot changed from a link and pin technology, to Janney-style couplers.

A number of old design features and locomotive technologies can be seen in the photo above.