A Vision for Canada's Railways

▪ 2004

      In 2003 many challenges faced Canada's railways, which had served for 150 years as Canada's spine, bringing together the scattered British North American colonies that made up the transcontinental country. The most important concern of all was to find a way for the railway to meet the mounting needs of traffic in the 1,320-km (820-mi) heavily populated central corridor that extends from Quebec City in the east through Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto to Windsor in the west. Should traffic in the corridor be turned over to the high-speed trains that operate in Western Europe, such as the TGV (Trains à Grande Vitesse), which hurtle down the tracks at 320 km/hr (200 mph) between the principal cities in France?

      A practical basis for a high-speed passenger rail service appeared on the horizon. Bombardier Inc., a Montreal-based builder of aircraft and transportation equipment, had designed a rapid eight-car set of vehicles, Acela, that operated with some success over Amtrak's lines in the northeastern United States. The company had also tested new locomotives and rolling stock similar in size to that of Acela but powered by 5,000-hp Pratt and Whitney aircraft engines. This equipment would not require the expensive electrification used by European trains.

      Urban transportation was another area experiencing change. Cities across Canada were forging ahead with integrated bus and light-rail transit systems. Ottawa was a good example. Its 900 buses, many traveling on dedicated routes, were merged with the diesel-powered O-Train, a line running from the southern outskirts of the city to near its downtown core. Plans were under way to expand the system to meet the needs of the city's 800,000 inhabitants.

      If the future of rail transportation in central Canada was indefinite, Canada's north offered exciting terrain for the adventurous rail traveler. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, a succession of railways built to open the north provided journeys into spectacular scenery. In the west, successors to the original transcontinental routes—the Rocky Mountaineer through Banff and the Canadian through Jasper—wind among the majestic Rocky Mountains. From Winnipeg a railway passes through rugged lake and forest country to reach the ocean port of Churchill on Hudson Bay. Ontario's two northern lines are the Algoma Central, which runs from Sault Ste. Marie through the Agawa Canyon, resplendent with hardwoods in the fall, and the Northland, which cuts through the mineral-rich Canadian Shield to Moosonee, close to an old fur-trading post on James Bay. In Quebec a line runs north from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the iron-ore deposits of Ungava and Labrador, where canoeists, fishermen, and hunters were brought into the last great wilderness region of eastern North America.

David M.L. Farr

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