Grand Trunk Pacific Railway

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Type	Railway company
Founded	1903

For the company's city-directory listings and its Lakehead employees, see Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (business).

The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) was a railway company controlled by the Grand Trunk Railway. It was incorporated in 1903 and built Canada's second transcontinental line between 1906 and 1914, running from Winnipeg by way of Edmonton to Prince Rupert. At the Lakehead it built the Lake Superior Branch from Superior Junction, near Sioux Lookout, to a terminal at Fort William. The terminal stood on 1,600 acres of the Fort William Reserve that passed to the company in 1905 (see 1905 Railway Taking). The company failed during the First World War. The federal government put it in receivership in 1919, and by 1923 its lines had been merged into the Canadian National Railways.

Origins

Charles Melville Hays, general manager of the Grand Trunk, announced the transcontinental scheme on 24 November 1902. He was president of the Grand Trunk Pacific from 1904 until his death in 1912. Under the plan backed by Wilfrid Laurier's government, the GTP would build the line west of Winnipeg. The government would build the National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) east from Winnipeg to Moncton and lease it to the GTP for 50 years at a rent of 3 per cent of its cost, with the first seven years free.

To reach the grain ports at the head of Lake Superior, the company obtained a charter in 1903 for a branch from the NTR to Fort William, Port Arthur or another port on the lake. In 1904 the Government of Ontario granted the branch a subsidy of $2,000 and 6,000 acres of land per mile, the land to be taken in ten large blocks beside the line.

The Lakehead terminal

The company's engineers looked at several sites and took an option on land at Bare Point, north of the Port Arthur harbour. They settled instead on a 1,600-acre tract of the Fort William Reserve fronting the Kaministiquia River and the Mission River; the Mission River had to be heavily dredged. Clarence Hugh Jackson, mayor of Fort William in 1904, went to Montreal to negotiate a deal that would place the company's terminals in Fort William and bring a bridge over the Kaministiquia at West Fort.

The reserve land was sold to the company in 1905 for $242,936. The houses, church and graves of the band's village at the Mission had to be moved, and Fort William First Nation regards the transfer as an expropriation. Canada settled the band's claim in 2016–17 on an offer of $98,933,310 (see Grand Trunk Pacific Claim and Grand Trunk Pacific Settlement Agreement).

The 1905 agreement and the town's bonus

The Town of Fort William signed an agreement with the company in 1905, the year E. S. Rutledge became mayor. The town agreed to pay the company $300,000 for lands, docks, yards, buildings and other improvements. Section 6 offered a further $50,000 bonus if, within a year, the company undertook to build a bridge over the Kaministiquia and to give the town a perpetual right to cross it by streetcar, vehicle and on foot. The ratepayers approved the enabling by-law by about 100 to 1. The town also granted tax exemptions and land, and closed streets for the railway.

The company took up the bridge option in a second agreement in 1906, promising to maintain the bridge in perpetuity at no cost to the town other than the streetcar rails and wires. It finished the combined railway and road swing bridge, now the James Street Swing Bridge, in 1909 at a cost of about $230,000, and the town paid its $50,000. Fort William's population more than doubled between 1902 and 1906, from 4,799 to 10,032, and had reached 18,003 by 1909.

First sod

Laurier turned the official first sod of the Grand Trunk Pacific at West Fort William at 3:41 p.m. on 11 September 1905, before a crowd of about 10,000. Work on the main line had in fact started near Carberry, Manitoba, in late August 1905, and Grand Trunk officials were inclined to ignore the Fort William ceremony. Laurier stopped at Fort William on his way back east from a western tour, arriving over the Canadian Northern Railway.

Lake Superior Branch

On 5 October 1905 the company let the contract for just under 160 miles of line, from Fort William to Superior Junction, to Foley Brothers, Larsen and Company of Minnesota, then the largest heavy-construction contractor in North America. The firm's Canadian general manager, John William Stewart, arrived late that month, but large-scale work did not begin until 1906.

Leaving West Fort William, the line made a half-loop to avoid the Canadian Pacific Railway's heavy grades; it was nicknamed the "Moose's Nose" or "Devil's Elbow". It ran close to the CPR for about 60 miles, then turned north to meet the NTR at Superior Junction, 6.4 miles east of Sioux Lookout. The work needed a 600-foot rock tunnel at Flett and sixty bridges, numbered from West Fort to Superior Junction. A shortage of 60-pound rail, which carried a federal tariff, delayed completion. The stations west of West Fort were named in alphabetical order, from Alba to Superior Junction. The company laid 99 miles of the branch in 1907 and began running trains over it in November 1908; Todd gives the opening date as 27 November 1908. The turnaround point at mile 107 was named Graham after George P. Graham, Laurier's Minister of Railways and Canals.

The 252-mile NTR section from Superior Junction to Winnipeg was built by J. D. McArthur's company of Winnipeg. Apart from one ten-car grain train late in 1909, it carried no GTP grain until it opened in April 1911, after a dispute with the Canadian Northern over trackage rights in Winnipeg. Until then GTP grain from the prairies reached the Lakehead over the Canadian Northern, and the company lost the through grain traffic of the 1908, 1909 and 1910 seasons.

The Fort William terminal

The company's yards and shops, known as the Mission Terminal, were on the reserve land south of the Kaministiquia, at milepost 0 of the branch. The site had yard tracks, a multi-stall roundhouse, a coal tower, a water tank and car shops. There was also a coal dock for moving lake coal into hopper cars, and two large transfer sheds for package and bulk freight to and from the lower lake ports. The superintendent and the company's offices were based there, and a freight shed for local trade stood nearby on the Kaministiquia. The swing bridge gave the line access to the property.

The passenger station, West Fort William, stood on the north bank about half a mile east of the main line, 1.5 miles from the terminal across the river. It was probably in use from 1908 until 1916 or 1917. From 1910 GTP passenger trains also used the Canadian Pacific's new Fort William station, owned by the CPR, by way of a spur along Empire Avenue to Empire Junction. It served as a union station until stations were consolidated under Canadian National in 1921.

Grain elevator

The company's terminal elevator, the Grand Trunk Pacific Elevator, was the first built on the south shore of the Kaministiquia, across from Mission Island. Construction began in 1908 and the elevator took its first grain in 1910. It was designed by R. H. Folwell and built by W. R. Sinks and John S. Metcalf. Its first capacity was 3,250,000 bushels, on foundations meant to carry much larger additions, and a photograph of it was used on a widely sold European postcard published by Valentine and Sons. Todd gives a capacity of 5.75 million bushels, for grain from the company's 131 prairie elevators and from private companies. The elevator still operates, as the Superior Terminal of Cargill and Parrish and Heimbecker at 140 Darrel Avenue.

Inspection tour

After the contractor declared the branch ready, O. O. Winter, the company's general superintendent at Fort William, inspected it with A. B. Atwater, Hays and Alfred W. Smithers; the four were photographed at Fort William in 1910. Smithers was chairman of the company's board, based in London. Hays died in the sinking of the Titanic on 15 April 1912.

The bonus and the bridge

Accounts of Fort William's bonus differ. Todd puts the cash bonus at $200,000 plus $50,000 for the bridge. The company's 1909 return to Parliament gives $300,000 for the Fort William terminals and $50,000 for the bridge. The 1905 agreement, as quoted by the Court of Appeal for Ontario, provides $300,000 for lands, docks, yards and buildings plus the $50,000 bridge bonus.

The bridge terms became the subject of a lawsuit more than a century later. A fire broke out on the northern approach spans on 29 October 2013. Afterwards CN, successor to the GTP, reopened the bridge to trains and pedestrians but not to motor vehicles. CN argued that the 1906 agreement bound it to maintain the bridge only for the streetcar and horse-drawn traffic of its day. The city of Thunder Bay, successor to the town, applied for a ruling with Fort William First Nation on its side. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice found for CN in 2017. On 11 June 2018 the Court of Appeal reversed that decision: it held that "vehicle traffic" included cars and trucks, found CN in breach of the agreement, and ordered it to reopen and maintain the bridge. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear CN's appeal, and the bridge reopened to vehicles in November 2019.

Collapse and the Canadian National takeover

The cost of the GTP rose from Hays's estimate of $100 million to more than $185 million, and by 1919 the line was losing more than $13 million a year. The company refused to take up its lease of the NTR, which the federal government began to operate itself in 1914. The Lake Superior Branch was leased in perpetuity to the Canadian Government Railways from 1 July 1915. The rent was $600,000 a year, with an option to buy the branch within 21 years for $13,333,333.

On 25 February 1919 the GTP told the federal government that it could not meet its bond interest. On 7 March, using the War Measures Act, the government named the Minister of Railways and Canals as receiver. Canadian National Railways took over the company's operation and management on 12 July 1920, but the receivership did not end until 31 May 1927. The government had decided in 1919 to buy both the GTP and its parent at a price set by arbitration. In 1923 the operations of the Grand Trunk, the Grand Trunk Pacific and the NTR were merged with the nationalized Canadian Northern into the Canadian National system. The name "Canadian National Railways" had first been applied in December 1918 to the combined Canadian Northern and Canadian Government Railways. Under their manager, D. B. Hanna, the branch's timber bridges and trestles were replaced with steel, concrete or fill.

Neebing yard and abandonment

In 1922 Canadian National decided to build a large new yard at Fort William, at Neebing, to handle all the grain and other traffic coming to the Lakehead. A new line from Neebing to Conmee Junction, on the south side of the Kaministiquia, was finished in 1924. The Mission Terminal stayed in use until late 1923, when the new yard combined the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern facilities. The 26-mile section of the GTP from near Conmee to Fort William was abandoned in the fall of 1924 and its rails were lifted in 1925. Its closure shut the stations at Alba, Baird, Crest and Dona. T. Delvecchio of Kakabeka Falls, who worked for the GTP, the Canadian Government Railways and Canadian National, was the long-time section foreman at Dona. He supervised the lifting of the rails from Dona to West Fort William.

Most of the original terminal buildings were demolished while Neebing Yard was built. By 1976 the coal docks were loading iron-ore pellets for a private company and the elevator had been sold to a private operator. The spur to the CP station had also been taken up. The rest of the Lake Superior Branch became Canadian National's Graham Subdivision. The ten land-grant blocks were later sold to the Abitibi Power and Paper Company, except blocks 9 and 10, which went back to Ontario.

Conflicting figures

• Town bonus: $200,000 cash (Todd) against $300,000 (the company's 1909 return and the 1905 agreement as quoted in 2018), in each case with $50,000 more for the bridge.
• Elevator capacity: 3,250,000 bushels at opening (Friends of Grain Elevators) against 5.75 million (Todd, probably after the elevator was enlarged).
• Bridge dates: one railway history says the swing bridge was built in 1907–08 under a 1905 agreement; the Court of Appeal says it was built under the 1906 agreement and completed in 1909.
• Length of the branch: Todd gives both "some 200 miles" and just under 160 miles under the 1905 contract.

See also

• 1905 Railway Taking
• Grand Trunk Pacific Claim
• Grand Trunk Pacific Settlement Agreement
• Grand Trunk Pacific Elevator
• Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (business), the company's city-directory listings
• James Street Swing Bridge
• Westfort

In Anishinabek News

• April 2019: The company's former lands are being considered for industrial development by Fort William First Nation.