When Transport Minister Jean-Luc Pepin lowered Ottawa’s axe on VIA’s exposed neck in the first of several cuts beginning in November 1981, he said it was necessary to free up funding to buy Bombardier’s problem plagued Light, Rapid, Comfortable (LRC) trains.  He added that “some” might run outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor.  They didn’t.   Some of the trains cut by ...

Retired Brandon Sun general manager Bill Chester and I often yak about the need to restore rail passenger service on the Prairies, across Northern Ontario and in the Maritimes in a modern and affordable form.  We’ve concluded there’s only one reason it hasn’t happened:  politicians and their paladins.   Bill and I shared a few sardonic chuckles when he sent ...

When Transport Minister Omar Alghabra appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities on January 12, he said he wasn’t hiding from the multiple meltdowns of Canada’s airlines and VIA Rail over the Christmas holidays.  But he was.   Alghabra and his government are hiding from an inevitable confrontation with more than a century of ...

  To paraphrase Gordon Lightfoot, “There was a time in this fair land when the railroads were well run.”  But no more – at least to hear their customers tell it.   Shippers are screaming at Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific (CP) for not providing what they deem an adequate supply of empty cars and delivering the loaded cars ...

Beware of Canadian railway wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Two have been circling the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) since early 2021 and one is now getting ready to dine – it thinks.   The two northern wolves are our transcontinental railways, Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN).  In their prime, both were powerhouses that spanned Canada, served U.S. border ...

It may seem odd to share with Northern Ontarians a recent article I wrote for the Toronto Star about a transportation agency in Southern Ontario.  But the reasons are many and my concern from a northern viewpoint is extreme because this politically-driven juggernaut has been expanding its empire out of sight – with billions of our tax dollars – through ...

Canada’s freight railways and its publicly-owned passenger carrier, VIA Rail, have never been in worse shape, despite the frantic efforts of their flacks to tell us the opposite.  But have no fear.  The Trudeau government has come up with a brilliant plan to fix this mess:  Loan $4.5 billion to Senegal to build a new double-track railway.   The economic, ...

Transportation injustice comes in two flavours in Ontario:  federal and provincial.  The latter is more recent, but it’s just as sour.   The federal vandalization of Ontario’s rail service has been going on for decades, all the way back to the 1940s when Liberal cabinet minister C.D. Howe dropped all concern about the health of our railways in favour of ...

Age, maturity and experience eventually bring the realization that some things in this life simply aren’t just or fair.  But that doesn’t mean surrendering to injustice without speaking out and pushing back.  Such is the case with the destruction of Northern Ontario’s rail passenger service.   For more than half-a-century, successive federal governments have committed transportation vandalism across Northern Ontario.  ...

  It’s a fair bet that few Canadian politicians have ever watched the 1957 Jimmy Stewart movie, Night Passage.  If they had, they might have heeded the thought-provoking lyrics of Ned Washington, as sung by Stewart, in that charming film of yore:   Oh, you can’t get far without a railroad, You can’t get far without a railroad. You gotta ...

      A group of self-proclaimed advocates is demanding the government immediately restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service, have that publicly-funded agency buy CN’s Algoma Central line from Sault Ste. Marie to Hearst, restore the passenger train on that line and push a private freight operator off the Sudbury-Soo line.  These grand pronouncements are in their submission to ...

Vic Fedeli has dug himself into a pit with endless promises to restore Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) passenger service “before the next election.”  He’s now appealing for help from Liberal Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota.  Politics, passenger trains, and ill-advised promises make strange bedfellows.   The good news is MP Anthony Rota has offered to assist the ...

Frank magazine employed an effective and evocative word when reporting on dubious political statements back in its heyday:  nose stretchers.   What’s a nose stretcher?  Think of Pinocchio when he told tall tales.  Think of actor Leslie Nielsen in the movie, Airplane, whose proboscis grew each time he uttered soothing words to calm the frightened passengers without regard for the ...