<\/a>ily of railroaders who embedded in me a deep respect for trains and train people.\u00a0 The Canadian was the queen of this world.\u00a0 She was the last classic streamliner created from scratch by the visionary Budd Company, sired in the image of her sisters, The Chessie, the Wabash Blue Bird, the Burlington Route\u2019s snazzy Twin Zephyrs and the glittery California Zephyr.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I first saw The Canadian when I was four, on a snowy evening walk with my father in Bolton, Ontario.\u00a0 Around the curve she flew and, in a flash, provided a living lesson in history, geography, technology and nationalism.\u00a0 The catch-me-if-you-can snarl of the diesels, the shimmering stainless steel car flanks, the jade-tinted scenic domes, the up-and-down zigzag of sleeping car windows, the crimson flashes of roses bobbing in snifters on snowy dining car linen and \u2013 like an exclamation mark at the end of a perfect sentence \u2013 the illuminated portrait of that cheeky CPR beaver, grinning down from his perch on the tapered stern of the observation car.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As The Canadian pounded along on the first lap of her run to Vancouver, a four-year-old kid could dream of those towns and cities strung out along the main line to the Pacific.\u00a0 Places that didn\u2019t exist until the CPR spiked down its pioneering rails, spawned those communities, those farms and factories, and converted a patriotic notion into a transcontinental nation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Later, The Canadian was a daily after-school event.\u00a0 I raced by bike or electric trolley bus every afternoon to the West Toronto station, where CPR operator Clare Schoester had me perform \u201cmy duties.\u201d\u00a0 These were chalking up the arrival and departure boards in my draughtsman father\u2019s handwriting and making the PA announcements.\u00a0 Commanding either the inbound or outbound Canadian would be Mr. Schoester\u2019s friend, locomotive engineer Norm Schroeder, who often smuggled me aboard for illicit cab rides.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Next came my pestering letters to CPR executives in Toronto and at headquarters in Montreal\u2019s Windsor Station.\u00a0 These produced invitations to meet with the bemused railroaders.\u00a0 One of them was CPR President and Chairman Norris Roy \u201cBuck\u201d Crump, who bought The Canadian in 1953.\u00a0 She would always be known to the CPR family as Buck\u2019s Beauty.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Canadian was Mr. Crump\u2019s pride and joy and heartbreak.\u00a0 As he told me, he misjudged the extent to which government would fund the competing air and highway systems, rendering The Canadian and all passenger trains hopelessly unprofitable.\u00a0 But he still loved and watched over her, even if she eventually gushed embarrassing buckets of CPR red ink.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just how closely Mr. Crump watched his train was explained to me by CPR (later VIA) dining car steward Joe Kratochvil, a good Fort William boy who hired on in 1945 and retired from the number one seniority position on The Canadian in 1984.\u00a0 He often served Mr. Crump and was encouraged to report cutbacks affecting the train\u2019s reputation as \u201cthe route of scenic grandeur and unsurpassed service.\u201d\u00a0 Any downgrading economies were quickly reversed after Mr. Crump learned of them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Joe was the steward on the last leg of my first voyage on The Canadian in 1968, I rode with him on his last runs to and from Winnipeg, and he was briefly aboard for the last run over the CPR main line in 1990.\u00a0 He bailed early because he couldn\u2019t bear to watch \u201chis train\u201d die at the hands of the politicians.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That last departure eastbound from Thunder Bay was heartbreaking.\u00a0 The protestors were there with their signs and candles, and as we prepared to take our leave, the soon-to-be-unemployed VIA stationmaster called out, \u201cFrom the people of VIA Thunder Bay, thank you, good luck and farewell.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To fight for The Canadian is to fight on behalf of those people.\u00a0 The railroaders who love and pamper her.\u00a0 The passengers from across Canada and around the world who have ridden and still ride aboard her gleaming cars.\u00a0 The millions more who would if she were more affordable and returned to the North Shore.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All of this can and probably will be dismissed as sentimental fluff by Ottawa.\u00a0 But governments come and governments go.\u00a0 Like Ol\u2019 Man River, the people and their beloved Canadian just keep rollin\u2019 along.\u00a0 That\u2019s as it should be.\u00a0 It\u2019s why I fight to make sure it always will be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Greg Gormick is a national rail analyst and government policy adviser based in Greater Toronto.\u00a0 He currently serves as coordinator of the All Aboard St. Marys citizens\u2019 committee in Southwestern Ontario.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Brenda and Wawa-news readers: Why do I do it? Expend prodigious amounts of research time, travel to the North Shore and push for the preservation and resurrection of VIA Rail\u2019s Canadian, that is. Three good reasons:\u00a0 past glories, present potential and people. I grew up in a family of railroaders who …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[784],"class_list":["post-6122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","tag-the-canadian"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 01:26:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6124,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122\/revisions\/6124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}