Date(s) -Thursday, September 26, 2024
7:15 pm - 9:00 pm
Location: James Bay New Horizons
Categories
Victoria Historical Society presents their opening talk on Thursday, September 26, 2024 at James Bay New Horizons, 234 Menzies Street, Victoria V8V 2G7 with Frank Leonard discussing The Other Railway Terminal: The Early Development of the Canadian Northern Pacific / Canadian National yard on the Former Songhees Reserve, 1909-1928. James Bay New Horizons opens at 7:15 pm for refreshments and conversation. Talk begins shortly after 7:30 pm.
The Other Railway Terminal: The Early Development of the Canadian Northern Pacific / Canadian National yard on the Former Songhees Reserve, 1909-1928.
While the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway (E&N) yard, with its signature roundhouse, has once again entered public discussion as the centrepiece of a development project, many Victoria residents do not recognize the Selkirk trestle as the remnant of part of a plan for a second, more grandiose yard located by the rival Canadian Northern Pacific Railway (CNP) / Canadian National Railways (CNR) on the former Songhees Reserve. This presentation explores the origin, acquisition, and early development of the second yard, which suggest the company’s development strategies for Victoria harbour and Vancouver Island. Deteriorating finances of the CNP after the outbreak of the First World War led to a continual reduction of allocations for expenditure on the facility and more modest terminal plans. In 1922 the sweeping vision of the local harbour association prompted the CNR to consider briefly a bold plan that would link its Vancouver Island line and the terminal with the Ogden Point ocean docks. But financial stringencies again led the managers to settle on a railway car ferry slip at the terminal that allowed only limited connection with the docks. The location of only a single interchange track to the E&N through a large yard extension south of the Point Ellice Bridge, together with the creation of the Cowichan Bay cut off, which provided an alternative facility some sixty miles north of Victoria for timber export from the island interior, reveals that the company had effectively abandoned future railway development of its terminal.
Frank Leonard, adjunct associate professor in the Department of History of the University of Victoria, was awarded the title of faculty emeritus of Douglas College. He investigates elements of infrastructure projects in western Canada and the United State, frequently by using different types of business records to illuminate the contradictions of development in both firms and communities. Previous studies compare goldrush roads in Victoria colony, Australia, railway terminus development in Seattle, and megaproject financing in Scandinavia with equivalent projects in British Columbia.