In the early 1970’s I worked for Canadian Pacific Ltd.  This was a monolithic company that started as a private Canadian railroad company and then branched out into shipping (freighters), trucking, hotels, forestry products, air transport, mining and probably a few others.  Today all the pieces have been sold to various other companies and the railroad is all that remains.   In the 1970’s though they were a very large and successful conglomerate.  This of course is before it became popular for Corporations to go “back to their roots”

The Background

My job was a porter on the passenger train that went from Vancouver to Montreal every day.  That is one train left Vancouver and one left Montreal every day.  It took the train about 6 days to cross the country.  I traveled from  Vancouver to Winnipeg and back, a two and a half day journey each way.  The work schedule was 6 days on (3 out and 3 back, with an overnight in Winnipeg) and then 4 days off.  We were paid for 20 hours days (hey your porter is almost always on duty) so it was not bad money wise.

I don’t recall how many times I did the round trip but more than 10 for sure.  It’s a funny thing how hindsight works.  I was traveling frequently relaxing long trips through what could arguably be classified as some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.  Had I understood then what I know now,  I would have appreciated it much more, much more than viewing it just as a high paying job (I might have paid them).

The Story

From those years, a few stories stand out in my mind and over time I will probably share more of those but today’s interesting story is how a conglomerate like CP could stretch their muscles in those days.

On our way into Calgary news arrived of a derail in the Rockies east of Banff.   Our train was not going through.  CP brought buses (from the companies bus line) to the train station in Calgary and bused us to the Calgary airport where we took a CP Air jet to Kamloops (porters and passengers).  We were bused (via CP’s busline) to the Kamloops train station.  The porter crew and the passengers going west of Kamloops picked up the westbound train there, those whose original destination had been between Banff and Kamloops got the east bound train.   Hey if you can do it why not.

Progress

Of course today, all has changed.  Via rail runs the passenger train from Vancouver to Montreal (via Jasper not Banff) and it is not daily (evry 2nd day in the summer though) and a private company called the Rocky Mountaineer  runs a train from Vancouver to Calgary (as a tourist experience).   There is no cross country passenger train on the CP tracks any more (a pity).

There are other private train companies taking advantage of the rails in the Rockies, for example one that runs a half day train from Jasper to Dunster through the Yellow Head pass (and then buses you back) on the Jasper to Prince George part of the CN line.