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Fall 2008
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Colonist Cars Helped Build the West
By Corporate Historian Emeritus Jonathan Hanna
In March, 1914, a party of colonists
from Colorado, USA, arriving at Bassano, Alberta, prepare to occupy their Canadian Pacific ready-made
farms in the eastern section of the irrigation block.
It's the railway - the Canadian Pacific Railway - that physically united
Canada as a nation. But it's the people who actually built the country. And no other rail car did more to fill the
Canadian nation with people than the CPR colonist car.
A century ago, travelling on CPR colonist cars was the equivalent to today's no-frills flying.
Elsewhere on a transcontinental train, travelers would sit, eat, drink, and sleep in fine style. But the colonist
car offered just the basics of century-old rail travel with all extras being just that: extras.
Food, blankets, pillows, bedding, and even berth curtains were all available to the to the colonist car guest for
an extra fee. Food was available if a dining car was part of the train's consist. If not, you just broke out some
snacks or heated something up on the car's kitchen range at the end of the passenger compartment across from the
ladies' room. CPR's famous wool blankets were rented out at a dollar each - the same price as a mattress. Pillows
went for 35 cents, and berth curtains, for privacy, cost a dollar a pair. Most immigrants on tight budgets did
without the frills. They spent several days in these mobile homes in cramped quasi-comfort, travelling
from the immigrant ship that off-loaded them at the ports of Halifax, Saint John, Quebec City, and
later Montreal to their new homesteads or CPR ready-made farms on the Prairies.
Although spartan in appearance and
appointments, the colonist sleeping cars introduced by Canadian Pacific in 1884 were a decided improvement over the
ordinary day coaches for handling immigrant traffic to the western prairies during the preceding
years.
A typical wooden colonist car from a hundred years ago had 14 sections (two bare wood benches and a pull down upper
berth) in the true third-class part of the car that could seat 56 people. It also had a
four-section, second-class portion or smoking section, seating 16, that featured
upholstered leather benches and berth curtains. There was also a ladies' room and a kitchenette at one end of the
car. And there was a men's room for smoking at the other end of the car. Despite these rudimentary accommodations
immigrants flocked to Canada, especially from Europe where, most notably in the United Kingdom, many CPR and
Government of Canada immigration initiatives enticed immigrants to come to Canada. In the first decade of the 20th
century, Canada's population increased by one-third, from 5.3 to 7.2 million.
Sometimes there were dips in immigration. No matter. CPR redeployed its excess colonist cars to other duties... some
even more intriguing than populating Canada with its future lifeblood. During times of war, colonist cars moved
troops there and back, including the Riel Rebellion, The Boer War, and of course, both world wars. Colonist cars
also moved many Ukrainian Canadians to internment camps in the First World War. Some of these colonist cars,
specially equipped with bars over the windows, would move Chinese immigrants in bond who couldn't afford Canada's
$500-per-person head tax. Colonist cars also served on fast moving silk trains and gold trains, and
were converted for ranchers to use as drover cars.
More than a thousand colonist cars brought millions of new immigrants to Canada. Yet only two
relatively-intact, wooden CPR colonist cars exist today. The 1905 colonist car CP 2514 is at the West
Coast Railway Association's museum in Squamish, B.C., while the 1912 colonist car CP 2658 awaits approval for a
million-dollar restoration at Calgary's Heritage Park.
This Momentum article is copyright
2008 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with
their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Company.
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