Concordes and Parking Lots: Part 1 of 2
A brief history of passenger rail in contemporary Canada from 1960 until 1989
In 1960 Canada was still a very provincial and rural country. The TransCanada highway wasn’t fully paved, and Montreal was the only metro region with more than 2 million people, and even then just barely. In rural parts of the country many homes still lacked indoor plumbing, and one room schoolhouses were still a common feature among farming communities.
Change was on the horizon though. A wave of suburbanization was about to radically alter the future of Canadian cities. Social movements, from women’s rights to separatism, would impact culture and politics at large. The earliest hints of a broader, global free trade movement, which would transform the economy, were starting to emerge. And technology was going to become the centrepiece for the new, optimistic, post war era.
Among this tidal wave of progress, the often mythologized and romanticized passenger train was going to become less and less central to peoples lives. It would see a last ditch effort in the 1960’s to redefine what it could do for people, even as the industry was in free fall. There would be government intervention in the 70’s to prevent the complete collapse of passenger rail service, followed by decades of managed decline. But in recent years a new era of passenger rail has started to rise up. One still filled with failures and hiccups, but also an increasing number of positive outcomes.
Canada’s population is growing at an increasingly rapid rate. Just recently it grew by 1 million people in a year for the first time ever. More and more people are living in properly urban areas, or at least aspiring too if the day ever comes that they can afford it. This is setting up passenger rail, an inherently urban form of transportation, to take on a new role in how people get around. As investments in public transport are sometimes hitting tens of billions for a single project, it is critical that there is a proper understanding of why passenger rail declined in the first place before diving head first into massive new investments.
Despite popular myths the decline wasn’t due to callous politicians cutting budgets, arrogant freight companies, or any one particular boogeyman. It was wrapped up in the changing dreams and ambitions of Canadians, and a society that was embracing new technologies that offered a better way to live and travel. It was a collective decision to move on to something different, just as it will be a collective decision to bring back passenger rail in a new, modern form.
Year zero of the decline
1946, 77 years ago, would turn out to be the starting point for the decline of passenger rail. The end of World War 2 brought about a brief spike in travel. Troops used trains to return home. Families were reuniting and relocating after many had their lives uprooted, while others simply wanted to see loved ones they had been unable to visit during war time. That year would be the height of long distance and inter-city rail travel in Canada.
Even before the war, changes were underway. The train had been a staple of travelling because it was often the only way to get around, aside from horse and cart, or steamship if you happened to live along a waterway. Cars were becoming popular, but in many places roads weren’t even roads. They were just well travelled paths across otherwise untouched landscapes that were often slow, rutted, and could easily damage fragile vehicles.
However the auto industry was getting better at creating more durable cars and trucks. At the same time local and provincial governments were turning informal tracks into dirt roads, dirt roads into gravel roads, and gravel roads into paved ones. Gas stations and service centres were popping up along main routes and in small towns. And with increasingly available credit, car ownership was no longer just for the rich.
When the war came to an end, and the economy started to boom, all the pieces were in place for a radical change to Canadian society. Cheap, post-war, affordable, suburban tract housing, much of it initially built to deal with post-war housing shortages, brought home ownership to the masses. The car would make the much less dense suburbs they created possible to get around in. Shopping malls began to emerge, along with strip malls, suburban grocery stores, and a growing trucking industry that could easily keep them replenished with goods and food.
But 1950’s Canada was an unequal country. While some cities were growing and embracing the modern suburban movement, there were still rural areas without electricity, and indoor toilets, let alone other modern accessories like a TV. Quebec was still very much under the rule of the Catholic Church, and the governments that kept the church state alive. Newfoundland was still a brand new province, full of outposts and only just starting to see many of the trappings of modern life hit the island (for better or for worse).
For much of the 50’s it wasn’t so much a social and cultural revolution, but a transition. While passenger rail was declining, there were still large segments of the Canadian population who relied on it because it was still the best way to travel longer distances. For those who still couldn’t afford a car it was the only way. The only other alternative, air travel, was even more beyond the average working and middle class persons reach.
1960: Year zero of modern suburban Canada
The Quiet Revolution is overwhelming said to be the start of modern Quebec, and in many ways coincides with the less well defined start of modern Canada as well. Extraordinary growth of the suburbs would begin at the start of the 1960’s. And it was here that the suburbs would shed the still traditionally inspired layout and designs that war-time housing had adopted, and go all in on bungalows, large arterials, freeways, and cul-de-sacs.
1960 was also the year that Canadian National Railway would change its name to CN, and adopt an entirely new and modern logo and identity. Headed up by designer Allan Fleming it was a complete departure from what their identity had been before, and was part of a broader plan to become a more forward looking company. Their ambitions went beyond trains and hotels into real estate, telecommunication, and embracing new forms of moving goods such as containerization.
When it came to their passenger rail business CN was becoming eager to shed a lot of the routes they operated. However, because they were subject to federal mandates, they couldn’t just up and shut them down. Each closure required an application to the federal government, and if the feds said no, operations had to carry on. CN being a crown corporation also made abandoning lines particularly difficult as remote and rural services were far more tangled up in their mandate than the privately owned Canadian Pacific. But there were cases where CN was allowed to shutter some routes. Early on this was often on lines who’s performance was dreadfully slow. On PEI there were several lines were a trip by car that would take 2 1/2 hours (down to 90 minutes today) would take 5 hours by train in the the early 60’s. Similar cases were found in Newfoundland, and in rural parts of Ontario, Quebec, and the Prairies where some lines had average speeds of 40km/h or less.
There would be a flip side to this. Whether out of a genuine desire to be forward thinking, or a realization that they were going to be saddled with much of the passenger rail business whether they liked it or not CN began to look at ways to innovate and adopt new technologies. One of their first attempts involved using the Budd RDC self propelled rail car. These trains, which they received from the mid-50’s and early 60’s, did not require a separate locomotive pulling unpowered carriages. Each car could move under their own power meaning service could be operated with just a single car if ridership was low enough. It was seen as a way to reduce costs on minimally used rural routes, and to some extent, helped for a little while.
For some of its flagship routes, like the Transcanadian trains, or in the more urban Quebec-Windsor corridor, CN bought new passenger cars, newer diesel locomotives, and would even start to replace some aging stations with newer, more modern ones. It wasn’t just a way to save money by not having the high maintenance costs associated with older equipment, but a way to provide a more comfortable passenger experience and attract more travellers. Or so the thinking went.
But there were two choices in particular that would both signify their ambitions, and the insurmountable task they faced: improving the quality of their network to allow for faster speeds, and the Turbo Train. However the outcome of these would not be felt until well into the 1970’s.
CN’s rival, Canadian Pacific, was much less interested in making a serious go of the passenger rail business. Their last serious effort was the introduction of The Canadian in 1955. It used modern diesel locomotives, had an all stainless steel body, and was the pinnacle of luxury travel, with advertising that matched its ambition. It is also the perfect example of the myths that surround rail travel in Canada. While it was initially successful, that was short lived. By the time the 60’s had started it was already struggling and after successfully lobbying to discontinue its less posh version, The Dominion, in 1966, it would attempt to do the same for The Canadian in 1970. It was never a mass market train used by everyday people. It was a luxury getaway, in the same way its hotels like the Banff Springs were. But yet the memory of it persists as something more than it ever really was.
By the time the 1960’s rolled around, Canadian Pacific was largely done with the passenger rail business. They had also adopted the Budd RDC cars as a cost saving measure. But they were far more aggressive in their petitions to the government to discontinue services. Canadian Pacific had steamships that were still relatively successful, and more importantly an airline. Passenger rail wasn’t figuring into their future, and unlike CN they would make no real attempts at modernization to try and make one last go of it.
It is hard to know whether this was exclusively because Canadian Pacific was able to be more aggressive being a private company that was not bound by mandates to same degree as CN and didn’t have to try, or if they more clearly saw the writing on the wall. But there was no doubt that the 1960’s were going to be a very unceremonious parting of ways for Canadian Pacific and a large segment of its passenger rail business.
Flight of the Concorde
The gulf between travelling by train in the 1960’s, and what travel could be like in the future, reached an absurd peak when the idea of supersonic airplanes started to become a reality. Regular commercial aircraft were slowly becoming safer, faster, and required fewer stops for fuel, slowly bringing down travel times. But with a supersonic plane it was an even bigger leap forward then the incremental improvements of jet planes. It would be possible to go from Toronto to Vancouver in about 3 hours, versus the 4 days to take a train, and 5 days, or more, to drive there in the mid-60’s.
For a country as big as Canada, flying was already becoming the preferred way to travel, if you could afford it. The idea of getting from Toronto to Vancouver faster than you could go from Toronto to Montreal by train was an idea that captured a lot of peoples imaginations.
It would also capture the attention of cities and the federal government, along with the then nationalized Air Canada. In 1965 the first prototypes of the Concorde began being constructed. By 1967 Air Canada had order 4 Concordes, and 6 of the rival Boeing’s SST supersonic plane. But these aircraft needed a place to take off from. Runways had to be longer, and most existing airports were not able to handle this kind of expansion. This would ultimately lead to one of the most infamous transportation projects in Canada’s history.
Supersonic airplanes would face a lot more hurdles though. When flying over land the sonic boom they created when they hit the speed of sound was not only loud, but could shatter windows if it happened above an urban area. It would lead to many cities and regions in the US and across the world pushing for bans on supersonic air travel over land, many of which were successful. Prospects of the SST and Concorde were being limited as flights over water became the only ones airlines could safely plan for. But just as new ‘technologies’ today, like Uber or Hyperloop, get pumped up endlessly by media, evangelists and fan boys, the same processes were keeping the dream of supersonic air travel alive in the 60’s.
Canada’s Centennial and the brief rail revival
1967 marked the 100 year anniversary of Canada’s confederation. It would also be when one of the most popular world’s fairs to date, Expo 67 in Montreal, would take place. Over the course of 6 months 50 million visitors would attend Expo (that is not a typo either….Expo was that successful). And among those who came from Canada, many arrived by train. It wasn’t the sole reason that passenger rail travel would temporarily reverse course and see an increase, but it played a central role in it, with ridership numbers starting to fall again in 1968 once Expo was over.
The early- to mid-60’s were a complicated time for passenger rail. Many routes were in free fall, as rural roads improved, leaving train service as the much slower option. But cities were also growing at an enormous clip thanks to the baby boom, which was creating a potentially larger customer base in urban regions like the Quebec-Windsor corridor. Leisure travel was still largely a domestic affair, with all inclusive holidays and cheap European airfares still several decades away. But that travel was increasingly done by car, not by passenger rail.
While trains were falling out favour, they weren’t down and out. In Ottawa, as part of a controversial urban design scheme called the Greber plan, the centrally located Union Station, with its tracks next to the banks of the Rideau Canal was moved to a location several kilometres away where it had more land, and easy highway access. The project was not cheap either. It cost CDN35 million for the station and the new tracks needed to access it, the equivalent of CDN340 million today. What resulted is one of the best modernist train stations still active in North America (Buenavista Station in Mexico City is the only other one on par with it) and perhaps one of the most beautiful train stations in Canada period.
Part of this revival was being aided by improved travel times. In 1960, if you wanted to go from Toronto to Montreal, the trip would take anywhere from 6h15 to 8h28. If you wanted to go from Toronto to Ottawa, your only option was one of two overnight trains that took 7h40 or 8h15 (it wouldn’t be until sometime in the late 60’s that you could take a train from Toronto to Ottawa during the day time). But with investments in the track, newer and more efficient diesel locomotives, and better passenger cars, travel times slowly started to decline. By 1976 travel time from Ottawa to Toronto had been reduced to anywhere between 5h35 and 5h55, while travelling from Toronto to Montreal could be done in 4h55 with normal trains (and even faster in some cases).
Even some lines outside of urban areas, or that were not part of the busiest transcontinental routes, saw improvements. Going from Sudbury to Sault Ste Marie went from 5h00 in the 1960, to 3h45 in 1970. But, even then it wasn’t enough, with that line eventually being discontinued due to declining ridership, despite its improved service.
What was an assumed trend at the start of the 1960’s had become confirmed by the end of it; rural and long distance routes were hemorrhaging money at an increasing rate. Urban regions were the only hope of having a profitable arm of the passenger rail business. And CN had an idea on how to capitalize on that.
Turbo
When the Shinkansen launched in 1964 there was already an interest in making faster trains. Its debut set the bar incredibly high though, and because of the hyper density of Japan, and the already strong passenger rail culture and ridership, they had an advantage that even European countries would struggle with initially. The Shinkansen was the complete package. It was an all new train, with all new tracks. Even within the stations the Shinkansen tracks were off limits to any other passenger trains.
Canada was not Japan though. In 1960 the population of Tokyo on its own was almost equal to that of the entirety of Canada. The 552km Toikada line that opened in 1964 served a population that was 10 times that of Toronto, Montreal, and everything in between.
When it came time to explore high speed trains in Canada there were already limitations from day one. The cost of an entirely new track could not be justified, so it would have to run over existing infrastructure. The lines were not electric, so it had to be diesel, or gas powered. And it needed to be suitable for Canadian winters.
CN found its answer with the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) built Turbo Train. It used a gas powered jet turbine instead of a diesel engine. It was built to be a single unit, would tilt so that it could take corners at higher speeds, and would be constructed out of aluminium to reduce weight.
The exterior looked like nothing else in North America at the time, with windows that resembled those in airplanes. The interior, design, undertaken by CN, took the existing aesthetic of its newer trains and made them posher, sexier, and more modern. It would be paired with a customer service experience akin to airlines, and would take CN’s modern branding and run with it.
CN wanted the train ready to go in time for Expo 67. Not just so that it could take advantage of all the travellers going there, but so that it had a true flagship piece to show off during the worlds fair. This fevered desire may have been part of the trains undoing. With so much pressure to get the train running right away the number of trials and test runs were minimal. When it went into service in 1968, it immediately faced problems, something that would become a reoccurring theme during its life time.
What was supposed to be a triumphant evolution of passenger rail, and a way to turn the page on passenger rail in urban regions, turned into a disaster. The trains were faster, kind of. The trip from Toronto to Montreal on Turbo would take anywhere from 4h10 to 4h30, which was anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes faster than its conventional services. But it never achieved the sub 4 hour time that was initially set out for it. Between the technical and mechanical problems it was never able to reinvigorate the passenger rail market. Instead, it at best delayed the decline that was about to come and the Turbo experiment would go down in flames… literally. By 1982 Turbo would be pulled from service for good.
The complicated history of Mirabel and the rise of the Canadian jet age
Throughout the 60’s there were investments being made in intercity passenger rail. In the middle part of the decade, when Turbo had yet to reveal its failure in the real world, and there was a spike in passenger rail ridership due to Expo 67. It briefly looked as though the humble train might still have a chance. But even as that was happening a lot more money was being sunk into airports and expanding the potential of passenger airlines. From 1961 to 1971 it was estimated that the federal Department of Transport alone invested around CDN300 million into airport upgrades, the equivalent of about CDN2.25 billion today.
Air traffic was booming though, and it seemed like the growth would be endless for many decades to come, or at least many studies thought so. Fuelling the pitched fever for more investments in airport infrastructure were the supersonic plans that were on the horizon. Not only did they need longer runaways to deal with takeoffs and landings, they needed a lot of space around them to deal with the noise, as did the more traditional jet aircraft that were being developed for that matter. And despite the challenges supersonic airplanes faced they were still being billed as a game changer for long distance travel.
The first two regions that really became the focus of next generation air travel were the rapidly growing Greater Toronto Area, and Montreal. For the Toronto region an airport in Pickering was envisioned, though for many reasons, including anticipated air traffic demand that never came and local opposition, this project never came to be. But in Montreal it was a different story.
Dorval, which is on the Island of Montreal, was the city and regions primary airport. But in the mid-60’s it was deemed inadequate to deal with the anticipated growth of air travel, and would require expensive land acquisitions to be able to expand. Originally the preferred plan for a new airport was just down the road, off of the Island and west of Dorion-Vaudreil. It had everything that was needed. An existing freeway, could easily be integrated into the rail network, and was also reasonably accessible from Ottawa, with the new airport expected to be a mega-regional hub for long-distance and international flights. But it was deemed to be too close to Ontario, a problematic issue given the rise of nationalism and an early-separatist movement in Quebec.
A site north of Montreal near the village of Saint-Scholastique was chosen instead. It was still firmly in Quebec, and could be linked to the Hull region and Ottawa via a new freeway. It had problems, such as the lack of existing highway and rail connections into Montreal itself. But it was a compromise choice that everyone could get behind, and just as critically had the land the project needed. The new airport, named Mirabel after a farm in the area, would encompass an area almost equal to the Island of Montreal when the buffer zone was factored in. It would, for close to 3 decades, stand as the largest airport in the entire world.
The project was not cheap. The initial costs of the airport were at least CDN500 million in 1975, about CDN2.7 billion today. And that number does not take into account the various deficit and maintenance costs it would occur in the subsequent years. By the time it was completed there were even more questions surrounding the viability of supersonic passenger service. Boeing had already cancelled its SST project in 1971 leaving the Concorde as the only commercial supersonic plan being developed outside of the Soviet Union. And the economics of actually operating the service were unravelling, with the new model turning Concordes into planes for the ultra-rich, instead of a mass market affair.
With Mirabel being used for international flights and Dorval for domestic transferring between them became a nightmare and off putting for passengers. But perhaps the final factor that really took the wind out of Mirabel’s sails were changes to various air traffic agreements. Montreal’s dominance in international flights had once been held up by agreements that greatly restricted airlines ability to fly directly in to Toronto. Once that restriction was lifted and more international flights could fly directly in and out of current day Pearson Airport, Mirbael’s raison d-etre had been shattered.
Today Mirabel is often held up as the perfect example of a white elephant, boondoggle project. It was undoubtedly the result of a mix of optimism, hubris and arrogance. But what is interesting is the fact that even though Mirabel itself was a bust it wouldn’t have any long term impacts on the growth of air travel. The supersonic vision may have been dead but air travel still evolved and still continued to grow, even if it wasn’t by the super wild estimates of the 60’s and 70’s. Mirabels failure just meant that other regions in Canada would not adopt that model. The growth of air travel would carry on with that knowledge in hand, and the decline of passenger rail would continue apace.
There is however a second aspect of Mirabel’s legacy that is far less discussed but would prove highly consequential. As part of the original vision for the airport a ‘high speed’ electric rapid transit system would be constructed to get people from downtown Montreal to the airport at speeds up to 160km/h. It was called the transport rapide régional aéroportuaire Montréal-Mirabel (TRRAMM) and alongside new freeway connections it was seen as an integral part of the airports success.
It was a proposal that emerged during a time when new ideas about urban rapid transit were being developed. They were sort of like subways, but faster, modern, used lighter vehicles, and often times ran above ground more than they did underground. In the mid-70’s there was a great deal of support for TRRAMM within Quebec. But as Mirabel’s imminent failures became clear, it would slowly be scaled back, and eventually all but cancelled by the start of the 1980’s.
It would however still remain hugely influential as the project stayed alive, at least in the form of political support. Over the subsequent decades it would often be revived or brought up, in some form or another. And in the mid-10’s, when the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) was being developed it was in many ways become a carbon copy version of TRRAMM, with a connection to Dorval airport instead of Mirabel. Even the trains looked remarkably similar, though they only hit 100km/h instead of 160. In 2018 then Premier Philippe Couillard brought it full circle and even suggested that the REM could one day be extended beyond its planned northern terminus of Deux-Montagne into Mirabel, though it would be to serve the people and not the airport which had at that time stopped most all operations except for test flights and other exceptions.
TRAMM was largely DOA because of it being so closely tied to Mirabel. But it was not the only project like it being proposed or considered at the time in Canada. A new wave of modern urban rapid transit would begin to play a critical role in Canadian cities over the coming decades.
Boomers leave the city and an era of managed decline begins
By the start of the 1970’s the passenger rail market was in serious trouble. It was no longer the smaller rural and remote routes that were bleeding serious amounts of cash. Even semi-urban and urban regions were seeing a serious decline in rail travel, alongside the once flagship transcontinental routes. The axe would swing hard in ‘70 and ‘71 as routes were cut left, right, and centre to help stem to ever increasing revenue loses, and the rising cost of federal subsidies.
But, it was about to get worse. The suburbanization movement that started in the 60’s went into overdrive as the majority of baby boomers were now entering their 20’s, and were looking to buy homes. Overwhelming, the suburbs is where they wanted to be, and as a result urban hearts of cities like Toronto saw their population decline as the new homebuyers opted for Scarborough instead of Cabbagetown.
With the suburban home came the suburban lifestyle, which of course included the car. To make matters worse the ever expanding suburbs pushed people further and further away from train stations, with no transit options to get to them. They had to drive there, and once you were in your car, why bother getting out and making the trip longer?
Even CN, who had spent much of the 60’s trying to at least find a way to make passenger rail work in the urban regions, was ready to call it quits. They, like Canadian Pacific, didn’t just want to get rid of more routes, they wanted out completely. Even though CN was still managing to make marginal improvements in travel times, it wasn’t enough to stem the decline. In the election campaign of 1974, Pierre Trudeau made nationalizing passenger rail service part of his platform. Under a new carrier, in a similar vein to the recently created Amtrak, CN and Canadian Pacific would exit that business completely. He won, and would get to work quickly on creating the new agency.
While intercity and long distance rail were in total shambles, urban transit was still managing to tread water. In 1970 the Ontario Government created the Ontario Transportation Development Corporation (later known as UTDC). It would design and build transit vehicles, but was also a research facility that was pushing the envelope on new technologies. Its first product would be the now retired Toronto Streetcar, but it was also focusing on automated technologies that could replace the urban maglev concepts that had been experimented with in the early 1970’s. Ultimately this would lead to the vehicles used most famously on Vancouvers Skytrain system. At one point it was also tasked with creating a vehicle for a semi-commuter rail system known as GO ALRT.
Alongside the push for more high tech urban rapid transit came GO. It was first launched in 1967 when it introduced commuter rail service on the Lakeshore corridor from Pickering to Union Station, and onward to Oakville. It was done on the cheap, costing just CDN9 million at the time, and was viewed as an experiment. It was immediately successful though, leading to service increases 4 months after opening, and additional lines being added into the network starting in April 1974.
It was an early part of the renewed focus on the needs of the densest, most central part of cities which came as a result of public backlash to the urban highway schemes of the 1960’s. While they succeeded in places such as Montreal, in Toronto and Vancouver there was an incredible amount of resistance to them, eventually leading to their cancellation. As a consequence cities started to take a closer at their urban transit networks, and in conjunction with emerging new technologies, made serious efforts to try to expand them. This progress would be slow and uneven. And it would become particularly challenging as cities grappled with how to provide rapid transit into low density, car-centric, and intrinsically anti-transit suburban areas. But despite some very serious challenges, urban transit never faced the decline that passenger rail did, something that would become incredibly consequential many decades later.
VIA
In 1976 the now famous VIA logo made its first appearances on co-branded CN timetables. It was not the official start of the agency, that would be in January 1977. But it was the moment when the new nationalized passenger rail carrier made its public debut and started its tumultuous history.
The transition of CN and Canadian Pacific services to VIA was both simple, and incredibly complex. VIA would take over most of their passenger rail equipment, paint it blue and put a big yellow logo on it. Train stations wouldn’t even get a new coat of paint in the early years, with only logos and brochures being replaced.
But there is so much more to operating a passenger train service. VIA would need its own reservation system, maintenance facilities, and staff both on and off the trains. It would need to do its own marketing, or hire an agency. It would have to negotiate track rights with the two companies. It would have to assume control of train stations, or make usage agreements in the case of larger ones that were independently operated.
VIA also faced the fundamental problem of inheriting a business that had been in decline for 30 years at that point. They either needed to figure out how to turn things around, or manage the decline.
By all indications the early days of the agency were at least filled with good intentions. They got the funding they needed to build maintenance facilities, create the ReserVIA system, and even purchase new trains from Bombarider for use in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, and maybe elsewhere if they performed well. There were even investments in stations, such as the majestic Gare-du-Palais in Quebec City which had actually been shuttered in the 70’s but VIA wanted reopened to bring back service to the city centre. Burton Kramer, who designed the iconic CBC ‘exploding pie’ logo was tasked with creating a graphic standard guideline for VIA’s signage and communications. And there was the creation of VIA 1, their first class cars that would launch in conjunction with the new LRC trains and become a critical part of their revenue stream in the coming decades.
These efforts should not be minimized. They were honest attempts at helping rebuilding the image of rail travel, and in the case of new trains, could offer real tangible improvements to the service.
But there were still an incredible number of problems remaining. The oil crisis of the late 70’s had caused a small increase in ridership as people looked to the train to avoid the high price of gas. Not only was it short lived though, but every new customer required some sort of subsidy to offset the cost of actually running the train. The more customers they served, the bigger the deficit got. This would only be compounded further when the cost of running rights to use the freight companies tracks began to escalate, in part due to their increasing freight business. By the mid-1980’s VIA was losing up to CDN800 million a year, about CDN1.92 billion in todays money, a deficit that required an equal amount of public money to cover.
Some routes didn’t even have enough ridership to really contribute to that problem. By 1982 ridership between Calgary and Edmonton was just 53,000 per year, which even at that low number was the highest it had been since 1969. Attempts by VIA to re-establish a station in downtown Edmonton failed, meaning service stopped in the southern part of the city. The trains themselves were also gaining a reputation for being deadly. The numerous farm crossings created dangerous situations and in one year 15 people were killed in multiple crashes on that single line alone.
The hits kept coming for VIA and eventually the first major service cuts fell. It was a pretty symbolic hit, with lines in the maritimes and the prairies being reduced particularly hard. In September 1985 the last trains between Calgary and Edmonton would run, a move that was met with very little resistance in the province. Even then Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore said “It's a seedy, tacky service used by very few people. Its 200 level crossings make it an absolute calamity that has caused too many deaths.” When PC leader Brian Mulroney campaigned in the 1984 election he made restoring many of the services part of his platform. After he was elected and entered office, he undid many of the cuts, but the problems only continued to escalate.
7 days, 6 nights all inclusive
VIA’s 1985 Annual Report was an honest and sober summary of the state of affairs when it came to passenger rail in Canada. In 1982 VIA had undertaken a study into high speed rail in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, being heavily inspired by the recent launch of the TGV. Initially it was well received and even pursued. But by 1985 the landscape had changed and “in the light of the advent of airline deregulation since [the] studies were made”, VIA wanted to go back to the drawing board to determine if the economics of the project would still hold up. There were some positives in VIA’s current business, but those were about to fade quickly.
As part of the nationalization of passenger rail services, the agency inherited CN’s Maple Leaf Tours, which would eventually be renamed VIA Getaway’s and would later be referred to by VIA Destination as well. These were semi-inclusive, mostly weekend, packages that included train tickets, hotel accommodation, and sometimes a car rental or tickets to a show or a game. Often times they were paired up with Canadian Pacific’s hotels such as The Royal York and Chateau Frontenac, offering up a slightly posh weekend getaway. They also included some of the their long distance trains, such as The Canadian, and The Ocean which connected Toronto and Montreal with Halifax.
The 1985 report talked rather positively about VIA’s leisure business. Their tour division had seen a revenue increase of 22% over the previous year. It was a source of light among the bleak landscape they faced. But airline deregulation was going to completely wipe out that out in short order.
Wardair, who had been around for decades, would move from being a charter only airline and start regular service flights in 1986. Air Transat, a charter airline that catered heavily to a growing market of southern destinations, such as Mexico and the Caribbean, would start operation in 1987.
As prices plummeted, and more all inclusive resorts opened up on islands and coast lines where local governments were okay with them being segregated from the rest of the population, it began to redefine the tourism sector. Eventually it would be possible to go from Toronto to Las Vegas for a long weekend for the same price it cost to go to Quebec City. Travelling within Canada was becoming out of fashion as more far-flung, international, destinations became financially accessible to the middle class.
It also wasn’t just VIA’s tour division that was being hit. Those who once used the train’s long distance services now had something that hadn’t existed before, airfares that were the same price, or just a little more expensive, than a train fare. Why spend the same amount of money to take 2 days to get from Winnipeg to Vancouver when you could fly and only have to give up a morning or afternoon? For most people, the choice was an easy one.
The inevitable moment arrives
Going into 1989 VIA was struggling to make any further inroads in Canada. Ridership across the entire network had stabilized at around 6.4 million passengers. But so too had its annual deficit, which came in at CDN570 million in 1988 (around CDN1.15 billion in 2023). Canada was also about to hit its last major, multi-year, recession before a 15 year run of economic growth began. Unemployment was heading higher, and would hit the 11% mark in the early 90’s. There was also the growing political and economic instability as a result of a revitalized separatist movement in Quebec.
When Brian Mulroney won re-election in 1988 there were no more promises about bringing back VIA services. In fact it wasn’t even on the radar as an issue. The ‘88 election is often referred to as ‘The Free Trade Election’ because of how dominant and important the topic had become in Canada. It was by and large the only issue. The first bilateral agreement between Canada and the US had been signed in January 1988, but the larger, more comprehensive NAFTA was coming up. It fuelled nationalist calls from opposition parties, and pushed the boundaries of election law with no shortage of third parties, such as think tanks and unions, wanting to get in on the action and support their side.
With the economy heading into a serious recession, tough decisions were going to have to be made to avoid the federal government plunging into a spiralling deficit. The most infamous decision made during Mulroney’s second term was implementing the GST. It was a nation wide 7% sales tax that would ultimately be the primary reason the Progressive Conservative party completely collapsed in the 1993 election, leading to them folding from federal politics shortly. Few departments would be spared cuts. and VIA would be no exception.
All of the cuts that Mulroney had reversed in ‘85 were once again slashed, on top of all new route closures, including the original TransCanadian route along the Canadian Pacific line and all but one of the maritime routes. It was a move that lead to some articles being written in magazines such as Macleans, and editorial cartoons in daily newspapers. There were even the occasional local protests against the plans for VIA’s budget, such as one in Kingston, Ontario that saw a few dozen people turn out to voice their thoughts on the cuts. For those old enough to remember a time when trains were critical to moving around, or some who just really liked them, it felt like a small part of Canada was dying.
But that group was increasingly becoming the minority of the country. Baby boomers, some of whom were now in there 40’s, were mostly living in suburbs, and had no attachment to VIA or trains. They lived by their car, and for many, the train was simply an antiquated relic of a Canada that was now firmly in the past.
And the country had not yet stopped changing. In fact the 90’s would herald an all new era with renewed levels of immigration from an all new collection of countries, a growing indigenous justice movement, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms aiding gay rights advocates, and an increasingly globalized economy. Equally as important would be the growing influence of Generation X, who were about to help kick start an urban renaissance in many Canadian cities.
In the collective mind of some people, the Mulroney cuts are often held up as one of the biggest reasons why passenger rail has become so shit in Canada. According to that perspective it wasn’t anything complex or part of a larger, systemic change in Canadian society. Mulroney was a bad man who did bad things to VIA, and that’s all there is to it. But the cuts were 42 years in the making. And perhaps if the recession of the late 80’s and early 90’s had not happened VIA could have had a few more years to try to increase ridership and reduce its deficit enough to avoid the size of the cuts that took place. But that likely would have been kicking the can down the road, and avoiding the inevitable day when the government could no longer justify the huge subsidies being sent their way.
This article continues, and concludes, with Part 2.
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