Let Ontario Northland take over VIA Rail's Sudbury to White River service

It's time to put the essential remote service into the hands of a competent agency that understands the region

Northern Ontario is a brilliant place. Its landscapes are exceedingly pretty, the people lovely, and it has many wonderful and charming small towns and cities spread across it. But even within Ontario itself it can be an afterthought. Sometimes perceived as just a big long expanse of nothing in between the Prairies and the urban heart of Canada.

Up until the past 6 years the intercity public transport in Northern Ontario, be it buses or trains, had been in a slow, decades long, decline as rail service slowly disappeared, and private bus operators like Greyhound abandoned the region. Since 2016 however, Ontario Northland is proving itself as a competent, even forward thinking, agency that seems to genuinely care about properly connecting Northern Ontario. While the plans for a reinstated train service from Toronto to Cochrane receive a majority of the headlines in Southern Ontario (when the northern region actually makes the news), it is the recent bus expansion that is the most impressive development so far. The agency now has a reach that starts in Ottawa and Toronto, and goes all the way west to Winnipeg, with a few pre-Covid routes not yet up and running again.

Ontario Northland service map, including the Polar Bear Express, but without the still to be reinstated routes cut during Covid-19 or the future Toronto to Cochrane rail service. It is easy to see how perfectly the Sudbury to White River rail service would fit into its network. Image by Ontario Northland via EspanolaNow.

One of the few surviving remote services VIA Rail operates is a train between Sudbury and White River. While it does serve some communities with all-season road access, many rely on the train as their sole way in and out, whether it is to access medical care, work, or to see friends and family.

In some ways it is surprising that the service still functions. It uses trains that are close to 75 years old at this point, kept alive by what must be a very talented group of mechanics (work that is done at Ontario Northland’s maintenance facility in North Bay). It’s stations are not great either. The one in White River, which would have been a very charming and pretty building in its prime, looks like it hasn’t seen any attention since the 1970’s.

Plywood over some windows and doors. Peeling paint. Wooden steps. Poor passenger facilities. White River Station doesn’t need to be fancy, but it deserves to be more than this. Image taken March 2021.

While VIA and the Federal government are in the process of buying new trains for all of its services outside the Quebec-Windsor corridor, there is no indication they are going to address other aspects of the service, like stations, potential track upgrades to maintain reliability, and other passenger comfort and convenience issues. Unlike the line to Churchill or to a lesser degree the line to Prince Rupert, service between Sudbury and White River has a minimal tourist function, and thus it seems to garner even less attention than the already low priority northern and remote services.

Ontario Northland is an agency based in Northern Ontario, with a vested interest in the region. They understand the often unique and specific transportation needs that come with northern and remote living. They care about the north (even if getting the attention of Queen’s Park or Ottawa can be tough at times).

There is no reason why the Sudbury to White River service should be left in the hands of VIA, an agency who is currently struggling to understand passenger rail needs in its own backyard of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, let alone services well removed from those cities. Giving control of the Sudbury to White River route to Ontario Northland, while still covering some of the subsidies that are required for remote services, simply makes sense. It can be better integrated into Ontario Northland’s larger transportation network and schedules. And as a service run and administered by Northern Ontarian’s themselves, there will be a built in desire and interest in maintaining the quality of it over the long run, and defending it when it comes under threat.

This would be one more small part of improving the overall public transportation issues that exist in Northern Ontario, and an important step in the right direction. In the past it probably made sense to have VIA run this service. Not anymore. It’s time to start discussions and find a way to hand it over to people who will actually care about it.

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