Ron Brown - Rails Across Ontario

The Growth of Ontarios Rail Network

P rior to 1830, travel around what is now Ontario was slow and arduous. Roads, where any existed, were rutted quagmires for much of the year. Stage travel between Montreal and York (now Toronto) could last up to five days. Canals were dug to ease the shipping of produce, but these were restricted to navigable waterways and were seasonal. It was little wonder that the 1830s saw concerted talk of railways.

Trains were up and running in both England and the United States by the 1830s. Canadas first railway was that which, in 1832, linked La Prairie on the St. Lawrence River and St. Jean on the Richelieu an 18-kilometre year-round route that eliminated what previously was a 120-kilometre journey over water and land. Ontarios first was a horse-drawn portage railway which bypassed the falls and rapids of the Niagara River by connecting Queenston with Chippawa, located above the mighty cataract.

Nearly two decades would pass before Ontario witnessed its first steam train, one that began at a small wooden station on Lake Ontario and made its way to Machells Corners (later Aurora) in 1853. This was the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railway.

Following that it was open season. New laws such as the Railway Guarantee Act of 1849, the Municipal Corporations Act, and the Mainline Railway Act, also passed in 1849, helped guarantee loans and empowered municipalities to raise money to finance the building of new lines. Within five years construction was under way on the Great Western Railway, an American line linking New York State with Michigan; the Grand Trunk (GT), which would open a line from Montreal through Toronto and on to Sarnia; and the Buffalo, Brantford, and Goderich (later the Erie and Huron) line, which would connect Lake Erie with Lake Huron. The Brockville and Ottawa and the Cobourg and Peterborough Railways also began operating at this time.

Expansion ground to a halt during the American Civil War, but started again in earnest following Confederation in Canada in 1867. By 1910 more than 115 railway charters had been granted in Ontario alone, and the province was nearing a railway saturation point.

With the growth in towns and cities, and more particularly in profitability, rail lines began amalgamating. By 1890 the Grand Trunk had absorbed the Great Western and the Midland Railways and was quickly gobbling up the many resource and branch lines that were responsible for a spiders web of tracks across southern Ontario.

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was a relative late-comer to southern Ontarios railway landscape. In 1872, the Toronto, Grey and Bruce (later the CPR) began laying tracks that would ultimately connect Owen Sound with Union Station in Toronto. It operated from a terminus at Queens Quay (near the foot of todays Bathurst Street), through Orangeville, to Owen Sound and Teeswater. It was operating by 1873 and became part of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) a decade later.

Another line that was to become part of the CPR was the Credit Valley Railway (CVR), which began running from Parkdale in Toronto to St. Thomas in 1881, with additional branches to Orangeville and Elora.

The 1880s also saw the CPR add to its network the Ontario and Quebec Railway, which would stretch from Montreal through Smiths Falls, Peterborough, and West Toronto Junction. It had originally shared a junction in Perth with the earlier Brockville and Ottawa line. Following the completion of the CPRs Lakeshore line, its yard facilities were relocated to Smiths Falls and all evidence of the yards and buildings in Perth were long gone. In 1883 the Ontario and Quebec (O&Q) acquired the CVR, both of which became part of the CPR the following year.