1 February 2009
Winter Weather was Delaying Trains Back in 1889 as Well
Canadian Pacific Railway's Windsor Station in
Montreal, Quebec.
Montreal Quebec - "Yesterday marked a memorable
event in the history of the Canadian Pacific railway. Their ambition to obtain an entrance into Montreal from the West was
realized." - Gazette, Saturday, 2 Feb 1889.
William Van Horne didn't become president of the Canadian Pacific Railway by thinking small. It showed even in so fleeting a thing as
the sign he ordered for the high fence surrounding his latest building project. There it was, with letters six feet tall:
"Beats All Creation - The New C.P.R. Station!"
The Windsor Street Station - named for the stretch of what's now Peel St. where it stands - had been under construction for more than
a year. And now it was ready.
The first train left on the first day of February 1889. It consisted of just a locomotive, a tender, and the private passenger car
Champlain, and went only as far as Montreal West. On board were Van Horne, his protege Thomas Shaughnessy (who would succeed him as
president in 1899) and various other CPR bigwigs. They pronounced the new track, laid as part of the station project, in excellent
condition.
The opening of the station to the public had to wait another three days. The first train to steam in was the 7:25 a.m. from Boston,
followed two hours later that morning by an eight-car train from Toronto. Inauspiciously, it was well behind schedule,
held up by cold weather and the need to accommodate extra passengers bound for Montreal's famous winter carnival.
The CPR swore in six special constables to control disembarking travellers and the cabs they sought at the station's main entrance on
Osborne St. Many of those newcomers would have noticed how the building's crenellations were mimicked in the carnival's focal point,
the traditional ice palace erected across the way in Dominion Square.
Above the waiting rooms on the ground floor were four storeys of office space. The company's headquarters had previously been in Place
d'Armes.
The station was much smaller than what we see today. It reached from the southwest corner of Windsor and Osborne, today's de la
Gauchetiere St., just half way down the hill toward St. Antoine St. Behind it, houses remained on Osborne's south side. The rails from
Montreal West, terminating in a four-track train shed, ran along their back fence-line. Extensions to the
station starting in 1900 would see those houses disappear, as well as the buildings between the station and St. Antoine.
The architect was an American, Bruce Price. He and Van Horne respected each other, but often bumped heads.
For example, Price's original design called mainly for brick, with elaborately carved dormers and a massive clock tower on the Windsor
St. side. Van Horne balked. First, the brick had to give way to limestone blocks, better suited to Montreal's winters. Then, part way
through the construction, the pitch of the roof became flatter, most of the dormers disappeared and the tower emerged as a lower,
square structure.
The result was a building lacking the flamboyant character Price wanted. But Van Horne was pleased by its reduced cost, as well as its
flexibility to accommodate the extensions he knew were on the immediate horizon.
It was a fitting response to the Grand Trunk Railway's new Bonaventure Station, which had opened several blocks away just a few months
before. In addition, however, the Windsor Street Station was part of a realignment of the CPR's routes.
Previously, all its passenger trains had approached Montreal in a roundabout way from the north, terminating at a pokey station in the
city's east end at Dalhousie Square (now Place Viger). With the station on Windsor St., however, trains bound for cities to the west
like Toronto and Chicago, as well as to New England over the new CPR bridge crossing the St. Lawrence at Lachine, had a far more
convenient terminal.
In a Gazette editorial welcoming out-of-town visitors to Montreal's winter carnival that year, the new stations of both
the Grand Trunk and the CPR were praised: "Visitors by rail will remember that the gorgeous railway stations at which they
disembark are part of the city and not part of the carnival. The explanation may be necessary to travellers accustomed to being dumped
on the river bank below Dalhousie Square or in the ramshackle structure that did such noble duty under the name of Old
Bonaventure."
Alas, the new Bonaventure burned down in 1948. But Windsor Station, even though the tracks leading to it were torn up in 1993, has
been making its presence felt in downtown Montreal for 120 years now - and counting.
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