VOLUME XI NUMBER 2

FEBRUARY 16,1981     CENTENNIAL ISSUE

This is the eerie-looking cell-like room on B floor of Windsor Station where popular legend says Chinese laborers were kept - Date? Maurice Quinn.

Legend Conjures Up Cruel Visions
But it's Really Just Another Myth

By Ron Grant

There is a popular legend that, at one time, some Chinese laborers were kept in a cell like room with barred doors, deep in the gloomy bowels of Windsor Station. It's a story perpetuated out of the corners of mouths in sly, confidential, whispers.

When heard, it conjures up visions of leg irons, anguish and cruel desperation, even in the least sympathetic imaginations. But, as it happens, it's just another myth.

The truth is that during the First World War, the allied forces recruited laborers in China to be sent to Europe to perform unskilled labor in connection with military operations. These Chinese, evidently all volunteers, were used to help in the digging of trenches or in construction work around military installations. Apparently they were not employed in conditions which would normally put them under enemy fire.

Movement from China, presumably through Hong Kong and Shanghai, was made by Canadian Pacific Steam Ship (CPSS) vessels across the Pacific, by train across Canada, then by convoy across the Atlantic. While travelling across Canada they were, of course, aliens in bond, and as such were escorted by guards. Pending transfer to other trains and ships, they required overnight accommodation, and this is how the legend was born.

They were housed and fed in immigrant quarters for transients which the company maintained on B floor in Windsor Station, below the concourse and waiting room levels.

The legend is really just a myth and the living quarters shown above are where Chinese laborers actually stayed.

Now there happens to be a cell like room with barred doors that still exists at the bottom of the stairs to B floor, off the Lagauchetiere and Peel Streets office entrance. This room, however, was maintained by the Express Company as a store room for bullion and other valuables in transit. It was never used by the Chinese, or anyone else.

But, a vestige of the old immigrant quarters still remains in an area on this floor. It's a room, with a door out to the Peel Street hill, which the present building staff, and generations of them before, still call "the old kitchen". Evidently, this is where the immigrant kitchen was, although it ceased to exist at least 50 years ago.

In any case, there was no dungeon, no cries of despair, no nudge-nudges and wink-winks. Even so, I'll bet that five or six years hence, somebody will pause with me at the top of the B floor stairs and furtively say, "Did I ever tell you about that room down there with the barred door..."

This CP Rail News article is copyright 1981 by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited and is reprinted here with their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.