20 January 2010

100 Years Ago on 21 Jan 1910 One of the Worst Railway Disasters in Canadian History Hit Northern Ontario

Spanish River Ontario - It's remembered as one of the worst disasters in Canadian railway history.
 
One hundred years ago, on 21 Jan 1910, a Canadian Pacific Railway passenger train bound for Minneapolis from Montreal hit the Spanish River railway bridge, about 240 kilometres east of Sault Ste. Marie, claiming the lives of 43 passengers.
 
Unofficially, it remains the fourth-worst death count in Canadian railway history, surpassed only by the St. Hillaire, Que. disaster of 1864 where 83 people, mostly immigrants, were killed when their train failed to stop at an open swing bridge and plunged into the Richelieu River, and earlier wrecks in the 1850s which claimed 59 and 52 lives respectively.
 
According to official reports, only 15 of 98 people aboard the westbound train, which would have crossed into the United States at the Sault, escaped uninjured.
 
Passengers not killed on impact, and an ensuing fire, drowned in the deep, frigid waters of the Spanish River, 40 feet below the railway bridge.
 
Only three of 25 first-class passengers escaped after their coach rolled down the steep embankment and crashed through foot-thick river ice while 20 passengers were aboard a second-class car which split in two after hitting the bridge superstructure, half the car burned on the bridge and the other half descended into the river.
 
As well 14 passengers were reportedly in the dining car that followed the first-class coach into the river and a fourth passenger coach turned on its side and came to a rest on the embankment.
 
Four cars on the seven-car train derailed on the approach to the Spanish River crossing.
 
Speculation for the disaster ranged from faulty rail alignment to faulty equipment but a coroner's inquest into the derailment was unable to determine an exact cause.
 
Local authors Darcy and Myril Lynn Brason-Lediett have published a 140-page book on he Spanish River Train Disaster with copies available in libraries and museums in the Sault and Blind River.
 
The incident happened 22 years after the first-ever wood-burning locomotive puffed its way into the Sault's Oakland Avenue train station in October, 1887.
 
The opening of the CPR's 300-kilometre Sault to Sudbury branch line, which had been stalled at Algoma Mills, east of Blind River, for several years gave the Sault two rail connections to the outside world.
 
The second connection, the railway bridge spanning the St. Mary's River and linking with American railway operators, had opened the same year as the CPR arrived.
 
Prior to the arrival of the railway the town had to rely on seasonal shipping for provisions, mail, as well as transportation in-and-out-of-town, service which was disrupted through the winter months.
 
Two years after the arrival of the railway, the town, an isolated community of about 1,000 residents in the mid 1880s, began experiencing its "first large boom" when hundreds of tradespeople, laborers, and their families began arriving to begin work on the Sault Shipping Canal.
 
Dan Bellerose.