Smiths Falls Ontario - An hour's drive northeast of here (Kingston) is the town of Smiths Falls.
 
Almost hidden on the northwest corner of the town is The Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, a real going concern.
 
The station and surrounding buildings were erected by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1913, linking Toronto with Ottawa.
 
Now, everybody who owns a dog walks the former rail bed called The Cataraqui Trail.
 
The Canadian Northern line symbolized the wild excesses of railway construction across Canada around 1900.
 
But those who had an ear to the ground could hear the faint honks of motor trucks and the racket of highway construction.
 
Rail passenger stations disappeared and rail transport was rationalized under the hammer of competition.
 
In 1921-23 the Government of Canada enforced a list of mergers of surplus lines thus gobbling up the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Northern, and many others under the banner of Canadian National Railways (CNR).
 
The shift to diesel and freight in the booming 1950s spelled doom to scores of handsome passenger stations across the country.
 
CN abandoned the Outer Station in Kingston in the early 1980s while the former Canadian Northern station in Smiths Falls was posted for demolition.
 
Many other railway treasures went that way at the same time.
 
I note that Brampton has rallied to save their historic CPR station.
 
Here is a sentence from Brampton's restoration story which may be helpful to the people of Kingston:  "Working in partnership with Mattamy Homes, the Peel District School Board, and the Brampton Public Library, the City reconstructed the CPR station and adapted it to function as a cultural amenity space..."
 
Imagine that!
 
The school board in on the ground floor!
 
Let me return to Smiths Falls.
 
The town was fortunate to have a railway buff named Bill Le Surf who was not going to allow the beautiful, old Canadian Northern station be torn down.
 
A citizens' association was formed to which CN sold the station for $1.
 
That move avoided the messiness of municipal ownership which Kingston avoided by disdaining to buy the Outer Station for the same price in 2003.
 
In contrast to Kingston's "look-the-other-way attitude," the association in Smiths Falls as the owner, raised money enough to buy adjoining acres.
 
By 1999 the association was incorporated and in receipt of some government grant money sufficient to keep it afloat.
 
Now the Smiths Falls Railway Museum greets upwards of 5,000 visitors annually and is securely established as a national historic site and a cultural landmark in the town.
 
It's a real pleasure to visit the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario.
 
If Smiths Falls was perched alongside Highway 401 and further adorned with Fort Henry, their annual visitors might number 25,000.
 
The problem in Kingston is that their beautiful station was ruined by vandalism and fires in the 1990s.
 
Additionally the movers and shakers in our town are fixedly downtown in their thinking.
 
CN's plan to gut the former baggage building before selling it to somebody offers an opportunity for civic-minded people in Kingston to grasp the nettle before it's too late.
 
Peter H. Hennessy.