Calgary Alberta - When Kory Hill says he never has a typical day on the job, it's only partly in jest.
 
As manager of mechanical with Canadian Pacific (CP) in Lethbridge, he leads a team of five supervisors and 46 employees responsible for ensuring that the trains passing through continue their journey in good working order.
 
Lethbridge is a critical terminal supporting CP's bulk franchise, inspecting and performing maintenance on freight cars and locomotives.
 
What's more, while many Alberta terminals serve either CP's east-west or north-south corridors, the lines converge in Lethbridge where crews shepherd trains to and from all four directions.
 
"The team wears a lot of different hats," Hill says of the range of duties they undertake in three eight-hour shifts a day, 365 days a year.
 
"It takes a lot of organization and communication to keep everybody safe and all the traffic moving efficiently."
 
Completed in 1885, the railway physically united Canada, and CP has played a significant role in the Canadian economy ever since.
 
Today it offers freight transportation services in both Canada and the United States.
 
Some tasks, such as visual inspections to identify necessary repairs, would be familiar to earlier generations of railroaders.
 
But current employees also have the advantage of 21st century technologies, robotics, and data analytics for everything from logistics planning to predicting equipment failures before they occur.
 
Hill has become familiar with CP's established and emerging procedures only since 2018, when he joined the railway as a mechanical supervisor.
 
Until then, he'd worked in the oil and gas industry, but switched sectors with the help and encouragement of a family friend familiar with CP.
 
Two years later, Hill was promoted to the manager's role.
 
While taking some CP leadership training programs, he also met colleagues from different communities and on different operational and professional career paths.
 
Some, Hill says, have become unofficial mentors.
 
"I'm not afraid to say I don't know, and there are people throughout Canada I can turn to for advice. I've never had anybody not take a call," he says.
 
According to Pam Arpin, vice president and chief information officer, making connections and facilitating communications is nothing new for CP.
 
"It's what we've been doing since the 1800s when we ran telegraph wire alongside the tracks. Our culture has always been forward-thinking," she says.
 
Like other senior leaders, Arpin hosts regular town hall meetings, which became increasingly important during the pandemic when employees were working from home.
 
CP has since adopted a flexible, hybrid workplace model, and encourages people to return to the office when feasible so they can interact and collaborate in ways that aren't possible through a computer screen, she says.
 
Arpin herself has extended an invitation to the 900 employees on her team to join her one-on-one on her frequent 30 minute walks around the park-like grounds of the Calgary head office.
 
Those employees include IT professionals who design and implement many of the complex technologies that make CP a rail industry leader in innovation.
 
CP believes diverse thinking drives innovation and is committed to supporting a representative and inclusive workplace, Arpin says.
 
So when the League of Railway Women named her Railway Woman of the Year in 2019, it inspired her, she says, to become more active in encouraging young women to enter historically male-dominated fields like railroading and IT.
 
"You can be what you can see," says Arpin.
 
This story was produced by Mediacorp in partnership with Postmedia, on behalf of Canadian Pacific Railway Limited..