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March/April 1998 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor's Notebook Feature: Ice storm Feature: Sandbanks Provincial Park Our home and native tongue Write to know À la carte

Alphabet railway

Is it true that stops on prairie rail lines were named alphabetically?
Peter Danyluk, Elk Point, Alta.

Some of them were, as a trip along a CN line makes clear. Start at Arona, Man., and go to Zeneta, Sask. Begin again at Atwater, Sask., and go to Zelma. Repeat the process at Allan and Artland, Sask., and at Ardrossen, Alta. There are three more or less complete alphabets of towns between central Manitoba and Edmonton and two partial ones besides.

In some places letters are missing, and in others, letters have been interjected. But of the several rail lines laid across the plains a century or so ago, the one built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway between about 1905 and 1914 (and now part of the CN system) had its stops named in alphabetical order. Some stops

became substantial towns, others small villages, and others again never developed beyond a dot on a map and a name. Still, says Jack Ives Sr., a retired Tisdale, Sask., newspaper publisher who has made a thorough study of the ABCs of the GTPR, "Someone of a poetic turn of mind undertook to name the stations in alphabetical order, and it is gratifying that there seemed to be room for a bit of whimsy amidst the questionable politics and business disharmony that characterized that railway era." Regrettably, despite Ives' best efforts, the identity of the alphabetically minded person or persons responsible remains unknown.

Yonker, Sask., along the alphabet line. (Photo: Saskatchewan Archives Board/R-B9808)		Zelma, Sask., rounded out one alphabet. (Photo: Saskatchewan Archives Board/R-A7912)

The Grand Trunk Railway was a spectacularly successful company, at first. Backed by English capital, it completed a line between Montréal and Toronto in 1856, then expanded rapidly through takeovers and new construction. It built the Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Montréal, a bridge over the Niagara River and a tunnel under the St. Clair River at Sarnia, Ont. By the 1880s it had lines from Chicago to the Atlantic coast, and ranked among the largest railway systems in the world.

Still, it cast envious eyes at railway building in the west -- Canadian Pacific's 1885 cross-country line and the start of a second transcontinental route by Canadian Northern around 1900. In 1903 the Grand Trunk established a subsidiary, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, to build a line from Winnipeg to the Pacific. Under Charles M. Hays, the Grand Trunk's energetic general manager who also became Grand Trunk Pacific's president, the new company pushed its line west. It went across Manitoba, then northwest through Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper and Prince George, B.C., to Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast. The line connected with a track from Moncton to Winnipeg built by the federal government.

The alphabetical order, Jack Ives has determined, starts just west of Portage la Prairie. "It begins with the siding known as Arona," he says, "and continues with Bloom, Caye, Deer, Exira, Firdale, Gregg, Harte, Ingelow, Justice, Knox, Levine, Myra, Norman, Oakner, Pope, Quadra, Rea and Stenberg. The next two letters are reversed, so Uno comes before Treat, while Victor concludes the sequence in Manitoba.

"Welby is the first Saskatchewan community in the series, with Yarbo and Zeneta ending the first round. The rotation begins again with Atwater, Bangor and Cana, then skips to Fenwood, Goodeve, Hubbard, Ituna, Jasmin, Kelliher and Leross, then skips again to Punnichy, Quinton, Raymore, Semans, Tate, Undora, Venn, Watrous, Xena, Young and Zelma.

"The alphabetic ramble continues across Saskatchewan with Allan, Bradwell, Clavet, Duro, Eaton, Farley, Grandora and Hawoods, then Juniata, Kinley, Leney, Mead, Neola, Oban and Palo, then Reford, Scott, Tako, Unity, Vera and Winter, and Yonker and Zumbra.

"Artland is the last alphabetic town in Saskatchewan, with Chauvin, Dunn and Edgerton across the Alberta border. But the namer of names' determination begins to flag here. Heath, Greenshields and Fabyan appear in reverse order, then Irma, Jarrow, and Kinsella, and Ryley, Tofield and Uncas farther west. But no other names seem to fit until Ardrossan, Bremner, Clover Bar and Dunvegan turn up in the Edmonton area.

"After that, alphabetic names can sometimes be found in threes or fours," Ives concludes. "But the system seems to have died out as it moved through the remainder of Alberta and into British Columbia." Still, the last station before Prince Rupert and the Pacific is named Bungalow Z, "a symbolic exclamation point to end the process?" he wonders.

Alas, despite the imaginative naming system, the Grand Trunk Pacific proved less than successful, suffering stiff competition from the CPR's and Canadian Northern's established western systems. It dragged down the parent company, Grand Trunk, and in 1919 the whole empire collapsed. The Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific, heavily in debt to the federal government, were joined in 1923 with the Canadian Northern, the federal government's Moncton-to-Winnipeg line and other lines and made part of the federally owned Canadian National Railways.

By that time, Charles Hays, whose dream had built the Grand Trunk Pacific, was long gone. He was among the rich and dynamic who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The names Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific remained on some Canadian rail cars until the 1950s before they, too, faded from the scene. Today, of the once great Grand Trunk conglomerate, only the ABCs of prairie towns remain.

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