Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway

Great Northern Railway

GN system map, circa 1918; dotted lines represent nearby railroads
Great Northern 400, a preserved EMD SD45.
Overview
Headquarters	Saint Paul, Minnesota
Reporting mark	GN
Locale	British Columbia California Idaho Iowa Manitoba Minnesota Montana North Dakota Oregon South Dakota Washington Wisconsin
Dates of operation	1857–1970
Successor	Burlington Northern Railroad
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Length	8,368 miles (13,467 kilometres)

The Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway (V.V. & E.) was a railway line in British Columbia that was proposed in 1896 and built in stages from 1906 to 1916. It was owned by the Vancouver, Victoria, and Eastern Railway and Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway, and was managed by James J. Hill.

Origin

The Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway was a promotion railway in southwestern British Columbia proposed and later built to oppose and take business from the Canadian Pacific Railway. While the V.V. & E. was first, the CPR later built the Kettle Valley Railway as a separate southern line crossing the province.

The V.V. & E. was chartered by Vancouver businessmen including the mayor, to funnel the rich Kootenay mining trade and wealth through to Vancouver. It was chartered in 1896 and built from 1905 to 1916.

Its route ran from Cloverdale in Surrey, through Langley, Abbotsford, Sumas Prairie, to Hope, with another section in the Coquihalla Pass area going from Brookmere to Otter Lake, Tulameen, Coalmont, Princeton, Hedley, Keremeos, and thence crossing into the United States at Nighthawk, Washington, and striking onto Oroville. It crossed the international border five times in its meandering journey and terminated back again in Canada at Grand Forks. This railway was to have a very long, slow birth. It was politically, legally, and structurally protracted.

When the Canadian Pacific Railway was finished in 1886, it had the monopoly on railways in the area for some twenty years. This and the high freight rates alienated citizens in the west. Also, the discovery of rich silver ore at Nelson heralded a mining boom in southeastern BC. Railways and shipping lines were built into the area, with many coming from the Spokane area of Washington State.

This was the backdrop of an ongoing feud between two railroad barons. William van Horne, an American who was President of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and James Jerome Hill, a Canadian who had been a director of the CPR but left after an argument with the board and became a railroad baron on his own in Minnesota. He would build the rival Great Northern Railway, which paralleled the CPR line on the south side of the border in the US. The two companies and presidents would fight a legendary war for rail lines, trade and political favour.

The CPR would fight battles with the GN at Sandon, Midway, Nelson, Grand Forks, and Greenwood, and finally Sapperton. They would have rate wars, overbuild rail lines, and put competing interests into the mining areas. The CPR would buy up coal mines, used for fuel to smelt ore, and it even accidentally bought a smelter when it obtained Heinze's Columbia and Western line. This became the famed Cominco smelter at Trail. To this end, GN was also buying, building, and proposing other lines to abut and enter onto CPR territory. GN bought the Victoria and Sidney Railway on Vancouver Island. It built the New Westminster and Southern Railway to connect Bellingham with New Westminster. It started the Victoria Terminal Railway and Ferry Company in 1903, which ran from Ladner to Cloverdale, and thus it was engaged in constructing a network of rails and ferries to compete. The CPR had a monopoly, better geography with respect to the economy of Canada, and the deep pockets of starry-eyed London bankers.

With much of the mineral traffic going to the US, Vancouver felt like an unwanted dance partner and thought a Coast-to-Kootenay railway would improve things. The CPR had penetrated the mineral area with a hybrid rail system of trains and lake boats to get to the region. This did not reduce the threat from the American rivals as they had easier geography to access the Kootenays. And so, a railway was proposed by Vancouver and Victoria businessman to be a non-CPR line, one that was Canadian-owned, to the Kootenay district. Mayor Templeman was a principal proponent. From this came the name of Vancouver, Victoria & Eastern.

At the same time, the CPR and the GN were vying to expand their lines to southeastern BC. The CPR negotiated with Ottawa to exchange a lower freight rate, mainly for grain farmers, the Crow Rate, in exchange for subsidies to build a railway from the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta to Nelson and the booming mining town of Rossland. This eastern line did not placate the businessmen of Vancouver. Another independent narrow gauge line, the Columbia and Western Railway, was built by Montana copper king Fritz Heinze. It was soon bought by the CPR and would eventually grow into the eastern segment of the Kettle Valley Railway.

Amidst all this bustle was the V.V. & E. line, which everyone thought was a good idea, but actual advancement never seemed to happen. It was sold to the Manitoba railway kings of McKenzie and Mann, but they lost interest when they failed to get a federal subsidy (as it was given to the CPR.) As a result, the line was resold to James Jerome Hill and the GN in 1901. However, the line was not Hill's trump card. He was busy with another line — the Victoria, Westminster & Yukon Railway. It was a local line promoted by lumber baron John Hendry, who wanted to get into the railway business and break the CPR monopoly in the Vancouver area. He built a line with GN help from New Westminster to the False Creek flats in Vancouver. This is the present main line through Burnaby still used by GN, CN, and Amtrak today. Hendry thought he might extend the line to the other booming mining district in the far off Yukon. For this he would have to arrange to have a bridge built across Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver and then eventually build north. Hendry served as president for a time for the V.V. & E.

In this mix came the manoeuvering and rivalry between the various factions: the CPR, GN, the Canadian Federal and Provincial governments, and several administrations of different political stripes. Hill and Hendry had a protracted and convoluted business contract which built the line into Vancouver but delayed the V.V. and E. for fifteen years. In this time period, GN re-aligned its north-south railway from the swamps of Surrey to Delta as it built along the foreshore at White Rock, virtually creating the beachside community, across Mud Bay, Burns Bog, and over the new federally-built railway bridge at New Westminster.

One aspect furthering the delay in construction of the Hope to Okanagan Section was the steep and solid coast mountains east of Hope. The granite peaks rose up suddenly and presented no easy path through. In this region, railway construction would be perilously expensive. Both the V.V. & E. and CPR did surveys through the Coquihalla Pass area — V.V. & E. in 1896 and CPR in 1900.

Over time, the V.V. & E. became a political cause. The citizens loved any idea that broke the CPR monopoly, and armchair railway barons liked pencilling in lines across maps. Furthering this was the fact that getting to the Kootenays from the coast was a two-day affair by the circuitous existing lines. Competing governments would raise the issue, as would newspaper editors. The Dunsmuir government in BC became embroiled in the V.V. & E. as it paid for a survey of the mountains in the Hope area. The aged Edgar Dewdney, of Dewdney Trail fame, was brought out of retirement and performed the work. Subsequently, the Dunsmuir government fell due to bribery and corruption charges over the railway. One officer, Edward Prior, was also booted from office due to a similar public works scandal. And thus, the Coast-to-Kootenay railway became just a dream. In the meantime, further mineral discoveries were made in the copper-rich Boundary districts and thus the CPR and the GN extended their lines westward from the Nelson area.

Construction

The demise of the Dunsmuir government in BC brought in premier Richard McBride, and with him came a railway-building era the likes of which the province had never seen. As such, the V.V. & E. was started in 1907 at Cloverdale and ran east through Langley and the flat hills and meandering brooks of the Fraser Valley. It wandered into Abbotsford, where it crossed over the CPR lines at Huntingdon and onto the flat Sumas Prairie.

In 1910, the V.V. & E. skirted around the then large Sumas Lake, into the brick plant at Kilgard, and along the eastern foot of Sumas Mountain. At the same time, Hill was building a line westward from the American Okanagan at Oroville to Hedley and Princeton. Large coal deposits of high grade coal, suitable for burning in hard-pulling steam locomotives, was discovered near Coalmont. Slowly, the two GN lines were coming together.

McKenzie and Mann, the former owners of the line, were building a competing transcontinental line through the Fraser Canyon and Valley, the Canadian Northern Pacific, and thus traded access to the GN: the V.V. & E. could use its line from Cannor (named from CANadian NORthern) at Chilliwack Mountain to run 25 miles east along the narrowing valley to Hope, while the Canadian Northern would use the GN's line from New Westminster to False Creek in Vancouver. Finding enough space for the railway terminus and yards for the two rail lines became a headache for the City of Vancouver. The problem was solved by using the spoil from the Grandview Cut and filling in the eastern side of False Creek. The V. W. & Y crossed the creek on wooden piles and ended at a small building beside the Ho Ho Restaurant. The V.V. & E. bought the V.W. & Y. in 1908. The Canadian Northern Railway and the V.V. & E. also had contracts on Vancouver Island, with the former building to Bamfield and the latter to the Alberni Valley respectively.

By 1910, both the CPR and the GN were committed to building Coast-to-Kootenay Railways. GN had the advantage in the east as it had completed the line to Princeton from Grand Forks, although much of it in American territory; the CPR had the advantage in the west, as it had built to Hope and had a line to the coal mines of Merritt. Filling in the gaps from Grand Forks to Hope presented a few problems. There were mountains, narrow canyons, high plateaux, and steep grades. There was also a ponderously slow and politically susceptible Board of Railway Construction and its government masters in Ottawa. Naturally, the CPR maintained the upper hand and received subsidies and favouritism from Ottawa. The CPR's line was a separate line and legal entity called the Kettle Valley Railway. It was to be the great rival to the V.V. & E.

It was the canyons and crests of the Coquihalla country that came to the fore. During this time, neither line had publicly declared its preferred route. Although with the GN at Princeton and driving on to Coalmont, and the CPR already at Hope and Merritt, the convergence of forces were destined to meet at Coquihalla Pass. Dewdney's survey had investigated the terrain and reported that the ground was not suitable for easy railway construction and any line would be costly. The routes were determined by the mountains and there were only three choices of passes in the area — Coquihalla Pass, with its canyon of scree on the approach from the south; Allison Pass, with its narrow canyons and bluffs; and Railroad Pass, with high peaks and steep grades. [Not to be confused with the Railroad Pass in the Pemberton Area.] In 1909, J. Hill ordered the construction of an eight-mile tunnel using the Railroad Pass Route to Tulameen. Contracts were let and work started. Hill had no fear of long tunnels as he had built the Cascade Tunnel across the Cascade Mountains near Everett, Washington, to complete his US mainline. He then reconsidered and chose to use the canyon and Coquihalla Pass alignment. Some argue that Hill reasoned the long tunnel would take too long to complete, that he had disputes with his own board, that the project was too expensive, or that he could build through Coquihalla Pass just to stymie the CPR. However, both railways had surveys going through the canyon and it became apparent that there was only room for one line in the mountains. The GN complained to the Board of Railway Construction that the CPR was encroaching on its survey, which GN had filed with the board first. There was a legal battle as to who had first rights to the canyon. Hill was not averse to disputes over right of way and had fought with other lines, as at the Deschutes River War. The Railway Board sent its own engineers to examine the canyon.

Both railways continued construction on their lines between 1911-13. In the provincial election of 1912, McBride campaigned on subsidising the CPR with a $10,000 per mile grant and a $200,000 completion bonus. McBride won his fourth election. No money was offered to the V.V. & E.

In 1913, the Railway Board and the two railways signed the Coquihalla Pass Agreement, whereby the two lines agreed to share tracks through the Coquihalla area—the CPR would build from Hope through the pass to Brookmere, and GN would allow Kettle Valley trains to use its track from Brookmere to Princeton. The granite mountains have forced the warring railways to compromise. GN paid the CPR $150,000 per year to run its train over CPR tracks.

Demise

Almost as soon as the V.V. & E. was finished, GN began to lose interest in the line. It cut back service, which offended passengers and shippers. With less traffic, the railway cut service even more. It was in a death spiral. Normal business was interrupted by the First World War. Then came the post-war slump and increasing competition from the Panama Canal. In the Fraser Valley, GN faced fierce competition from the BC Electric railway, which could run shorter, cheaper trains more often, and thus was popular with the dairy farmers and market gardeners. Because of this, GN began to abandon the V.V. & E. line in the Upper Valley from 1920. Nine years later, the entire western end of the V.V. & E. was abandoned. Its birthing process had lasted longer than its operating lifetime.

The mountain section lasted longer, hauling gold ore from Hedley and ice from Otter Lake to the cities in pre-refrigeration days. GN was quick to cut back its feeder lines as the mines played out. The Kettle Valley Railway became the top competitor. GN stopped running trains on the Brookmere to Princeton section in 1937 and coal mining stopped in Coalmont in 1940 due to a massive underground explosion.

GN sold its last coast section of the V.V. & E. to the CPR in 1945; it needed it to run trains from Brookmere to Penticton. The CPR rebuilt the wooden bridges on the Similkameen River with heavy steel ones in 1948. GN ran trains to Keromeos until 1972, when that section was abandoned.

Bibliography

• F. Leonard. "Railroading a Renegade". BC Studies 2007
• R. Turner. "Steam along the Boundary".
• Barrie Sandford. "McCulloch's Wonder". Whitecap. Vancouver. 1977.
• Patricia Roy. "Progress, Prosperity and Politics: the Railway Policies of Richard McBride". BC Studies Fall 1980.