X-Nico

45 unusual facts about Canadian Pacific Railway


29th century

The CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) lease on the O&Q (Ontario and Quebec) will end on 4 January 2883 after a 999-year lease.

Albert Salter

The later construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the area, however, made mineral exploration more feasible and finally resulted in the development of a mining settlement in 1883.

Ashcroft Terminal

Located 340 km east of Vancouver and 90 km west of Kamloops, Ashcroft Terminal is situated on mainlines for both Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and Canadian National Railway (CN).

Baron Revelstoke

The City of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada was renamed in honour of Edward Charles Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke, commemorating his role in securing the financing necessary for completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Booster engine

Canadian Pacific Railway rostered 3,257 steam locomotives acquired between 1881 and 1949, yet only 55 were equipped with boosters.

Canadian federal election, 1874

Macdonald's government had been forced to resign on November 5, 1873 because of allegations of corruption relating to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (see the Pacific Scandal).

Canadian federal election, 1878

Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservative/Liberal-Conservative party was returned to office after having been defeated five years before amidst scandals over the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Canadian Pacific Railway No. 1246

Canadian Pacific Railway No. 1246 was one of three 1200-series Canadian Pacific Railway locomotives in the Steamtown, USA collection.

Canadian Railroad Trilogy

The "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is a song by Gordon Lightfoot that describes the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Canadian Rockies

The Canadian Pacific Railway was founded to provide a link from the province of British Columbia to the eastern provinces.

Canadian Women's Open

In November 2013, Canadian Pacific Railway Company took over title sponsorship of the Canadian Women's Open and the event name was changed to Canadian Pacific Women's Open, or Omnium féminin Canadien Pacifique.

Chelsea Buckland

Her father, Glenn, has worked for Canadian Pacific Railway, while her mother, Gail, has worked as a hospital service worker.

E. Hunter Harrison

Hunter Harrison (born 1944), is a railroad executive who has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) since June 29, 2012.

Feminisation of the workplace

In 1888, the government of Canada decided to invite skilled Chinese men to work in The Gold Rush and the Canadian Pacific Railway to reduce the cost of labor wages and to afford these projects.

George Laidlaw

Though it was met with minimal success at the time, the idea was the backbone of what was to become the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Guillaume Bresse

During the 1880s, Bresse even joined a syndicate which bought a section of railway from the provincial government and sold it to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, earning substantial profits.

Harvest excursion

Thus in 1890 harvest excursions were organized by the Canadian Pacific Railway in which special trains would transport workers from Eastern Canada to the prairie centres.

Henry Hepburne-Scott, 10th Lord Polwarth

Polwarth then returned to business and was again a Director of Imperial Chemical Industries from 1974 to 1981 and also of the Sun Life Assurance Co of Canada from 1975 to 1984, of the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1975 to 1986 and of Halliburton Co from 1974 to 1987.

Herbert Butterworth

On 8 March 1929, he emigrated to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the liner Regina and later worked in Calgary for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

HMS Princess Irene

Princess Irene was built by William Denny and Brothers Ltd, Dumbarton for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

HMS Princess Irene was a 5,394 GRT ocean liner which was built in 1914 by William Denny and Brothers Ltd, Dumbarton, Scotland for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

John L. Stevens

The question had taken on significance after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886.

Middleton, Norfolk

He was one of two brothers and the son of a railway engineer on the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Napierville Junction Railway

This continued to operate like this until the early 1990s when the D&H was bought and merged into the Canadian Pacific Railway thus turning the Rouses Point to Delson line into Canadian Pacific's Lacolle Sub.

National Parks of Canada

Coal was the most plentiful and profitable of all the minerals and therefore its mining in parks was accepted by politicians and Canadian Pacific Railway officials.

Nicholson, Pennsylvania

Built by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in 1915, the bridge has served many owners; DL&W, Erie-Lackawanna, Conrail, Delaware & Hudson also operated by Guilford Transportation, and New York Susquehanna & Western before the current owner, Canadian Pacific Railway.

Norman Charles Harris

He worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway followed by the Hydro-Electric Power Co. in Tasmania and in 1913 became a draftsman for the Victoria Railways and then joining his father in the rolling stock division.

Norman Inkster

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but spending nearly all of his early years in Broadview, Saskatchewan, where his father, Harold, was a Master mechanic with the Canadian Pacific Railway and his mother, Martha, was a housewife, he was educated at the University of New Brunswick, where he studied sociology and psychology.

Palliser Expedition

The purpose was to explore possible routes for the Canadian Pacific Railway and discover new species of plants.

Pershing Square Capital Management

In 2010, Pershing Square reported having taken a large ownership stakes in JC Penney and Canadian Pacific Railway.

PRR 1223

By the year 1940, most railroads had forgotten about the 4-4-0, but the Pennsy, the Boston and Maine, and Canadian Pacific Railway, among others, were still using them.

Rail transport in Canada

There are two major publicly traded transcontinental freight railway systems, the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railway.

Saint-Constant, Quebec

Saint-Constant was transformed the construction of the Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec

Another impetus to its development came a few years later in 1854, when the Grand Trunk Railway was built through the area, followed by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1887.

Skinner baronets

He was the founder of Thomas Skinner & Co, publishers, and a Director of the Canadian Pacific Railway, of the Hudson's Bay Company and of the Bank of Montreal.

Slocan Valley Rail Trail

The trail uses a rail corridor that was originally built for the Nakusp and Slocan Railway which was abandoned by the Canadian Pacific Railway during the 1980s.

SS Beaverburn

Beaverburn was the name of two steamships operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway

SS Storstad

The Canadian Pacific Railway, which owned the Empress of Ireland, filed a $2,000,000 lawsuit for damages against the owners of the Storstad.

Sudbury, Suffolk

The Canadian city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario (formerly known as Sudbury and still referred to as Sudbury in everyday usage) was named after Sudbury, becoming a settlement in 1883 following the discovery of rich nickel and copper ores there during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Adventure of Black Peter

It also says C. P. R. on the second page, which Holmes reckons stands for Canadian Pacific Railway.

Thomas James Tait

Born in Melbourne, Quebec, the son of Melbourne McTaggart Tait, Tait entered the service of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1880, and by 1903 he was manager of transportation with Canadian Pacific Railway company.

Thunder Bay Public Library

Library services for Fort William began in 1885 when Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) employees opened a bath, along with a smoking and literary room, with a library attached in the Round House at West Fort William.

Vaudreuil-Dorion

The CN and CP rail links between Toronto and Montreal are located in Dorion.

Verne Sankey

Born in 1890, Verne Sankey worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway in his youth and later attempted to start a farm in South Dakota.

William W. Stinson

William W. Stinson (born 1935) is a former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Pacific Railway and former Chairman of Sun Life Financial.


Arbor Creek, Saskatoon

It is bounded by McOrmond Drive to the east, Highway 5 and the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks to the south, Berini Drive to the west, and Kerr Road to the north.

Beddington Heights, Calgary

The community was originally named after the city of Beddington in Surrey, England, and began as a Canadian Pacific Railway station.

Brooks, Alberta

Through a Postmaster General-sponsored contest, the area was named after Noel Edgell Brooks, a Canadian Pacific Railway Divisional Engineer from Calgary.

Canada's grand railway hotels

Given its location next to Montreal's main train station, the Windsor served for years as the permanent residence of executives of both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway.

Canadian Industries Limited

In order to provide the massive amounts of explosives needed to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, a new dynamite factory was opened in McMasterville, Quebec.

Ceylon, Saskatchewan

He may have chosen the name Ceylon in recognition of a CPR station of the name in Ontario, or it may have been named for a yacht that was owned by Scottish merchant Sir Thomas Lipton (whose name still graces tea bags to this day).

Chateau Lake Louise

The original Chateau was gradually built up at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century by the Canadian Pacific Railway and was thus "kin" to its predecessors, the Banff Springs Hotel, and the Château Frontenac.

CNR Spadina Roundhouse

Toronto's Canadian Pacific Railway, John Street Roundhouse, now the home of the Steam Whistle brewery along with Spadina Roundhouse were two of hundreds of roundhouses in North America in the 1930s.

Coronach, Saskatchewan

It was founded in 1926 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and named after Coronach, the horse who had just won the Epsom Derby in England that year.

Craigellachie, British Columbia

It was named after the village of Craigellachie on the River Spey in Moray, Scotland, the ancestral home of Sir George Stephen, the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

Dempster Heming

He was also working for the Canadian Pacific Railway at the same time and sold his farm in 1912 to become a full-time employee of the railway at Moose Jaw.

Eskbank, Saskatchewan

The hamlet is located about 15 km south of Highway 42 on Range road 20, approximately 50 km north-west of the City of Moose Jaw on the former Canadian Pacific Railway Tracks from Moose Jaw to Riverhurst.

Frank William Green

Upon his graduation from McGill in 1898, Green worked as a physician on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway Crowsnest Pass line, in the Kootenay Valley, working on horseback.

Glossary of North American railway terms

Pac-Man: A nickname for Canadian Pacific Railway's 1968-1996 logo featuring a black triangle within a white half-circle, which resembles the main character of the video arcade game Pac-Man.

Halifax and Southwestern Railway

The H&SW, along with the Inverness Railway, were isolated from the rest of CNoR's trackage which ran from Montreal to Vancouver, not unlike rival Canadian Pacific Railway's Dominion Atlantic Railway.

Kandahar, Saskatchewan

Kandahar is a small hamlet on Highway 16 near Wynyard, Saskatchewan, Canada, named by Canadian Pacific Railway executives in the late 19th century for a British military victory in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Mission Bridge

Before the Mission Bridge was completed, the only link between the City of Abbotsford and the City of Mission was the Canadian Pacific Railway Mission Railway Bridge which had wooden planks laid on the ties between the rails, and outside the rails, to allow the passage of automobile traffic.

New Brunswick Route 1

However, the city, along with the provincial and federal governments, decided to bargain with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) to purchase the majority of the Mill Street Yard near the neo-gothic Union Station for a highway alignment which would run through the middle of the city (somewhat like the infamous Interstate 93 alignment which was built through Boston).

Nicola River

From there the river flows 60 kilometres northwest to the Thompson, and is followed on that route by British Columbia Highway 8 and a spur line of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Ontario Highway 651

At the midpoint of the route, a short road branches off to the east, connecting with Dalton, a siding on the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental line.

Pemberton Ridge, New Brunswick

While the larger centers of Canterbury, (34 kilometres) or Danforth (30 kilometres) provided access to the Canadian Pacific Railway, as well as other commodities such as farm supplies and consumer items, Forest City was the service centre for the community.

Robsart, New Mexico

Robsart may have been named by the Southern Pacific Railway after Amy Robsart from the Sir Walter Scott book Kenilworth, as Robsart, Saskatchewan received its name from the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Roderick R. McLennan

Born in Charlottenburgh, Canada West, the third son of Roderick McLennan, McLennan worked in construction of railways and other public works, including sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway north of Lake Superior.

Suffield, Alberta

Established by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1884, Suffield was named after Charles Harbord, 5th Baron Suffield who married in 1854, Cecilia Annetta, the sister of Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke, who assisted in financing the railway.

Thomas Underwood

Two years later, he joined a Canadian Pacific Railway construction gang and was working in Craigellachie, British Columbia at the time of the last spike was driven to complete the transcontinental railroad.

TransAlta

Calgary Power's cheap power is credited with Canadian Pacific Railway's decision to locate its regional engine repair shop in Ogden, Calgary spurring Calgary's economic development.