I’m glad my dad carried a camera on his way west from Ontario to Vancouver Island, while he travelled toward a naval base situated in Comox, a small town on the north eastern side of the island, and 90-minutes north (today, by car) of Nanaimo’s ferry landing. By examining one of a handful of photographs from that time in his life, I recently learned the once-thriving town of Hornepayne exists somewhere along the way.
I sussed out from the ‘black and white’ that Horne-payne lies 572.4 miles west of Toronto, 722.4 west of Montreal and 635.4 east of Winnipeg. And that when six young men in navy blue stepped off the train there (with Doug behind the camera) in January or February, 1944, it was cold enough to turn one’s breath into clouds of frost.
In a road atlas I discovered that the town sits on highway 631, about 100 kilometers north of White River (200 km. north of Wawa) and Trans-Canada Highway 17, and about 70 km. south of the intersection - likely a very quiet one - of 631 and Trans-Canada 11.
Hornepayne also sits on the CN rail line that connects Toronto, Sudbury and Winnipeg and many tiny spots that the vast majority of Canadians will likely never see or hear about, even once, over the course of a lifetime.
For example, do Capreol, Wilnet, Westree, Gogama, Kukatush, Foleyet, Elsas, Peterbell, Argolis, Fire River, Oba or MacDuff ring a bell? Not very likely, unless you regularly travel on the CN line between Sudbury and Hornepayne and keep your eyes peeled for signs erected at all the little whistle stops along the way. It may have been while on that stretch of rail that someone first said, “Be careful, pal. If you blink you’ll miss it.”
At www.railfame.ca I read that Hornepayne is the ‘quintessential railway town’. It is ‘hewn out of the wilderness of northern Ontario... symbolic of the railway’s determination to develop that region, and of the character of its inhabitants’. The town was called Fitzbach when first established in 1913 ‘as a divisional point on the Canadian Northern Ontario Railway’s main line between Montréal and Port Arthur. It was renamed Hornepayne about 1920’.
I also learned that the highway that runs through it today (i.e., number 631) was not completed until the 1980s, so it was about 40 years after my father stopped there that ‘the community’s dependence on the railway was ended’. In other words, if I’d lived there in the 1960s and wanted new blue jeans, in all likelihood I would have had to thumb through an Eaton’s catalogue, measure the length of my inseam with the help of a cloth tape from my mother’s sewing basket, mail off an order and then go wait (impatiently, very impatiently) at the train station for six weeks or more. That being said, to this day the railway serves as a vital link to the northern community.
What would six young sailors, chiefly from south western Ontario, have thought of Hornepayne? Would they have felt like they were in the middle of nowhere, or said, “We’re so far out of town we can’t even see the boonies from here?” I don’t know. Never will.
But I do know the old CN train station still stands, though, according to Wikipedia, it "is no longer in use and fallen into disrepair."
I also know, when I drive west to Comox this summer, I’ll likely feel a strong urge to turn north at White River, and drive about 100 km. out of my way in search of hot coffee and a quiet place to stretch my legs.
***
Please click here to read Theatre of the Restless Mind: PT 1 “Dad, a picture is worth a thousand words”
.
No comments:
Post a Comment