Theatre of the Restless Mind PT 1: “Dad, do you remember a cold day in Hornepayne?”

The train whistle shrieked louder than the cold wind racing past its windows. Doug Harrison, a 23-year old Canadian Seaman took note of the sound - it came to him as a muffled moan - as he sat upon a bench seat inside a crowded passenger car, six back from the steaming engine, but he didn’t immediately realize what it meant.

Doug looked up from the well-thumbed Toronto newspaper one of his five buddies had purchased for a nickel the day before (“That’s a pretty steep price to pay,” he surely said at the time, in early 1944). He gazed out the train window and noticed the trees, having rushed past for the last 100 miles or more, were now thinning.

“Boys, we might see a new face in a few minutes,” he said to Leading Seamen Chuck Rose and Buryl McIntyre, two tall gents who were sitting on the bench opposite him, one on each side of his resting feet. “I heard the whistle blow and the train seems to be slowing. I tell you, I could sure use a stretch.”

The train slowed more perceptibly, another sharp whistle blast was sounded, some passengers stirred and an old-timer, familiar with the isolated stops in Northern Ontario and the spare amenities offered at each, said a few words to the restless sailors.

“We’re coming into Hornepayne. Not much more than piles of raw lumber to look at, but there’s hot coffee inside the station.”


[Original photo by Doug Harrison; this copy by G.Harrison]

Doug and the other sailors stood, straightened, shook out a few wrinkles, donned their standard-issue navy blue long coats and stepped out of the train car.

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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 Hornepayne 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, 1944, it was cold enough to turn one’s breath into clouds of frost.


[Above photo, and of engine, from www.railfame.ca]

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.


[Photo by Don Westbrook; Doug Harrison stands second left; this copy by G.Harrison]

I do know the old CN train station still stands and, according to Wikipedia, ‘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.

***

This story was written at a time when I was planning to motorcycle to BC. I am now going to travel by train and should be home before the snow flies!

Please click here for more about Dad’s Navy days

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