Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 10.
Station Agent in the Gatineau
Bruce Ballantyne
The following is taken from an interview that I had with Mr. Harold Craft in April 1979. Mr. Craft was a Canadian Pacific Railway station agent at a number of locations up the Gatineau. He now lives in Alcove, Que.
The station agent, until the 1930‘s, was a very important person in a village. He came right next to the doctor. I became station agent at Gracefield in 1915 and in those days nearly everything that you ate or wore had to come to you by rail. Store-keepers from Notre Dame to Low, Lac Cayamant and other out-of-the-way places had to get their summer goods in during the winter and take them from Gracefield station by sleigh. It was much easier to take a load in the snow than it was by wagon in the summer.
I was in Gracefield until 1918. A fellow named Bob Pearse followed me there. I came to Alcove in April 1918 and succeeded a man by the name of Bob Ritchie. I was station agent there until 1932.
Previous to about 1937 we had two passenger trains from Maniwaki daily, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and two up to Maniwaki in the early evening. In the summer we had a suburban train running from Kazabazua in and back. In addition to that we had two regular way freights — one each way.
In the late 1920‘s, at the height of railroad life in the Gatineau, we had what we called the “BIue Sea Special" which went up Fridays. It may have stopped at Wakefield but its next stop then was Blue Sea. We had, in addition to these. extra freights to handle the traffic. Everything moved by rail: hemlock bark for tanning, cordwood and cattle. We used to haul a lot of cordwood. For the cattle there were stock pens, as we called them, including big ones at Alcove, Wakefield, Farrellton and Venosta. The cattle would be loaded and sent to markets in Montreal and Toronto.
I recall one particularly busy time in the 192O’s with the railway diversion for the Chelsea Dam. The diversion was done by a man named Maclean. The railway got its gravel at Farrellton and the gravel trains made for a lot of work. We had an operator - a telegrapher Jack Malone - at the pit. The gravel trains were handled like any other trains.
The suburban passenger train, in the mid-1920‘s, was moved to Alcove and it used to start there at 6:30 each morning. We had a wye just down the road a little ways where the engine would be turned. The highway now runs through both legs of the wye. The only building that is still there is the one in which the trainmen stopped overnight.
After Alcove I went to Ottawa for five years - 1932 to 1937 - but my heart was in the Gatineau. When Wakefield station became vacant I was told that I was the senior applicant so I moved back. Living in Alcove, I travelled back and forth to Wakefield by car. There were a few times in the winter when I had to ski down because of the storms. In 1941 the Aluminum Company opened at Farm Point and we did the railway accounting at Wakefield. It became very busy.
When I was there a good many of our visiting Americans would like to send a telegram back home. You could send a telegram of ten words to Pennsylvania for, if I remember, 60 cents.
Some of the other agents while I worked included Bill Ellis, then Keith Stewart, at Chelsea; Harry Leslie in Wakefield, in 1918, then Bill Thorn. A fellow named Hill replaced me in Alcove until it closed. There was a man named Bert Fuller at Low. He was replaced by a fine gentleman named A. Gregoire and then a man named Thibodeau. Then there was Alphonse Martineau in Gracefield when that station closed. There was a Mr. Roy followed by Charlie Sylvester at Maniwaki.
In 1965 I got a call and was asked to relieve the agent at Gracefield, for his month's holiday. So l said sure! And l relieved the regular agent there which was exactly 50 years after my first time. l always valued that. It was quite a satisfaction to return.
Bruce Ballantyne, who researched and compiled the above item first had a short article in our 1977 edition entitled TO THE COTTAGE 9- 1896. The reference is to Blue Sea Lake which his father first visited in 1919 and where he later built a cottage in 1922. Bruce ‘s first trip was in 1947 and he still visits the area each summer.