Canoe River train crash

Canoe River train crash
File:Canoerivertrainwreck.svg Approximate location of the Canoe River train crash
Details
Date	November 21, 1950 10:40 a.m.
Location	Valemount, British Columbia
Country	Canada
Line	Transcontinental mainline
Operator	Canadian National Railways
Incident type	Head-on collision
Cause	Full order not received by troop train, which was to pull into siding.
Statistics
Trains	2
Deaths	21
Injured	61

The Canoe River train crash occurred on November 21, 1950, near Valemount in eastern British Columbia, Canada, when a westbound troop train and the eastbound Canadian National Railway (CNR) Continental Limited collided head-on. Twenty-one people were killed: 17 Canadian soldiers bound for deployment in the Korean War, and the two-man locomotive crews of both trains.

On investigation of the crash, it was found that part of an order sent to the troop train instructing it to wait on sidings to allow eastbound traffic to pass had not been received, causing the troop train to proceed on its way, rather than stop, and eventually to strike the passenger train. A telegraph operator, Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, was charged with manslaughter; the prosecution alleged he was negligent in passing the troop train an incomplete message. He hired his Member of Parliament, prominent lawyer and Opposition frontbencher John Diefenbaker as defence counsel. Diefenbaker joined the Law Society of British Columbia in order to take the case, and obtained Atherton's acquittal.

In response to recommended changes, the CNR installed block signals on the stretch of track on which the crash occurred. The railway later rerouted the main line in that area, eliminating a sharp curve which had prevented the crews from seeing that another train was approaching.

On November 21, 1950, a troop train, Passenger Extra 3538 West, comprising S-2-a class locomotive 3538 and 17 cars, about half of which were wooden cars with steel underframes was moving westbound through the Rocky Mountains on the CNR transcontinental mainline.^[1] Onboard were 23 officers and 315 men of 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, travelling west from Camp Shilo, Manitoba en route to Fort Lewis, Washington, for deployment in the Korean War.^[2] CNR Train No. 2, the eastbound Continental Limited (also Continental), comprised U-1-a class locomotive 6004 and eleven all-steel cars.^[1] It was passing through the mountains, en route from Vancouver to Montreal.^[3]

It was the intent of CNR dispatcher A. E. Tisdale to send both trains identical orders so that they could safely "meet", or get past each other on a section of the line which was for the most part single track. The order, in its full form, read "Passenger Extra 3538 West meet No. 2 Engine 6004 at Cedarside and No. 4 Engine 6057 at Gosnell."^[4] (Cedarside and Gosnell were sidings where trains could wait to allow opposing traffic to clear).^[5] Tisdale had dictated the order to Atherton, the operator at Red Pass Junction, for delivery to Passenger Extra 3538 West, the troop train, and to the operator at Blue River, 89 miles (143 km) westbound from Red Pass Junction, for delivery to No. 2, the Continental. The words "at Cedarside" did not appear in the order as copied down by Atherton for the troop train crew.^[1]

As the full order had been passed to the eastbound Continental, its crew expected to meet the troop train at Cedarside, 43 miles (69 km) east of Blue River; the crew aboard the troop train expected to meet the Continental and another train at Gosnell 25 miles (40 km) westbound from Cedarside.^[1] With neither train crew aware of anything wrong, the troop train passed Cedarside and the Continental passed Gosnell. Both trains were traveling at moderate speeds, and attempted to negotiate a sharp curve from opposite ends. The crews did not realise a collision was imminent until the last moment, and the trains struck head-on at 10:40 a.m.^[6]

The accident occurred south of Valemount, near a siding named Canoe River,^[7] 5 miles (8.0 km) westbound from Cedarside.^[8] The leading cars of each train were derailed; those which had been part of the troop train were demolished by the crash.^[9] According to testimony at the inquiry hearing, most of the deaths were caused by a burst of live steam from the troop train's ruptured boilers; the scalding vapour passed through several of the damaged cars after the crash.^[6]

People from the nearby settlement of Valemount hurried to the scene, and found the troop cars damaged beyond recognition. There were no medical supplies aboard the troop train;^[10] the only medical officer on board had disembarked in Edmonton.^[9] First aid kits on the troop train proved empty; a box labeled "Medical Stores" was found to contain contraceptives.^[11] Rescuers were forced to use axes and hammers to break into the troop cars; the wood and steel cars had collapsed under the impact. One soldier, still alive, appeared to have not an inch of skin on his body unscalded; another had a chunk of glass piercing his chest from front to back.^[10] With the exception of the engine and tender of the Continental, which were demolished, there was little damage to the eastbound train.^[12] Several of the passengers on the eastbound Continental suffered minor injuries.^[13] One dining car on the troop train was used as a hospital, another as a morgue.^[11] James Henderson, a young officer on the troop train, recalled:

I talked with one soldier who lay shivering in a bunk in the hospital coach. He had no visible sign of injury but his face was a ghastly green shade. He wanted more blankets and a cigarette, and I gave him both. An hour later, I helped move his body to the other coach.^[14]

The telephone lines next to the track were cut by the accident, but a crewman managed to make an emergency call to Jasper in Alberta. As the crash site was 83 miles (134 km) from there, relief was three hours in arriving. At the time of the crash, the temperature was about 0 °F (−18 °C)^[15] and there were about 6 inches (150 mm) of snow on the ground. ^[7] With no medical officer present, a young doctor, P. S. Kimmett of Edson, Alberta, a passenger on the Continental, took charge of efforts to aid the injured with his wife, a nurse.^[15] Kimmett supervised efforts to aid fifty people, despite having almost no medical supplies or trained personnel.^[16]

The train which arrived three hours after the accident subsequently transported the injured to Edmonton.^[15] Wintry weather conditions and an intense oil fire made the rescue efforts difficult; and the attempts to recover the remains of the dead even more so; four bodies were never found. On November 29, 1950, the remaining soldiers left Camp Wainwright, where they had been taken after being evacuated to Edmonton, for Fort Lewis, resuming their journey to Korea. The death toll had been twenty, including sixteen soldiers. Twelve soldiers and the two two-man train crews died in or shortly after the crash; four soldiers died on the rescue train en route to hospital in Edmonton. A 17th soldier, Gunner David Owens of Granby, Quebec died on December 9, bringing the death toll to 21.^[9]

Within days of the crash, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as the provincial police for British Columbia, began an investigation. The CNR suspended all trainmen involved in passing the order to the troop train, and held an internal inquiry at Kamloops, British Columbia, while the Board of Transport Commissioners announced that a public inquiry would be held at Edmonton.^[17]

At the public inquiry, conducted in December 1950, evidence was presented concerning the events of the crash. Telegraph operator Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, 22, testified, and stated that there had been a lengthy gap in transmission, and that the words "at Cedarside" were not heard by him. Although railway regulations called for him to listen to a repeat of the order by the telegrapher at Blue River, he did not do so in this case and instead continued with his other duties, passing the message to the troop train without the vital two words. He denied repeating back the order to Dispatcher Tisdale with the two words included. Atherton had been discharged by the CNR prior to the inquiry.^[5] Tisdale testified to passing the order by telephone to Blue River, British Columbia and to Red Pass Junction, and that the orders had been correctly read back to him by both operators. He also testified to a brief gap in communications several days previously, noting that in the rough country the railway line passed through, it was not uncommon for objects falling against the communication line to cause brief outages.^[18]

The inquiry showed that most of the deaths and injuries took place among those on the troop train. The wooden cars (they had steel underframes) gave little resistance to the impact, unlike the Continental's steel cars. A CNR official testified at the inquiry that it would cost $127,000,000 to replace all such cars with modern steel ones.^[19]

The Board of Transport Commissioners issued its report on January 22, 1951. It avoided assigning individual responsibility for the deaths, but urged the CNR to install block signals on the section of line where the accident took place. It noted that the CNR already had a policy of installing such signals, though they were expensive and difficult to obtain from the United States, and that the CNR had deemed other sections of the line more dangerous. It also urged additional training to ensure that messages were transmitted accurately, and safety checks to catch instances where messages were transmitted incorrectly.^[20]

Atherton's father approached lawyer and politician John Diefenbaker in December 1950, and sought to hire him as his son's counsel.^[21] The Athertons were Diefenbaker's constituents; their hometown, Zealandia, Saskatchewan, was in his riding, Lake Centre.^[22] Diefenbaker declined the case, stating that Parliament had first call on his time, that his wife, Edna was seriously ill with leukemia, and that he was not admitted as a lawyer in British Columbia. Edna Diefenbaker was well-known as an influence over her husband; in desperation Alfred Atherton Sr. talked his way into her Saskatoon hospital room.^[21]

In his memoirs, Diefenbaker did not mention the elder Atherton's initial approach, but wrote that he was in Australia at a parliamentary conference at the time of the Canoe River crash. An Australian lawyer pointed out the case to Diefenbaker; he thought it interesting but noted that he was not a member of the Law Society of British Columbia. Diefenbaker wrote that he had planned to meet Edna in Hawaii and break his journey there with her; instead she wired him asking him to meet her in Vancouver. The MP found his wife in a Saskatoon hospital, in the final stages of the illness that would kill her (she died on February 7, 1951). She told him that Jack Atherton had been to see her, and that the soldiers' deaths were due to their being transported in wooden train cars instead of the modern steel. "Everyone in the CNR is running away from responsibility for what appears to have been a grievous disregard for human lives."^[23] John Diefenbaker objected that thebar examination in British Columbia was notoriously difficult, and that the fee to be admitted as a lawyer in British Columbia was $1,500. Edna Diefenbaker informed her husband, "I told him you'd take it", and eventually he promised to undertake the representation.^[23]

Atherton was arrested on a charge of manslaughter on January 9, 1951, in Saskatoon and was taken to British Columbia by the RCMP. Since his dismissal by the CNR, Atherton had been staying with his parents at Zealandia, where his father was CNR station agent.^[3] The manslaughter charge concerned the death of Henry Proskunik, fireman aboard the troop train.^[24] Held on $5,000 bail, Atherton was released from custody in Prince George, British Columbia on January 24, when a local storeowner and an unnamed CNR employee each contributed $2,500.^[25]

After his wife's death and funeral in February, Diefenbaker traveled to Vancouver in early March 1951 to arrange for his admission to the British Columbia bar. Failure to pass the bar examination would effectively disqualify Diefenbaker from the Atherton case, as he would have to wait for reexamination and the preliminary hearing was set for mid-March. He paid his fee, and was then given an oral examination by the bar secretary, which in full was: "Are there contracts required by statute to be in writing?" "Yes." "Name one of them." "A land contract."^[26] Diefenbaker was then congratulated at being the first applicant ever to pass the British Columbia bar exam with a perfect score, and was sworn in. ^[26]

The preliminary hearing began on March 13, 1951 in Prince George, and lasted three days, with the Crown calling 20 witnesses. Colonel Eric Pepler, a World War I veteran and British Columbia's Deputy Attorney General, led for the Crown, while Diefenbaker led for the defence. Diefenbaker alleged that the rules of the CNR did not require that the telegraph operator listen to the repeat of his message, but merely recommended that he should. Nevertheless, Diefenbaker's motion to dismiss was unsuccessful and Atherton was committed for trial before the Supreme Court of British Columbia (a trial level court). His bail was continued.^[27][28]

Diefenbaker had still not recovered from the death of his wife. Roy Hall, his law partner and one of Diefenbaker's juniors in the Atherton case, remembered: "he was still in a state of shock at the preliminary hearing", and "he seemed at times to be in a trance ... he was acting from instinct rather from normal concentration.^[29]

The trial was held in Prince George, and began on May 9, 1951. With a CNR official on the stand, Diefenbaker addressed him, "I suppose the reason you put these soldiers in wooden cars with steel cars on either end was so that no matter what they might subsequently find in Korea, they'd always be able to say, 'Well we had worse than that in Canada'."^[2] Colonel Pepler objected, stating that Diefenbaker had not asked a question, to which the defence lawyer responded, "My Lord, it was made clear by the elevation of my voice at the end of the sentence that there was a great big question mark on it." The judge, Justice A.D. McFarlane, began to rule^[30] but Pepler interjected, "I want to make it clear that in this case we are not concerned about the death of a few privates going to Korea."^[2] Pepler's intent was to remind the judge that Atherton was only charged in the death of the troop train fireman, Proskunik, but Diefenbaker "pounced on the slip-up": "Oh, you're not concerned about the killing of a few privates? Oh, Colonel!"^[2] Diefenbaker recounted that a veteran, sitting on the jury, expressed shock at Pepler's comment, and Diefenbaker lost no opportunity during the remainder of the trial to address Pepler as "Colonel".^[30]

Diefenbaker suggested to the jury that the silence on the line which had apparently swallowed the words "at Cedarside" might have been caused by a fish dropped on a snow-covered line by a bird, and claimed to have evidence of a previous occurrence. He noted in his memoirs that the incident "was not well documented, but it was all we had".^[31] At the conclusion of the four-day trial, counsel argued for five hours; Diefenbaker's summation took three of them. Justice McFarlane took an hour to charge the jury. It returned forty minutes later, and acquitted Atherton as his mother wept.^[24]

The CNR adopted the inquiry recommendations, installing block signaling in the area of the accident.^[2] In 1953, it modernised its passenger fleet, ordering 302 new cars, delivery of which began later the same year.^[32] In later years, the line was rerouted to eliminate the sharp curve on which the disaster took place.^[2]

A cenotaph to the soldiers who died in the crash stands at CFB Shilo (as Camp Shilo has been redesignated); a memorial parade is conducted there each year on the anniversary of the crash by the 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (RCHA).^[33] The RCHA suffered more casualties in the crash than it did in its first year of fighting in Korea.^[34] A memorial was erected near the crash site by the regiment in 1987; a special remembrance was held in Valemount for the 60th anniversary of the disaster in 2010.^[35]

Pepler retired in 1954, having served twenty years as British Columbia's deputy attorney general. He subsequently served as one of British Columbia's commissioners on uniform provincial laws,^[36] and embarked on a revision of the rules of the British Columbia Supreme Court before dying in November 1956 in a suburban Vancouver hospital.^[37]

Diefenbaker had represented Atherton without fee, and at his own expense, though donations from railroad employees, who "passed the hat", reimbursed him for about half his costs.^[16] Atherton went to work for the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, and settled in Saskatoon. When Diefenbaker, who was by then Leader of the Opposition and Progressive Conservative Party leader, campaigned in the province during the 1957 election, Atherton traveled to Regina to greet him, skipping his own wedding rehearsal to do so.^[38] According to Diefenbaker's biographer, Smith, in the Atherton case:

Diefenbaker had won a popular victory, redeemed his promise to Edna, and endeared himself for life to Jack Atherton and his fellow railway workers. The case was celebrated in the press and became one of his major political assets.^[39]

Diefenbaker won the election, and became Prime Minister of Canada on June 21, 1957.^[40]

References

Bibliography

• Barris, Ted. Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at War, 1950–1953. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1999. ISBN 0771575912.
• Diefenbaker, John. One Canada, Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Crusading Years 1895 to 1956. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1975. ISBN 0-7705-1331-X.
• Henderson, James Glassco. The Nuking of Happy Valley and Other Tales Told in the Mess. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1552129624.
• Shaw, Robert B. A History of Railroad Accidents, Safety Precautions and Operating Practices. Northern Press, 1978 OCLC 500309958.
• Smith, Denis. Rogue Tory: The Life and Legend of John Diefenbaker. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1995. ISBN 0-921912-92-7.

• Excerpt from CBC program broadcast after Diefenbaker's 1979 death, about the Atherton case
• Veterans Affairs Canada page about the train wreck