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	south of Valemount, British Columbia
Country	Canada
Line	Transcontinental mainline
Operator	Canadian National Railways
Incident type	Head-on collision
Cause	Words omitted from order to troop train by an operator, causing it to proceed rather than pull into a 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 being deployed in the Korean War and the two-man locomotive crews of both trains.

The post-crash investigation found that the order given to the troop train differed from the intended message. Crucial words were missing, causing the troop train to proceed on its way rather than halt on a siding, causing the collision. A telegraph operator, Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, was charged with manslaughter; the prosecution alleged he was negligent by passing an incomplete message. His family hired his Member of Parliament, John Diefenbaker, as defence counsel. Diefenbaker joined the British Columbia bar in order to take the case, and obtained Atherton's acquittal.

After the accident, 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 that prevented crews from seeing approaching trains. Diefenbaker's successful defence of Atherton became an asset in his political rise. Two monuments, one near the crash site and the other in Manitoba, honour the soldiers who died in the crash.

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

CNR dispatcher A. E. Tisdale meant to send both trains identical orders to "meet" (get past each other) on a mostly single-track section. His intended order 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 dictated the order to Alfred John "Jack" 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 to be given to the troop train crew.^[2]

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) eastbound from 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.^[2] 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, most of the deaths were caused by steam from the troop train's ruptured boilers penetrating the damaged cars.^[6]

People from the nearby settlement of Valemount hurried to the scene and found the troop cars damaged beyond recognition. Some of the troop cars had collapsed in the disaster; rescuers used axes and hammers to break into them. There were no medical supplies aboard the troop train,^[10] and 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] 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. Because the crash site was 83 miles (134 km) away, relief took three hours to arrive. At the time of the crash, the temperature was about 0 °F (−18 °C),^[15] and there were about 6 inches (15 cm) of snow on the ground. ^[7] 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 50 people despite having almost no medical supplies or trained medical personnel.^[16]

The rescue train, which arrived three hours after the accident, transported the injured to Edmonton.^[15] Wintry weather conditions made the rescue efforts difficult, and the attempts to recover the remains of the dead even more so; four bodies were never found.^[6][1] Transcontinental traffic was rerouted temporarily onto Canadian Pacific tracks through Calgary as the CNR attempted to clear the tracks. The work was hampered by an explosion and fire, but the wreckage was cleared by the evening of November 22, allowing traffic to resume the following day.^[17]

On November 29, 1950, the remaining soldiers left Camp Wainwright, Alberta, where they had been taken after being evacuated to Edmonton, resuming their journey to Korea. The death toll had been 20, including 16 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 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. The Board of Transport Commissioners announced that a public inquiry would be held at Edmonton.^[18] It was conducted in December 1950.

Atherton, aged 22, had been dismissed by the CNR prior to the Edmonton hearings. He testified that there had been a lengthy gap in transmission, and that he did not hear the words "at Cedarside". 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 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.^[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, saying that in the rough country which the railway line passed through it was not uncommon for objects falling against the communication line to cause brief outages.^[19]

Testimony to the inquiry established the damage to the troop train and those on it. The wooden cars with steel underframes gave little resistance to the impact, unlike the Continental's steel cars. A CNR official testified that it would cost $127,000,000 to replace all such cars with modern steel ones.^[20]

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.^[21]

In anticipation of charges being filed against his son, Atherton's father approached Member of Parliament John Diefenbaker in December 1950 and sought to retain him as defence counsel.^[22] The Athertons were Diefenbaker's constituents; their hometown, Zealandia, Saskatchewan, was in his riding, Lake Centre.^[23] 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.^[22]

In his memoirs, Diefenbaker did not mention the elder Atherton's initial approach but wrote that he was in Australia 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 on his way back from Australia. Instead she wired him asking him to meet her in Vancouver.^[24]

Diefenbaker related that he 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 from being transported in wooden train cars. "Everyone in the CNR is running away from responsibility for what appears to have been a grievous disregard for human lives."^[24] John Diefenbaker objected that the bar examination in British Columbia was notoriously difficult and that the application fee was $1,500. Edna Diefenbaker informed her husband, "I told him you'd take it", and eventually the MP gave in.^[24]

Atherton was arrested for manslaughter on January 9, 1951, in Saskatoon and was taken to British Columbia by the RCMP. After 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.^[25] Held on $5,000 bail, Atherton was released from custody in Prince George, British Columbia, on January 24 when a local storeowner and a CNR employee each contributed $2,500.^[26]

After his wife's death in February 1951, Diefenbaker traveled to Vancouver in early March to take the British Columbia bar examination. Failure to pass the bar would effectively disqualify Diefenbaker from the Atherton case because 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."^[27] Diefenbaker was then congratulated for being the first applicant to pass the British Columbia bar exam with a perfect score.^[27]

The preliminary hearing began on March 13, 1951, 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).^[1][28]

The trial was held in Prince George and began on May 9, 1951. To a CNR official on the stand, Diefenbaker said, "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'."^[1] Colonel Pepler objected, stating that Diefenbaker had not asked a question. Diefenbaker 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 began to rule,^[29] 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."^[1] Pepler intended to remind the judge that Atherton was only charged in the death of the troop train fireman, but Diefenbaker pounced: "Oh, you're not concerned about the killing of a few privates? Oh, Colonel!"^[1] Diefenbaker recounted that a veteran, sitting on the jury, expressed shock at Pepler's comment, and Diefenbaker lost no opportunity during the rest of the trial to address Pepler as "Colonel".^[29]

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".^[30] At the conclusion of the four-day trial, the lawyers argued for five hours; Diefenbaker's summation took three of them. Justice McFarlane took an hour to charge the jury. It returned 40 minutes later and acquitted Atherton as his mother wept.^[25]

The RCHA suffered more casualties in the crash than it did in its first year of fighting in Korea.^[31] A monument to the soldiers who died stands at CFB Shilo (as Camp Shilo has been redesignated), where a memorial parade is conducted each year on the anniversary of the crash.^[32] A memorial cairn 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.^[33]

The CNR adopted the inquiry recommendations, installing block signaling in the area of the accident.^[1] In 1953, it modernised its passenger fleet, ordering 302 new cars.^[34] In later years, the line was rerouted to eliminate the sharp curve on which the disaster took place.^[1]

Atherton went to work for the Saskatchewan Transportation Company and settled in Saskatoon. Pepler retired in 1954, having served 20 years as British Columbia's deputy attorney general. He subsequently served as one of British Columbia's commissioners on uniform provincial laws^[35] and embarked on a revision of the rules of the British Columbia Supreme Court before dying in November 1956 in a suburban Vancouver hospital.^[36] Diefenbaker had represented Atherton at his own expense, though donations from railroad employees who "passed the hat" reimbursed him for about half his costs.^[16]

When Diefenbaker, who was by then Leader of the Opposition and Progressive Conservative Party leader, campaigned in Saskatchewan during the 1957 election, Atherton traveled to Regina to greet him, skipping his own wedding rehearsal.^[37] Concerning the Atherton case, Diefenbaker's biographer, Denis Smith, wrote:

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.^[38]

Diefenbaker won the election, and on June 21, 1957 became Prime Minister of Canada.^[39]

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. Kirkwood, N.Y.: Vail-Ballou 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