Notes

1. Leonard F. Earl, “The Hudson Bay Railway,” The Manitoba Historical Society: MHS Transactions 3, no. 14 (1957–58).

2. Anti-black immigration policies

Attracted by such promotional literature as the “Last Best West,” African Americans began to immigrate to Canada’s Prairies during the 1880s. Their arrivals prompted protests from business communities in both Edmonton and Winnipeg. Although the federal government resisted the pressure to ban such immigration outright, they did impose such indirect techniques as refusing to send them literature on how to apply and subjected them to arbitrary medical examinations that deemed them to be physically unfit to settle in the harsh conditions of the area.

Chinese Head Tax

To help build its railway as cheaply as possible, the CPR brought fifteen thousand labourers from China, paying them only a fraction of what whites received. Alarmed at these numbers, British Columbia tried and failed to legislate against further immigration. In 1885 the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, requiring Chinese immigrants pay $50 to enter the country, an amount which later rose to $500. Male immigrants were further forbidden from bringing their wives with them. The tax was finally abolished in 1923.

Continuous Journey

Bowing to western racism, in 1908 the federal government acted to discourage Indian immigration. Warned by the British government not to prohibit it outright, the new law rather stipulated that Indian immigrants had to travel by a continuous journey with no en route stops. Because ships that travelled that distance usually had to stop along the way, the restriction effectively halted such immigration. By the 1920s, a mere 1,300 people had immigrated to Canada from India. The law remained on the books until 1947.

Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia.

3. Terry Patterson, “A Trip Through Time in Transcona,” Manitoba History 15 (1987).

4. James H. Gray’s seminal work on prairie prostitution, Red Lights on the Prairies, (Toronto: MacMillan, 1971), also highlights the red light sagas of places like Calgary, where the trade focused on 6th Avenue and 9th Avenue by the station, and Annabelle and MacFarlane Streets near Winnipeg’s Point Douglas district. In Regina the red light trade seemed to concentrate around Ottawa and Tenth Avenue, near the station, although Moose Jaw was also considered to be Regina’s red light district. A dozen brothels were located within a five minute walk of Saskatoon’s CNo station.

5. The historical information on Empress is thanks to Pat Donaldson and the “That’s Empressive” website.

6. Charles Bohi and Les Kozma have compiled a complete roster of railway stations in western Canada and catalogued them in accordance with their respective station styles, the subdivisions where they appeared, and the year in which they were built: Canadian National’s Western Stations, (Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2002); Canadian Pacific’s Western Depots, (David City, Nebraska: South Platte Press, 1993).

7. Bruce Ballantine of the Bytown Railway Society carried out a census of Canada’s railway stations, published in 1998 by the Bytown Railway Society as The Guide to Canada’s Railway Stations. Station inventories can also be found on the Railway Station Historical Society website.

8. The Hotel MacDonald was good enough to make available a photocopy of the hotel’s history.

9. Susan Rozniatowski, “Fallen Splendour: The Challener Murals of the Royal Alexandra Hotel,” Manitoba History, no. 42 (2001–02).

10. Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation. Saskatchewan Grain Elevators: An Inventory of Grain Handling Facilities. Saskatoon, 2010.

11. Herrington R., Saskatchewan Road and Railway Bridges to 1950, Heritage Resources Branch, Saskatchewan Culture Youth and Recreation, March 31, 2007

12. David Malaher. “Port Nelson and the Hudson Bay Railway,” Manitoba History, no. 8 (1984).