CPR: The Once Great Canadian Railway

From the completion of the railway in 1885 and into the first decade of the 20th century, the CPR grew and expanded. There was no other form of land transportation at this time that covered such large areas in a short period of time. This time period was CPR’s height as a major railway.

Many companies were hit hard by the Great Depression (1929 – 1939). Although the CPR was affected, it was not hit as hard as their rival, Canadian National Railways. This is because while the CPR was debt – free, CNR was not. In order to prevent a financial crisis, the CPR had to scale back on many aspects. These aspects included parts of the passenger and freight services, and stopped issuing dividends to its shareholders after 1932.

 At the end of the 1930’s, World War II broke out. CPR did what it had done in World War I. It gave much of its resources to help and do its part in helping win the war. It retooled its Angus Shops in Montreal to produce Valentine tanks, and transported troops and resources across the country. As well, 22 of the CPR’s ships went to warfare, 12 of which were sunk.

New modes of transportation, which became CPR’s competition, such as airplanes and trucking grew in popularity after the end of World War II. Although this was good news for CPR’s expanded transportation business, which included truck and air businesses, passenger trains quickly dropped in popularity.

CPR introduced their first luxury train, The Canadian, in the 1950’s. It did help profits for a short time, but in the early 60’s, the CPR started to drop out of the passenger service. Passenger services for CPR got so bad, the other luxury train, The Dominion, was discontinued from further service. Then in 1970 CPR applied to discontinue The Canadian, but was unsuccessful. On October 29, 1978, CP Rail joined CNR in transferring its passenger services to VIA Rail, a new federal Crown corporation that is responsible for managing all intercity passenger service in Canada.

Today, CP Rail is not what it used to be, but is still a very important asset to Canada in transporting goods and resources, even if it is not a passenger service anymore. In the 90’s, it sold off some of its smaller branch lines to other, smaller companies in order to downsize its route. These consisted of  all of its lines east of Montreal, with the routes operating across Maine and New Brunswick to the port of Saint John being sold or abandoned, severing CPR’s transcontinental status. CPR had gone from its great status of being a revolutionary transportation technology that opened Canada’s hinterland, to an image of being just another mode of transportation.

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