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After the accident, the CNR installed block signals on the stretch of track on which the crash occurred. The railway later realigned the main line in that area, eliminating a sharp curve that prevented crews from seeing oncoming trains. Diefenbaker's successful defence of Atherton became an asset in his political rise.... |
On November 21, 1950, a westbound troop train, Passenger Extra 3538 West—consisting of the S-2-a class 2-8-2 steam locomotive 3538 and 17 cars, about half of which had wood bodies with steel underframes—was travelling from Camp Shilo, Manitoba to Fort Lewis, Washington. It was carrying 23 officers and 315 men of 2nd Re... |
By 1950, the CNR used the part-wooden cars only for the transportation of soldiers; other passengers were no longer carried in them. After the 1947 Dugald rail accident, the Board of Transport Commissioners had ordered that wooden passenger coaches not be placed between all-steel cars. However, under the terms of that ... |
CNR dispatcher A. E. Tisdale meant to send both trains identical orders to "meet" on a mostly single-track section. His intended order read "Psgr Extra 3538 West meet No. 2 Eng 6004 at Cedarside and No. 4 Eng 6057 Gosnell." Tisdale dictated the order from his office in Kamloops, British Columbia, to Alfred John "Jack... |
When the westbound troop train stopped at Red Pass Junction, Atherton gave the incorrect written order to train conductor John A. Mainprize. As the full order had been passed to the eastbound Continental, its crew expected to meet the troop train at Cedarside, 43 miles eastbound from Blue River; the crew aboard the tr... |
The accident occurred south of Valemount, 0.6 miles east of a small station named Canoe River, 5 miles westbound from Cedarside. The crash took place on the only stretch long) of CNR mainline in the mountains not protected by automatic block signals. The leading cars of each train were derailed, while those which ha... |
People from the nearby settlement of Valemount hurried to the scene and found the troop cars damaged beyond recognition. Some had collapsed in the disaster; rescuers used axes and hammers to break into them. There were no medical supplies aboard the troop train, and the only medical officer on board had disembarked in ... |
Dr. P. S. Kimmett of Edson, Alberta, a passenger on the Continental, took charge of efforts to aid the injured with his wife, a nurse. Kimmett supervised efforts to aid 50 people despite having almost no supplies or trained personnel. One soldier, still alive, appeared to have not an inch of skin on his body unscalded;... |
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. |
At the time of the crash, the temperature was about 0 °F , and there were about 6 inches of snow on the ground. 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 away, medical relief took three hour... |
Wintry weather made subsequent attempts to recover the dead difficult; four bodies were never found. 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 that broke out on the morning of No... |
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 locomotive crews died in or shortly after the crash; four soldi... |
Within days of the crash, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police , as the provincial police for British Columbia, began an investigation. The site of the crash was under the jurisdiction of the RCMP detachment in Prince George, British Columbia, and any charges would be laid there. The CNR suspended all trainmen involved in... |
Atherton, aged 22, was dismissed by the CNR before the Edmonton hearings. He testified that there was 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 in... |
Tisdale testified to passing the order by telephone to Blue River and to Red Pass Junction, and that it was correctly read back to him by both operators. He also testified to a brief gap in communications several days before the crash, saying that in the rough country through which the railway line passed it was not un... |
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 million to replace all such cars with modern steel ones. Dr. Kimmett test... |
The Board of Transport Commissioners issued its report on January 18, 1951. It avoided assigning individual responsibility for the deaths and urged the CNR to install block signals on the section of line where the accident took place. The Board noted that the CNR already had a policy of installing such signals, though ... |
In anticipation of charges being laid against his son, Atherton's father approached Member of Parliament and King's Counsel John Diefenbaker in December 1950 and sought to retain him as defence counsel. The Athertons were Diefenbaker's constituents; their hometown, Zealandia, Saskatchewan, was in his riding, Lake Centr... |
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 Socie... |
Diefenbaker related that he found his wife in a Saskatoon hospital, in the final stages of the illness that would kill her . 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 wh... |
Atherton was arrested for manslaughter on January 9, 1951, in Saskatoon and was taken to Prince George by the RCMP. After his dismissal by the CNR, Atherton was staying with his parents at Zealandia, where his father was CNR station agent. The manslaughter charge concerned the death of Henry Proskunik, fireman aboard t... |
After his wife's death in February 1951, Diefenbaker travelled to Vancouver in early March to take the British Columbia bar examination, which the Prince George Citizen called "a formality which will cost him $1500". 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." |
Diefenbaker was then congratulated for being the first applicant to pass the British Columbia bar exam with a perfect score. |
The preliminary hearing began on March 13, 1951, and lasted three days, during which the Crown called 20 witnesses. 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 ... |
The trial began on May 9, 1951. 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. 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 ... |
The two lead counsel clashed again during their final addresses to the jury, with Pepler objecting to Diefenbaker's use of testimony from the preliminary hearing. Justice McFarlane stated to Pepler, "I do not think you should object like this", and when Pepler persisted, the judge "roared" at him, "Please, just stop th... |
Diefenbaker suggested to the jury that the silence on the line which had, he contended, 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, ... |
The CNR adopted the inquiry recommendations, installing block signalling in the area of the accident. In 1953, it modernised its passenger fleet, ordering 302 new cars. In later years, the line was rerouted to eliminate the sharp curve on which the disaster took place. |
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 and embarked on a revision of the rules o... |
Diefenbaker had represented Atherton at his own expense, though donations from railroad employees reimbursed him for about half his costs. The case had been followed throughout Canada's railway community, and on his return to Ottawa, Diefenbaker was widely congratulated for his victory. By 1957, he had become Leader of... |
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. |
Diefenbaker won the election and, on June 21, 1957, became Prime Minister of Canada. |
The RCHA suffered more casualties in the crash than it did in its first year of fighting in Korea. A monument to the soldiers who died stands at CFB Shilo , where a memorial parade is conducted each year on the anniversary of the crash. It was dedicated on November 21, 1952. |
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. The CNR has also raised a monument near the site of the disaster. The names of the military dead are inscribed in the Korea Book of Remembrance and are ... |
In 2003, as part of Remembrance Week observances for the Canadian Senate, five family members of the soldiers who died in the crash were presented with Memorial Crosses. Other family members were due to receive them at a later date. The dead were not given posthumous Canadian Volunteer Service Medals as they never reac... |
Explanatory notes |
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The Hinton train collision was a rail transport accident that occurred in Canada on 8 February 1986. Twenty-three people were killed in a collision between a Canadian National Railway freight train and a Via Rail passenger train called the Super Continental, including the engine crews of both trains. It was the deadl... |
After 56 days of testimony at a public inquiry, a commission concluded that the collision was caused by the freight head end crew failing to stop their train because of incapacitation or other unknown factors, while the conductor in the caboose failed to use the emergency brake to stop the train. The report also highli... |
The collision occurred on a stretch of Canadian National Railway's transcontinental main line west of Edmonton, near the town of Hinton, Alberta. The towns of Jasper to the west and Edson to the east were nearby. Slightly over half of the 100-mile stretch of track between Jasper and Edson was double-tracked, includi... |
On the morning of 8 February 1986, Via Rail Canada train No. 4 was traveling eastbound from Jasper to Edmonton on its transcontinental journey. The train, which combined Super Continental and Skeena, consisted of 14 units in the following order: |
The train's unusual composition was the result of two separate scheduled services from British Columbia being coupled together at Jasper. The front section, which had originated in Vancouver, consisted of two locomotives and five cars while the second section from Prince Rupert was led by one locomotive and five cars... |
Engineers Mike Peleshaty, age 57, and Emil Miller, age 53, were in the lead locomotive. On board the train were 94 passengers, 14 stewards and 7 crew . |
Canadian National Railway's westbound train No. 413 consisted of three locomotives, EMD GP38-2W number 5586, and 2 EMD SD40 numbers 5104 and 5062, followed by a high-speed spreader, 35 cylindrical hoppers loaded with grain, 7 bulkhead flat cars loaded with large pipes, 45 hoppers loaded with sulphur, 20 loaded tank car... |
The freight train left Edson at 6:40 am. About 38 km from Edson, it was halted at sidings outside Medicine Lodge to allow two eastbound trains to pass. It departed Medicine Lodge at 8:02 am and traveled 5 km , reaching Hargwen at 8:20 am where a section of double track started. The train dispatcher at Edmonton set the... |
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