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. The collision killed 21 people: 17 Canadian soldiers en route to the Korean War and the two-man locomotive crew of each train.
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, resulting in the collision. A telegraph operator, Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, was charged with manslaughter; the Crown alleged that he was negligent in passing an incomplete message. His family hired his Member of Parliament, John Diefenbaker, as defence counsel. Diefenbaker joined the British Columbia bar 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 realigned its main line in that area, eliminating a sharp curve that had prevented crews from seeing oncoming trains. Diefenbaker's successful defence of Atherton became an asset in his political rise. A number of monuments honour the dead.
Crash
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 wooden bodies with steel underframes—was travelling from Camp Shilo, Manitoba, to Fort Lewis, Washington. It was carrying 23 officers and 315 men of 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (RCHA) for deployment to the Korean War, a movement dubbed Operation Sawhorse. The train was moving through the Rocky Mountains on the CNR transcontinental mainline. CNR Train No. 2, the eastbound Continental Limited, consisted of the U-1-a class 4-8-2 steam locomotive 6004 and eleven all-steel cars and was en route from Vancouver to Montreal.
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 decision, General Order Number 707, the wooden cars with steel underframes did not count as "wooden cars".
CNR dispatcher A. E. Tisdale meant to send both trains identical orders to "meet" (stop and wait for the other train to pass before proceeding) 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." (Cedarside and Gosnell were sidings where trains could wait to allow opposing traffic to clear.) Tisdale dictated the order from his office in Kamloops, British Columbia, to Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, the operator at Red Pass Junction, for delivery to Passenger Extra 3538 West, the troop train, and to F. E. Parsons, the operator at Blue River, 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 handed to the troop train crew. Parsons's version of the order accorded with Tisdale's, and was passed to the Continental and to Train No. 4. According to Hugh A. Halliday in his history of Canadian railroad wrecks, "it would have been one man's word against the other, but the Blue River operator had been on the line at the same time. Parsons backed up Tisdale's version of events; Atherton would be cast firmly as the culprit in this affair."
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, eastbound from Blue River; the crew aboard the troop train expected to meet both the Continental and Train No. 4 at Gosnell westbound from Cedarside. With neither train crew aware of anything wrong, the troop train passed Cedarside and the Continental passed Gosnell. Both trains were travelling at moderate speeds, and attempted to negotiate a sharp curve from opposite ends. Thomas W. Tindall, a forestry employee, saw the two trains approaching each other from an embankment; he tried to signal the Continental crew, who responded to his frantic signals with a friendly wave. The two crews did not realise that a collision was imminent until the last moment, and the trains struck head-on at 10:35 a.m.
The accident occurred south of Valemount, east of a small station named Canoe River, westbound from Cedarside. The crash took place on the only stretch (18-mile (29 km) long) of CNR mainline in the mountains not protected by automatic block signals. The leading cars of each train were derailed, while those which had been part of the troop train were demolished. According to testimony at the inquiry, most of the deaths were caused by steam from the troop train's ruptured boiler penetrating the damaged cars. At the moment of the crash, two soldiers, Gunners William Barton and Roger Bowe, both of Newfoundland, were buying cigarettes at the newsstand aboard the train. The structure of the newsstand shielded them in the crash, and they survived. Their fellow Newfoundlanders, Gunners Joseph Thistle and James A. White, standing just a few feet away, were not shielded by the newsstand and perished.
Rescue
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 Edmonton. First-aid kits on that train proved empty; a box labelled "Medical Stores" was found to contain only contraceptives.
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; another had a chunk of glass piercing his chest from front to back. With the exception of the engine and tender of the Continental, which were demolished, there was little damage to the eastbound train. Several of the passengers on the Continental suffered minor injuries. One dining car on the troop train was used as a hospital, another as a morgue. 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.
At the time of the crash, the temperature was about , and there was about 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 away, medical relief took three hours to arrive. A work engine, in the interim, took the movable coaches of the troop train back along the track as far as Cedarside. The hospital train brought eight nurses and two doctors from Jasper, who spent the trip making what preparations they could. On arrival, they found patients with severe injuries. "There was hardly a case with only one type of trauma." That rescue train transported the injured to Edmonton from the crash scene. The Jasper doctors left the train when the rescue train reached there, again placing Dr. Kimmett in charge. He remained so until the civilians were relieved by Army personnel from Edmonton, who joined the train in Edson. Major Francis P. Leask, commanding the soldiers, praised Dr. Kimmett's work, "We couldn't have gotten along without him" and also praised his men, both veterans and recruits, for their calm, efficient work in the disaster.
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 November 22, consuming many of the wrecked cars and likely the missing bodies, and the wreckage was cleared by that evening, allowing traffic to resume the following day.
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 soldiers died on the rescue train en route to hospital in Edmonton. A 17th soldier, Gunner David Owens, died in an Edmonton hospital on December 9, bringing the death toll to 21. Owens had suffered severe burns, and was believed on the way to recovery when he suffered a relapse. Gunner Art Evoy, a survivor of the crash, recalled the eeriness of the first roll call at Wainwright, "It was a very small group that answered the roll call that day."
Inquiry Within days of the crash, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), 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 passing the order to the troop train and held an internal inquiry at Kamloops. The Board of Transport Commissioners announced that a public inquiry would be held at Edmonton in December 1950.
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 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.
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 uncommon for objects falling against the communication line to cause brief outages. Parsons also testified that Atherton had correctly repeated back the order.
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 Continentals steel cars. A CNR official testified that it would cost $127 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) to replace all such cars with modern steel ones. Dr. Kimmett testified, stating that though he had six bottles of penicillin when he began his work, no syringe could be found to administer it. When a syringe was later found, five of the bottles could no longer be located. No heating was available on the troop train until the arrival of the emergency locomotive from Red Pass Junction, and no blood plasma had been brought on the hospital train—none was available until the injured reached Jasper. Dr. Kimmett testified that it was "very difficult" to administer plasma on the train, and that two men died between Jasper and Edson.