As much as Jasper’s recent history has been shaped by its status as a national park, Jasper is very much a railroad town.
For more than 100 years, the parallel tracks that slash through this landscape have shaped Jasper’s story, delivering the goods and equipment that built Jasper, transporting the rich and famous, discharging countless travellers and summer-job seekers and, importantly, providing jobs for many who have settled here.
The story’s plot is told at the train station. Originally built in 1911 as a whistle stop along the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTPR), the heritage building that you see today was neither the first nor the only one in Jasper. A few years after the GTPR staked its claim on Fitzhugh, as Jasper was then known, rival Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) built its own station 700 meters away at Sleepy Hollow.
A tight network of substations emerged across the park, with communities springing up around the key transfer points at Entrance, Lucerne and Red Pass. Between 1919 and 1923, in the wake of the Great War and with the creeping economic repercussions that followed, the federal government forced GTPR and CNoR to merge. What is now the Canadian National Railway (CNR) was born of economic austerity that resulted in the closure of the Sleepy Hollow and Lucerne stations consolidating activity at the current site. This included a bunkhouse, maintenance buildings and a wheelhouse to service the main station. Two years later, in the winter of 1924/25 the station burned to the ground.
The story of the next 100 years or so (the current building began operations in 1926 but not completed until 1927) is rich almost beyond imagination. Too much information takes on a different meaning when one settles into the railroad files at the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives (JYMA). Stories of Engine 6015, the Lovat Scouts, Hollywood stars, beavers destined for New Zealand, wartime all-women crews, and golfing greats resonate and are almost fantastical.
But as the rails themselves foretell, there are parallel stories to those better known that may never meet but depend on one another.
These days, the Jasper train station is less of a hub than a waystation. But for years, it was a full-service centre for many of Jasper’s activities. Unlike today, railway crews, famished after a long shift, didn’t have to cross Connaught Drive to fill the holes in their stomachs. Train stations across the country were homes to diners that were built for CNR employees but open to all. Known as Beaneries, they were staffed by young women who were known as Beanerie Queens, and who became the heart and soul of Jasper.
Rose-Marie Wall (née Bacon) was a Beanerie Queen in the late 1950s, and she preserved her experiences there in a 16-page, handwritten memoir that is a joyful read. Employed by CNR for just one winter, she came to Jasper and, like so many, she made it her permanent home. The job in the Beanery was tough, conditions strict, and the camaraderie strong for the women serving coffee and ladling ox tail soup 24 hours a day for rail workers, tourists, fishers, and golfers at the train station. Photographed with Mary Burns, her shift companion, Rose-Marie clearly loved her time behind the U-shaped counter that dominated the Train Station, although there were difficult moments.
During the Great Express Office Robbery of 1958, Rose-Marie disconnected the cash register to protect the cash inside only to knock herself cold with the drawer when it was plugged back in. She almost lost her job over adding an extra scoop of ice cream to handsome Fred’s milkshake. And she risked it all to slip hungry patrons a free extra butter pat or scoop of jam for their toast.
But being a Beanerie Queen meant making many friends up and down the line and all those who gravitated towards the station.
Around 1924, before the original station was destroyed by fire, four men (Merle Clark, George Camp, Josh Hargreaves, and an unnamed companion) stopped in Jasper to enjoy the sights and have their pictures taken by the totem pole and train station. Captured in the background of their portrait is a fifth man. He’s standing on the platform, his feet slightly apart, head lowered, hat not quite square, hands buried in his coat pockets. He is caught in an unposed moment where he seems to be nevertheless posing a question so many have asked: How did I get here?
No doubt, thousands delight in visiting Jasper, but this is a photo that suggests not all do. It seems to be telling a sadder story of one who stopped in town, not knowing where they were going, perhaps running from something or someone.
The Jasper train stations have witnessed many of these stories that have gone unheralded within its walls.
The Canadian National Railway (CNR) station in Jasper is trundling towards the 100th anniversary of its second life, ignited by fire. It will continue to whisper the thousands of stories that its walls have heard. Beanery regulars and Queens, poker players and train porters, the excited and downtrodden, and even businessmen who ate in the grand dining room. All have left a silent, unique tale. Train tracks run parallel, but the lives they carry converge at the station.
Many have stepped out into a world of possibility and new beginnings that Jasper has generously provided throughout its history. Many more perhaps disembarked, only to find that Jasper could not meet their needs, forced to move on after a few short weeks or months.
John Wilmshurst // info@thejasperlocal.com
