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Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 17.

Working For The CPR

Gunda Larnbton

Nelson McConnell was born in 1888 and lived for more than a hundred years. Forty-five years of this long life were spent working for the CPR. His grandfather, Bill McConnell, had settled north of Kazabazua, not far from a large supply farm for the lumber camps. He had twelve children; Nelson was one of the seven children of Bill's son Joseph. The nearest train stop for their farm was Aylwin station, one stop north of Kazabazua, two stops south of Gracefield.

There were several serious railway accidents caused by clay slides during McConnell's youth. He was only four years old and the Ottawa and Gatineau Railroad had just reached Low when a tragic washout occurred. It was late afternoon, November 16th 1892, and the visibility was poor, when an empty ballast train returned, drawn by two steam engines. Ballast, or gravel, was taken from a pit belonging to James Francis Skillen, just east of Highway 105, about a mile south of Brennan's Hill, and transported over a bridge spanning the creek south of Low. No inspection of areas where washouts might occur was done at that time for a mere work train. When the train engineer, Wilson, noticed that there had been a clay slide on the Stagg Creek and that the bridge had gone, he blew his whistle, presumably to alert the brakeman. But it was too late.

The tragedy has remained in local memory because it was described in a ballad, The Stagg Creek Wreck1, still sung in the Low and Farrellton area. It was written by Thomas Quigg, who had worked in Skillen's ballast pit and knew the men who lost their lives. Descendants of Thomas Quigg mentioned a part of the Stagg Creek Wreck ballad which was later omitted, and which referred to the man who should have operated the brakes. His name was Meagher, and he may have been blamed for the accident, although the current version of the song does not refer to him at all. The song starts with the invitation to “tender hearted Christians" to hear about the sad fate of three young railroad men who met their death in the Stagg Creek Wreck on November 16th day“.

"It being that same evening five minutes after four
(Saul) Wilson left the (ballast) pit with hands on number four.
Not knowing of no danger nor a cause to be afraid
With the CPR behind him to assist him on the grade."

(The CPR in this case refers to the extra locomotive from the CPR: the railway was then still called the Gatineau Valley Railway).

“But when he came to Stagg Creek, a slide met Wilson's view
To warn his mates and comrades his whistle loud he blew,
To warn his mates and comrades, whom on earth he'll see no more
Then took that leap that left them on that eternal shore.

“And for Jimmy Blakeley, who had a sad, sad end
May the Lord have mercy on your soul, you died a hard, hard death.
I pity your poor mother, your brothers and sisters too.
For they'll be broken-hearted when to Quebec you go.
“And for James young Hammond, who was so far from home
No one to follow him to the graveyard nor shed for him a tear.
His parents lived in England to a place called Temple Bar.
And when they hear of his sad fate, they'll curse that GVR.”

Stagg Creek clay bank
Stagg Creek clay bank.

Nelson McConnell was seven years old when the Ottawa and Gatineau Railroad reached Aylwin, and remembered times when only a stage coach connected his village with points north and south. By 1908, when he started working for the railway, the line to Maniwaki had been completed and ownership was in the hands of the CPR. He started as a labourer and eventually became involved in inspection work to reduce the number of land slides: in-spection of bridges, culverts and areas where a washout might endanger the tracks.

In 1908, his first year working for the CPR, Nelson McConnell witnessed an accident at Aylwln Station in which the popular railway engineer Bill McFa1l was seriously injured. McFall had moved his locomotive onto a separate siding to take on water. The rails leading to the end of this siding had been left open and the locomotive slid off" the rails and plunged down a bank, pinning McFal1 beneath it. “Near Aylwin Station they had a little store and post office, just across the road... so people heard the crash."2 The CPR was notified. Young Nelson McConnell was on the rescue train sent north. It took several hours to free McFall‘s leg. McConnell had two strong cousins who helped to carry the injured man to a nearby farm house, where he was attended by a doctor and nurse. McFall‘s leg was badly crushed and his foot had to be amputated. “He had to go back to hospital and have the bone cut to make a good stump. He had an artificial foot put on and went back to his engine.”3

Nelson McConnell
Nelson McConnell, aged 96, in front of his house at Kazabazua.

Within a year, a washout occurred between Alcove and Farrellton which threatened an entire passenger train going north, with McFall as engineer. Bill Mahon, whose family farm was a mile south of this accident, was sixteen at the time it took place. He was fishing in the Gatineau River near his home when the train went by. Bill McFall was a popular engine driver, known to most young people in the neighbourhood; he waved to the boy from the locomotive drawing a baggage car and three passenger cars. No-one there knew of a washout which had destroyed a culvert on the line between Farrellton and Alcove, near the farm which now belongs to John Kelly, and where steep banks of leda clay may be seen on both sides of the present Highway 105. The locomotive plunged into the washout. McFall shouted to the fireman, Harry Baker, to jump. He stopped the train in time to save all the passenger cars, but the baggage car hung over the culvert, a sight Bill Mahon would never forget. McFall, though he too jumped into the river, had been badly scalded by the steam from the engine. In the train there was a doctor's wife, Mrs. Mulligan from Maniwaki, who was returning home from Ottawa. She had cotton nightclothes in her luggage, and tore these into long strips to bandage the scalded man's burns. Dr. Pritchard came from Alcove as soon as he was notified. A new engine was brought from Ottawa to take the train south and to take Bill McFall to hospital. He died there a few days later, mourned by all those who had known him on the Maniwaki line. It took many hours to dig out the locomotive and repair the tracks so that trains could go north again.

Nelson McConnell worked his way up and eventually became bridge and building master. "In those days, there were all wooden trestles, wooden culverts and platforms. They use stronger building material, now.“4 He would inspect tracks, spending many days riding on small inspection cars. Before these had gas motors. “you could put four or five men on them and you could take them off the tracks and run them on the road. For snowy weather, they had trains that were plough trains, in the early days. You had to clean the stuff out from between the rails from the centre and throw it to the side, with a machine drawn by the engine."5

McConnell often worked a ten-hour day and was away from home for a week at a time, checking the tracks. Due to inspectors like him, washouts were usually found before a train got to them.

Up to the early 1950s, when the entire length of the highway to Maniwaki was finally completed, trains were the life line for many small comunities, often the only line of communication for little stations like Aylwin or Mark's Crossing (near Gracefield). When Nelson McConnell retired from the CPR, he returned to Kazabazua, the area where he had grown up. For over thirty years he lived in a former schoolhouse, which he renovated for his wife and himself. His wife died in 1973, but he continued living there until, in 1988, he joined his sister, Mrs. M. Hamilton, in A1cove. He died on December 17th, 1989, and was buried on his 101st birthday, December 20th, 1989.

Footnotes:

  1. This is the version of The Stagg Creek Wreck as sung by Marvin Keeley of Farrellton. The music, text and many details about the song can be found in an article "The Stagg Creek Wreck" by Laurel Doucette, in the October 1982 bulletin of the Canadian Folk Music Society (1314 Sherbourne St, Calgary. Alta), which is devoted to folk songs about the railway.
  2. Interview with Nelson McConnell, Kazabazua, November 1984. The tape transcript of this interview may be found in the archives of the Historical Society of the Gatineau.
  3. lbid. Hill McFa1l had been engineer on the first passenger train reaching Maniwaki on February 8th, 1904.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.

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