Railway Lands, Pt. 2

Railway Lands is a two-part series exploring Parry Sound's history with railroads.

When I first came to live in Parry Sound it was 1977. I was only about five years old then. The town was very different from the way it is now. Now there are two busy continental railways passing through the town: the mighty Canadian Pacific and the equally proud Canadian National Railway. They wind their way through the town, heading to and from greater markets in the East and the West. But when I first came here, there was more.

When I arrived in Parry Sound the town was entering a transition period. Booth's Parry Sound-Arnprior-Ottawa railway was coming to a close, but was still in operation, and the port of Parry Sound was slowly ending its industrial phase and entering the more peaceful tourist phase. Let me paint you a picture of what this looked like:

Learn more about old Parry Sound's harbour and its railways after the jump...


Both sides of the harbour were lined with railway tracks, and access to the waterfront was restricted to only a few points. The east side of the harbour was lined with large, industrial-looking oil tanks that were three or four stories high. They were painted white so that you would not be able to see them in a blizzard or, more likely, to deflect summer sunshine.

There was a pier designed with a pipe where large oil tankers could berth in the town and unload the oil into these tanks. From there the oil would be distributed to the numerous tanker cars that lined the railway spur, and then shipped across Northern Ontario.

There was another set of tracks that joined up with this set of tracks. They crossed the Seguin River. This second set snaked along the waterfront of the western side of town, until it could connect to the Canadian Pacific railway north of town. The CPR main line crossed the harbour on a very impressive trestle several stories above the harbour.

The upshot of these railway spurs was that, while they were in use, they stopped development by blocking access to the waterfront in the more accessible locations. By the time the land was turned over to the town, in the eighties, the land around the tracks was as developed as it could be. These railway lands (two thin strips of land bordering the entire waterfront of the town) could only have one effective use: after the land was upgraded from a railway bed to a walking path, Parry Sound had a trail. The Fitness Trail. Skirting the town, against the water, broken only where there wes level crossing and the bridges were removed.

My favourite parts of The Fitness Trail are the portions that are within rock cuts; the cuts are narrow and have been done so long ago that trees and shrubs have grown over, creating a canopy over the trail. At night the lights come on and the light reflects off the canopy, casting the way with a yellow-green light.


-- By Aubrey Jackson