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This page last updated September 25, 2002
The modest, ramshackle Canadian National Railway station on the Prince Rupert waterfront was in fact the terminus of a vast national railway network, the Grand Trunk Railway--the third of the federally chartered Canadian transcontinental railway systems from the a century ago. Although the station was to have been designed by the legendary architect Francis M. Rattenbury, connected with a luxurious hotel in the midst of a thriving port and city, in reality the station appears to have been the work of an anonymous CNR designer, supervised by General Manager A.E. Warren and Engineer H.A .Hixon of Winnipeg. (Thanks to Sue Rowse for research.)
The Prince Rupert station was the terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, connecting Prince Rupert (the closest North American port to Japan) with Winnipeg. Construction began eastward from Prince Rupert in May, 1908; the last spike was driven at Fort Fraser in April, 1914. Heavy construction costs and poor economic conditions, exacerbated by the outbreak of the First World War, drove the railway into bankruptcy. It was incorporated into the publicly owned Canadian National Railway system in 1919.
The GTPR was the brainchild of Charles Melville Hays (sometimes spelt "Hayes") and received its charter from the federal government during the same Laurier-era railway boom that created the Canadian Northern and the Kettle Valley Railway. The KVR, now abandoned, was part of the Canadian Pacific Railway's system, while the Canadian Northern was a separate transcontinental system (like the Grand Trunk system, it became part of Canadian National in 1919). A symbolic nail in the GTPR's coffin actually occurred two years before its last spike was driven when Hays went down with the Titanic.
Canadian National Railways runs its Skeena service from this station. It is an immensely scenic run, but regrettably doesn't generate enough traffic or revenue to pay for the refurbishment of the station or the waterfront. Like the City of Prince Rupert itself, rail travel in Canada has fallen on hard times. Prince Rupert has been in an economic tailspin for a decade or more, with the decline of the fishing and forest industries. Its population has dropped and real-estate values are shrinking. There is talk of offshore oil and gas development, as controversial as it is potentially lucrative.
