From the CPR Accident Files

In the archives, we have about 40 file boxes full of Canadian Pacific Railway Accident Reports from the Revelstoke Division from 1909 to 1935. Every single accident had to be reported, even if someone got a boo-boo on their finger, so there are hundreds of reports about minor accidents as well as a smaller percentage of major accidents, including fatalities. The March 4th, 1910 Rogers Pass Snowslide was the largest loss of life in any accident on the Revelstoke Division, with 58 men killed. The file for that event alone comprises about 600 pages of letters, memos, invoices and telegrams.

At tomorrow's Brown Bag History talk, I will be sharing some of the stories from the files. Obviously, there were some terrible tragedies. In 1919, two brakemen were knocked off the top of a train by a derrick on a spur line to the sawmill. One of the men, Thomas Ernest Root, died of a fractured skull, and the other, William Clay, survived, but died nine years later in an engine boiler explosion at Glacier. The story was very tragic, but there was one item in the file that made me smile. When Thomas MacNabb, Superintendent at Revelstoke sent a memo to Mr. Cotterell, the Assistant General Manager of CPR at Vancouver, the agent who sent it left out a crucial period. This incorrect punctuation caused Mr. Cotterell to call the local office for clarification, and he was so annoyed that he asked the local superintendent to discipline the agent who sent the memo. The unfortunate man was given two demerit marks for "using incorrect punctuation and altering the meaning of a memo."