Posts Tagged “history”
The 38.5 mile (62 kilometre) Canadian National Railways branch line from Terrace to Kitimat is one of the last working rail lines in North America that still uses wooden trestle bridges.
There are three large and three smaller trestles along the line, as well a large bridge built to cross the Skeena River at Terrace and three steel Pratt triangular truss bridges over the Lakelse, Wedeene, Little Wedeene Rivers.
Additional photographs are by Jim Thorne. All rights reserved. Jim also added some historic information for this blog.
A satellite view of the CN line from Terrace to Kitimat. The blue line is the record of traveling by pickup on the highway and forest service roads to photograph some of the trestles. (Google Earth)
In the late 1940s, the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan) began planning a smelter in Kitimat, to take advantage of the hydro electric capacity that would eventually lead to the reservoir behind the Kenney Dam that fed water through the mountains to the power plant Kemano.
As Alcan was planning and building Kitimat, the company signed transportation contracts with Canadian National Railways promising the railway would get one million 1950 dollars a year in revenue.
The branch line had go through the rugged terrain, come in to the town’s service centre, pass what was then an obstacle known as the Sand Hill and then on to the new aluminum smelter. (The Sand Hill, a glacial deposit, then reached all the way to the Kitimat River. For the past 60 years it has been used to support the local industries by supplying sand, gravel and concrete products and has now shrunk back from its original size.)
CN worked to build the new branch line crossing “difficult terrain of the area, including swamps, hard clay, rocks and watersheds.”
Canadian Transportation magazine reported in July 1952 that the branch line alone would cost $10 million 1952 dollars or $217,391.30 per mile.
Freight travel began as soon as the branch line was completed in December 1954. Temporary huts acted as the train station when passenger service began in January 1955 but were soon overwhelmed. A CN Station was built that would operate until passenger service ended in 1957 when the highway to Terrace was opened.
RELATED Can Kitimat’s historic CN railway station be saved from demolition?
The “milk-run” freight trains were restricted to a maximum speed of 15 miles per hour (it’s 20 mph today) over the Kitimat Sub Division. Along the line CN serviced Lakelse Lake where there was a whistle stop in a clearing by the track. I still remember a vacation at Lakelse in the summer of 1957 when I was seven years old. Seeing the steam locomotive come around a curve out of the forest for the return journey was the moment I fell in love with trains and railways. The other “stations” (again really just clearings) on the timetable were at Wedeene, Dubose and Thunderbird, to pick up loggers, surveyors, fishers and hunters. The trip from Lakelse to Kitimat would have taken one hour and thirty minutes if the passenger train was running on schedule
Though passenger service is long gone, freight service has continued now for more than 60 years. Freight traffic increased in the early 1960s, then slowed as the market for aluminum slowed down. Freight traffic on the line peaked in the years when the Eurocan Pulp & Paper mill was operating (1969 – 2010). Wood chip cars comprised a major portion of traffic on the line. More traffic was added when Ocelot Industries (later owned by Methanex) came on line in the 1980s. In 2010, Eurocan closed and more than half the traffic on the line was lost. Then the Methanex traffic also came to a halt. Today, almost all of the remaining traffic is for Rio Tinto (the successor to Alcan). But CN may soon see new customers on the Kitimat Sub Division.
Today traffic is on the increase with the multi-billion dollar LNG Canada project beginning construction. There is a second smaller liquefied natural gas project planned. As well there is the proposed Pacific Traverse Energy liquefied petroleum gas project which would use tank cars rather than the pipelines planned for the LNG project. That means those more than 60-year-old trestles will even more trains in the future. Those trestles were rebuilt and reinforced in the 1990s to increase load capacity. In 1997, part of the Thunderbird ‘S’ trestle collapsed while being rebuilt and there was a fatality and several serious injuries.
Over the past few months, I set out to photograph those trestle bridges that are accessible. Some of them are deep in the bush and others can only be reached by boat.
The first challenge for CN was the main line was on the north bank of the Skeena River. First built as part of the old Grand Trunk Pacific, the line followed the river through Terrace and then on to the port of Prince Rupert. To reach Kitimat and hemmed in by mountains, CN had to build a switch back so that the trains would go into the Terrace yards, then switch onto the Kitimat branch line. That meant a new rail bridge had to be built alongside an older highway bridge.
Building the rail bridge alongside the highway bridge.
CN 543-51 with locomotives 2855 and 2036 outbound from Kitimat cross the Skeena River to Terrace, October 17, 2019. (Jim Thorne)
A satellite view of Terrace. The main highway to Kitimat is to the right of the airport. The straight line is a more modern highway bridge into the city. The curved line above it is the “old” highway bridge and the railway bridge. The road left of the airport is the route we took to the first trestle at Thunderbird.
A satellite view of the “old” highway bridge and the rail bridge beside it (Google Earth)
Approaching the Thunderbird trestle, May 10. 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The large curved trestle at Thunderbird outside of Terrace. (Google Earth)
“Heavy metal” from Rio Tinto aluminum smelter on the Thunderbird trestle, May 2, 2019. (Jim Thorne)
The Thunderbird trestle outside Terrace, BC, May 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
A closer view of the Thunderbird Trestle, May 10. 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The Thunderbird trestle, May 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The S-shape Thunderbird trestle, photographed July 6, 1981. Original image shot on Fujichrome. (Jim Thorne)
Satellite view of the Pratt Triangle Truss bridge over the Lakelse River. (Google Earth)
A second large trestle deep in the bush south of Lakelse is not easily accessible. (Google Earth)
Dozens of small creeks are found throughout the mountains and valley that railway traverses, May 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The third large trestle is accessible from the forest service road. (Google Earth)
CN train northbound out of Kitimat, August 19, 2019. (Jim Thorne)
The third trestle (from Terrace) on the Kitimat branch line, May 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
A side view of the third trestle, May 10, 2019 (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the third trestle, May 10, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The steel Pratt triangular truss bridge over the Wedeene River. (Google Earth)
The Pratt truss steel bridge over the Little Wedeene River. (Google Earth)
A CN train northbound out of Kitimat with wood chip cargo from the now closed Eurocan mill, near Wedeene, April 21, 1982. (Jim Thorne)
Our track showing the road along the river south of the Wedeenes. There are three trestles, a small one over an unnamed creek, a larger one over Goose Creek and a third inside Kitimat beside Ninth Street.
A small trestle bridge over an unnamed creek is deep in the forest but can be photographed from the road, May 2010.(Robin Rowland)
Another view of the small forest trestle bridge, May 2010. (Robin Rowland)
The forest trestle, May 2010.(Robin Rowland)
Goose Creek is an environmentally sensitive area, May 10, 2019, (Robin Rowland)
The trestle at Goose Creek just outside Kitimat, May 10, 2019., (Robin Rowland)
The Ninth Street trestle in Kitimat, Sept. 1, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The beaver dam on the creek beside the Ninth Street trestle, Sept. 1, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the Ninth Street Trestle, Sept. 1, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
The rail line in Kitimat from the Ninth Street trestle looking along the tracks to the endangered old CN Station, Sept. 1, 2019. (Robin Rowland)
CN south bound tank car train for Methanex passing by abandoned 1950’s station in Kitimat, March 12, 2012 (Jim Thorne)
A line of tank cars and hopper cars are lined up at the old Kitimat CN station, August 25. 2012. (Robin Rowland))
RELATED Can Kitimat’s historic CN railway station be saved from demolition?
“Such miserable pirates are too sordid to engage a photographer to make a special series for them; they prefer to rob an already poorly paid class of men-men who have to depend for their living upon the sale of views taken during the short summer months.”
Most photographers today believe that the problems of image piracy began with the Internet in the 1990s and the switch over to digital in the 2000s.
That’s what I thought too — until this weekend when I was doing research for a book project on the archive site Canadiana.ca. I serendipitously came across some old copies of the Canadian Photographic Journal from 1894 and 1895. If you read about the problems photographers were facing with image pirates and with news organizations that took images without credit 122 years ago, it appears that things haven’t changed all that much.
MORE CONCERNING COPYRIGHT
WE have on former occasions tried to impress our readers with the vital importance of registering their copyright in photographs that are likely to prove of more than passing importance, and we published in a former number a concise article upon the method of securing such registration in Canada.
We have since received numerous complaints from subscribers who have been victimized by pirate publishers. One of these firms of pirates began by buying a few photograms of a prominent Canadian city at a cost of about twenty-five cents each and then published
them as photo engravings in “Souvenir” form at about ten cents the book.
We do not mean to say the photograms thus collected at so little expense were by any means excellent views, and the reproductions were even worse, but still put upon the market at so low a price-they were sold and must have injured the sale of the original photograms.
We have no battle with publishers of these books so long as they pursue their business in a straightforward manner and give the photographers, whose works they appropriate, adequate remuneration and proper acknowledgment of authorship.
But we have no sympathy with the meanness of those marauding pirates who infest certain cities and rob hardworking photographers of the results of their labors. It is all very well for these people to say they bought and paid for the views they republish, we admit that they did so-but they did not thereby acquire the right to republish those views and sell them in opposition to their original authors.
Such miserable pirates are too sordid to engage a photographer to make a special series for them; they prefer to rob an already poorly paid class of men-men who have to depend for their living upon the sale of views taken during the short summer months.
These same parasitical publishers seem- to be imbued with a natural inborn baseness that prevents them from giving the men they rob credit for being the authors of the original photographs, whereas if they had the decency to publish the names and addresses of the
photographers we might consider it in the light of a redeeming act of grace.
How often do we see even in the public press such titles as “Minne-haha Cathedral From a Photograph.”
Why are publishers so averse to give credit where credit is due? Is it because they are ashamed to publish the name of their victim, or is it because they fear he might be a gainer of some notoriety if his name was mentioned?
If newspapers are mean enough to take the liberty of appropriating men’s work and publishing it, they should not be too mean to advertise him by mentioning bis name and address.
Since there is such a lamentable lack of honorable feeling among a certain class, the only remedy for photographers is registration of copyright and, again, we urge our readers, if they do not wish to, be at the mercy of copyists, to register each of their choice views.
We know that the Canadian Copyright Act is hardly in accordance with the requirements of photographers-the rates being (in their peculiar circumstances) especially high-but still registration is the only way of protecting individual interests.
In Great Britain there has been recently formed an active “Copyright Union” which is virtually under the wing of the Chamber of Commerce.
The active promoters of this union have our most hearty sympathies; they are doing a good work for our British brethren and deserve the undivided support of every photographer in the land. Canada has long been in want of such an active body to protect the interests of photographers.
We believe the time is now ripe for the formation of such a union here, and we believe the best expression of our sympathies with the organizers of the British union will be the formation of a similar body in Canada. We want an amendment to the Copyright Act an
amendment that will be an equal gain to photographers and the treasury of Canada.
Individuals cannot secure this, a powerful combined effort can do so.
The active co-operation of all photographers is required to fight for that which is, according to the unwritten code of honor, their individual right.
A year later in May 1895, the Canadian Photographic Journal published this letter from New York City.
SIR, -At an informal meeting held by a number of representative photographers of this city, March 14, 1895, it was unanimously decided to issue the following prospectus to the prominent members of our profession, submitting the plan proposed therein to their earliest consideration, and requesting their immediate reply to same address, Committee of the proposed Photographers’ Copyright League, 13-15 West Twenty-fourth Street.
Art in photography is at last a generally acknowledged factor, and the productions of photographers have become the chief source of supply for the illustrations which fi1l newspapers and periodicals. Even the courts now recognize that fact and extend the protection of the copyright law to all such photographers as are artistic.
During the past ten years a vigorous battle has been waging between a few determined photographers on the one hand, and an indiscriminate host of lithographers and other pirates, on the other. The latter had become so used to appropriating without leave whatever they saw was good and original in photographic publications, giving in return neither remuneration nor even credit, and the results to them were so profitable, that the effort to break them of the pernicious habit was no easy matter.
On the contrary it developed rapidly into a serious and bitterly contested struggle.
Thus far each photographer has done his fighting, sing]e-handed, and generally against large and powerful corporations. In spite of this, however, the result has been almost uniformly a complete victory for the photographer, decision after decision being rendered in his favor by the courts, though often only after years of burdensome and expensive litigation.
In view of these facts and other reasons which follow, we deem it wise and expedient, at this time, to band our best men together, so, that in future a united front will be opposed to infringers of all kinds.
There have been many demands within the past few years for such a union, and we know of no question now rife in the fraternity in which a community of interests would be more desirable, mutual and in every way advantageous to us ail.
Our proposition is that an organization (to be known as the Photographers’ Copyright League of America) be formed at once, and take upon itself, by means of an advisory committee to be elected annually, the prosecution of all infringers of the copyright works of any of its members, whenever a proper case for such prosecution is presented by him ; that it defray all expenses of same ; and that in return, so as to make it self-supporting, a fair percentage of all recoveries so obtained, be turned into the treasury.
Notes
Also cross posted to my Tao of News blog
The nineteenth century definition of photogram is obviously different from today’s “image made without camera”. From the context it appears to refer to souvenir postcards.
In the nineteenth century, Canadians were encouraged to register copyright materials with the Department of Agriculture. Today, under the Berne Convention, Canadians don’t have to register, but can if they wish with the copyright office. However, unlike the United States, there is no requirement to file a copy of the work.
An online search has found no references to the Photographers’ Copyright League of America. It would be interesting to find out what happened to the organization.
The original copies of the Canadian Photographic Journal for May 1894 and May 1895 are available online. Full access to the Canadiana.ca archive costs $10 Cdn a month.
One has to note that despite the fact that magazine masthead shows a woman photographer with a camera on a tripod, the copy is somewhat sexist, referring to photographers as “men” and a “fraternity.”
And now a word from our sponsor……the latest gear for May 1895 (ad in the Canadian Photographic Journal.)
I was in Prince Rupert and Port Edward, BC on Friday, May 29. I was able to pay a brief visit to the North Pacific Cannery National Historic Site. I had always wanted to see the site, but in the past my visits to Prince Rupert were either in the winter, when the site is closed, or I was too busy filing to clients to have the time.
So here are some of the photos I took, converted to black and white, appropriate since the North Pacific Cannery was the longest running cannery on the west coast, operating from 1889 to 1981. It was named a National Historic Site in 1987.
The west end of the cannery site. The two small buildings are replicas of the houses that were occupied by workers from local First Nations. The large building to the left is the machine shop and First Nations net loft (Robin Rowland)
A fishing net hangs from the rafters in the First Nations Net Loft. The building was built in Port Essington and moved to the cannery site in 1937. The loft was where First Nations fishers stored, repaired and hung their nets. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the loft. (Robin Rowland)
The main part of the cannery at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
The cannery’s old fuel dock was separate from the rest of the facility for safety reasons. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the old fuel dock. (Robin Rowland)
An old rowboat on the cannery grounds. (Robin Rowland)
The west end of Smith Island, Port Edward, BC, captured driving back from the cannery site just as the fog rolled in. (Robin Rowland)
A few hours ago, the last roll of Kodachrome came out of the developing soup at Dwayne’s Photo in the small town of Parson’s, Kansas.
From the time the film was created in 1935 until the last hours of 2011, Kodachrome produced some of the greatest colour photographs of the Twentieth Century (and a few in the Twenty-first)
The end has come for Kodachrome.
So it is entirely appropriate that I choose to use this image, taken in Kodachrome at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park London, back in 1978 for this blog. Although I have seen the “The End is at Hand” image in countless cartoons, especially, of course, in the New Yorker, this is the only time I have actually seen and photographed such a sign.
Last February, after Kodak announced the end of Kodachrome, I posted on the blog some of the few favourite shots I took with Kodachrome, of my 1976 visit to Pompeii
I said at the time. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” quoting, of course, the Joannie Mitchell song.
I also said I would post more photos, but taking early retirement, selling a house, moving across the country and getting settled in took up much of time.,
Now the Kodachrome epoc has ended, I have gone through the all to few Kodachrome images I shot. As I said in an e-mail to a friend I was a kid (the first roll was shot when I had just turned 15, the last when I was 35) for someone with not much money, it was more convenient both in budget and time to shoot Ektachrome or another colour slide film. Then it was more convenient to shoot digital.
So I have created a photo gallery called Kodachrome and the kid
The first roll was shot on Dominion Day (now Canada Day) July 1, 1965, in my old and now home town of Kitimat, BC, during the Dominion Day parade. I shot two cameras, an old Kodak 620 using black and white and my father’s battered viewfinder camera (I hope it was a Leica, but I can’t remember). I must have been a budding photojournalist even then, the subsequent roll, likely Ektachrome, shows that I was running across the street to get different angles.
The next two photos don’t jog my memory. One is of Jesse Falls, which flows into Douglas Channel south of Kitimat and the other appears to be a river rapids. I have no memory of any boat or river trips or taking those pictures.
The next photographs are from my post university back packing trip to Europe. I bought a few rolls of Kodachrome and used the film for some special areas. The first was the Essex coast, where my father grew up. Next ones are from my two day hike along the central portion of Hadrian’s Wall. I am not posting the standard, cliched shot of the wall when it climbs a hill near Housesteads, but a couple from the fort at Corbridge and a portion of fortifications along the River Tyne, south of the wall. There are images from the River Rhine castle cruise and finally a shot of the Roman Forum (after which I was running out of money and film and bought more Ektachrome).
The next few images are back in London in 1978 at Speakers Corner, a year later from San Fransisco (again on both trips I shot mostly Ektachrome). The last images are from the time around Christmas 1985.
All I can say, like many, I wish I had shot more.
How many times do we say “if I had a chance to do it all over again….”
Well, if I had a chance to do it all over again, I would have shot more Kodachrome. Joni Mitchell was right, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
In all those years, I only shot a few rolls. Why? For a poor student back in the 70s, I thought it was too expensive. It was also more convenient to get Ektachrome and take it to a 24-hour custom lab in Toronto rather than mailing it away and waiting a couple of weeks. (Or so I thought back then).
A couple of coincidences came together in the past week or so.
First, I love old steam engines and the age of steam on the railways. The current issue of Classic Trains magazine celebrates the end of steam in North America 60 years ago. The magazine style are stories of rail fan memoir and personal experiences. To my surprise , these memoirs by men who were teenagers (youngest 14) or college students in 1960, shot Kodachrome. There were lots of those rich Kodachromes in the issue, capturing those last days of smoke belching black engines. So it shows, I probably should have shot more Kodachrome.
Second: I was looking for an old shot for possible use in a story I was writing for CBC.ca. Although the shot eventually wasn’t used, the image was in a yellow plastic box of Kodachrome slides that I had taken during my post-university backpacking trip to Europe.
I scanned that one image, then decided to scan some more.
My visit to Pompeii in September, 1976..
The ruined town of Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background, September 1976 (Robin Rowland)
This is one om my favourite shots from my visit.
The ampitheatre in Pompeii, September 1976 (Robin Rowland)
The gladiators who fought in that arena were trained in the nearby Gladiators’ School.
The school for gladiators, Pompeii. September 1976. (Robin Rowland)
The forum in Pompeii, September 1976. (Robin Rowland)
A street in Pompeii. September, 1976. (Robin Rowland)
The theatre at Pompeii, September, 1976.
There are more shots of Pompeii and others from that trip back in 1976 on my Photoshelter site.
In the next week or so, depending on work load, I will upload a second set of Kodachrome images from that trip, the Rhine River castle tour on a day of pouring rain.