This Day in History, 1979: The last passenger train leaves the Canadian Pacific Railway station

On Oct. 27, 1979, the last passenger train left the Canadian Pacific Railway station at 601 West Cordova St. After 92 years of service, the CPR was no longer operating passenger trains to downtown Vancouver.

The change came after the federal government created Via Rail in 1977 to oversee passenger rail service in Canada, running on CP and Canadian National track.

Two years later, Via decided to run all its trains out of the CN station on Main Street, and service was cut at the CP station.

Two hundred passengers were booked aboard the last train from the CP station. Workers decorated the engine of the last CP passenger train with a sign reading “Montreal or bust.”

This may have been a nod to signage on the first train to arrive in Vancouver on May 23, 1887, which had “Montreal Greets the Terminal City’ written on its smokestack.

In the heyday of rail travel, seven trains arrived and departed from the station every day, but by 1979 it was down to a single run. The baggage department at the station once had 100 employees. By 1979, it had six.

Both CP and CN had wanted to get out of the passenger rail business for decades, because it lost money in the age of cars and air travel. But the federal government wouldn’t let them, arguing it was an essential service.

A compromise was reached in 1967, when the feds agreed to cover 80 per cent of the railways’ passenger rail losses. But the government eventually decided to start Via.

The CN station on Main street isn’t nearly as grand as the CP station, but the government owned CN and it got the nod as the Via terminus.

This didn’t sit well with George Copeland of New Westminster, who came down in 1979 to see the last train off from the CP station.

“The CN is just a barn, this has got character,” said Copeland.

There have been three CP stations on the downtown waterfront.

The first was small and made of wood. The station and rail line were constructed on a trestle over tidal flats that marked the original Gastown shoreline (the tidal flats were later filled in for railway yards). It was at the foot of Howe Street.

After a larger CP station was built in 1898-99, a CP “switchtender” who had been injured at work was allowed to live in the old station. It was moved to the foot of Heatley avenue, where William Alberts lived with his family until he died in 1948, at 80 years old. The family moved out after his death, and it was torn down.

“The old station is pretty forlorn now,” said a Vancouver Sun story on Nov. 5, 1948. “Over the old building hangs moss and soot and silence.”

The second CP station was a large Victorian building that was built at the foot of Granville. The imposing structure was what became known as “railway château” architecture, with two giant turrets flanking the entrance, making it look like a castle.

An 1898 story in the Vancouver World said it was designed by architect Edward Maxwell of Montreal and constructed by contractor Thomas Tompkins of Brockville, Ont., who had built many CPR buildings, including the 1891 Vancouver Opera House on Granville Street.

Tompkins told The World the station would cost $175,000 and up to two million bricks would be used in its construction.

Vancouver had a giant boom in the early 1900s, and the 1899 station quickly became too small. It was torn down when the current CP station opened in Aug. 1914.

Its neoclassical design was by Montreal architects Barott, Blackader and Webster, and features 18 ionic columns on the exterior at 601 West Cordova.

The cost was $1 million, part of $3 million in “terminal improvements” to the CPR station and shipping terminal. The Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre is built where the CPR’s Pier B-C used to be.

The CP station is now owned by Cadillac Fairview and is known as Waterfront Station, a transit hub used by the SeaBus, SkyTrain and the West Coast Express commuter rail line.