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History - The Railway
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History
of the Railway and Cannington
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The first news of the railway coming to Cannington came in 1868, one year after Confederation. The Toronto & Nipissing Railway Company was opening up from Toronto to
Coboconk, and Cannington was to be a stop along the line. The first Premier of Ontario,
John Sanfield MacDonald (picture below) came to Cannington to turn the sod for the railway line in 1868.
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Premier John Sanfield MacDonald, his cabinet, investors in the Toronto
& Nipissing Railway Company and the Municipal Council are pictured in
Cannington in 1868 turning the sod for the railway.
Our museum has one of three originals of this picture, the other two are located in Queen's Park and The
Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.
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The Cannington Station opened in 1871. One of our main exports was grain to Toronto to the famous distillery district. Gooderham & Worts needed the grain to produce whiskey.
After a decade of the Toronto & Nipissing Railway Company prospering, it ended up merging into the Midland Railway Company before being merged into the Grand Trunk Railway. This involved changing the gauge of the track, and Cannington got a new station in 1886.
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This is the 1886 Grand Trunk Railway Station that was located in
Cannington.
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Residents of Cannington could travel by rail to Toronto, and many other local cities, but they could also go to the United States, the Western provinces, or to the
Maritimes by train through the Grand Trunk Railway.
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This time table is from 1899 in the Cannington Gleaner. It shows the times the train would be going North or South through Cannington.
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The GTR was in bad shape after the death of
Charles Melville Hayes, the president of the company when the Titanic sunk. It
lost a lot of its workers with the outbreak of WWI, and it was financially
backed by British investors who had to put their money elsewhere with the
outbreak of the war.
In the early 1920s, the
Canadian government ended up nationalizing the GTR into its Canadian National
Railway crown corporation.
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Grand Trunk Railway President Charles Melville Hayes
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