Timothy Allan Johnston
  • Home
  • Photographs
    • H/W Barbie Dance
    • The Carseland Hotel and Blue Saloon
    • Farmstead of Old
    • Cambridge
    • Calgary Rally in Support of Schools
    • 2022 Calendar Images
    • Etta's Album
    • 2021 Calendar Photographs
    • Wardair's Boeing 727
    • Grumman Goose CF-UAZ
    • Mitchell Bombers
    • Warbirds at Calgary
    • Okotoks Photo Walk
    • African Girl Children Exhibition
    • Theatre of the Gods
    • What Once Was
    • Spring Coulee to Vauxhall
    • No Whistle: An Abandoned Rail Line in Calgary
    • Trains and More Trains
    • At the Airdrie Rodeo
    • At the Arrowwood Rodeo, 2019
    • Mossleigh, Rockyford, Rosebud, Chancellor
    • Hand Hills Stampede
    • Millarville Rodeo 2017
    • Barrel Racers for Britney
    • Switching the Highfield Spur
    • Photo Cards Objects
    • Photo Cards Landscapes
    • Photo Cards Railroads
    • Southern Alberta Sweep
    • Southwest Saskatchewan
    • Osprey Family
    • Photo Walk 2015
    • Calgary Stampede 101
    • Gleichen Rodeo 2015
    • Tees Rodeo 2015
    • Millarville Rodeo 2015
    • Tsuu T'inna Rodeo 2015
    • Arrowwood Rodeo 2015
    • Calgary Stampede Rodeo 2015
    • Water Valley Rodeo 2015
    • Millarville Rodeo 2014
    • Longview Rodeo 2014
    • Arrowwood Rodeo 2014
    • Rockyford Rodeo 2014
    • Millarville Rodeo 2013
    • Pick Up Men at the Millarville Rodeo
    • Bar U Rodeo
    • Grace Under Pressure at the Water Valley Rodeo
    • Saturday at the Cochrane Rodeo
    • SBA Remains
    • Chestermere Barn
    • Landscape Print Sale
    • Recent Photographs
    • Pierce Estate Park and Southwest of Calgary
    • Turner Valley Refinery
    • Saturday in Inglewood
    • Within Twenty Miles
    • Saturday Downtown
    • In and Around Calgary
    • Canadian Images
    • Around Alberta
    • Around Alberta II
    • Bow River Ranch
    • Ottawa-Toronto Road Trip
    • Bridges
    • Egypt
    • Athens
    • Mykonos
    • Mozambique
    • Nature
    • Alberta Ballet "Mozart's Requiem"
    • Alberta Ballet "Pomp Without Circumstance"
    • Alberta Ballet "Up Close" new choreography
    • Alberta Ballet "Seven Deadly Sins"
    • Alberta Ballet "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy"
    • Alberta Ballet "Sleeping Beauty"
    • Alberta Ballet "Love Lies Bleeding"
  • Travel Journals
    • India 1986
    • Swaziland 1989
    • Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe 1993
    • Mozambique 1996
    • Honduras and Nicaragua 2000
    • Togo and Ghana 2001
    • Lome, Togo 2002
    • Mozambique 2003
    • Togo and Ghana 2004
    • Barbados, 2004
    • Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, 2006
    • Ghana 2009
    • Mozambique 2010
    • Tim's Canada Road Trip
  • Published Stories
    • Calgary Urban Sketchers
    • Doug Lansdell's Farm Tractors of the Past
    • Threshing Bee a nod to farm life of old
    • Westword Magazine
    • Calgary's Rail Line to the Past
    • A Carmen Red Jaguar
    • Alberta's Bessonneau Hangar
    • A barrel of fun in retirement for Maureen Marston
    • Clark Seaborn's Airplanes
    • 2442: Calgary Transit's Newest C-Train Car
    • No. 31 EFTS De Winton Celebration
    • Dave Richards at Heritage Park
    • Off the beaten path with Charley
    • You Oughta Be In Pictures
    • In the War Skies of Calgary
    • Calgary's National Music Centre
    • The Polar Express
    • Sirens' Song Silenced
    • Nick's Barbershop
    • A Visit to the Calgary Stampede Ranch
    • A Pony Named Midget
    • Bert Jackson, Bow Maker
    • Down Highway 12 and Home
    • A Field Trip to Lake Nyasa
    • "Remembering the Air Base that Time Forgot"
    • A "Daily Diary" History of RCAF Station Pearce, Alberta
    • Constructing the Aerodrome of Democracy: Civil Engineering and the Development of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan
    • Stubb Ross
  • Editor's Notebooks
    • Humor in the Classroom (and, sometimes, late at night, on the playground)New Page
    • Experiencing the World of Real Work
    • 100 Years of Renewal
    • An African Opportunity
    • "Flying Right"
    • The Canadian Teachers' federation
    • At the Edge of Learning
    • Distant Shorelines
    • Computer Renovations
    • 75 Years
    • Where Were You When the Blue Jays Won?
    • Deadwood, Wild Horse, Paddle Prairie, Big Stone
    • Gone Flyin'
    • Birthday Gifts from Delhi
    • Stories from the Veld
    • The Hug
    • Travelling the Border Country
    • Teachers Teaching
    • Last of the First Days
    • Principal
    • No "Snags" in these School Councils
    • Finding History in my Own "Backyard"
    • Humour In the Classroom
    • A "Learningful" Experience
    • Riding the Muskeg Special
    • The Big Picture
    • A Decade of Faces
  • Contact
The ATA Magazine - Editor’s Notebook

Volume 67, Nov/Dec 1986

 

 

            Riding the Musket Special

            I’ve had some good train rides. Not many, but good ones. As a boy, I rode a “pet” steam engine pulling a passenger train one night from Calgary to Lethbridge. This engine was the engineer’s hobby as well as his vocation. He spent his days off polishing the brass and washing the engine in the round house. I’ve hitched rides on the Canmore Mines Number Four as it spotted coal cars on the mainline Canadian Pacific Railway tracks. Now with a diesel hidden inside the boiler, Number Four has toured me around Calgary’s Heritage Park on occasion.

            A CP vice-president once had me to supper on his private coach, parked by the Lethbridge station. The car came with valet, silver cutlery and fine china. I’ve ridden a flat car, pushed by a diesel yard engine, out onto the high level bridge at Lethbridge to photograph a crew replacing ties high above the Old Man River.

            Finding a good train ride these days isn’t easy. Canadian National and CP have turned their passenger trains over to Via Rail. Well, almost all of them. CN still operates one passenger service in Canada, the Muskeg Special, between Edmonton and Fort McMurray. I rode that train last month.

            There were two reasons to take the train; one was the ride itself. The other was that the train provided the only way of getting to where I was going, apart from chartering an airplane. Where I was going, along with Associate Editor Phyllis de Luna, was to Chard, Alberta, which is situated about 120 kilometers south of Fort McMurray, and ultimately to the settlement of Janvier, about 16 kilometers east of Chard.

            At Janvier we found Father R Perin School, the newest school in the Northland School Division. This beautiful new building, with its fine staff and wonderful kids, would complement any suburb in the province. Situated in a clearing in the bush, it is a magnet for native children living on the reserve and others in the Janvier settlement.

            Our journey was one of amazing contrasts. The train crew makes the trip twice a week, and this run is its regular assignment. The crew members know everyone along the way, and they run the train to serve these people. Riding the train is like stepping back in time. The passenger coach, which is vintage 1940, rolls along behind two baggage cars and a diesel engine at a leisurely 50 kilometres per hour. Food service consists of fried egg sandwiches and coffee served up by the conductor from the kitchen in the caboose. Passengers can expect one of the two enginemen to walk back from the cab to see how they’re doing.

            The region served by the train north of Lac La Biche is bush country, endless and untouched by civilization. Nothing is left at Chard apart from some abandoned shacks and a railroad siding. Finding Janvier and its new school in such a setting was therefore all the more remarkable.

            Our story and pictures appear in this issue. This is our way of taking readers on a very special field trip. Everyone we met along the way welcomed us and made us feel at home.

            As for the train ride, it was a good one.