About 40 people eager for the return of a passenger rail in the region toured Sault Ste. Marie’s new train station in the Canal District on Tuesday with hopes a year-round service will once again be offered.
Although built two years ago, the station was used in the fall for the very first time during the Agawa Canyon Tour Train’s season, which ran from mid-September to mid-October.
“The flow was great, there was lots of access for busses and parking and people were able to eat,” said Melissa Porco, director of marketing for SIS Group.
The building was prefabricated but Porco said efforts were made to match bricks and other materials to the other buildings in the Canal District, like the neighbouring Machine Shop and Algoma Conservatory of Music.
“We tried to match the architecture of the area. We wanted it to fit,” she said.
The station will get much more use if passenger train service makes its return to the region through the proposed Mask-wa Oo-ta-ban ‘Bear Train,’ said Dorothy Macnaughton, chair of the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains (CAPT).
The Bear Train proposal is an initiative of the Missanabie Cree First Nation and Mask-wa Transportation Association Inc. and has been in the works since CN put the Algoma Central Railway (ACR) passenger service on ice in 2015, after the Conservative government of the day pulled a subsidy for operating the line.
“I think it gives us added impetus to get the Bear Train moving and to get the station used more,” said Macnaughton during a tour of the station on Tuesday.
In the years since the passenger service was discontinued a number of businesses along the line have suffered.
“Business is down all the way along the line. In Hearst when it comes to snowmobiles in the winter, they used to go up by train,” said Macnaughton. “They have lost all of that business.”
Macnaughton said the biggest hurdle to restarting the passenger service is securing those operating funds again.
“We had a lot of letters and dealings with Minister Garneau when he was Minister of Transportation and there was very little progress and very little response from that department,” she said.
If federal funding from the Ministry of Transportation is not forthcoming, Macnaughton said other sources may have to be explored.
One option is to appeal to Patty Haidu, the newly-named Minister of Indigenous Services.
“I think we need to work with her to make her understand why the Bear Train needs to be funded on an annual operating basis, like every other train service everywhere that is subsidized,” said Macnaughton of Haidu’s new role.
She hopes that Haidu will have a greater understanding of the issue because she represents Thunder Bay and is also the minister in charge of FedNor, a federal economic development agency for projects in Northern Ontario.
Recent news that Ontario Northland will be restarting its passenger rail service from Toronto to Timmins in 2022 is encouraging, said Macnaughton, but there is a catch.
That service was shut down in 2012 but the Ontario PC government has committed to get it back up and running.
Although she said it is nice to see passenger rail returning to a different part of Northern Ontario, Macnaughton notes that the same kind of resurrection can’t happen here because this line is overseen by the federal government, not provincial.
“The line from Sault to Hearst still has to be a federal line because it crosses the international border, a section crosses into Michigan,” she said.
Also complicating the situation is a the sale to Watco by CN for the portion of the line from Sault Ste. Marie to Oba, said Macnaughton. If the Bear Train begins to operate an agreement will have to be made with CN to allow it to run past Oba to Hearst.
“There is a huge potential. We just have to convince the powers that be that it’s worth their investment,” said Macnaughton.