Colleen posted a good question on the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group earlier this week, and she receive great answers. She wanted to know if any passenger train lists exist in Canada.
The short answer to Colleen’s question was no. But within minutes she and the rest of us learned a lot about the resources that are available to help her research her ancestors and ours.
That online conversation is worth sharing.
Harvesting in the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan district, ca. 1911. Photo: Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, R-A7657.
Colleen
Hello. I have a question about the railway that took immigrants from ship ports to the west. My grandparents landed in Quebec City in 1907 and then went by rail to Saskatchewan. My question is regarding passenger lists. Are there any records that exist in Canada? Are there any books written about this topic? Thank you.
Gail
Unfortunately, unless the train crossed the Canada-US border, there are no passenger train lists.
An excellent source for information about train travel is the library at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa and the archivist at the Canadian Railway Museum, Exporail, in Delson, Quebec. Both provide service in English and French.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum owns CN’s historic timetables and one of the librarians or the transportation curator will be able to tell you how long a train would have taken to travel from Quebec City to Saskatchewan in 1907. They can probably tell you the stops the train made along the way as well.
The second largest archival collection at Library and Archives Canada is CN’s. Still, I recommend first contacting the above two organizations. Their turnaround time tends to be faster than LAC’s, perhaps because they manage smaller collections.
Canadian Pacific Railway maintains its own archives in Calgary.
Ken
They would likely have traveled by CP Rail. You may find records in the land grants given out in Saskatchewan in 1911. There were also grants given out in 1909 as well. Three of my great uncles received grants in 1909 after coming to Canada in 1906 as British Home Children. More information and how to search the (Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan’s homesteading) archives here.
The provincial archives at Saskatoon are being moved to Regina to amalgamate the collections, which means the Saskatchewan land records will be unavailable for searching until the move is complete.
Another link to search land records is Library and Archives Canada’s Land Grants of Western Canada, 1870-1930.
Gail
This 1906 railway map shows the routes of CP and CN’s predecessor, Canadian Northern Railway. (CN was formed in 1919 and took over the Canadian Northern and other railways at that time.)
Dianne
Check out (the University of Calgary’s) Our Roots to see if there is a book about the history of the town they settled in. They may mention something about the journey to get there.
If you look at the Sessional Papers of Canada 1908 (which gives the reports for 1907) — Volume one of each year is payments made by the Auditor General. You want Section L, Department of the Interior, and L28 is Expenditures for Immigration, Manitoba and Northwest Territories, including Saskatchewan. Those types of entries start around 1880 (Dept. of the Interior – Immigration), although the earlier years is more about expenses for quarantine.
There you will find the names of people who were paid to help transport the immigrants from the east (someone met them at the port and put them on the train, and traveled with them), people who were in charge of feeding and housing them, medical officers who looked after them, etc.
Once they were guided to their land, there was an agent who checked in on them to make sure they were okay, if there was anything they needed and the work they agreed to do was coming along. Very interesting! From these you can sort of see what the process was when your ancestors arrived.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
That, ladies and gentleman, is an excellent example of how genealogists collaborate and help each other.
The government started publishing the reports of expenditures for Immigration in the Sessional Papers in more detail around 1895, first in Part G, then in Section H, and later in Section L. Now we can easily look up and search the Sessional Papers of Canada free at Canadiana.org.