The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Living History: The Ontario Train Crash That Saved Lives

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

The Horseshoe Hill train crash in Caledon, Ont., killed seven people on September 3, 1907. It affected countless families across Ontario but it also brought some good. A group of women used the tragedy to bring Orangeville its first hospital. In this episode of Living History, we'll visit the site of the wreck, see the old railway roadbed, explore the health-care legacy as it stands today in Orangeville, and hear how this deadly railway would claim more lives until the day it was ripped up.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. Seven people died right here near the start of the 20th century. I'm at Horseshoe Hill near Caledon, Ontario, the site of one of the worst

railway tragedies this area has ever seen. It affected countless families across the province, but there was some good that came out of it too. The crash showed the need for better health care in the region and it pushed people to take action. Welcome to the Toronto Gray and Bruce Railways Horseshoe Curve. It was September 3rd, 1907. The day's passenger run started here in Markdale, Ontario, near where the former station once stood. This was a special run to take passengers to the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, that's known as the Canadian National Exhibition in 2023. This line has TG&B heritage, but it had merged with the Canadian Pacific Railway some 24 years earlier. After the first few stops, the train was already quite full and it was falling behind schedule. Some passengers felt the crew was running fast to make up time. They called the speed

excessive and said it was the fastest train they'd taken. That was enough to make some people abandon their trips altogether. One crash survivor later said, quote, I know two men who got off at Orangeville because they thought the train would come to grief, unquote. Here in Orangeville, the railway added three extra coaches to help handle the load. At one point, there were about 600 people on board. It took the train just 15 minutes to get from here to Caledon, the last station before it faced the Niagara Escarpment. In the world of railways, major curves aren't ideal. They can require more maintenance and trains have to slow down to get around them safely. But when the TG&B came to Caledon, major curves were the only option.

From the top to the bottom of the horseshoe, the track drops about 85 feet. If that were a straight line, it would be a grade of about six and a half percent, which is just too much for trains to handle. Adding the horseshoe curve brought the grade down to about two percent. That's still considered mountain grade and is very difficult to run on, especially when you add on a horseshoe curve. But expert railroaders can generally handle those slopes. The engineer George Hodge had some experience, but he was far from a veteran. In fact, this was only the second time he had ever run a passenger train. Hodge said he put on the brakes a quarter mile before the crash, but with a heavy train and a steep hill, that's simply

not enough time. The speed limit on the curve was 25 miles per hour, but track workers in the area said the train was going much faster than that. Some passengers would later say it felt like the train was going 55 miles per hour when it crashed. When the track workers saw the train coming at speed, they quickly jumped to the other side of the fence, getting farther away from the tracks. At 9.35am, the train entered the curve, and physics took over. The steam locomotive rolled into the ditch, its cab came clean off its frame. The last few cars on the train stayed upright, but the ones closer to the front, well, the passengers there weren't so lucky. The first car behind the locomotive had essentially turned to splinters.

Some people who were riding in that car would later say they have no idea how they made it out alive. Six people died in the crash, and one more died later in hospital. The youngest was a boy, just entering his teens. The passengers who survived had to act as first responders. They pulled other people from the crushed coaches and tried to help them as best they could. The train wrecked near farmer Alex McLeish's property. This was his farmhouse. He and his neighbour George Baxter started offering any help they could. My name is Phil Lamoureux. I reside here in the former Alex McLeish homestead. The locomotive came to rest directly across the road.

All the neighbours came and lended their help with axes because they had to cut the passengers out of the wood coaches. They sent a fast horse with a young man to Caledon Village to telegraph in for help to come down to the wreckage. As all the telegraph poles were taken out at the time of the incident. Help arrived from Caledon within about 20 minutes. All told, the crash had hurt 114 people. The injuries included burns, broken bones, and internal injuries. Someone even lost an ear.

Still, many more had to be treated for shock. The scene was chaotic. A train would later come and take the most seriously injured people to a hospital in Toronto. Soon after, the investigations began. In mid-September, a coroner's jury looked into the crash. Several passengers testified that the train had been traveling much too fast. Hodge, the engineer, and conductor Matthew Grimes said they had not been speeding. Hodge said there was a brake shoe missing from the locomotive after the wreck,

and that the locomotive often felt like it wanted to roll over at the best of times. A jury found that Hodge and Grimes had caused a passenger's death by speeding, and that they and the railway were criminally negligent in the crash. A criminal trial would later find the two men not guilty. This was far from the only incident at the Horseshoe Curve, according to railway historian Carl Riff. He has a news article collection that lists several mishaps on this stretch of track, including derailments and runaways on this very curve. But Riff perhaps summed it up best when he wrote, quote, lots of incidents on the Horseshoe Curve. I don't list them all, unquote.

The Horseshoe Hill disaster had badly shaken the counties of Caledon and Dufferin. With such a full train and the tight connections in rural communities, many families would have known at least one person who was on board. The tragedy showed the lack of emergency medical care in the area. People would have to spend at least a half a day traveling to get to the nearest hospital, and for the most severe cases, Toronto was more than double that distance. A group of 53 women decided they would be the ones to change that. They launched the Lord Dufferin Chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, IO DE for short. Their goal?

Bringing a hospital to Orangeville. A quick note about IO DE. It began in New Brunswick in 1900 as a women-led group that supported British colonial ideals and the war effort. It also dabbled in white supremacy, and some members believed that a woman's place should be within the home. I trust we can all agree those are terrible ideologies, but the organization has changed a lot since those early days. In fact, the I now stands for inclusive. The group tells me its members held a wide range of beliefs that were common at the time, and the current organization has an entirely new charter that dates back to 1968.

By 1911, the Lord Dufferin IODE chapter had raised $6,300. That's around $160,000 in 2023 money. They bought a house and spent the rest of the funds turning it into a health care centre. It opened in October of 1912 at the corner of 1st and 2nd here in Orangeville. It kept growing throughout the years and today this property stands as Lord Dufferin Centre Retirement Residence. IODE ran the hospital until 1954 when a community hospital board took over the management. It's since merged with other health providers and today the modern-day hospital is part of Headwaters Health Care Centre. Orangeville was growing. It was bound to get a hospital at some point but the efforts of these women certainly sped up

that process. And it saved lives too. One of the first patients at the hospital was a railway worker who got hurt on the job. He would later tell a newspaper that without a hospital this close, quote, I would have had no chance whatever for recovery, unquote. The hospital in Orangeville was one lasting legacy from the railway tragedy, but whatever became of the Horseshoe Curve? The Toronto Grey and Bruce line wasn't the only one between Orangeville and Toronto. There was also the Credit Valley Railway which, like the TGNB, had merged with the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Credit Valley route was longer but far gentler than the notorious Horseshoe Curve,

so the CPR sent most of its trains on that track instead. In 1933, crews started ripping up the old TGNB, but the railway would claim one last victim. Two men were driving near Mono Road. They weren't paying much attention to the railway. After all, it was supposed to be abandoned, and all the warning signs were down. But the tracks were still there. As they drove across, their car got hit by the very train that was pulling up the rails. Here at the Horseshoe Curve, much of the original rail bed has been filled in and leveled out and is since overgrown. But there are still some hints of railway heritage in this area. This road, which runs next to the crash site, carries the name

Horseshoe Hill Road. That's all thanks to the efforts of one person who is passionate about saving this history. The Region Appeal and Town of Caledon came up with the idea that they needed to give all the numbered roads names. One thought was to name Third Line to Dixie Road, but a neighbour in the area, Don Naylor, thought that we could maybe persuade them to name it Horseshoe Hill Road in memory of the Horseshoe Curb train wreck. So it became the Horseshoe Hill Road in memory out of the Horseshoe Curve train wreck. So it became the Horseshoe Hill Road back around the mid 80s.

If you take a look from above the scar from the old Horseshoe Curve still cuts across this landscape. It's not much but it's helped to keep the memory of that tragedy alive as part of Canada's living history.