Red Pass

This is Red Pass, near the B.C. - Alberta border. We saw it on the map and stopped to see if we could get a bite to eat. Fine if you like eating wildflowers at this Canadian National Railroad whistle stop!

Please send a note to gdixon@shared-visions.com if you can provide more information about this site.

Wayne Tocheniuk offered the following memories:

I spent the first 12 years of my life in Red Pass. Our house stood not far from where you took your photo and I used to fish at the small warf that was below the Red Pass sign.

When I was young there was a store at the bottom of the road, a school an the top of the hill on the highway, and a small community hall. There was also a hobo camp situated on the other side of the trestle going the other direction. This would be from 1961 to 1972. Red pass had only railway workers living in it except the game warden and his family that lived in the house on the top of the road in. They lived in the old police station, I remember the cells in the basement.

The store used to sell gas on the river for small airplanes and I remember them roaring past behind our house not many feet away.

Well I could go on and on but that will give you a bit of info.

— Wayne

Bob McLeod offered more information:

My Dad was the station agent there from 1964 - late 1967. In 1967 we bought the general store from the Williams family and ran it until 1969, when the provincial government decreed that they didn't want any commercial outlets inside Mount Robson Provincial Park. I know Wayne and most of his family though I haven't seen or talked with any of the people from there in years. The dock that Wayne refers to was built by the Williams. It was one of four that existed at the time. There was the Williams dock, Lional Youngs' dock, Bill Hallams' dock and the one down by the station. (I believe the one that had been down below the station was washed away shortly after we moved away.) The picture you show is from above the Williams dock looking up to the mouth of Moose Lake. There were other private holdings in the park just up the lake at the next point where the McCreadys' had their summer cabins. Up at Lucerne, the Lauries' had a farm and there was another small divisional station that no longer exists as well.

Something that may be of some interest is my space. http://bobmacspace.spaces.live.com/ or http://amryal.com/gallery.

If you would like more information, I would be pleased to offer as much as I can.  If you have Wayne's e-mail address, please send him a message and tell him I'm sorry he broke his arm when we were tobogganing when we were kids.

Thanks! 

Bob McLeod 
Kingston, ON. 
bob_594@hotmail.com 

Dave Emmington sent this article on May 9, 2010:

RED PASS JUNCTION - by Dave Emmington 

Red Pass Junction came into existence with the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern railway companies. The two railways were often within a stones throw of each other heading west from Edmonton to the Yellowhead Pass and along Moose Lake to Red Pass. Along Moose Lake you could reach out and touch a train; in fact, several sideswipes did occur. Here the railways parted company, the GTP northbound and east to Prince Rupert and the CNoR continued west to Vancouver. The town site was originally surveyed with streets running parallel to the railway tracks; 4th.Avenue was the present day Yellowhead Highway. John Ashbridge arriving in 1951 declared, “Red Pass was every bit as beautiful a spot as on God’s green earth.”

After the fledgling railways had merged to become the Canadian National Railways, the community boasted of a 10-room hotel constructed in 1924 by Earl Woodley. Hotel Red Pass had a large dining room, lobby, children’s room, kitchen, pantry and a 20-seat beer parlor. The hotel accommodated travelers changing trains between the diverging lines for $7.00 per night. Grandpa Woodley tended the bar. The Woodleys also built the store and post office. The hotel was destroyed by fire in 1949.

A B.C. Provincial Police Barracks was built at Red Pass due to the transient nature of construction crews and the illegal transport of liquor; at the time the railway was the only means of transportation. A lone policeman would act as Game Warden, register births and deaths, dispense licenses and collect Poll Tax. The barracks was poorly insulated and pipes froze, requiring a fire to be built outdoors to boil water that was then poured over the frozen pipes and thus restoring the building’s heating system. A Driver’s License could be obtained without a written exam, no blanks to fill in, no driving test to do, no road signs to read; the policeman would ask a few questions and handed out a license “good for all time”. There was a large hobo jungle nearby; policemen on horseback would kick the bums off trains and chase them east to Rainbow Station and beyond to Alberta. The R.C.M.P. took over in the early 1950’s. The barracks was turned over to the Parks Branch in 1962 and, having no purpose for the building, it was torn down.

A school was built in 1935. The population varied reaching 96 persons in 1958, 18 were school age. The school closed in 1965 and remained boarded up in 1972.

Several Japanese Internment Camps existed throughout the Yellowhead Pass in 1942; the camp at Red Pass became a Road Construction Camp. Until then the poor trail used by the Overlanders in 1862 and the slightly improved “tote” road used to haul railway construction materials was maintained by local residents. By 1962 the C.N.R. had demolished the Rainbow and Yellowhead stations, removing a vital refuge for Red Pass residents who dared travel in poor conditions. Construction of the present day Yellowhead Route reached Red Pass in 1965.

Long distance telephone replaced the use of the railway telephone system in 1965. A telephone booth was installed and the B.C. Telephone Company officials toured the new unit and explained how the system worked.

Lloyd and Barbara Williams owned and operated the Red Pass Store. Barbara recounts in the book Yellowhead Pass And It’s People; there were bad times of heavy snow, 11 pm and 4 am mail trains and of good friends leaving but mostly good times, good friends meeting at the station, beautiful scenery, hunting and fishing, school concerts, picnics, work parties, caravans, bridge games, dances, births and husband Lloyd’s airplane. The Williams’ sold the store in 1967; the building met the same fate of the R.C.M.P Barracks.

Red Pass is a special place for me; today all the buildings are gone save the old generator shack at the Mile 44 bridge and a boxcar on the grounds of the old store site. I worked in Red Pass for two summers, smoked cigars on the store porch and fished in the lake. The scenery is still the best on God’s green earth.

The words are mine; historical facts were gathered from the book, “Yellowhead Pass And It’s People,” a project of local people supported by the New Horizons and Heritage Trust.

— Dave Emmington