CN passenger train. |
Expo 67 was about to open and all of the jobs there had
been sewn up by university students some months before. I was glancing through
the local help wanted ads and spotted one that was looking for summer employees
to work on the CN passenger trains out of Montreal. Normally these jobs would
have been snapped up quickly but most young people didn’t want to miss the
chance in taking part in Expo 67.
I went down to Central Station and was pretty well hired
on the spot. I faked being a university student and they never asked for any
proof. Training started a day or two later and I was joined by about twenty
real university students. The guy who showed us the ropes was a no bullshit
type named Mike Hogan who kind of resembled Ernest Borgnine in his prime. He
crammed a lot into our two days of instruction including how to carry a tray.
Our training was done on an old dining car in the train yards. I think they
were located in Point St. Charles.
Being that we were summer help we worked off of what was
called a spare board. We could be called at any time to go anywhere on the CN
line out of Montreal as long as the route was initiated in Montreal. Ottawa,
Toronto, and Winnipeg to the west. North to Senneterre, Quebec. East to Quebec
City, Gaspe, Quebec, and Campbellton, New Brunswick.
We were trained to do two different jobs. One was as a
waiter where we wore a white shirt and a black tie along with a short red
jacket. The other job was the one most of us were not fussy about and that was
as a dishwasher or as they called it on the trains, a “pearl diver”. The
dishwashing area had a fairly small sink that was portioned in two. On one side
was the very hot soapy water and on the other side was water for rinsing. The
hot water was generated by a steam tap. Fortunately, I only found myself covered
in food slop a half a dozen times before exclusively working only as a waiter.
Getting up close to a train can be rather ominous. They
aren’t built of fiberglass. The power of a locomotive is incredible. And the
whole shebang goes hurtling down tracks at high speeds counting on nothing
being in the way. Trains are very unforgiving beasts and not to be taken
lightly. They demand respect.
I was just about ready for my first trip but didn’t have
any black shoes. I found a nice fairly new pair of brown ones that one of the
frat boys had left behind and they fit so I got some black shoe polish and I
was in business. It wasn’t as if the shoes were going to be missed what with
the building about to be torn down.
I didn’t have a phone but shortly after I started to work
I rented a room on Hutchison Street that had a pay phone in the hallway. That
phone was my way of being contacted for a few months. Before that I would just
check in physically at the spare board office that was just outside the south
door to Central Station.
To get to the station platform we took the same stairs
with the brass handrails that the passengers did down to the bowels below. The
first thing I noticed was a lot of hissing sounds and a dank kind of odor.
Central Station Montreal |
The guy in charge of the dining car was the steward.
There were usually 4-6 waiters under his command. The kitchen was run by a chef
with 2 or 3 cooks as assistants. The dishwasher was under the steward’s
authority. The porters were almost always black. A few of the cooks were also
black. I can’t recall seeing more than maybe one black waiter. Hey it was the
60s! Oscar Peterson’s brother worked as a chef on the CN trains. The guy that
was in charge of everything on the train was the conductor. He was the sheriff,
the judge and jury, the king. Whatever he said was gospel.
Working on the passenger trains back then had a whole
culture. Almost all of the workers came from rougher parts of Montreal like
Point St. Charles, Little Burgundy, Griffintown and a poor neighbourhood that once had the
nick name Goose Village. Some of them had some resentment for preppy college
boys who were just there for the summer.
Seniority ruled. The longer you worked for the railroad
the better choices you had as to which runs you worked on. The conductors and
stewards wore blue dress jackets that had little bars near one of the sleeve
cuffs that indicated how long they had been with the company. From what I can
recall, the most desired run for old timers was the Montreal-Ottawa one because
you could be in your own bed at home each night. I think a old guy named Jimmy
Dodds had top seniority at the time as far as stewards go.
A lot of the employees had limited educations and they
knew that their jobs were important as far as providing for their families.
That isn’t to say that there weren’t some characters also working on the train.
A few were involved with criminal activities away from the job. There were also
some I wouldn’t have wanted to face in a dark alley. There were some really
tough buggers. The craziest guy I worked with once came out of the kitchen with
his package laid out on a glass celery and olives dish. It was rumoured that he
was once arrested for stealing a TV when it fell on his head from a window
ledge and knocked him cold.
I think waiters and dishwashers got paid something like
$1.30 an hour. We were off the clock as soon as we stepped off of the train.
Meals were free while we were working. When I first started I made the big
mistake of gulping back orange juice like it was water. The tips were pretty
good while we were working as waiters. Our accommodations in other cities were
paid for by the company and always at a 3rd rate hotel including The
Walker House in Toronto, The Empire Hotel in Winnipeg, and The Baker House in
Gaspe, PQ.
CN pay stub 1967. |
Over the summer I hardly ever ran into any of the
students I had started with except for one. He was a short Jewish guy who had
to be one of the hairiest people I have ever met. Nice enough guy but he must
have had an itchy life.
It was a really busy summer in 1967 on the trains what
with Expo 67 The passenger cars were packed and some people were quite
demanding. We often had 4 calls for a meal and people were lined up down the
corridor. Some would sit down before we had a chance to clean the table. I got
to be pretty proficient at handling the big serving tray while the train
lurched about and somehow never managed to spill anything on anyone.
I remember one trip between Montreal and Toronto when I
was assigned the duty of wandering through the passenger cars to announce the
first call for dinner. I entered one car and was kind of taken aback by the
sullen looks from some of the passengers. It was a few minutes before it dawned
on me that they were manacled and on their way to the pen in Kingston.
On another trip the staff was eating dinner after having
completed 4 sittings and an old farmer wandered in. We told him that the dining
car was closed but the steward let him eat anyway. Apparently he didn’t like
cigarettes and took it upon himself to put our smokes out in the ashtray they
were resting in.
In the beginning, I would sometimes go down to the last
car and go outside and have a smoke. I would feel little drops of water but
thought nothing of it. Someone later pointed out to me that those little drops
of water were coming from the washrooms.
I started to become a bit of a cowboy. In northern
Ontario if a passenger asked me what lake was outside the window, I would tell
them Round Lake. ”Round Lake?” “Yeah it’s round somewhere.” None of the other
waiters wanted to call bingo after the last meal at night but I kind of liked
it. It gave me a chance to joke around with the young and older babes. There
was one steward, a guy named George Stundon, who was a bit of a cool dude. I
think he asked to get me on his crew if they needed someone from the spare
board. I must have told that guy every joke I ever heard in my then 20 years on
this planet.
Things got very hectic on the train during Expo 67. Once
in a while the steward and chef would agree to condemn some food just so they
could shut the dining car down because of lack of food. Occasionally garbage
was tossed out to the side of the tracks. It was kind of like us and them. The
hordes at the gates.
Trip record Montreal To Winnipeg and back. |
The porters and the conductor and assistant conductor
were also fed in the dining car. Some of the young black guys had copped an
attitude. Race relations were a big deal in the 60s. Some of the young black
guys would just glare at you if you asked them a question. There wasn’t any
point in telling them that I wasn’t the one oppressing them. “I’m on your side
man!” I do remember getting pissed one
night with some of the older black porters at a dive in Quebec City called The
Fez.
In 1967 they added a disco car to the passenger train
between Montreal and Toronto where people could dance while hurtling down the
tracks. I was never in that car while working but saw the interior when the
train was in the station. It was decorated in early acid trip.
You may be asking yourself what was on the menu in the
dining car? Maybe not? Anyway, there were about 5 main choices. Prime rib was
#1. A lot of people wanted the end cut but there were only two per roast. I
kind of got sick of the stuff after a while. #2 was some kind of chicken. The
only other entrée I can remember was trout and it was seldom ordered. I think
they pronounce it “trit” in French. Celery and olives (without the package)
came with the meal. Pie and ice cream or pie and cheddar cheese were the desert
standards.
I found that the worst place to sleep at night on the
train was above the wheels unless you really liked listening to that
“clack-clack, clack-clack sound”. I learned what a “deadhead” was, a worker who
was travelling but not being paid.
I never met anyone really famous working on the train. I
saw Elwy Yost (look him up) who was rather tall get on a late night train to
Toronto. I also ran into a folksinger on a trip to Winnipeg. He wrote a song
that became popular in Canada for a few months called Moody Manitoba Morning.
I was too young to work the club car as a bartender. I
probably would have had to take a course. Seemed like a cozy kind of job.
Shmooze with the passengers, load them up on alcohol, get great tips. The
breaking up of fights might not have been much fun. I started bringing home
those empty miniature liquor bottles that held about an ounce of liquor. They
are probably worth something today.
I stayed on at the trains after the summer. I was saving
up a bit for a trip I had planned to take to Australia. You couldn’t quite call
me a college drop-out since I wasn’t going to school anyway. A few of the
regulars would give me a hard time for being a student. If only they knew.
The snows had come. One day I got a call telling me I was
going to Senaterre in northern Quebec . Somewhere past Chicoutimi and on the
way to Chibougamau I think. Love that name. Chibougamau. Anyway, I was changing
into my waiter’s garb when I was told that was not going to be a waiter but
“the” cook. It only involved making sandwiches which wasn’t difficult. When we
got off the train the snow was about 4 feet high on the ground. We had to carry
our valises (there’s an old word) over our heads. I remember the windows in our
hotel were glazed over with ice.
One of the awkward things about working on the trains was
sharing a room in some far off distant city with strangers. It isn’t that
comfortable seeing an old guy you hardly know getting undressed out of the
corner of your eye. The other thing is a lot of these guys liked to get shit
faced drunk when they were out of town. It wasn’t so bad when I was with them
but getting drunk was just a sometimes thing for me.
I had a couple of run-ins with a few waiters but never on
the train. I was sitting at the bar in The Baker House Hotel in Gaspe talking
to a taxi driver when a French Canadian waiter from the trains approached us.
He started giving me a hard time about being a student and I don’t think he was
fussy about my English speaking background either. He was throwing a lot of
insults around and wouldn’t let up. Finally I got up from my seat and punched
him in the noggin knocking him over some nearby empty tables and chairs.
Back then they had newsstands on some trains that were
operated by women. On this trip the the newsstand woman had brought along her
boyfriend who was a bit of a gorilla. I was serving the two of them breakfast
the next morning and the gorilla guy started laughing when he found out that it
was me who was involved in the short fight the night before. Apparently the
waiter had gone to the gorilla’s room seeking help in fighting me. I might have
weighed all of 150 lbs. at the time and I wasn’t Bruce Lee.
I had two run-ins at the Empire Hotel in Winnipeg. I’m
not sure, but this may be the same Empire Hotel that Joni Mitchell sang about
in one of her songs. “Raised On Robbery”. The first run-in happened in the
hallway outside of our room. I was on the way to the bathroom in my skivvies (this
wasn’t a classy hotel) when an old guy accused me of making a lot of noise. He
wouldn’t accept that it wasn’t me and looked like he wanted to lay a beating on
me. He kind of skulked away when I picked up a floor ashtray and told him I
would clobber him if he got any closer.
The 2nd run-in was with another waiter. He had
an English last name but was French. 4 of us were sharing a room and he came
back to the room totally wasted. I was sleeping. He started to harass me with
the student stuff and I told him to take a hike. Then he got in my face and did
a few fake punches at my chin. I knocked him out. He deadheaded it back to
Montreal. It turned out he had once had his jaw wired. I had to explain to the
union guy on the train why I had done what I did.
This same guy had a brother who worked on the trains who
was rumoured to be a pimp. I didn’t like my chances of being on the same crew
and in some strange town with him. Pimp guys were probably out of my league as
far as fighting goes. I did about 5 or 6 more trips and then quit.
I remember the names of some of the smaller towns the
train stopped at. Places like Sioux Lookout, Armstrong, Hornepayne, Gogama, Madapedia,
and Campbelton. I remember some of the characters who worked on the train. One
guy told me about how he had joined the army at 15 and had been in WW2. He said
he had cut fingers off of dead German soldiers on the battlefield to take their
rings. One of the train conductors was also an opera singer. One guy aspired to
be a professional gambler and would get me to play cards with him so he could
practice his skills.
All in all I thought working on the trains was kind of
like the Foreign Legion.
The last time I was on a train other than a sky train in
Vancouver or a subway in other cities was the one from London to Paris. It was
like being on a quiet rocket.
Train travel has fallen off in Canada over the past
decades but there is still something about them. Partly because of our history
I guess. Beats the hell out of having your ass crammed into an airline seat
next to someone with bad breath. Trains
also make better songs than planes. “From Natchez to Mobile….wherever the four
winds blow….”
Pardon mois garcons! C'est le Chatanooga choo-choo!
Great story Colin - brings back memories. My Dad was a real train buff and he and Mom took my sister and I on a summer train trip to eastern Canada / US in 1965. That was certainly the age of passenger rail - you could ride by rail almost anywhere. I remember one train called the "Phoebe Snow" that I think ran between Buffalo and New Jersey.
ReplyDeleteThanks Colin for the enjoyable story and great memories. The folksinger was probably Rick Neufeld of Manitoba who wrote the song "Moody Manitoba Morning." Montreal's "The Bells" had their first hit with the song in the late 1960s. Certain jobs -- especially when you work in a small group and travel together -- attract the characters. Like the railroad, think of carnivals and circuses. I worked on a rail gang in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, living on a work train on which we travelled throughout that district to work sites. The only full diner left on Canadian trains is the one between Toronto and Vancouver. You're right -- it was the best way to travel. I relived some of those experiences this summer on two trips across the country. Unfortunately today it is less of a way of regular travel than a fancy train ride that is meant to be done once as a special treat (you couldn't afford it otherwise).
ReplyDeleteGreat story. Much Appreciated.
ReplyDeleteMy father worked all his life for the C.N. Retired while working at what was the turcot yards.
My grandfather as well; and uncles.