Frankly Speaking

This photo, published in Floyd Yeats' Canadian Pacific's Big Hill (1985), is from the Soole collection at the National Railway Museum in York, England. It shows CPR's The Dominion westbound, about to enter the Upper Spiral Tunnel. Portions of the lower grade are shown in the background. Three Canadian Pacific railroaders died at 1 a.m. Monday, when their 112-car grain train derailed on what railroaders know as “The Big Hill,” between the summit of Kicking Horse Pass on the B.C.-Alberta boundary, and the town of Field, 10 miles to the west. News reports and photos of the scene show unbelievable destruction. The lead locomotive apparently went off a bridge into the Kicking Horse River, and at least a Union Pacific trailing locomotive and 99 cars piled up behind it. Only 13 cars and the rear end locomotive stayed on the tracks. A Transportation Safety Board preliminary report Tuesday indicated that the train had been stopped for a crew change on the upper part of th...

Surrey Memorial Hospital has the busiest emergency room in B.C. The fact that there is just one hospital in the 12th-largest city in the country is a damning indication of the shortage of services in Surrey. Surrey had 517,887 residents in mid-2016, according to census numbers released last week. The continued growth makes it the 12th-largest city in the country, not far behind Vancouver, which sits in eighth place with 631,486 residents. Interestingly enough, Vancouver is not just smaller than the two largest Canadian cities, Toronto and Montreal. It also smaller than Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton and Winnipeg, as well as the largest Toronto suburban city of Mississauga, which has 90,000 more residents than Vancouver. The Metro Vancouver area is the third-largest urban region in the country, and it wouldn’t be that way without large suburban cities such as Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond and Coquitlam. Burnaby is the third-largest city in the region, but at 232,755 residents, it is l...

Paul Godfrey is the CEO of Postmedia Network The combining of newsrooms in four Canadian cities by Postmedia Network has prompted a tremendous amount of media coverage today. Multiple media outlets on all platforms have devoted a lot of time and energy to the announcement that newsrooms in Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver would be combined. As part of this restructuring, each city will have one editor overseeing the combined newsrooms, even though there will continue to be two newspaper titles in each city. A total of 90 people are losing their jobs, and buyouts will also be offered in Ottawa and Vancouver. As many as 50 more journalists may be without jobs after that is complete. It’s interesting how much attention this has received, but not surprising. The media love to report on the media. Meanwhile, 430 people who work at a potash mine in New Brunswick, where finding new jobs is much harder than in a large city, also lost their jobs today. Potash Corporation of ...