(The following story appeared on the Northern Sentinel website on May 21.)
KITIMAT, B.C. — Railroads just aren’t built the way they used to be, and a young generation of men in the 1950s sure knew how to get it done.
One of the early pioneers of Kitimat was Richard Wells, who back in the 1950s was an engineer working for CN Rail.
He was the leader of just one of several survey gangs exploring the wilderness as the rail line from Kitimat to Terrace was constructed.
Wells recently gave a presentation at the Kitimat Centennial Museum on his experiences building the railroad.
The work began in September 1951 when the initial surveys were done. Wells himself had just graduated from university and made his way into CN to start work on the line.
“I was just a young engineer, graduated from UBC,” said Wells about how he started in the company in 1950.
With the lack of modern day equipment surveyors had to begin scoping out the land by bush whacking, explained Wells.
“You didn’t have modern aerial photogramatry and Google and all that stuff, of course,” he said. “So we had to go right on the ground and survey a possible route.”
During construction, when the work camps would be located deep in the woods between the two ends of the line, Wells said it could be months before anyone would see civilization.
“It depends where we were camped. We had a camp right on Lakelse Lake so in the winter we would walk across the lake and go to town,” said Wells. “But if we were way down halfway, then forget it. You didn’t go anywhere.”
At the very least, though, workers were well looked after.
“We had good food,” he said. “They had to have good food or they wouldn’t keep the workers.”
Packers would follow the crews and carry gigantic slabs of meat and cookhouses would be erected at the camps.
The company would also experiment with delivery methods for some foods.
There was a point where they tried to air drop packages of flour in the woods.
“I can remember flour hitting the trees and bursting the flour sacks open,” he recalls. “It was snow and flour. That didn’t work.”
That plan was quickly scrapped, but at least no one went hungry.
Another anecdote from the day involved two other guys who were working in the Kildala Pass.
A fearsome grizzly bear was making his way through the area and started giving the workers some trouble.
The two men did the only thing they could do; gave the grizzly bear a shot from their fire extinguisher.
Both lived to tell their story.
Once the work was completed he was transferred to the Bridge Office for CN which at the time was in Winnipeg.
But he didn’t stay long and went back to work on the Kitimat-Terrace line for some final jobs until the line was operational.
From there his story continues with Alcan and their new aluminum smelter.
“I subsequently left CN and joined Alcan right here in the Kitimat,” said Wells, noting that he had taken a trip down to the smelter site earlier in the day.
He joined Alcan in 1956 but a shift in the market led to dark times in the community and Wells was transferred out.
“A lot of their projects were cancelled in view of market conditions,” said Wells. “So nothing went by the potlines that you see here today.”
A lot of people were let go at the time.
He went on to stay with Alcan working on their bauxite mines in South America and eventually found himself at Alcan’s general engineering office in Montreal.
“That’s a long way from railroading,” he said with a laugh.