How Canada Lost Much of Its Passenger Rail Network Over Seven Decades

Posted on November 27, 2025

Reading time: 9 minutes.

For those who care about trains, Canada presents a sobering landscape. What exists today (a skeletal national network, a handful of urban rail systems and three major long-distance routes) is a remnant of something far more extensive. Understanding Canadian rail means understanding what has been abandoned, cut and allowed to disappear over seven decades of retrenchment.

The intercity purge: VIA Rail’s cuts

The history of VIA Rail since its formation in 1977 has been one of repeated trauma. The 1981 cuts under Pierre Trudeau’s government slashed the budget, leading to a 40 per cent reduction in operations. Popular trains vanished: the Super Continental, which had run transcontinental service through Saskatoon and Edmonton, and the Atlantic, which served the Maritimes. Both had been frequently sold out.

Far worse came on 15 January 1990, when Transport Minister Benoît Bouchard announced a 55 per cent reduction in VIA’s operations. Major communities such as Thunder Bay, Regina, Calgary and Fredericton lost all their passenger trains. So did countless small towns that had to rely entirely on roads for the first time. In Nova Scotia, service from Halifax to Yarmouth and Sydney ended. In New Brunswick, the route between Moncton and Edmundston was cut. VIA would no longer run from Winnipeg to Calgary. Vancouver Island lost service between Victoria and Courtenay.

The Canadian, CP’s flagship transcontinental service through the southern route via Calgary and Banff, was moved to the less scenic northern CN route. While the 1990 cuts had preserved daily service, frequencies dropped to three days per week, reduced further to twice-weekly in the off-season. By 2007, the schedule was lengthened so that the train now takes four nights rather than three to travel between Toronto and Vancouver, almost identical to 1940s travel times despite substantial technological change.

In 1994, Finance Minister Paul Martin’s budget eliminated the Atlantic route entirely, consolidating eastern transcontinental service on the Ocean alone. CP had sold off track the Atlantic had used, making restoration impossible under VIA’s mandate to operate only on CN or CP lines.

The result of these cuts was catastrophic. Ridership that had peaked at around eight million passengers in 1981 dropped by 45 per cent following the 1989-1990 restructuring. It has never recovered, hovering around four to five million today. VIA Rail now operates more like two separate entities: an intercity service in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal Corridor, and a dwindling national network everywhere else.

The territories: railways that never came

The three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) illustrate absence rather than loss. They lack rail and road infrastructure due to cold climate, great distances and thin markets from small populations. The Northwest Territories has no passenger rail service. Nunavut has no access via road or rail, with air and water the only routes to reach it.

The sole exception is the White Pass and Yukon Route, a narrow-gauge heritage railway linking Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse. Built during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, it closed in 1982 when metal prices collapsed, eliminating the ore traffic that sustained it. Partially revived in 1988 as a heritage railway, it now serves tourists rather than functioning as practical transport.

Saskatchewan: a province abandoned

Saskatchewan offers perhaps the starkest example of what disappeared. Only two passenger rail services operate in the province: The Canadian and the Winnipeg to Churchill train, both of which simply pass through rather than serving Saskatchewan communities.

The real blow came in 2017, when the Saskatchewan Transportation Company was wound down. This Crown corporation, established in 1946, had provided intercity bus services to 282 communities across the province. Its closure, justified by mounting subsidies (C$94 per passenger by 2017), left Saskatchewan without dedicated public transport links between communities. The decision was particularly harsh for northern communities that had expanded service as recently as 2008 to places like La Loche, Buffalo Narrows and Ile-a-la-Crosse.

Manitoba beyond Winnipeg

An unnamed mixed passenger train that once connected with the Winnipeg to Churchill service at The Pas previously served Lynn Lake, but this service was truncated to Pukatawagan in 2003 due to loss of freight traffic. Manitoba’s passenger rail now consists solely of Winnipeg’s limited commuter presence and the twice-weekly Churchill service. The province has no intercity rail network connecting its communities.

The Churchill line itself faced extinction when flooding in May 2017 heavily damaged track and bridges, suspending service for 18 months. Prices skyrocketed in Churchill as supplies had to be flown in. When the first passenger train returned on 4 December 2018, over 100 people braved minus-20-degree weather to welcome it. The 560-day suspension illustrated how fragile these lifeline services are.

British Columbia’s interior

BC Rail operated freight, passenger and excursion services on 2,320 kilometres of mainline track until 2004, when freight operations were leased to Canadian National Railway. Regular passenger services connecting communities in the BC interior effectively ceased decades earlier. VIA Rail’s Skeena service between Jasper and Prince Rupert provides the only remaining practical passenger link through the northern interior, whilst heritage railways and museum operations offer seasonal excursions rather than transport.

Alberta: waiting for the future

Alberta currently has no intercity or regional passenger rail services beyond VIA Rail’s transcontinental routes passing through Edmonton and Jasper. The province is developing a Passenger Rail Master Plan expected to be completed by summer 2025, which contemplates regional rail between Calgary and Edmonton with a hub in Red Deer, commuter rail connecting both cities to their airports and suburbs, and regional rail to Banff and Jasper National Parks. The province aims to introduce the system by 2040 through a new Crown corporation similar to Ontario’s Metrolinx. Until then, Alberta remains dependent on its CTrain and LRT systems for urban movement, with no practical intercity rail options.

The tram holocaust

Perhaps the most dramatic loss came in the two decades following the Second World War, when most Canadian cities abandoned their tram systems in favour of buses. Most transit systems were worn out after the war and required extensive investment. The decision was made to replace all trams with modern trolleybuses and motorbuses.

By the First World War, 48 Canadian cities and towns hosted tram systems. By 1960, all but one had vanished. Calgary abandoned trams in 1947, Vancouver in 1955 and Montreal in 1959. After the 1959 closure of the Montreal and Ottawa systems, only Toronto operated trams.

In 1966, the Toronto Transportation Commission announced plans to eliminate all tram routes by 1980. Metro Toronto chair William Allen claimed that “trams are as obsolete as the horse and buggy”. The plan was only abandoned in 1972 after fierce public opposition led by Professor Andrew Biemiller, transit advocate Steve Munro, city councillors and urbanist Jane Jacobs. Toronto stood alone in North America as the sole major city to preserve its tram network.

The systems in Halifax, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Hamilton, Ottawa and Montreal are gone, taking with them a dense web of local and interurban connections.

Interurban railways: the forgotten network

Canada once had an extensive network of interurban electric railways connecting neighbouring towns and cities. The first intercity application came at St. Catharines in 1887, with a line to Thorold, followed by a 13-mile interurban system between New Westminster and Vancouver in 1891. In Canada most passenger interurban services were removed by the 1950s. These included lines radiating from Toronto to Port Credit, Guelph and Lake Simcoe, systems connecting Vancouver Island communities, and networks around Montreal. The rise of the motor car and the construction of highways made them uneconomic. Only fragments survive, absorbed into urban transit systems or heritage operations.

Regional and secondary routes: death by a thousand cuts

The loss extends far beyond the dramatic cuts. Between April 1977 and the 1990 cuts, VIA discontinued dozens of routes, including services in Manitoba (Dauphin to Winnipegosis), Saskatchewan (Prince Albert to Melfort, Crooked River to Hudson Bay), Alberta (Edmonton to Grand Centre), Quebec (Richmond to Charny, Limoilou to Clermont), and Ontario (Thunder Bay to Warroad via Winnipeg, Sudbury to Sault Ste Marie). Most were small, essential links serving communities that had few alternatives.

Ontario Northland’s Northlander from Toronto to Cochrane was discontinued in 2012, though restoration is now planned. The Atlantic provinces saw nearly complete elimination of services outside the Ocean route. Cape Breton, the Annapolis Valley, Vancouver Island beyond heritage operations, the BC interior beyond tourist routes, northern Ontario beyond the White River service. All lost their trains.

What looking at 1955 reveals

Sean Marshall’s interactive map comparing 1955 and 1980 passenger rail shows the scale of what disappeared even before the major cuts. In 1955, Canada had passenger trains reaching nearly every region, serving communities large and small with a frequency that made rail a genuine alternative. The decline can be attributed to several factors: passenger train revenues were augmented by express cargo and mail; mixed trains carrying both passengers and freight were still justified before trucks took over; an incomplete highway network guaranteed healthy passenger demand in an era before jet travel became accessible to the masses.

By 1980, much had already vanished. The 1981 and 1990 cuts simply accelerated a retreat that had been underway for decades.

The present remnant

What remains is a system that has contracted to a core in the Quebec City to Windsor Corridor, three long-distance experiential routes (The Canadian, The Ocean, Winnipeg to Churchill), a handful of remote regional services and whatever urban metro and light rail individual cities have managed to build with their own resources.

The contrast with what existed in 1955 or even 1980 is sobering. Canada once had passenger trains reaching nearly every region, serving communities large and small with a frequency that made rail a genuine alternative. What has been lost is not merely track and rolling stock, but connectivity, accessibility and the ability of people in much of the country to choose rail travel at all.

For rail enthusiasts visiting Canada, understanding this history of retreat is essential. The trains that remain are worth experiencing (The Canadian through the Rockies, the Corridor’s intercity services, the journey to Churchill) but they operate against a background of abandonment. Canada’s railways tell a story not just of what survives, but of what was allowed to disappear.