Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
I should point out that the pictures are listed at the end of the presentation in both French and English. They're not meant to provide anything other than the visuals. If you wish to look at them later they are in the packages.
Thank you for making it possible for me to make this short presentation on how we think we can participate in a meaningful way in Canada's 150th anniversary and support similar aims by the Canadian Railway Museum's Exporail.
My name is Garry Anderson and I have been the chief executive officer of Trains Deluxe, the trade name of the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook, British Columbia, since it began in 1976. We may be a relatively small community, but we have established an internationally renowned collection of vintage deluxe Canadian hotels-on-wheels, representing various eras from the 1880s to the 1950s. My background is in architecture, so I have approached railway passenger train interpretation from the perspective of architecture on wheels.
My work in assembling and restoring this collection and developing public access programs resulted in my becoming a member of the Order of Canada in 2007. Just yesterday I received the award of distinguished service from the Canadian Museums Association for the same reason, hence my reason for being in Ottawa, and the timely and inexpensive ability for me to make a presentation to you. This was done on very short notice, so I must thank the committee's staff for making arrangements.
One of the train sets is a complete seven-car original set of the 1929 Trans Canada Limited, and it was given national historic designation last year. One of the first orders of business of our then-new MP, David Wilks, was his effort to get a precise time of the designation in June 2011 to include it in our local community celebrations. This train is one of the highlights of the displays at the museum, and was determined by the national historic sites and monuments staff to be the most luxurious train ever built in Canada. It is the first such designation for railway heritage of this type. Several other cars from other trains are also federally designated as movable cultural property.
I have been fortunate to have an uninterrupted 36-year career in railway heritage. This has allowed me to develop a long-range perspective on the incredible impact the railway has had and still has on our country. The railway literally brought British Columbia into Confederation, thus saving the whole western half of the country from becoming part of the United States of America. The railway also made Confederation work by linking the diverse parts of our landscape. Without it, connections and communications would have been ineffective, and Canada probably would not have survived as a unified country. So the railway's place in an anniversary such as this is absolutely essential. Not to do so would be an historical travesty.
My perspective has also made me aware of the historic and internationally recognized achievements made by our country in railway matters, particularly passenger car design, interior decor, operations, and the support technology that make Canadian car-building among the finest in the world for the many climactic conditions that Canada experiences.
This perspective also involves railway art and architecture, but in particular the great railway urban hotels and resorts that developed world fame. The Canadian Museum of Rail Travel displays and interprets all of this in a most unusual way. It de-emphasizes the technology and mechanical aspects while emphasizing the social history of rail travel, along with the creative arts of design, art, and architecture. We have been described as more of a fine arts or decorative arts collection by many, which is a distinct departure from the norm and a compliment.
The handouts—if you're able to see them—show some of the beautiful interiors of some of the railcars in Cranbrook. A picture is often worth a thousand words, and these photos show a side of railway heritage not often portrayed, at least not on this scale, in a small community remote from major centres. Calgary is the nearest centre at 400 kilometres away.
Canada is often described as a vast and diverse country, which I think also aptly describes our railway heritage. There are many railway collections that tell many stories from the local, regional, and provincial levels. However, there are very few that tell national and even international stories, and they must be part of any celebration of our country's survival for the past 150 years. It also surprised me that the Canadian railway story does not figure more prominently in the story of Canada as presented by our federal institutions. This is a very big oversight when compared to the stronger federal portrayal of our relatively recent aeronautical story, including the Avro Arrow, for instance, which dates from only 60 years ago.
We do have a national aeronautical museum, but no equivalent national railway museum. The national Museum of Science and Technology has too large a mandate to tell a true railway story, so that institution cannot do it justice. The missing historical link needs to be corrected or Canadians will continue to be uninformed on the central role that the railways played in the building and development of our country, a role unique to the railway at that time.
I'd like to offer two proposals for the committee to consider for the 2017 celebrations.
The first proposal is to designate the Canadian Railway Museum-Exporail as the new national railway museum of Canada, with connections to other railway collections of national significance, to instantly create a lasting legacy for the 150th anniversary of our country. This act would suddenly profile the central role that the railway played in the act of Confederation in making Confederation work, and how it continues to affect the lives of Canadians and businesses of Canada.
The Canadian Museum of Rail Travel has been able to expand the definition of a national collection so that other public railway heritage collections with artifacts of proven national significance and located across the country could also benefit through a decentralized approach, but with formal connections to the CRM. In this way, more Canadians would have improved geographic access to the railway heritage that built and linked this nation by making Confederation work.
The railway contributed significantly to the development of the country into one of the wealthiest in the world, and this needs to be better understood so it can be celebrated in the way it should be as part of the Canadian identity. We recognize that while not all of the national collection resides at Exporail, it is the largest railway collection in Canada. There are also other important collections that contain items of national significance and contribute to the story line. This issue was discussed by this committee in October 2006 and it did come for a vote in the House, although nothing further transpired.
The second proposal is that the federal government should involve and promote nationally significant railway heritage in an expanded role in the 150th celebration to better acquaint Canadians of all ages with the central role that the railways played and still play in our country. Broad-based and cost effective federal promotion leading up to and including 2017, assisted by the railway companies and provinces, would increase visitation to railway heritage collections across the country, improving access for all Canadians and visitors to Canada.
Preserving the large artifacts that make up many railway heritage collections is expensive, but it would develop support from this type of partnership over the short to long term. It would greatly improve awareness of the long-standing importance of the railways to Canada.
I will close by pointing you to five short quotes from an important historic document on the trains collection done in 1992 by Robert Turner, curator emeritus of modern history of the Royal BC Museum. These are also available on the museum website. I will leave the quotes for the record, so I'll just let you read them.
The intention of these quotes was to show that collections not located in major metropolitan urban areas are significant and do contribute to the story.
I want to applaud the government for taking the lead so early in the development plans for the 2017 celebrations and we want to assist in any way we can. We have the actual artifacts to celebrate with, while the federal government has the ways and means to make it happen in time for 2017.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.