The Chinook Centre for Arts and Restorative Education

About the Chinook Centre

There are several possible meanings when using the word “Chinook:”

A west coast First Nation/language group
a warm prairie wind from the west in winter
a historic Alberta train running between Edmonton and Calgary from 1936 – 1956
a Parallel // Streams initiative in the kanata spirit
- This refers to our Canadian Classroom stationary programming housed in railcars from the historic Alberta train

Three railcars we own are undergoing exterior restoration at the Cranbrook History Centre (BC).

Two of the cars ran on The Chinook, a CP Edmonton-Calgary day train service from 1936-1956; the third, a first class sleeping car, ran on Canadian Pacific transcontinental trains from 1928-67.

After sandblasting/repainting, metal and roof repairs, they’ll move to Edmonton AB to become

The Chinook Centre for Arts and Restorative Education

and be open for day visits by school/homeschool classes and night/weekend cultural events.

Download PDF

Preview

The Chinook Centre for Arts and Restorative Education Poster

Who are the Chinook?

The Chinook are a West Coast First Nation after which we’ve named a warming winter wind. In transit to Edmonton, the railcars will be smudged by elders of the First Nations through whose territory they pass. Each car will be given an Indigenous name in addition to its car number.

Former Canadian Pacific Baggage-Buffet Car 3051

This has been our classroom for visiting school groups in Cranbrook, BC. With 32 floor-mounted rotating seats in pairs, it can be configured in theatre-style (all forward facing) or in eight foursomes with tables. There is a kitchenette/serving counter at the front end of the classroom area, and farther forward, there is the baggage and mechanical area that provide room for equipment and materials storage.

The Last Run of Baggage-Buffet Car 3051

This car last ran regularly in the 1990s behind the locomotive on the National Museum of Science and Technology excursion train from Ottawa ON to Wakefield QC. It also was part of Canadian Pacific’s special train for the 100^th anniversary of The Last Spike.

Baggage Buffet Car 3051 - Class in Session

Ex-CP Mail Express Car to be named “Maskepetoon”

The name Maskepetoon comes from the Nehiyaw (Cree) peacemaker. This car is now a 70 x 10 foot long open space, as the mail/post office has been removed. In it’s place (windowed section in the picture), will be a library/boardroom/research area with heavy duty railway display cabinets partitioning it from the express area that will double as a gym for music and movement, and serve as a gallery for art and photo displays.

Gandhi of the Plains

Former AB Lieutenant Governor, writer and educator Dr. J. W. Grant MacEwan describes Maskepetoon as “the Gandhi of the Plains.” We’ll be consulting with his descendants and First Nation to develop a fitting display in the library to honour and share his legacy.

20201107_141455 mail express exterior L-R

Mail Express Car (Maskepetoon) in present condition awaiting sandblast/ painting, name photo-shopped in

Mail Express car 3612 original floor plan_000007

Ex-CP Sleeping Car – Redvers

This Ex-CP Sleeping Car named “Redvers” is 84 feet long and includes 3 rooms and 2 smaller compartments, as well as 8 upper/lower berth sections seating 32 in facing pairs by day. We’ll use this for pre-session and follow-up study, allowing the Chinook Centre to accomodate 3 classes at a time, alternating between the classroom, gym, and study areas within a 90-120 minute overall visit, or approximately 300 students & teachers in a six hour school day.

Background on ex-CP Sleeping Car Redvers

CP Sleeping Car Redvers arriving Montreal’s Windsor Station (Place Ville Marie in background), summer 1967, leading the First Class (sleeping car) of Canadian Pacific’s second transcontinental train, the Expo Limited, named for the “Expo ’67” World’s Fair being held on an artificial island in the Saint Lawrence River, and commemorating the centennial of Canadian Confederation. Redvers and other R-class heavyweight sleepers (all-steel bodies with inlaid hardwood interiors weighing 90 tonnes each) were built in 1920 for CP’s all First Class Trans-Canada Limited (“the fastest train across the continent”). In the mid 1950s, they were thoroughly reconditioned to be able to run with the Next Generation of long-distance passenger equipment: the Budd stainless steel fleet that made up CP’s The Canadian and The Dominion beginning in 1954-55.

Withdrawn from service beginning in 1968, the R cars were stored by CP at Montreal and Vancouver where they were eventually disposed of. Redvers was donated to the Alberta Rail Museum in 1973 and served as part of the “Strathcona Coach” Canadian Youth Hostel at the end-of-steel in 1975. Five years later, it was was part of a special train, pulled by former CN steam locomotive 6060, to celebrate Alberta’s 75th Anniversary with public excursions to a number of destinations in the province. In the 1990s, Redvers was sold to the Canadian Museum of Rail Transport in Cranbrook, BC, now the Cranbrook History Centre (CHC). So thorough was CP’s 1950s rebuild that CP approached CHC to purchase the trucks (the heafy cast bogies on the undercarriage, each holding three wheel sets) to refit a car in its “Royal Canadian Pacific” luxury passenger train. CHC declined to sell the dar for parts and CCOR acquired it intact!

Ex-CP 56-seat First Class Day Coach – Crowfoot

In addition to the three cars CCORE owns, there is a fourth Cranbrook car CCOR has an interest in acquiring, if sponsorship can be found to cover the costs of thoroughgoing interior restoration including floor removal and replacement, and removal and rebuilding of the interior walls below the windows. (The car`s external steel fabric and end vestibules are sound, and all the windows are sealed and intact.)

This is ex-CP 56-seat first class day coach 2104, the fourth of the new lightweight streamlined cars the Company built in 1936, of the type for the ChinookS‘s trainset. It is proposed to name this coach after Isapo-Muxika (‘‘Crowfoot’’), Great Chief of the Sik’sika (Blackfoot) Confederacy, who played a key part in negotiating and signing Treaty Number Seven. His statue stands inside Alberta`s legislature rotunda.

As well as a noted warrior, later peacemaker and father of his own people, Crowfoot is a father of the kanata constellation as much as those who sat at the table in Charlottetown, Québec City and London. His wise and skilled diplomacy saved what would become Alberta from the interracial strife that marked the meeting of First Nations and settler societies in many other parts of Turtle Island/North America.

CCOR would use the 56-seat centre section of this coach as a theatre to screen documentaries including the National Film Board`s ‘‘Ballad of Crowfoot’’ together with productions by Indigenous filmmakers. The lounges at each end of the car would be still photo galleries of the life of Crowfoot, one covering the period before arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway and settlement on the plains, and one afterwards.