By Sally Butterfield Archivist
BC Archives Acquisition Documents Forgotten Railway Dreams
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n late 2019, the BC Archives was offered a black metal trunk practically bursting with a mess of papers. These had once belonged to the Victoria Saanich New Westminster Railway Company (VSNW). Some of the records were neatly bound together, while others were crumpled and stuffed in wherever there was room. There was absolutely no discernible order to the mess, and each individual piece of paper was coated with a film of dirt.
The trunk that contained the VSNW records.
Before these records can be made accessible to the public, they will need to be treated by the paper conservator and processed by an archivist. Minimal information is available about the history of the company, and reports in the Daily Colonist and the Canada Gazette are often contradictory. Each document will need to be examined to determine how it fits into the context of the company. Although their provenance and custodial history is unknown, the records appear to be a fairly complete representation of the Victoria Saanich New Westminster Railway Company and its efforts to build a rail link between downtown Victoria and New Westminster, connecting Victoria to the trans-Canada railway. A brief survey of the records shows that the records consist of financial account books, letterhead, board of management minutes and correspondence, drafts of the private bill to incorporate the company, company bylaws, and maps. A railway that linked Victoria to the rest of Canada was a promise of Confederation and, for Amor de Cosmos, the founder
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and president of the company, a particular sticking point. After the rail line was seemingly abandoned by the federal government, de Cosmos created the company to do what the federal government either could not or would not. The company was incorporated in 1891 by a private bill put forward to the Parliament of Canada. Multiple copies of the draft bill can be found among the records, each copy including notations of individuals involved in the project, including John Stuart Yates in Victoria and J.A. Gemmill, the company’s representative in Ottawa. It is interesting that the company was incorporated at the federal rather than the provincial level, and it perhaps indicates that de Cosmos envisioned this project as holding national significance—it would link Victoria not just with mainland British Columbia, but with the rest of the country. De Cosmos had previously incorporated the Victoria Saanich Railway Company in 1886 at the provincial level. The route between Victoria and Saanich would be identical, but this earlier company had no ambitions to connect to the mainland. (continues after next page)
