The introduction of the railway in the Eastern Townships in 1853 was very important to the area’s settlement and economy because it provided a fast and reliable means of transportation linked to major cities like Montreal, Boston and Portland. The railway helped develop industry in the region as it transported products to ice-free American ports, allowed settlers in remote areas to commute to larger towns, like Sherbrooke, for factory work, and provided accessibility to shopping centers and social gatherings previously too far to attend.

The Grand Trunk

The first railway line to enter the Eastern Townships was the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) in 1853 due to the great need for this in the area. The railway was constructed in response to Britain’s removal of tariffs placed on colonial goods, which placed Canadian products on a more competitive level overseas and forced the colony to find faster and more efficient methods of transportation, besides seasonal canal ships, to benefit the region in terms of increased settlement as well as economy. Another reason for the quick implementation of the GTR was the threat of American railroads overtaking the continent, as their canals had done previously. Not only would the GTR be able to compete with the American rivals, it would also extend into Vermont for easy access to major port cities like New York, Boston and Portland, that were open year round, unlike the port in Montreal, which closed in the winter. This railway became especially important after the 1854 Treaty of Reciprocity, which allowed for free trade between Canada and the United States.

The St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railway, the first section of what was to become the GTR, reached the Eastern Townships in 1853, and ran from Montreal to St. John’s, (Ste. Jean) and Richmond, and then south to the United States for trade. The expansion of the GTR opened up the region to tourism and settlement opportunities with ease and the formation of branch lines, like the Stanstead, Shefford & Chambly line, off of this major railway allowed for increased access to smaller towns in the areas, thereby improving the quality of life in the townships.

In order to combat this problem, another amendment was introduced that rerouted the railway from Chambly to St. John’s, which saved about twenty miles of track and allowed the union of the GTR’s SS&C and the Montreal Champlain Railway Company, saving tons of money and preventing interior competition.

Construction for a SS&C line separate from the Montreal Champlain tracks began in 1857 by William Flower & Company from Toronto and the subcontracted Macgovern and Longley Company. The track reached from St. John’s to West Farnham in 1858, to Granby in 1860, and to Waterloo in 1861, where it was halted due to lack of funds. As the lease of the SS&C was being tossed from line to line, the citizens of Magog, Brome, Shefford and Stanstead, who had been expecting their invested railway to have reached them by this time, took action and in eight years constructed the Massawippi Valley Railway Company from Lennoxville to Stanstead Junction, which was then leased to the American Connecticut and Passumptic Company for nine hundred and ninety nine years.

Railway Impacts

The impact of the railway in the Eastern Townships is best seen in Waterloo, in Shefford County, which was once an isolated sawing, milling and marketing town of two hundred that serviced the entire county. The day the first train passed through Waterloo marked long awaited success for its citizens as it meant that they were to be removed from isolation and provided with many economic opportunities that encouraged further settlement in the area.

The railway transformed the Eastern Townships in many ways, one of these being language. The population of Waterloo in 1850 was one hundred percent Anglophone and by 1931, this had switched to sixty five percent Francophone. The ease of railway travel and transport allowed French Canadians to move from the overcrowded seigneurial lands in the northern parts of the region and settle along the rail lines.

The introduction of the railway also affected the area economically, as Waterloo, a small farming town, was equipped with stores, hotels, a tannery, public and private schools, an iron foundry, a saw mill, four churches, a bank, a telegraph company, and a population of fifteen hundred people within six years of the railroad. This allowed Waterloo to compete with the main industrial town in the region, Sherbrooke, as well as allow its citizens easy access to trade and travel. The railway was obviously essential to the development of the Eastern Townships, only to be furthered with the introduction of the automobile.