If you’ve ever been a community newspaper reporter, you’ve covered your fair share of highway accidents. It’s just about the worst kind of assignment to get because, while there is certainly news value in it, bearing witness to the kind of tragedy that can result from crashes can weigh on a person. There have been a couple of crashes that weigh on me still, in fact.
But this story isn’t about that. This story is about a train derailment. Again, another type of story that many community newspaper reporters have to cover.
I’ve been to several derailments of varying descriptions. Sometimes a train jumped the track just enough to stop it, other times the massive machine seemed to have gotten airborne, leaving huge train cars jumbled up like matchsticks.
In July 1999, I had been on the job about two months. On July 14, a Wednesday morning, the publisher of The Northern Times in Kapuskasing came to my desk.
“Grab the delivery van. You’re going to Hornepayne,” Wayne Major said (or near enough to what he probably said).
What’s a Hornepayne, I wondered. I have to confess, I was pretty tired that day. The Times (RIP) was a weekly paper that hit the street on Wednesdays. Our small news team had to be in the newsroom by 6 a.m. on Tuesdays to lay out the paper, which, as you can imagine, took hours.
Heck, at the time, we still had a darkroom to develop film and light tables for doing paste-up. The paper would be laid out on computer, than printed onto large sheets of paper. Headlines, stories, ads and photos, were all cut out with Exacto knives, waxed and then physically laid out on sheets to be sent to the press.
It made for a long day.
So I was tired that Wednesday morning. But I had only been on the job for about two months, so I swallowed my exhaustion, grabbed the keys, camera and my notepad and hit the road.
If I thought Kap was remote (and it is), Hornepayne was the Moon. You drive west on Highway 11 from Kapusaksing for about two hours until you hit the turn-off to Highway 631, which you follow south to Hornepayne.
Hornepayne is a both a lumber town (by way of Haavaldsrud’s Timber Company) and a CNR railway depot. One of the more interesting features at the time was the town’s Hallmark Centre, which included a mall, a pool, a library, post office, hotel, high school, post office, gym, apartments and more — truly a one-stop shop. It was a seriously weird sprawling building in the centre of town.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I was able to find the railway investigation report the Transportation Safety Board produced about the derailment.
It reads:
“At approximately 0804 eastern daylight time on 14 July 1999, as VIA Rail Canada Inc. train No. 2 approached a private crossing used by lumber trucks near Hornepayne, Ontario, an empty tractor-trailer proceeded over the crossing. The train crew initiated an emergency brake application, but was unable to stop the train before colliding with the rear portion of the trailer. As a result of the collision, the truck spun and struck the side of the train causing three locomotives and eight passenger cars to derail. The fuel tanks of two of the locomotives were sliced open and their contents fuelled two small fires. As a result of the accident, three people were seriously injured and a total of eight people were taken to the Hornepayne community hospital.”
Once I got to Hornepayne, it wasn’t too difficult to find the crossing where the crash occurred. Unfortunately, the tractor-trailer was on the other side of the train and not visible from the road, and the smashed and derailed cars were farther down the line and also not visible.
“What the hell am I going to do now?” I remember thinking.
I spoke with police and officials at the scene, explaining who I was and trying to get access so I could get those all-important photos. They gave me the information I needed about what happened and the investigation to that point, but weren’t so forthcoming with letting me on the scene.
There was no way the police were going to let some skinny kid with a camera onto their scene.
I figured my publisher was testing me. “Let’s see how this cub can handle himself in the field.”
I didn’t want to be found lacking.
I went back to the van and smoked a cigarette. The sunny day got cloudy. It looked like rain.
I started the van, turned it around and headed for a bush road I had noticed earlier that seemed to run parallel to the tracks. I had an idea. If they weren’t going to let me get to the crash scene, I would find my own way there.
I found the dirt road and headed along it until I was well out of sight of the main road. I pulled to the side. It began to pour.
“Ok, smart guy, let’s see how smart you are.” Not smart enough as it turned out.
I thought if I were to just head straight into the bush that separated the bush road I was on from the rail line I needed to get to, I should be able to sneak my way to the scene and get my photos.
Boy, did I think I was clever. I could imagine the awesome story I would have to tell the publisher when I got back.
“They didn’t let me onto the scene, but never fear, Mr. Publisher, your intrepid young reporter won the day.”
Yeah, right. I seriously underestimated both the distance through the bush I would have to travel (or crawl as it turned out) and the thickness of a Northern Ontario bush in July. The undergrowth in the area was extremely heavy, so heavy I had to crawl under and over fallen trees and force my way through dense brush. Everything was drenched from the rain. My glasses were water-spotted and fogged up. I could barely see a few feet in front of me thanks to the rain, the brush and my foggy four eyes.
You know how easy it is to get turned around in the bush? It’s even easier under those conditions. I don’t know how long I wandered around in there without getting anywhere. It felt like forever trying to find the crash and then another forever trying (dejectedly) to find my way back to the van, which I did eventually.
I was bitterly disappointed. My moment of triumph was a total bust. I headed back to town and went to the Hallmark Centre, where I got a few quotes from people to feel like I was doing something. Then, I drove home.
When I got back, I explained to the publisher what happened and how the police wouldn’t let me get photos. I left out my adventure in the bush.
Fortunately, it seemed no one else was going to get photos either. Whew. Then, on the front page of The Daily Press in Timmins the next day, was a photo of the crash scene, from the other side of the train, showing the smashed transport truck and a mess of cars.
The publisher came into the newsroom and threw the paper on my desk with a “what the eff is this” kind of look on his face.
Damn, I thought. Then, I checked the byline of the photo. It was credited to someone with the last name “Haavaldsrud,” which meant someone from the family that operated the mill had snapped it.
This also meant, luckily for me, police didn’t let any other reporters onto the scene either, but they did let someone from the company.
Had I actually made it through the bush, this would be a better story, I’m sure. But I learned a few lessons that day, on how to speak with officers at crash scenes. I also learned that I could be resourceful, if not successful.
That wouldn’t be my last train crash. But it is the only one I covered where I didn’t get the photo. I didn’t let that happen again.
