Speedwell stations: The Prison Farm's forgotten train stops

Some time ago, Bob Keleher kindly loaned me what remained of his father's—Jim Keleher—postcard collection, which was quite extensive. Among the many cards of note was a real-photo postcard with the label, "Guelph Hospital, D.S.C.R., March 1919" written in pencil on the back.

("Guelph Hospital, D.S.C.R., March 1919," real photo postcard. Courtesy of the Jim Keleher collection.)

My first thought was that this notation was rather mysterious: There is certainly no hospital depicted in the image. "D.S.C.R." meant nothing to me at that point. So, I filed the image away with a mental note to revisit it sometime later.

I came across it again recently. Having become better acquainted with the Guelph scene of the early 20th century in the meantime, I recognized what I was looking at. It is a view taken from the concrete bridge over the Eramosa River at the Speedwell train station, or stations. The D.S.C.R. stands for "Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment," the governemnt agency in charge of demobilizating soldiers from the Great War. They ran the Speedwell Hospital, a facility to help returned soldiers to recuperate and prepare for civilian life once more, that was formerly the "Prison Farm" or, later, the Ontario Reformatory.

This image is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it depicts the Speedwell train stations, which is the first pictures of them that I have seen. The careful viewer will observe that there are several structures in view on the left side of the picture. The closest one is, I believe, the station built by the Toronto Suburban Railway (TSR), a private railway that provided a regular, electrified streetcar service between Toronto and Guelph (as one of its several routes). The line opened in 1917 and ran until 1931.

The TSR had a flag stop across the Eramosa from the Reformatory. It's not clear that this connection was used much by people to go to and from the Prison. However, it does seem that the TSR did a good business hauling milk from the Reformatory's dairy herd to Toronto. Such "milk runs" from local towns to the Big Smoke were a regular part of its business.

(Detail of "Guelph Hospital" postcard above. The TSR's Speedwell station is in the right foreground, while behind it from this perspective stands the CPR's Speedwell station. A farmhouse and barn are visible at the top of the cliff.)

The TSR's Speedwell station is certainly a modest building. But, it was clearly more than a simple shed, as attested by the chimney rising from its back wall. The presence of a stove is a sure sign that passengers would be treated to a little warmth in the winter months. Posts with guy poles can be seen at the front of the station (behind it from our perspective) and running off to the right, which provided the trains with power.

("Canadian Pacific Railway Co., Station. View of a little flag station on the CPR double track east of Smiths Falls;" courtesy of Ingenium Archives, Aubrey Mattingly Transportation Collection, MAT-06233. Though not a perfect match, this picture gives us some impression of what a flag stop of the era would look like at the front.)

I do not know what became of this station. It may well have been sold and moved elsewhere when the TSR was wound up.

The second building, right behind the TSR station in the image, would be the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) station. The TSR and CPR tracks ran parallel at that point, although they intersect away to the right where the CPR line (actually, the Guelph Junction Railway but operated by the CPR, even to this day) crosses the Eramosa while the TSR veers west to remain parallel the river.

The CPR station was built at the bridge crossing to the Reformatory in 1912, when the latter institution opened. It was a flag station, meaning that trains stopped there only when there were people or things to pick up or drop off. In the CPR timetable for 30 May 1915, the name of this stop is given as "Sturdee," presumably after Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, a British Admiral who had recently led a successful battle against a German naval squadron in the south Atlantic. However, the name failed to stick, perhaps because the CPR already had a "Sturdee" station near Glacier in British Columbia. Instead, the 31 October 1915 timetable applies the name "Speedwell." How this name arose is not clear, although its proximity to the Eramosa River, then usually known as the "Eramosa branch of the Speed" may have been decisive.

Other structures of some interest can be seen in the picture. Above the CPR station, a house can be seen along the crest of the ridge. A barn or outbuilding is visible a little ways to its left. A farm of 32 acres, belonging to Arnold Sanders, is shown in that location in the 1908 Wellington County Atlas. The portion of the farm above the ridge, which had not been added to the Prison Farm property, was apparently still in operation.

Some of these structures can be located in a site plan of the Reformatory dated to 1921 (detail above). Curiously, the CPR's Speedwell station is indicated on the plan but not the TSR's station, although both sets of tracks are present. Did this section of the map derive from a time before the TSR station was built?

Near the centre of the postcard image, the Royal City's standpipe can be seen poking up from Grange hill on the horizon. Much of the water for the city came through a pipeline from the Arkell springs in Puslinch. The pipeline ran parallel to the CPR tracks, buried about 5m away from the side near the cliff.

Speaking of water, the perceptive viewer will have noted quite a bit of it in the foreground, apparently lapping at the back of the TSR station. Guelph suffered quite a deluge on 18 March 1919, which rendered the Dundas bridge impassible, thus sundering the city from the Agricultural College on the hill. From the look of the postcard image above, it appears that the Eramosa nearly flooded out the railway tracks at Speedwell station.

("Prison Farm"; Postcard by International Stationary Co., ca. 1915; author's collection.)

It is quite possible that the same event was recorded in another postcard, from nearly the reverse angle. Unfortunately, this other card does not show either of the railway stations.

Perhaps the biggest recorded flood to affect the Speedwell stations was the great washout of 1921. On 10 July, only days after Guelph's most disastrous fire, a massive thunderstorm roared over the town at night, unleashing a torrential downpour accompanied by hail stones the size of walnuts! The downtown was quickly submerged (London Advertiser, 11 July 1921):

The storm commenced shortly after 11 o’clock last night, and for two hours raged with a severity never witnessed here before. Without hardly a moment’s cessation the sky was brilliantly illuminated with vivid flashes of lightning during the entire storm, and deep thunder roared continuously. At midnight the downtown streets were several feet deep with water, and firemen and city employees worked up to their hips trying to keep the watermains open.

At Speedwell, rainwater poured over the cliff above the station in sheets, pushing boulders down the slope and inundating the train tracks. The water pipe burst and disgorged another torrent of the wet stuff into the scene. Unfortunately, a freight train from Hamilton, approaching Speedwell on the CPR line, ran into a section of track that had been undermined by the flood. The locomotive derailed, its tender overturned into the ditch, while the following car ended up at a 90 degree angle. No one was badly injured, however.

Naturally, hundreds of Guelphites made the trip to see the wreckage as it was being cleaned up. No photos of it have come my way, although there must be some out there.

(Locations of the former CPR and TSR Speedwell stations located on a current map of the former Reformatory grounds. Image courtesy Google Maps.)

Having survived this mini Noachian deluge, among other watery assaults, the TSR station burned to the ground on 12 November 1926, succumbing perhaps to its own heating stove. It was, to my knowledge, not replaced. Perhaps, if and when the former Reformatory grounds become a National Urban Park, the former presence of these most structures will be memorialized.

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Actually, the Library & Archives Canada has a file entitled "The Toronto Suburban Railway Company - Lands and Leases - Matters In Connection With Speedwell Station" (1548596). Perhaps this file contains images or descriptions of the TSR Speedwell station. Next time I'm in the Capital City, I may have to have a look. Of course, if you have seen this material, let us know about it in the comments!