Canadian Pacific Railway Platform
The choice of this site was controversial. The first station was at the foot of Van Horne Street, quite far away from the downtown area of Prince Arthur's Landing (later Port Arthur, now Thunder Bay) and very inconvenient for both passengers and the company. Why such a strange site? In the early 1880s, the CPR needed land for its facilities. The McVicar family, headed by two sisters, Victoria and Christina, had land. They convinced William C. Van Horne, general manager of the railway, that in return for conceding land along the town's waterfront they, the McVicars, should be given the choice of a site for the depot. To Van Horne's chagrin, they chose a site convenient to their own property but very unfavourable to the railway. It took many years before the CPR was able to move its station closer to the town's centre -- to a site very near the platform seen here. This episode convinced Van Horne that never again would he be placed at the mercy of landowners. Thus was born the railway's policy of disregarding the interests of resident landowners when choosing sites for its depots -- a policy it followed so resolutely in Western Canada.
