Canoe River train crash The Canoe River train crash occurred on November 21 , 1950 , near Valemount in eastern British Columbia , Canada , when a westbound troop train and the eastbound Canadian National Railway ( CNR ) " Continental Limited " collided head - on . The collision killed 21 people : 17 Canadian soldiers en route to the Korean War and the two - man locomotive crew of each train . The post - crash investigation found that the order given to the troop train differed from the intended message . Crucial words were missing , causing the troop train to proceed on its way rather than halt on a siding , resulting in the collision . A telegraph operator , Alfred John " Jack " Atherton , was charged with manslaughter ; the Crown alleged that he was negligent in passing an incomplete message . His family hired his Member of Parliament , John Diefenbaker , as defence counsel . Diefenbaker joined the British Columbia bar to take the case , and obtained Atherton ' s acquittal . After the accident , the CNR installed block signal s on the stretch of track on which the crash occurred . The railway later realigned the main line in that area , eliminating a sharp curve that prevented crews from seeing oncoming trains . Diefenbaker ' s successful defence of Atherton became an asset in his political rise . A number of monuments honour the dead . Crash . On November 21 , 1950 , a westbound troop train , Passenger Extra 3538 West — consisting of the S - 2 - a class 2 - 8 - 2 steam locomotive 3538 and 17 cars , about half of which had wood bodies with steel underframe — was travelling from Camp Shilo , Manitoba to Fort Lewis , Washington . It was carrying 23 officers and 315 men of 2nd Regiment , Royal Canadian Horse Artillery ( RCHA ) for deployment to the Korean War , a movement dubbed Operation " Sawhorse " . The train was moving through the Rocky Mountains on the CNR transcontinental mainline . CNR Train No . 2 , the eastbound " Continental Limited " , consisted of the U - 1 - a class 4 - 8 - 2 steam locomotive 6004 and eleven all - steel cars and was en route from Vancouver to Montreal . By 1950 , the CNR used the part - wooden cars only for the transportation of soldiers ; other passengers were no longer carried in them . After the 1947 Dugald rail accident , the Board of Transport Commissioners had ordered that wooden passenger coaches not be placed between all - steel cars . However , under the terms of that decision , General Order Number 707 , the wooden cars with steel underframes did not count as " wooden cars " . CNR dispatcher A . E . Tisdale meant to send both trains identical orders to " meet " ( get past each other ) on a mostly single - track section . His intended order read " Psgr Extra 3538 West meet No . 2 Eng 6004 at Cedarside and No . 4 Eng 6057 Gosnell . " ( Cedarside and Gosnell were sidings where trains could wait to allow opposing traffic to clear . ) Tisdale dictated the order from his office in Kamloops , British Columbia , to Alfred John " Jack " Atherton , the operator at Red Pass Junction , for delivery to Passenger Extra 3538 West , the troop train , and to F . E . Parsons , the operator at Blue River , westbound from Red Pass Junction , for delivery to No . 2 , the " Continental " . The words " at Cedarside " did not appear in the order as copied down by Atherton to be handed to the troop train crew . Parsons ' s version of the order accorded with Tisdale ' s , and was passed to the " Continental " and to Train No . 4 . According to Hugh A . Halliday in his history of Canadian railroad wrecks , " it would have been one man ' s word against the other , but the Blue River operator had been on the line at the same time . Parsons backed up Tisdale ' s version of events ; Atherton would be cast firmly as the culprit in this affair . " When the westbound troop train stopped at Red Pass Junction , Atherton gave the incorrect written order to train conductor John A . Mainprize . As the full order had been passed to the eastbound " Continental " , its crew expected to meet the troop train at Cedarside , eastbound from Blue River ; the crew aboard the troop train expected to meet the " Continental " and another train at Gosnell westbound from Cedarside . With neither train crew aware of anything wrong , the troop train passed Cedarside and the " Continental " passed Gosnell . Both trains were travelling at moderate speeds , and attempted to negotiate a sharp curve from opposite ends . Thomas W . Tindall , a forestry employee , saw the two trains approaching each other from an embankment ; he tried to signal the " Continental " crew , who responded to his frantic signals with a friendly wave . The two crews did not realise that a collision was imminent until the last moment , and the trains struck head - on at 10 : 35 a . m . The accident occurred south of Valemount , east of a small station named Canoe River , westbound from Cedarside . The crash took place on the only stretch ( 18 - mile ( 29 km ) long ) of CNR mainline in the mountains not protected by automatic block signal s . The leading cars of each train were derailed , while those which had been part of the troop train were demolished by the crash . According to testimony at the inquiry , most of the deaths were caused by steam from the troop train ' s ruptured boilers penetrating the damaged cars . At the moment of the crash , two soldiers , Gunners William Barton and Roger Bowe , both of Newfoundland , were buying cigarettes at the newsstand aboard the train . The structure of the newsstand shielded them in the crash , and they survived . Their fellow Newfoundlanders , Gunners Joseph Thistle and James A . White , standing just a few feet away , were not shielded by the newsstand and perished in the crash . Rescue . People from the nearby settlement of Valemount hurried to the scene and found the troop cars damaged beyond recognition . Some had collapsed in the disaster ; rescuers used axes and hammers to break into them . There were no medical supplies aboard the troop train , and the only medical officer on board had disembarked in Edmonton . First - aid kit s on that train proved empty ; a box labelled " Medical Stores " was found to contain only contraceptives . Dr . P . S . Kimmett of Edson , Alberta , a passenger on the " Continental " , took charge of efforts to aid the injured with his wife , a nurse . Kimmett supervised efforts to aid 50 people despite having almost no supplies or trained personnel . One soldier , still alive , appeared to have not an inch of skin on his body unscalded ; another had a chunk of glass piercing his chest from front to back . With the exception of the engine and tender of the " Continental " , which were demolished , there was little damage to the eastbound train . Several of the passengers on the " Continental " suffered minor injuries . One dining car on the troop train was used as a hospital , another as a morgue . James Henderson , a young officer on the troop train , recalled : I talked with one soldier who lay shivering in a bunk in the hospital coach . He had no visible sign of injury but his face was a ghastly green shade . He wanted more blankets and a cigarette , and I gave him both . An hour later , I helped move his body to the other coach . At the time of the crash , the temperature was about , and there were about of snow on the ground . The telephone lines next to the track were cut by the accident , but a crewman managed to make an emergency call to Jasper in Alberta . Because the crash site was away , medical relief took three hours to arrive . A work engine , in the interim , took the movable coaches of the troop train back along the track as far as Cedarside . The hospital train brought eight nurses and two doctors from Jasper , who spent the trip making what preparations they could . On arrival , they found patients with severe injuries . " There was hardly a case with only one type of trauma . " That rescue train transported the injured to Edmonton from the crash scene . The Jasper doctors left the train when the rescue train reached there , again placing Dr . Kimmett in charge . He remained so until the civilians were relieved by Army personnel from Edmonton , who joined the train in Edson . Major Francis P . Leask , commanding the soldiers , praised Dr . Kimmett ' s work , " We couldn ' t have gotten along without him " and also praised his men , both veterans and recruits , for their calm , efficient work in the disaster . Wintry weather made subsequent attempts to recover the dead difficult ; four bodies were never found . Transcontinental traffic was rerouted temporarily onto Canadian Pacific tracks through Calgary as the CNR attempted to clear the tracks . The work was hampered by an explosion and fire that broke out on the morning of November 22 , consuming many of the wrecked cars and likely the missing bodies , and the wreckage was cleared by that evening , allowing traffic to resume the following day . On November 29 , 1950 , the remaining soldiers left Camp Wainwright , Alberta , where they had been taken after being evacuated to Edmonton , resuming their journey to Korea . The death toll had been 20 , including 16 soldiers . Twelve soldiers and the two two - man locomotive crews died in or shortly after the crash ; four soldiers died on the rescue train en route to hospital in Edmonton . A 17th soldier , Gunner David Owens , died in an Edmonton hospital on December 9 , bringing the death toll to 21 . Owens had suffered severe burns , and was believed on the way to recovery when he suffered a relapse . Gunner Art Evoy , a survivor of the crash , recalled the eeriness of the first roll call at Wainwright , " It was a very small group that answered the roll call that day . " Inquiry . Within days of the crash , the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ( RCMP ) , as the provincial police for British Columbia , began an investigation . The site of the crash was under the jurisdiction of the RCMP detachment in Prince George , British Columbia , and any charges would be laid there . The CNR suspended all trainmen involved in passing the order to the troop train and held an internal inquiry at Kamloops . The Board of Transport Commissioners announced that a public inquiry would be held at Edmonton in December 1950 . Atherton , aged 22 , was dismissed by the CNR before the Edmonton hearings . He testified that there was a lengthy gap in transmission , and that he did not hear the words " at Cedarside " . Although railway regulations called for him to listen to a repeat of the order by the telegrapher at Blue River , he did not do so and instead continued with his other duties , passing the message to the troop train without the vital two words . He denied repeating back the order to dispatcher Tisdale with the two words included . Tisdale testified to passing the order by telephone to Blue River and to Red Pass Junction , and that it was correctly read back to him by both operators . He also testified to a brief gap in communications several days before the crash , saying that in the rough country through which the railway line passed it was not uncommon for objects falling against the communication line to cause brief outages . Parsons also testified that Atherton had correctly repeated back the order . Testimony to the inquiry established the damage to the troop train and those on it . The wooden cars with steel underframes gave little resistance to the impact , unlike the " Continental " ' s steel cars . A CNR official testified that it would cost $ 127 million to replace all such cars with modern steel ones . Dr . Kimmett testified , stating that though he had six bottles of penicillin when he began his work , no syringe could be found to administer it . When a syringe was later found , five of the bottles could no longer be found . No heating was available on the troop train until the arrival of the emergency locomotive from Red Pass Junction , and no blood plasma had been brought on the hospital train — none was available until the injured reached Jasper . Dr . Kimmett testified that it was " very difficult " to administer plasma on the train , and that two men died between Jasper and Edson . The Board of Transport Commissioners issued its report on January 18 , 1951 . It avoided assigning individual responsibility for the deaths and urged the CNR to install block signals on the section of line where the accident took place . The Board noted that the CNR already had a policy of installing such signals , though they were expensive and difficult to obtain from the United States , and that the CNR had deemed other sections of the line more dangerous . It also urged additional training , to ensure that messages were transmitted accurately , and safety checks to catch instances where messages were transmitted incorrectly . Prosecution . Hiring of counsel , arrest . In anticipation of charges being laid against his son , Atherton ' s father approached Member of Parliament and King ' s Counsel John Diefenbaker in December 1950 and sought to retain him as defence counsel . The Athertons were Diefenbaker ' s constituents ; their hometown , Zealandia , Saskatchewan , was in his riding , Lake Centre . Diefenbaker declined the case , stating that Parliament had first call on his time , that his wife Edna was seriously ill with leukemia , and that he was not admitted as a lawyer in British Columbia . As Edna Diefenbaker was well known as an influence over her husband , in desperation Alfred Atherton Sr . talked his way into her Saskatoon hospital room . In his memoirs , Diefenbaker did not mention the elder Atherton ' s initial approach but wrote that he was in Australia at a parliamentary conference at the time of the Canoe River crash . An Australian lawyer pointed out the case to Diefenbaker ; he thought it interesting but noted that he was not a member of the Law Society of British Columbia . Diefenbaker wrote that he planned to meet Edna in Hawaii on his way back from Australia . Instead she wired him , requesting that he meet her in Vancouver . Diefenbaker related that he found his wife in a Saskatoon hospital , in the final stages of the illness that would kill her ( she died on February 7 , 1951 ) . She told him that Jack Atherton had been to see her and that the soldiers ' deaths were from being transported in wooden train cars . " Everyone in the CNR is running away from responsibility for what appears to have been a grievous disregard for human lives . " John Diefenbaker objected that the bar examination in British Columbia was notoriously difficult and that the application fee was $ 1 , 500 . Edna Diefenbaker informed her husband , " I told him you ' d take it " , and eventually her husband gave in . Atherton was arrested for manslaughter on January 9 , 1951 , in Saskatoon and was taken to Prince George by the RCMP . After his dismissal by the CNR , Atherton was staying with his parents at Zealandia , where his father was CNR station agent . The manslaughter charge concerned the death of Henry Proskunik , fireman aboard the troop train . Bail was set at $ 5 , 000 , and Magistrate P . J . Moran required any sureties to appear before him , making it difficult for Atherton ' s connections in Saskatchewan to obtain his release . Atherton was released from custody on January 24 , as Prince George furniture store owner Alex Moffat and local CNR employee William Reynolds each posted sureties valued at $ 2 , 500 . After his wife ' s death in February 1951 , Diefenbaker travelled to Vancouver in early March to take the British Columbia bar examination , which the Prince George " Citizen " called " a formality which will cost him $ 1500 " . Failure to pass the bar would effectively disqualify Diefenbaker from the Atherton case because he would have to wait for reexamination , and the preliminary hearing was set for mid - March . He paid his fee and was then given an oral examination by the bar secretary , which in full was : " Are there contracts required by statute to be in writing ? " " Yes . " " Name one of them . " " A land contract . " Diefenbaker was then congratulated for being the first applicant to pass the British Columbia bar exam with a perfect score . Hearings and trial . The preliminary hearing began on March 13 , 1951 , and lasted three days , during which the Crown called 20 witnesses . Diefenbaker alleged that the rules of the CNR did not require that the telegraph operator listen to the repeat of his message , but merely recommended that he should . Nevertheless , Diefenbaker ' s motion to dismiss was unsuccessful and Atherton was committed for trial before the Supreme Court of British Columbia ( a trial - level court ) . Manslaughter was a charge for which the accused did not have the option of a speedy trial before a county court judge , and Atherton ' s case was set for the Spring Assizes in Prince George . The trial began on May 9 , 1951 . Colonel Eric Pepler , a World War I veteran and British Columbia ' s deputy attorney general , led for the Crown while Diefenbaker led for the defence . To a CNR official on the stand , Diefenbaker said , " I suppose the reason you put these soldiers in wooden cars with steel cars on either end was so that no matter what they might subsequently find in Korea , they ' d always be able to say , ' Well we had worse than that in Canada ' . " Colonel Pepler objected , stating that Diefenbaker had not asked a question . Diefenbaker responded , " My Lord , it was made clear by the elevation of my voice at the end of the sentence that there was a great big question mark on it . " The judge , Justice A . D . McFarlane , began to rule , but Pepler interjected , " I want to make it clear that in this case we are not concerned about the death of a few privates going to Korea . " Pepler intended to remind the judge that Atherton was charged in relation to the death of only the troop train fireman , but Diefenbaker pounced : " Oh , you ' re not concerned about the killing of a few privates ? Oh , Colonel ! " Diefenbaker recounted that a veteran , sitting on the jury , expressed shock at Pepler ' s comment , and Diefenbaker lost no opportunity during the rest of the trial to address Pepler as " Colonel " . The two lead counsel clashed again during their final addresses to the jury , with Pepler objecting to Diefenbaker ' s use of testimony from the preliminary hearing . Justice McFarlane stated to Pepler , " I do not think you should object like this " , and when Pepler persisted , the judge " roared " at him , " Please , just stop this . " Diefenbaker stated , " I sat and suffered while my learned friend misconstrued the evidence " and when he noticed Pepler muttering under his breath , said to him , " You are growling " , to which Pepler replied , " Yes I am growling . I am objecting too . " Diefenbaker suggested to the jury that the silence on the line which had , he contended , swallowed the words " at Cedarside " might have been caused by a fish dropped on a snow - covered line by a bird and claimed to have evidence of a previous occurrence . He noted in his memoirs that the incident " was not well documented , but it was all we had " . He blamed the disaster on Tisdale , stating that lack of the word " at " before " Gosnell " in the order indicated that the Kamloops dispatcher had not been paying attention , and that he should have noticed that , according to Diefenbaker , the words " at Cedarside " were missing from Atherton ' s repeat of the order . The trial had taken four days ; the lawyers argued for five hours ; Diefenbaker ' s summation took three of them . Justice McFarlane took an hour to charge the jury . McFarlane told the jurors that if they believed that Atherton had passed the order to conductor Mainprize in the same form he had received it , they would be justified in acquitting him . The jury returned after 40 minutes of deliberations . Jury foreman Fred Mounkley announced the acquittal of Atherton , as Atherton ' s mother wept . Aftermath . The CNR adopted the inquiry recommendations , installing block signalling in the area of the accident . In 1953 , it modernised its passenger fleet , ordering 302 new cars . In later years , the line was rerouted to eliminate the sharp curve on which the disaster took place . Atherton went to work for the Saskatchewan Transportation Company and settled in Saskatoon . Pepler retired in 1954 , having served 20 years as British Columbia ' s deputy attorney general . He subsequently served as one of British Columbia ' s commissioners on uniform provincial laws and embarked on a revision of the rules of the British Columbia Supreme Court before dying on November 16 , 1957 , at age 66 in a suburban Vancouver hospital . Diefenbaker had represented Atherton at his own expense , though donations from railroad employees reimbursed him for about half his costs . The case had been followed throughout Canada ' s railway community , and on his return to Ottawa , Diefenbaker was widely congratulated for his victory . By 1957 , he had become Leader of the Opposition and Progressive Conservative Party leader , and when he campaigned in Saskatchewan during that year ' s election , Atherton travelled to Regina to greet him , skipping his own wedding rehearsal . As Diefenbaker campaigned in British Columbia , the Vancouver " Sun " reported on the large , enthusiastic crowds he gathered , and noted that he remained well remembered in Prince George for his defence of Atherton . Diefenbaker ' s biographer , Denis Smith , wrote of the Atherton case : Diefenbaker had won a popular victory , redeemed his promise to Edna , and endeared himself for life to Jack Atherton and his fellow railway workers . The case was celebrated in the press and became one of his major political assets . Diefenbaker won the election and , on June 21 , 1957 , became Prime Minister of Canada . Memorials and tributes . The RCHA suffered more casualties in the crash than it did in its first year of fighting in Korea . A monument to the soldiers who died stands at CFB Shilo ( as Camp Shilo has been redesignated ) , where a memorial parade is conducted each year on the anniversary of the crash . It was dedicated on November 21 , 1952 . A memorial cairn was erected near the crash site by the regiment in 1987 . A special remembrance was held in Valemount for the 60th anniversary of the disaster in 2010 . The CNR has also raised a monument near the site of the disaster . The names of the military dead are inscribed in the Korea Book of Remembrance and are also on the Wall of Remembrance in Brampton , Ontario ; they may also be found on the Korea Cairn at Winnipeg Brookside Cemetery . Manitoba has named a lake for Gunner William D . Wright , who died in the crash . In 2003 , as part of Remembrance Week observances for the Canadian Senate , five family members of the soldiers who died in the crash were presented with Memorial Cross es . Other family members were due to receive them at a later date . The dead were not given posthumous Canadian Volunteer Service Medals as they never reached the Korean theatre ; Tom Boutillier , a survivor of the crash , considers that an injustice and has campaigned for medals to be awarded . References . Explanatory notes Footnotes Bibliography