As construction of the Evergreen Line gets into gear, Coquitlam's very first electric rail transit service is about to pass its 100th anniversary.
It was on June 10, 1912, that the B.C. Electric Railway's (BCER) interurban service between New Westminster and Fraser Mills carried its first passengers, providing convenient hourly service from the Royal City to the townsite of the British Empire's largest lumber mill.
With the mill burgeoning, the company's townsite on mill property and the nearby new community of Maillardville soon had a population of a thousand. Other millworkers lived in adjacent Sapperton and other parts of New Westminster, and they all needed a reliable way to get to work. Those living in walking distance from the mill wanted a convenient way to get to New Westminster for shopping and entertainment.
At first, trains ran 3.5 miles from Fraser Mills to the BCER depot on Columbia Street in New Westminster, taking 25 minutes. Later, the trip would be reduced to 15 minutes.
To start the service, BCER built a branch off its line on Columbia Street, diverging to run along Brunette Street to the city limits and continuing into Coquitlam on a private right-of-way donated by the mill. It also donated the wooden ties for the rails and poles for the trolley wires, and a further half-mile of track was built past the public terminus at Fraser Mills right into the millsite, to accommodate special commuter services for the workforce and night-time freight trains.
From December 1913 onward, Fraser Mills trains travelled through to Queensborough, running alongside Ewen Avenue in that community as far as Jardine Street.
In his book The Story of the B.C. Electric Railway Co., historian Henry Ewert describes the ambience of the line in 1925:
"The Fraser Mills line always seemed to be busy. Two-car St. Louis-built interurban trains were the rule, and on Saturday night especially, they were packed with people coming into New Westminster. One mile west of the Fraser Mills station was Abbatoir station, better known to all habitués of the line as 'Packing House.'
"Since the fare from Fraser Mills to Packing House was six cents, and from there to New Westminster another six cents, conductors were driven almost to distraction by the fact that those who had boarded at Fraser Mills tended to claim they had boarded at Packing House. This chaos led further to the fare-saving riders fleeing the train with utmost speed upon its arrival at New Westminster."
Pioneer resident Elsie McKinnon, quoted in the book Coquitlam: 100 Years, clearly remembered the interurban line: "The tram ran from Queensborough to Fraser Mills once an hour. This was quite a comfortable, reliable service except when the old Queensborough bridge opened to river traffic."
She recalled the stop at Swift's slaughterhouse for a different reason than the extra fare: "One always knew when approaching Swift's from the horrendous odour. It did not seem to matter whether one was tired and fell asleep or was inebriated, they always aroused themselves when approaching Swift's."
The end came in 1937, when New Westminster streetcar lines were converted to bus routes. This saw the removal of tracks along Columbia Street, thus isolating the Fraser Mills branch. Service ended on Aug. 1.
Now, 75 years later, there is no physical trace of the line's route through Coquitlam. After crossing the Brunette River at the city limits, it would have curved across the alignment of today's freeway and then turned due east, running a half-block south of Tupper Avenue. That would take it through the site of today's giant Ikea store on its way to King Edward, where it turned south to reach the mill.
As we await the coming of the Evergreen Line, spare a thought for the pioneer of electric rail transit that served this community a century ago.
Your History is a column in which, once a month, representatives of the Tri-Cities' three heritage groups writes about local history. Ian Smith, writing for Coquitlam Heritage Society, is editor of The Sandhouse, the quarterly journal of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association, Pacific Coast Division.
