Hi all,
When I saw Doug's original posting on the Chinese trains I was reminded
of one of the legends I had heard when I worked for CP at Windsor
Station--the Chinese waiting room. I sent an email to Ron Ritchie asking
if the "Chinese trains" and the "Chinese waiting room" could be
connected. He dug up the following article from CP Rail News and they
are indeed part of the same story:
----Start of CP Rail News Story----
CP Rail News
February 16, 1981
Legend conjures up cruel visions but it's really just another myth
By Ron Grant
There is a popular legend that, at one time, some Chinese laborers were
kept in a cell-like room with barred doors, deep in the gloomy bowels of
Windsor Station. It's a story perpetuated out of the corners of mouths
in sly, confidential whispers.
When heard, it conjures up visions of leg irons, anguish and cruel
desperation, even in the least sympathetic imaginations. But, as it
happens, it's just another myth.
The truth is that during the First World War, the allied forces
recruited laborers in China to be sent to Europe to perform unskilled
labor in connection with military operations. These Chinese, evidently
all volunteers, were used to help in the digging of trenches or in
construction work around military installations. Apparently they were
not employed in conditions which would normally put them under enemy
fire.
Movement from China, presumably through Hong Kong and Shanghai, was made
by CPSS vessels across the Pacific, by train across Canada, then by
convoy across the Atlantic. While travelling across Canada they were, of
course, aliens in bond and, as such, were escorted by guards. Pending
transfer to other trains and ships, they required overnight
accommodation-and this is how the legend was born.
They were housed and fed in immigrant quarters for transients which the
company maintained on B floor in Windsor Station, below the concourse
and waiting room levels.
Now there happens to be a cell-like room with barred doors that still
exists at the bottom of the stairs to B floor, off the Lagauchetiere and
Peel office entrance. This room, however, was maintained by the Express
Company as a store room for bullion and other valuables in transit. It
was never used by the Chinese, or anyone else.
But, a vestige of the old immigrant quarters still remains in an area on
this floor. It's a room, with a door out to the Peel Street hill, which
the present building staff-and generations of them before-still call
"the old kitchen." Evidently, this is where the immigrant kitchen was,
although it ceased to exist at least 50 years ago.
In any case, there was no dungeon, no cries of despair, no nudge-nudges
and wink-winks. Even so, I'll bet that five or six years hence, somebody
will pause with me at the top of the B floor stairs and furtively say:
"Did I ever tell you about that room down there with the barred door."
----End of CP Rail News Story----
Cheers,
Jim
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Jim Sandilands
Mile 3.6 St. Lawrence & Hudson Westmount Subdivision
Montreal, Canada
mailto:jimsand@... Voicemail: 514-854-5101
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