Recently on a visit to Harrison Landing, a retirement home in Langley, B.C., 87 year old Hugh McGuire related his one and only experience “riding the rails”.
Hugh was born on April 29, 1917 and grew up in Chalk River, Ontario. The Great Depression hit hard in 1933 and 16 year old Hugh could not find work, nothing ever happened in Chalk River and he was not content to sit idly complaining about hard times. He hungered for adventure and travel. He had heard of the Relief Camps paying 5 dollars a month in 1933. The following year he read of the On-to-Ottawa-Trek. Chronically unemployed and disenchanted men were riding the rails to Ottawa hoping to convince the government to give them jobs. Many men from the work camps were protesting the meager wage and pointless work. A large group was stopped in Regina; the men were kicked off the trains. On July 1, 1935 a riot broke out when police tried to intervene.
Hugh hung around the C.P.R. railway yard and hobo jungle in Chalk River where many travelers would stop for a handout. It was here seasoned hoboes tried to discourage young Hugh. They told him stories of cold, snow and rain, thievery, danger and railway bulls (police). They warned of injury and even death trying to catch a freight train on the fly. Catching on a departing train could throw a person between two cars and under the wheels. Riding the truss rods under boxcars was neither safe nor comfortable.
Hugh was not to be discouraged; he had to find a better life. He would not jump on a freight train but would travel “first class” perched high on a pile of coal in the tender of a passenger locomotive. Crews mostly ignored non-revenue riders. Packing his few possessions in a tattered leather suitcase he boarded a C.P.R. Consolidation locomotive taking the regular passenger train late one afternoon. He was heading for Pembroke. Pembroke was a divisional point for the C.N.R and C.P.R., affording options to travel east or west.
His trip was short lived, perhaps his mother alerted the railway police, ten miles out he was arrested and taken many miles to North Bay and jail. Sentenced to seven days of porridge and molasses, home was starting to look pretty good. He was released in five days for good behavior and sent back to Chalk River.
The outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 gave Hugh his first break, he joined the Army. He learned trades as a Machinist, Millwright and Steam Engineer. In 1952 he became President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Loyally serving his fellow man for 50 years, never forgetting lessons learned in the school of a hobo jungle in Chalk River, Ontario.
