Qualla: Island Rail Corridor

Island Rail Corridor: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0. The last spike was gold and the hammer was silver. On 13 August 1886, at Cliffside near Shawnigan Lake, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald drove it home on the only visit he ever made to British Columbia, completing three and a half years of construction on the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway. The ceremony was out of all proportion to the railway: a line up one side of an island. But the E&N had not been built for its traffic. It had been built to settle an argument that had nearly torn the young Dominion apart, and it had been paid for with something close to a fifth of Vancouver Island.

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Image: Michal Klajban | CC BY-SA 4.0

Island Rail Corridor: The Promise That Nearly Broke Confederation

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marty Bernard from U.S.A., Public domain. When British Columbia entered Canada in 1871, the terms of union required Ottawa to begin building a railway to the Pacific within two years, linking Victoria to the rest of the country. The province, for its part, would hand over a band of public land along the route. Ottawa was...

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Image: Marty Bernard from U.S.A. | Public domain

Island Rail Corridor: Dunsmuir's Bargain

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob from Victoria, BC, Canada, Public domain. The man who eventually built it was Robert Dunsmuir, the Nanaimo coal baron, who happened also to be a sitting member of the provincial legislature negotiating with itself, which raised eyebrows then and reads worse now. He incorporated the E&N with three California partners - Ch...

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Image: Rob from Victoria, BC, Canada | Public domain

Island Rail Corridor: Reaching and Retreating

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lindenify, CC0. Under the CPR the line kept growing. Rails reached Wellington in 1887, Victoria in 1888, Port Alberni in 1911, Lake Cowichan in 1912, and Courtenay in 1914. The plan had been to carry on north to Campbell River; the First World War ended that. Then the century turned against it. ...

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Image: Lindenify | CC0

Island Rail Corridor: Temporarily Suspended

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alasdair McLellan, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2011, with decades of deferred maintenance finally catching up to the track, VIA and the operating railway suspended the Victoria-Courtenay passenger train indefinitely. The word used was temporary, and it has now been temporary for well over a decade. A replacement bus ran fo...

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Image: Alasdair McLellan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Island Rail Corridor: Owned by Everybody

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alasdair McLellan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rather than being abandoned and broken up, the corridor was given away. The Island Corridor Foundation - a registered charity formed as a partnership between Cowichan Tribes and the local governments strung along the line - negotiated for years, and in February 2006 the Canadian ...

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Image: Alasdair McLellan | CC BY-SA 3.0