Editor,

Much has been said about the CN derailments that caused major environmental destruction to the Cheakamus River and Wabanum Lake. It is less well known that CN has experienced a record number of over 70 other derailments this year including a more recent spill of sulfur near Prince George and another in which a small amount of really nasty stuff was spilled into the environment. This is obviously not good management unless it is actually part of the plan, the cost of doing business, for a company, which “is committed to moving more freight, more quickly and with fewer assets” and rewards executives with multi-million dollar bonuses for cutting corners.

But that is not the topic of this letter. This is about CN and the community. It started before the Cheakamus fiasco with some brush clearing along the tracks in Brackendale. After the job was “finished”, the much used access trail south of Depot Road was left covered in debris. Not a problem, I was told by the track maintenance company, since CN doesn’t want us on “their” right of ways even if we have been using them since the railway was built almost a century ago.

The trail has since been cleared by the good citizens of the Republic, not by CN, but not before I had gone to the local CN office and talked to the one remaining employee (presumably left there to shred the last of the documents) who was very sympathetic and gave me her name and local so I could check back later. When I called back she had gone on vacation. And so begins my story.

Used to be, if that pesky signal at the end of our property decided to go on ringing and flashing long after the train had passed, you could look up BC Rail in the phone book, call the North Yards after-hours number, talk to a real person, and be assured that they would get right on it. No more! There are no listings in our local phone book for CN or BCR. Call the number 411 gives you, 604 898 2400, and a voice tells you that the BCR switchboard in no longer in service but if you know the local… So I called CN in Vancouver (1 888...) and was given a number for the “Community Connects” office (in Calgary) for all of Canada: 1 800 766 7912. She (using first person singular) was not at her desk but I left the requested detailed message. By then it was the middle of August and CN had bigger PR fish to fry than local brush clearing, but she has still not called me back.

Another number published in a newspaper article, 1888 888 5909, which predicted an 11 second wait. I put the phone on speaker, made tea, filed my nails, listened to 20 variations of how important my call was to “our team” and, to their credit, the woman who finally answered was really well trained at scraping the caller off of the ceiling and getting to the point. I was impressed. She took down my concerns, read them back from her screen, and promised that no less a person than Mr. Dallas (“operations were within industry standards”) himself would be calling me back.

He has not called.

Obviously CN is not interested in the communities on its line. Why should they be? Who is going to hold their feet to the fire? I used to think we should save BC Rail but since pretty much all the jobs are gone from our community, I look forward to the day they decommission the tracks and give the land back (You did say we still own the land, didn’t you, Gordon?) to the communities to use for bike trails. That way the environment will no longer be at risk and there will be great economic benefit to all the communities on the route.

Dorte Froslev
(The Republic of) Brackendale

© The Whistler Question 2005