Following the River out of the Mountains

Down in the bottom, right corner of the post card it says,"217. Kicking Horse Canyon" As you can see, this is a picture of a steam train going along the canyon in the summer (notice the open car at the end of the train).

The Kicking Horse River is in the Canadian Rockies of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. The river was named in 1858, when James Hector, a member of the Palliser Expedition, reported being kicked by his pack-horse while exploring the river. Hector named the river and the associated pass as a result of the incident. The purpose of the Palliser Expedition was to gather scientific information on Rupert's Land, including information on the geography, climate, soil, flora and fauna, to discover its capabilities for settlement and transportation. The Kicking Horse Pass, which connects through the Rockies to the valley of the Bow River, was the route through the mountains that the Canadian Pacific Railway chose when it was constructed. The railway's Big Hill and associated Spiral Tunnels are in the Kicking Horse valley and were necessitated by the steep rate of descent of the river and its valley.

The picture on this post card, like last week's picture, was published by Byron Harmon. You can read last week's posting to find out more about Mr. Harmon.

If you look closely at the top right hand corner, where the stamp is to be placed, you will see a code that hints at the age of this post card. The box around the words, "PLACE STAMP HERE" have the letters "AZO" in between the boxes in the four corners. Azo was a brand name for blue light sensitive, silver chloride photo paper introduced by the Photo Materials Company in Rochester, New York in 1898. Kodak purchased the company that same year. Because of its poor light sensitivity it was manufactured for contact printing rather than enlarging. Its very broad tonal scale makes it the finest paper ever made to produce black & white work on. This paper became the favorite of those producing real photo postcards and was widely popular among amateurs because of its ease to use.

The fact that there are four boxes embedded with the AZO name tells us that this post card was printed between 1927 and 1940. It has been in continuous production longer than any other photo paper but was discontinued in 2005.

Pretty High Up in the Mountains

As part of the deal that saw British Columbia join the Canadian Confederation, the Government of Canada promised to connect British Columbia by rail to eastern Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was incorporated in 1881 to accomplish this promise. The last spike was driven at Craigellachie, B.C. on November 7, 1885.

Of course, the most dangerous part of building the railway was the section in the British Columbia mountains. Rivers, streams and creeks had to be crossed. To begin, wooden trestle bridges were built to span the chasms. Stoney Creek Bridge, at 325 feet, was the highest single-span bridge on the CPR line. It is 200 metres long (656 ft) of the truss arch bridge style. Built in 1893, it now carries the Canadian Pacific Railway single track 90 meters (295 ft) over the Stoney Creek, between Revelstoke and Golden. It was the Stoney Creek Bridge is a 200-metre-long (656 ft) truss arch bridge in British Columbia, Canada.

It was originally made of timber in 1893. A steel structure replaced

the wooden bridge in 1894. This quote from Flashback Canada (by J. Bradley Cruxton. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, ©2000, p. 161) explains how daunting the feat of building the bridge affected the engineers who had to drive over it: "The Mountain Creek trestle looked so fragile that one engineer refused to drive his engine over it. Van Horne said that he would drive the engine across himself. The engineer said, 'If you ain't afraid of getting killed Mr. Van Horne, with all your money, I ain't afraid either.' Van Horne replied, 'We'll have a double funeral – at my expense of course.' The engine passed safely over the bridge."

A second set of arches was added in 1929 to handle heavier traffic.

These coordinates are where you can find the bridge today: 51°22'48.00" N -117°27'57.60" W and they are very close to where Byron Harmon was standing when he took the picture on the front of the post card.

Byron Harmon arrived in Alberta in 1903 as an itinerant photographer after leaving his portrait studio in Tacoma, Washington. By 1906 He had become a founding member and official photographer of the Alpine Club of Canada. He took over 6,400 photographs while exploring the Canadian Rockies and the Selkirks. In 1907 Harmon began turning many of these photographs into real photo postcards, which became his principal life’s work. In 1924 he

traveled into the Rockies with the photographer Lewis R. Freeman. Some of the real photo postcards produced under Harmon’s name from this trip may actually be the work of Freeman that he published for him. After this trip Harmon mostly produced scenes alongside railway lines. He also distributed printed color postcards made from his photos that were manufactured in the United States.

His granddaughter still has a shop in Banff, Alberta.

Crossing Canada by Railway

The image on the front of this postcard shows the Transcontinental Limited train on the Canadian National mainline at Lucerne, British Columbia.

Lucerne sits 1,158 meters (3,800 feet) above sea level in the Canadian Rockies. It is west of Jasper, Alberta near the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson.

I searched the internet to see what I could find about the Transcontinental Limited train, and all I could find was that it was replaced on April 24, 1955, by Canadian National's new transcontinental flagship Super Continental. It mentions that this was the same date that competitor Canadian Pacific Railway introduced its new streamlined transcontinental train The Canadian.

Gowen & Sutton, the name on the back of the post card, were publishers of

real photo and printed postcards of the Canadian West. Not only did they produce cards depicting large cities, they captured many hard to reach views within the Canadian Territories. Many of their cards were hand tinted in a simple manner striving for style rather than realism, which created cards in vastly differing quality. While the real photo cards were made in Canada their printed cards were made in England. They were in business from 1921 to 1960 in Vancouver.