Nicholas Morant

The picture on the front of this post card was taken by Nicholas Morant.

For those of us who are "foamers" along the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) right of way west of Calgary, Nicholas Morant is a sort of icon or hero. Although he photographed many aspects of Canadian life and he was a great nature photographer, we "foamers" know him for the pictures of the CPR in the Rockies and the curve that the CPR named after him near Lake Louise at milepost 113 on CPR’s Laggan Subdivision. This post card shows the actual Curve that Morant made famous:

On the main line, so that the engineers and conductors can see it, there is a sign that says: "Morant's Curve" straight down from where the photographer of this picture is standing. This is looking west from an observation point along Highway 1A (Bow Valley Parkway). The picture on the front of this post card, below, is facing east from the same vantage point:

I strongly suggest that you look up Nicholas Morant on line, or in the library, to see what wonderful Black & White as well as colour photographs he developed. There is one book of which I am aware that features his work: Nicholas Morant's Canadian Pacific by J. F. Garden.

At only 19 years old, Nicholas Morant from Kamloops, British Columbia, began his photographic efforts with the CPR in 1929. He was hired on as the “special photographer”. He worked with the CPR almost continuously (there were 2 "shifts" not with the CPR) until he retired in 1981. He died March 13, 1999, in Calgary, Alberta at the age of 88.

He spent many hours at the Stoney Creek Bridge in Rogers Pass atop a specially constructed scaffolding where he photographed the special passenger train in the first post card, above, in 1955. This train is a special edition with Princess Margaret aboard. It is following the tracks of the famous Canadian transcontinental service.

As you can imagine, photographing around a railway in the mountains can be hazardous. An example of this is the story of when Morant and a Swiss guide encountered and were attacked by a grizzly bear. It happened in 1939. The guide eventually died of his injuries while Morant spent three months recovering in a hospital. The incident happened near the Morant's Curve featured in the other two post cards.

The first post card was published by Vanishing Vistas. It is copyrighted by Lyman E. Cox out of Sacramento, California in 1974. The middle post card is published by Altitude Publishing - the photo is copyrighted by Douglas Leighton. The bottom post card is the result of the efforts of The Postcard Factory from Markham, Ontario, Canada.

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.