For the past 20 years, Louis Wolkowski has worked to get more traffic through Canada’s only inland port.
The grain farmer from Canora, Sask. spent last Friday talking to other fervent Churchill port supporters about CN Rail’s sale of the rail line leading to the port to a U.S. short-line company.
“I know there’s some concern, and that crossed my mind too, for the sovereignty and the dignity of this country, that it’s an American-based rail company,” Wolkowski said.
“But I don’t think it’s that important to really get too excited about it.”
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Hugh Campbell, a Qu’Appelle, Sask. pea grower, expressed similar sentiments.
“If they’re doing a great job for us, we won’t be thinking much whether they’re American or Canadian,” he said.
Last week, those who want to see Churchill on Hudson Bay become a major grain port were less concerned with questions of sovereignty than they were relieved CN sold the track to someone who wants to make the northern system work.
OmniTrax, a company that manages 11 short-line railways in the United States, bought the network of lines.
Good track record
CN president Paul Tellier said OmniTrax has a good reputation, lots of experience and a strong bottom line.
At a news conference in Winnipeg last week, Tellier would not disclose details of the sale because of confidentiality arrangements with the company.
The deal includes a network of more than 1,300 kilometres of track starting at The Pas, Man. serving northern mining towns like Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and Thompson, as well as Churchill.
Lloyd Axworthy, Manitoba’s senior government MP who has been a long-time Churchill supporter, said the federal government has started negotiations with OmniTrax for the port.
“We believe, as most do, that the port and the rail line go hand in hand,” said Dwight Johnson, president of OmniTrax.
The chair of a Manitoba-based company trying to buy the line said he felt “bittersweet” about the sale.
Gord Peters of Gateway North Transportation System Ltd. said his group spent a year and more than $600,000 of its own money on the project.
They’re happy the line will continue to run, but Peters said they wish they knew why their bid wasn’t chosen.
“There seems to be a whole lot of our plan in the announcements today, so I think we had the right plan,” Peters said.
Pro-Canadian sovereignty groups were shocked at the sale.
“American business interests are not going to be concerned with the building of a Canadian economy, with Canadian jobs, with maintaining Canadian roots,” said Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians.
“They’re going to look at bottom line profit, period.”
But Churchill supporters said the profit approach is just what the doctor ordered for the ailing port.
“These people will probably try and build up more shipments through that run because they are certainly out there to make a dollar,” Wolkowski said.
