Don Fyk was hurriedly driving to a wedding reception in Dauphin, Man., from his home in Garland, Man., when he took a fortuitous wrong turn.
Near Sifton, Man., beside a rail line that he and other community members have long fought to keep in the ground, lay a pile of salvaged rail that had been torn from the ground.
After some phone calls to the Rural Municipality of Dauphin and the RCMP, Cando Contracting Ltd. of Brandon was stopped from ripping up the line.
It’s the latest parry in a back-and-forth struggle along the 134 kilometres of the Cowan subdivision between communities, CN Rail and the new owners, Cando Contracting Ltd.
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It’s a struggle that may be moving to provincial court.
CN first listed the Cowan sub for abandonment on July 3, 1996, the day after new federal rules for rail line discontinuance came into effect.
Since January 1997, towns and municipalities along the track have been scrambling to find a way to keep what they feel is a vital economic lifeline to their region, which stretches from Dauphin north to the Swan River Valley.
According to CN, the village of Ethelbert has twice agreed to buy the line but no financial deal was signed.
“Four years into the process, we felt it was time to wrap it up,” said CN spokesperson Jim Feeny.
CN gave the communities a May 15 deadline.
The village of Ethelbert submitted another offer, this time with operator Omnitrax, best known for its short line to Churchill.
But CN also received an offer from Cando Contracting, another short-line operator, that wanted to buy the line for scrap.
“The offer was financially attractive,” said Feeny, adding the village’s offer was inferior.
But Ethelbert councilor and business owner Vi Lawlor is skeptical.
“I think it’s because Omnitrax is in the picture with us,” said Lawlor.
“They (CN) don’t want it themselves, but they don’t want anyone else to have it either, especially Omnitrax.”
Lawlor said she’s not convinced CN actually sold the line to Cando, since land titles have not been transferred.
Several community groups have lodged official complaints with the Canadian Transportation Agency about the way CN offered the line.
Lawlor thinks the agency will make its decision sometime in October.
In the meantime, communities are lobbying governments and writing letters to politicians in an effort to make the authorities step in and stop the abandonment.
“Right now, we’re slowly going down the drain,” said Lawlor, describing her small village’s lack of economic activity and the threat to the town’s grain elevator.
“If this line is ripped up, it’s gone. It’s gone forever.”
Local governments have also passed heritage bylaws, calling for the line to be saved for historical reasons. It brought the first wave of Ukrainian settlers to the West, explained Fyk, who is also president of the Manitoba Heritage Federation.
Other municipalities have passed reclamation bylaws, requiring Cando to have a permit from the RM before tearing up track.
The new bylaws frustrate Gord Peters, president of Cando, who called them “expropriation without compensation.”
His company plans to take one of the RMs to court to get a ruling on the issue.
“The short-line industry needs clarification of what’s going on,” he said, adding businesses won’t invest in track if they can’t be assured they will be able to control their own assets.
Peters had looked at running a short line on the Cowan sub years ago, but said the economics don’t make sense.
Part of the track is in terrible condition, he said, and hasn’t been used for a decade.
Grain and lumber customers have moved off the track. It’s cheaper for trucks to move the commodities, he said.
His company bought the line on June 2 for scrap, and started tearing it up in several places, but has been stopped each time, he said.
Peters sympathizes with the communities, even though he doesn’t think their line is viable. He said he’s willing to sell it back to them, but he hasn’t received any concrete offers.
Meanwhile, CN has filed a lawsuit against a municipality and its councilors over a piece of track farther up the Swan River Valley.
Feeny said CN had started to remove rail from the 23-kilometre Erwood subdivision north of Swan River in June when it was stopped by the RM of Mountain. The RM had passed a heritage bylaw protecting the track.
Feeny said municipalities are exploiting the provincial Heritage Resources Act for commercial use and are preventing rail lines from using their own property.
“It is messy, but there are important questions here for us,” said Feeny.
