As far back as 1953, the term diesel, as applied to railway locomotives, was well known to the CNR employees in Stratford. Increasingly, the popular Canadian National Magazine had been carrying stories about the new wave of motive power. The Canadian Locomotive Co. ran ads in the magazine hailing “the throbbing hum of the diesel.” The main text on a two-page layout began with “The days of the steam locomotive are numbered,” and concluded with “Yes, the pulsing roar of the diesel locomotive is a song of power and progress, with a very real significance for every Canadian.” These were chilling reads for the men of the Stratford shops, men who worked with steam.

Early in 1953, the CNR inventory of rolling stock included 2,417 locomotives powered by steam and 395 driven by diesel. A company official in Toronto said Stratford would get its first diesel switcher in April. Before that, however, an announcement out of Montreal confirmed the darkest fears of its workers in Stratford. The CNR planned layoffs that would affect 75 employees. There was an exchange of correspondence between Stratford mayor Laurence Feick and CNR president Donald Gordon, but the latter said the move was unavoidable. Magazine stories continued to darken the Stratford workers’ vision of their future. One headline revealed “New Diesels are Major Factor in Our Modernization Plans.”

But there was to be a temporary reprieve. Conversion of other repair shops, Point St. Charles (Montreal) in particular, from steam to diesel sent a lot of steam work to Stratford in the mid-1950s. There were more than 1,500 employees working 48-hour weeks. Coupled with the popularity of the city’s newest industry, a Shakespearean “festival,” the booming shops made for prosperous times in Stratford.

Those in the know, however, viewed that bubble of prosperity to be short-lived. Most informed and anxious were the CNR’s front-line workers, collectively bound by their union of federated crafts. On May 28, 1958, their reps joined Stratford mayor Fred Cox in Ottawa for a meeting with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and members of his Progressive Conservative cabinet. Accompanying the mayor were pipefitter Jack Twamley, chair of the shops’ federated crafts; Earl Townsend, general chair of the shops’ machinists; and Les Whittemore, secretary-treasurer of the federated crafts and the shops fire chief. With Diefenbaker on the receiving line were Michael Starr, the government’s minister of labour, and George Hees, its minister of transport. Their gathering was arranged by Stratford resident J. Waldo Monteith, who at the time was the Perth County member of Parliament and the minister of national health and welfare.

In its afternoon edition on May 21, 1958, the Stratford Beacon-Herald told its readers about the meeting in a short, single-column story that began with “A deputation asking for the transfer of some of the CNR’s diesel maintenance operations to the motive power shops in Stratford was received sympathetically by Prime Minister Diefenbaker at noon today.” It also reported that Mr. Twamley, pleased with the reception he and his colleagues received, said, “I believe this question has a considerable bearing on the economy of the city as a whole,” and that it would be profitable both for Stratford and the railway if at least a portion of the diesel repair could be done in the city’s shops.

Indeed, that was a recurring message in the 14-page document presented by the Stratford delegation to the prime minister and his cabinet members. The pages included a review of how and why Stratford had long been an essential component in the success of the CNR. In return, the railway operation had fueled growth and good fortune for the city and its residents. In the delegation’s report there was a list of the city’s industrial operations and their combined workforce of more than 2,321. Closure of the shops, said the delegation, would eliminate at least 856 of those jobs and create economic chaos for “our community as a whole.” There was mention, too, of the fear, anxiety and tension that was coursing through the city.

Though not an attendee, the occasion of that meeting remains a vivid memory for Les Whittemore’s son, Peter. “I was stationed in Ottawa with the RCMP when they came,” he says, “and I remember giving my dad and Mr. Twamley a little tour of the city before they returned to Stratford, by train, of course.”

A copy of the presentation delivered that day by the Stratford delegates long remained among the railway documents accumulated through the years by the Whittemore family, which was well connected to the CNR operation in Stratford. The May 21, 1958, document is now destined for the Stratford-Perth Archives. Scribbled on the back of the third page in the Whittemore copy of that document are these notes, thought to have been written by Les Whittemore.

Control of railway is not in Government hands

fairly presented very much impressed

Surprised about the 100 mile radius from Toronto

Mr. Hees to bring it to the attention of C.N.R. and Mr. Gordon

The “map” below referenced in the presentation was a blueprint-type layout of the CNR property bounded by St. Patrick, Downie, St. David and Nelson (what is now Cooper) streets. It shows the various shops (machine, erecting, boiler, tender and annex) and outbuildings, as well as a turntable and the network of tracks. It is much like the layout in the book Two Divisions to Bluewater by Peter Bowers. It also appears on p. 79 in Railway Stratford Revisited, the 2012 book by Dean Robinson.

If the Ottawa presentation on that May afternoon generated any kind of hope for the presenters and for the people they represented, that optimism was dashed 36 days later, on Thursday, June 26, 1958. That is the date of what came to be called the “doomsday meeting” in the Canadian National Railways assembly hall at 256 Downie St. Hastily summoned were members of the Stratford city council and the chamber of commerce, as well as about three dozen local representatives of the railway’s unions. Representing the CNR were Eric Wynne, chief of motive power and car equipment, out of Montreal; L. S. McGregor, general superintendent of motive power and car equipment for the Central Region, out of Toronto; and F. Eugene Carlin, superintendent of the Stratford division. It was Carlin who delivered the bad news: “Management has had to face the prospect of dispensing with the services of more than 850 employees, many of them with long service and some with roots in the community that go back two and three generations. Such a move would have tragic consequences for a city of this size, and we searched intensively for some method of lessening the effect of closing the shops. The solution now proposed is to institute a temporary work program of some years’ duration that will employ all those with 20 years’ or more service and who will have reached the age of 50 by Dec. 31 next. More than one third of the shop staff is in that category.”

The next day the Beacon-Herald ran a two-column editorial on its front page, calling the announcement “a sad and serious point in this city’s history.” Just inches away there was another story, with a three-column headline that read, “CNR Deficit At $18,327,000 In Five Months.” For the corresponding period a year earlier, the company had reported an operating surplus of $10,795,000. For the month of January 1957 the total manufacturing payroll for Stratford was $1,134,192 (12,270,587 in 2024 dollars). Of that total, CNR wages and salaries accounted for $322,235 (3,486,193 in 2024 dollars), or better than 28 per cent. Four years earlier, 38 per cent of all workers in manufacturing in the city were employed by the CNR. Carlin’s words did not signal Armageddon, but losing the shops and its jobs was going to hurt.

City lawyer Bob Mountain was at that doomsday meeting. As a third-year alderman with more than a passing interest in the mayor’s chair, he was as concerned as anyone. “For a few weeks, as the workers spent their pension contributions things looked good,” he recalled years later. “But it was a pretty dark winter. For the first time since the early ‘30s Stratford had a loss of population. I think it was about two per cent. When the city council announced that it had to replace the janitor in city hall, we were flooded with applications. The short list had 60 names on it.”

Mountain ran for the mayor’s office in the fall of 1958 and won the job by defeating Clarence M. (Dutch) Meier. In his inaugural address in January 1959, Mountain said, “One of our prime tasks is to develop a positive attitude in ourselves and in our people so that the employment situation can be remedied as quickly as possible.” He pointed to the city’s unemployment level, noting it was higher at the end of 1957 than it was in 1958. And he concluded with this optimistic note, “The economic life of Stratford is represented by a total picture, and it has now been amply proven that the cutback at the CNR and the closing of Westinghouse have not had the disastrous effects predicted.”

The reduction of work and workers in the shops continued until just days before March 31, 1964, the CNR’s official closure of the facility.