Spy Hill earns praise

RESIDENTS OF SASK. TOWN LAUDED FOR HELPING PASSENGERS ON FROZEN TRAIN

Tributes are pouring in from across Canada for residents of a small Saskatchewan town who sprang to action on Christmas Day to help stranded passengers on a frozen train.

“God bless all of the people that helped out yesterday. It was a really wonderful thing for us,” said Robbie Hancock, a musician who was on the Via Rail train with almost 100 other passengers when it suffered a mechanical problem and pulled up in the tiny community of Spy Hill early Monday.

Hancock and his partner, CarrieAnn Leippi — who are based in Victoria and perform together as Weathervane — were on the train from Vancouver to Toronto as part of a Via Rail program where they get free fare, food and lodging in return for singing and playing for passengers.

Hancock has made the crossCanada trip with the program six times, but it was Leippi’s first. The trip was extra special because she was going to meet Hancock’s parents for the first time.

But they woke up early Christmas morning and told they would have to get off the train because it had no heat.

The train pulled onto a siding in Spy Hill, a community in eastern Saskatchewan near the Manitoba boundary with a population of less than 300, where the temperature was -43 C with the wind chill.

“When we came out, there was all the townspeople that were already there that were coming up in trucks and helping us take all of our luggage and everything off the train and into the Lions Club hall there,” said Hancock, speaking from a taxi on the way to Winnipeg’s airport on Tuesday where he and Leippi would board a plane for Toronto.

“Thanks to all the farmers in the community there and all the firemen, of course, that came out in Spy Hill,” he said. “They got everybody from the train into the hall very quickly and they had already started making breakfast for us.”