Back on schedule
Historic ‘Freeman Station’ has survived fires, abandonment and now COVID-19
You won’t be able to catch a train at “Freeman Station” in Burlington when it reopens on Saturday.
But you will be able to indulge in some railway nostalgia.
Think of it as a chance to travel back through time, rather than through space.
The 116-year-old building on Fairview Street — that was transformed into an interpretive centre in 2017 — has been in hibernation mode for the past two years because of COVID-19.
Now that pandemic restrictions have been eased, the volunteer group that looks after facility has decided to welcome the public again. Among other things, they want to show off some major improvements made during the shutdown.
But, visiting opportunities will be limited over the next several months, with the station being open only one day per month.
“What we are trying to show people is what a train station looked like in the early 1900s. They’ll be able to compare the difference to what a GO station is like today,” says Ed Keenleyside, president of the Friends of Freeman Station.
The closure during COVID led to a major drop in donations, something that would have been disastrous without government assistance. As well, the pandemic has meant the number of volunteers has declined as well.
But, adversity is nothing new to the station that is one of the last of its kind from the once mighty Grand Trunk Railway system.
In 1854, the first version of the station — two storeys tall with station master quarters on the top floor — was built at 950 Brant St. The wood structure burned down 28 years later.
Rebuilt shortly after in 1883, it burned down again in 1906.
That led to a one-storey third version of the station that operated until 1988 when the GO Transit station on Fairview replaced it.
Demolition looked inevitable for the surplus building, but community groups rallied to save the station that is known informally as “Freeman Station” because of the hamlet of Freeman around it. But, the station was officially known as “Burlington Junction” or “Burlington West.”
The City of Burlington ended up buying the station for one dollar in 2010, with the understanding the building would be moved. No permanent site could be found so it was loaded on a flatbed truck and placed at the back of the Burlington Fire Department station on Fairview Street on a temporary basis.
Then in 2015 a deal was struck to use an adjacent section of property owned by a chemical company that is currently known as Solenis. The move was only 200 metres.
Then two years later, the station was officially opened to the public.
But then the pandemic struck in early 2020, and the station has been closed ever since.
Keenleyside says volunteers continued restoration work over the downtime with renovations to a boxcar and caboose in the back of the lot as well as landscaping work. Inside, new audiovisual equipment was added, and a massive scale model of the station and the immediate area was worked on in the basement.
“We haven’t been open, but we’ve been busy,” says Keenleyside, who
hopes the enhancements to the site will further help people realize how impressive the area’s railway system was more than a century ago.
“A lot of people think things are a lot more streamlined and a lot faster today. But in the early 1900s, it was possible to take a letter to Freeman Station and have it delivered to a friend in Toronto. And then the friend could send back a response all in one day,” he says.
But safety was an issue in the old days of steam travel. Accidents were common, including a massive collision between a passenger train and freight train that killed two railway workers on March 1, 1898.
The 50-car freight train was stopped on a sidetrack, near Freeman Station, to allow the passenger train to pass on the main line. But an employee made a switching error.
“The brakeman, whose job it was to change the track switch, forgot. He left it in the open position and the passenger train, rather than going straight on main line, went on the sideline and smashed into the back of the freight train,” he says. The train engineer, Thomas Hutchison, and “fireman” James Clark ended up dying from injuries. But no others were seriously hurt.
The tragic incident is remembered by a copy of the train schedule for that day which is framed on a wall of the station.
Keenleyside, a former high school history teacher and local history fan, has spent a lot of time researching the accident and made a remarkable discovery.
It turns out one the people on the passenger train was his greatgrandfather, Anthony Keenleyside, 72. The father of 11 grown children was on his way to Toronto for a business meeting.
Freeman Station schedule
The station at 1285 Fairview St., Burlington will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, June 11, July 1, Aug. 6, Sept. 10, Oct. 1. Admission is free. Donations accepted. For information: freemanstation.ca
Marianne Schuett update
On Wednesdayat 4 p.m., the bells of Kilbride United Church will ring out to remember the 55th anniversary of the abduction of 10-year-old Marianne Schuett.
The girl was coaxed by a middleaged man into a dark-coloured station wagon outside her school in the Burlington area hamlet of Kilbride on April 27, 1967. Her body was never found, and her abductor never charged.
Last summer, I wrote about two retired police officers — Linda Gillis Davidson from the RCMP and Gord Collins from Peel Regional Police — who have been volunteering their time to investigate the cold case.
They believe Marianne’s body was discarded in a field in Acton off Highway 25 and 22 Side Road shortly after she was kidnapped.
On the weekend of Sept. 11 last year, the retired officers, a group of volunteers, cadaver-sniffing dogs and an archeologist scraped through sections of the property to gather samples for analysis.
The search found a small piece of white fabric that was sent away for DNA analysis along with other material. The analysis found human DNA but there was not enough material to use for tracing.
The investigators plan to return to the site in late May or June to gather more samples with aid of ultraviolet laser search equipment that is designed to cause bone, blood and other body parts to glow.
They’re hoping the technology will help them find better samples for analysis.