A Ribbon of Shining Steel
Page 13
Julie’s own grandfather, John Anderson, was among the many immigrants needed to keep the CPR running smoothly. He left Sweden in 1888 at the age of eighteen and started working for the railway in the Selkirk Mountains of B.C. By the early 1900s he had married a young Swedish immigrant and advanced to the position of Roadmaster, responsible for the section of track going through Rogers Pass — an area noted for its heavy snowfalls and avalanches.
One of those avalanches almost took his life. “On the night of March 4, 1910, a huge avalanche came down at the summit of Rogers Pass and buried the railway tracks about thirty feet [ten metres] deep. My grandfather called out his crew of 63 men and they set off with torches and shovels to clear the tracks.
“Around midnight, he left the site and hiked about a mile down the line to a watchman’s hut to phone in a progress report. He advised the dispatcher in Revelstoke that the tracks would be cleared in another couple of hours, then headed back. When he reached the site, all was in darkness. There were no lights from torches, no sounds of men digging, no sounds at all. Another avalanche had come down and buried everything. Only one man survived. The rest, including my grandfather’s younger brother, were buried in the avalanche. It was the worst disaster in the history of the CPR.”
Julie is the award-winning author of numerous books for young readers. Her novels include White Jade Tiger (winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, and nominated for both the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award and the Silver Birch Award), Destination Gold and The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain. Among her acclaimed picture books are The Dragon’s Pearl, Emma and the Silk Train, Bear on the Train and Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Near That Canoe!
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Kate Cameron is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
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Copyright © 2002 by Julie Lawson.
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ISBN: 978-1-4431-2814-8
First eBook edition: July 2015
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Go to www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada for information on the Dear Canada series — see inside the books, read an excerpt or a review, post a review, and more.