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BURNIE, WILLIAM, railway employee and engineer; b. c. 1838 in Glasgow; m. 24 Feb. 1863 Margaret Holmes (d. 8 July 1905) in South Durham (Durham-Sud), Lower Canada, and they had seven sons and four daughters; d. 21 Dec. 1902 in Fairchild, Wisc., and was buried there.

Early career

William Burnie emigrated from Scotland to Canada with his mother around 1846. He entered the employ of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) in November 1856, initially for two years as an engine cleaner and for another three and a half as night watchman at its facilities in Richmond, Lower Canada. He then served for two years as a fireman on a locomotive used in assisting trains on the steep gradient between Richmond and Acton Vale, about 22 miles west. On 18 June 1864 he was promoted to locomotive engineer.

Saint-Hilaire train disaster

Squalid passenger conditions

Transporting immigrants was a lucrative business for the GTR, and it regularly did so between Lévis and Montreal. With the sudden arrival of a large group at Lévis on 27 June, the GTR was faced with the task of providing a train for them. Most were from the German states and travelling to destinations in the American midwest. Only one passenger car was available to make up a train that was to carry between 458 and 467 passengers (reports vary). The GTR’s policy on such occasions, implemented by its general manager, Charles John Brydges*, was to place its customers in boxcars with rudimentary wooden benches temporarily installed. The immigrants were locked into cars that had no provisions for sanitation, heating, ventilation, or water. Occasional station stops along the route provided some relief. At 3:40 p.m. on 28 June the train, consisting of ten boxcars, one passenger car, and one brakeman’s van, left the GTR station at Pointe-Lévy (Lévis). There would be a crew change in Richmond, 94 miles away.

Staff shortage and neglect

Thomas King, the GTR’s locomotive foreman in Richmond, assigned Burnie as the engineer on the 12-car train from there to Montreal. Two other experienced engineers, who might have been given the task, had gone to see the circus in Richmond; Burnie was the only engineer available.

This was not the first time that Burnie had been asked to drive a train carrying immigrants from Richmond to Montreal. Three days earlier King had ordered him to do so. Burnie objected, citing his lack of experience and unfamiliarity with the line between the two places. At the last moment a qualified substitute engineer became available, so Burnie did not have to make the trip. On 28 June he again protested to King, who made clear to Burnie that keeping his job with the GTR depended on his acceptance.

When Burnie learned that the locomotive selected for this train was the pilot engine (the one he was accustomed to when working between Richmond and Acton Vale), he informed his superior that the engine’s pistons were defective. This meant, among other things, that the locomotive’s braking power when put into reverse gear was reduced. There were no GTR employees available in Richmond at the time (they too were at the circus) to carry out an inspection of the pistons; consequently, none was made before departure.

Finding the remainder of the five-man crew for the trip was also a problem. S. P. Dean, the GTR’s dispatcher in Pointe-Saint-Charles (Montreal), first telegraphed the conductor, F. Sadler, in Richmond. The latter declined to take the train and referred the message to Thomas Finn, a conductor whose reliability and competence were questionable. Finn accepted, and his first duty was to find the two brakemen required for a 12-car train. The only one available in Richmond was Gédéon Giroux, who refused when Finn informed him that he would be the sole brakeman. It was only after Finn agreed to have another sent from Montreal to meet the train at Saint-Hyacinthe that Giroux grudgingly agreed.

The last member of the crew was Nicholas Flynn, the fireman. Like Burnie, Flynn had only a few days of experience in his post (before that he had been an engine cleaner), and he had never been over the line to Montreal in the cab of a locomotive. With this undermanned and underqualified crew aboard, and the defective locomotive No. 168 pulling it, the train known as the Immigrant Special left Richmond at 10:05 p.m. on 28 June 1864, with 76 miles to cover before reaching Montreal. One of Burnie’s last acts before departure had been to borrow a copy of the official timetable from William Ames, the GTR night watchman in Richmond, so that at the very least he would know the sequence and names of the stations as well as the distances between them.

The first part of the trip, as far as Acton Vale, was familiar territory for Burnie. This was his regular run with the pilot engine; beyond that, the nature of the GTR’s undulating line was unknown to him. Consequently, at Acton Vale, Burnie asked Giroux to ride with him in the locomotive to guide him. This left no brakeman at the rear. At Saint-Hyacinthe, when no second brakeman joined the crew, it became clear that Finn had not made arrangements to properly staff his train. While the train stopped at Saint-Hyacinthe, Finn ordered Giroux to return to the brakeman’s van to relight the marker lamp that had gone out, and Finn took Giroux’s place in the cab of the locomotive with Burnie and Flynn.

Train wreck

At about 1:20 a.m. Burnie’s train departed the station at Saint-Hilaire (Mont-Saint-Hilaire), less than one mile from the GTR bridge over the Richelieu River. From the station the track descended a steep gradient and then curved sharply to the right before crossing the bridge. The GTR’s rule 24 stipulated that all trains should come to a stop for three minutes before crossing the bridge. None of this was known to Burnie, however, and Finn had not enlightened him. The Immigrant Special reached the bottom of the grade and proceeded around the curve and onto the 1,200-foot-long bridge. Only then did Burnie see the red signal light at the other end. Since the swing-bridge operator had not been informed that an extra westbound train would follow the last regularly scheduled one (there was no telegraph communication between the station at Saint-Hilaire and Belœil, on the other side of the river), he had opened the bridge to allow a steam tug and a string of barges to pass through. As soon as Burnie saw the red signal in the distance, he immediately put the locomotive into reverse (with minimal effect because of its faulty pistons) and whistled for the manual brakes to be applied in the van (the railway air brake would not be patented by George Westinghouse until 1869). Giroux, however, was occupied with the marker lamp and not at his brakeman post on the roof of the van. By the time he tried to apply the brakes, it was too little too late. The momentum of the train carried it over the open swing bridge and into the river, some of it falling on passing barges. Ninety-seven immigrants, mostly from the German states, died in the wreckage. Burnie and Giroux survived; Flynn and Finn did not. It remains the deadliest Canadian railway disaster in history. There were 362 survivors. The crews of barges saved many from drowning, and local residents made their homes available for the care of rescued passengers. Among those who provided medical assistance were physicians George Edgeworth Fenwick* from the Montreal General Hospital (accompanied by aspiring medical student Thomas George Roddick*) and William Hales Hingston from the city’s Hôtel Dieu. The two hospitals admitted 138 and 109 patients respectively. The GTR gave the Montreal General Hospital $2,000 and promised an annual donation of $400, but the institution was still $3,000 in debt at the end of the fiscal year because of the incident.

Condemnation and vindication

The official corporate response of the GTR was swift and unequivocal: it placed the blame for the disastrous accident squarely on Burnie’s shoulders. Shortly after the incident, he was jailed in Montreal pending the findings of the coroner’s jury. The jury selected was widely discredited in the press as biased in favour of the GTR. After deliberating from 5 to 9 July, it found Burnie guilty of gross carelessness. With his lawyer Bernard Devlin*, Burnie applied for habeas corpus pending the verdict of the grand jury. His petition, however, was refused by Judge Thomas Cushing Aylwin*, and he remained in jail throughout the summer.

The decision of the grand jury was rendered on 5 October. It returned “no bill,” meaning that there was no case to bring Burnie to trial, and he was released. The jury was, however, scathing in its denunciation of the GTR officials, “who have in this melancholy instance not only themselves entirely to blame for the occurrence, but also been utterly and shamefully wanting in what was due to the 467 passengers they carried, who with their lives were entrusted to carry.” A federal commission was set up to hear some of the victims’ claims against the GTR, and the company spent about $250,000 on compensation. It appears that none of the managers of the railway were ever held accountable for the circumstances leading to the disaster.

Life after the accident

The memory of this tragic accident was undoubtedly seared into Burnie’s mind. Outwardly, however, there was little sign of any inner turmoil. Following his release from jail, he returned to his home in Acton Vale, where he lived with his wife, Margaret, and their infant son. Around 1869 they moved to Montreal. Although he does not appear to have worked as a railway engineer again, Burnie readily found employment. During the era of steam power, railways were not the only businesses that required employees familiar with the operation of steam boilers. In 1871 he and his family relocated to Upton, where he was hired as the engineer at Valentine Cooke’s steam sawmill. A brief sojourn in Wisconsin followed. By 1881 Burnie, his wife, and eight children were living in Roxton Falls, Que., where he worked at another steam sawmill. Shortly thereafter they returned to Wisconsin, where he was again employed as a stationary engineer. William Burnie died in 1902 a relatively prosperous man, the father of 11 children, and a member of the freemasons.

John Derek Booth