In November of 1950, thousands of soldiers were sent to Fort Lewis, Washington, for training before their journey to Korea. They traveled by rail. At 10:35 in the morning on November 21, a troop train carrying 340 soldiers - soldiers of the 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery - was just east of the village of Canoe River, British Columbia. An express train on the same track was approaching in the opposite direction.
The two trains crashed head-on. The troop train was tossed into the air, its engine thrown back onto the coach cars behind it. Steel cars were shattered by other steel cars in a raging inferno. Seventeen Canadian soldiers died that morning and the bodies of four of them were never found. Many of those who escaped death suffered horrible injury including massive burns. The sacrifice made by the men at Canoe River was no less than that of all war Veterans who died in the service of our country.
