By Ann-Maureen Owens
with photography by Bernard Clark
Eric Gagnon has always been a train enthusiast. He inherited this interest from his father, Laurence, who had worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) briefly at Montreal’s Windsor Station before becoming an English teacher. “Dad was an avid train watcher, who would always write everything down and save everything to do with the trains he saw. He got my older brother, David, and I involved in watching trains, visiting train stations and taking trips for train fans on steam trains out of Montreal, where I was born.”
Train watching, also referred to as rail fanning, or trainspotting in the United Kingdom, is a popular hobby involving observing, documenting and photographing trains, locomotives and railway operations. Enthusiasts enjoy tracking engines, studying railway traffic patterns and experiencing the spectacle of trains in motion. As an adult, Eric has expanded his childhood interest to include model railroad building, blogging and writing books about trains and researching local railroad history.
The family moved from Lachine, Quebec, to Kingston when Eric, the youngest of three children, was 5 years old. His dad had decided to relocate to Ontario and accepted a teaching job at Sydenham High School. They bought a house in Amherstview, and Eric remembers that from his elementary school classroom windows, he had a great, if a bit distant, view of trains passing by . . .
