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I'm always saddened and angered to hear about things like this! I'm not going to go on about whether or not Wal-Mart stores are good or bad, but the destruction of historic buildings such as this is absolutely sickening! It really doesn't matter so much who is there in place of what once was, but rather the fact that it was allowed to happen. Old, historic buildings (of all kinds, not just railroad) are part of our heritage and need to be preserved! It seems that far to many people have a complete disregard for history and are concerned about money only. Sadly, I have a couple of more examples to add. A couple of years ago in Winnipeg, the old Eaton's building was torn down to make way for some sort of big ugly glass building of some kind. There was a public outcry over this and many people tried in vain to stop its destruction. For those of you who don't know, Eaton's was once the largest mail-order company in all of Canada. EVERYBODY bought from Eaton's. Most cities had an Eaton's department store and all of the people in rural and isolated areas of Canada bought practically everything from their catalog. I'm sure that a great many Canadian modelers got their start with a train set bought at Eaton's. This building had been the company's headquarters. Bottom line, Eaton's was a Canadian icon and major part of our country's history. Some of you are probably familiar with the Skydome in Toronto, home of the Toronto Blue Jays. Did you also know that the site on which it stands was once the home of CN's Spadina roundhouse and yard. This was probably the most famous roundhouse in all of Canada. It was build in 1927. It remained busy, even after the end of steam when it serviced diesels. There was even a public observation platform so that people could watch the activity. It was torn down in 1985. Worst of all, though, it was not an old, delapitated building. It was being actively used by Via Rail for it's locomotives and Via also had a coach yard in the area. Via had to pack up and move somewhere else because the city decided that the new Skydome should be built there. Also, the Montreal home of William Cornelius Van Horne, the great builder of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was torn down in I think the 80's (could have been the 70's). It was done overnight and no one was even told that there were plans to tear it down. It was all kept secret. Afterwards, people were outraged. A person from city council later tried to justify this by saying that the house "really didn't have anything to do with Quebec's history." I'm dead serious. If the CPR doesn't have anything to do with Quebec's history, then I don't what does! As others have said, we've got protect the historic places that are still left before someone does come up with an idea of getting rid of them. If we save them now, we won't have to scramble to quickly do it when it's too late. I'll end my post with one of my favorite quotes: "A country that forgets it's past has no future." -Winston Churchill
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