Canada's deadliest train cities include Toronto, Montreal, London—and Chilliwack

Nearly 4,000 people have died on Canada’s train tracks over the last four decades. And just five cities—Toronto, Montreal, London, Winnipeg, and Chilliwack—account for more than 330 of the deaths.

Although cities with the highest number of train fatalities were predominantly large and urban, some comparatively small communities—including Chilliwack, Kamloops, and Dorval, Que.—also experienced dozens of deaths in the last 40 years, according to The Current’s analysis of Transportation Safety Board data.

(You can read our story on Chilliwack and the particularly deadly section of track near its downtown here.)

The number of rail deaths has been declining since the 1990s, thanks in part to better crossing protections on the tracks. But experts say it will take both social and infrastructure changes to further reduce rail fatalities and better protect the vulnerable communities that frequently live closest to Canada’s increasingly busy rail lines.

This story uses data from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s Rail Occurrence Database System, which includes information on reportable accidents and incidents on federally regulated railways from January 1983 to the present. The data is updated on the 15th of each month. Data used for this story is accurate up to Aug. 15, 2024. The data does not include deaths on provincially regulated railways.

The information available for each incident is dependent on the details provided by the railway or the Transportation Safety Board at the time of the occurrence. As such, some data for certain incidents may be unavailable. (For example, many reports in the 1980s did not include a “near location” and instead only included the subdivision name and mile marker. These reports would not be included in the Current’s analysis of where train fatalities took place.)

The information presented in the story is as accurate as possible, within the limitations of the dataset and human analysis. If you find an error, you can email us here.

Canada’s deadly tracks

Canada is criss-crossed by thousands of kilometres of track that connect cities from the east coast to the west. The railways that operate on those lines transport goods, carry passengers, and link communities. They operate essential services that are only becoming busier. But their trains have also killed an average of 100 people every year since 1983.

The majority of Canada’s train-related deaths have been in Ontario, where a large population and a significant amount of track have left people and heavy, fast-moving trains in close proximity to one another. In that province, 1,717 people have died on tracks in the last 40 years.

Quebec—the province with the next highest number of deaths—has lost 1,194 people over the last four decades. Like Ontario, its rail system travels through a series of highly populated cities. Saskatchewan and Manitoba both have more track than Quebec, but their rail systems primarily travel through small towns and cities that, Winnipeg aside, are dwarfed in size by those in the east. Since 1983, 257 people have died on Saskatchewan’s tracks, while trains have killed 186 people in Manitoba.

Meanwhile, further west, BC and Alberta have seen 435 and 518 deaths over the last 40 years.

The deaths only account for the people who died at the scene, or shortly thereafter, in rail-related incidents on railways that are regulated by Transport Canada. Other railways, like the Southern Railway of BC in British Columbia and Big Sky Rail in Saskatchewan, are not federally regulated and not included in these statistics. The same goes for some city-operated transit systems involving rails, although not Ontario’s GO system.

Many other people have died from lingering injuries from train accidents, likely making Canada’s train-related death count much higher.

The most dangerous cities

The fatalities on Canada’s rail lines are spread throughout the provinces, with most communities having only one or two deaths over the last 40 years. But some cities have experienced a concentration of fatalities. In the deadliest locations, dozens of people have died on the tracks.

Note: these figures are, inevitably, an underestimate of the actual number of deaths in each community. The analysis relies on the described locations of deaths. But many reports from the 1980s and 1990s did not include location names, simply rail subdivision names and mile markers. As such, those are not included in this analysis.

Across Canada, large cities built around major railway hubs tend to experience more frequent fatal train incidents. Trains have killed at least 103 people in Toronto in the last 40 years, while Montreal and London, Ont., have seen at least 79 and 68 fatalities, respectively.

Those three cities have recorded more than 5% of all Canada’s train-related fatalities since 1983. Chilliwack, with the next highest number of fatalities, has lost 49 people in train-related incidents. Winnipeg saw 43 deaths in the last four decades.

With barely 100,000 residents, Chilliwack is by far the smallest community among those deadliest rail cities.

(The Current did a detailed analysis of Fraser Valley deaths for our local story on rail fatalities, showing that 49 people have died in Chilliwack. We have not done a similarly detailed analysis for cities outside the Fraser Valley, meaning the number of deaths elsewhere are likely a significant undercount.)

Other comparatively small communities with high numbers of train deaths include the Montreal suburb of Dorval, which is home to a high-volume train station near Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport; Woodstock, Ont., which was the site of Ontario’s first railway and is bisected by a CN and VIA line with high traffic and little fencing; and Kamloops, BC, through which both CPKC and CN operate busy transcontinental tracks that terminate at Metro Vancouver ports.

Like in Chilliwack, the Woodstock, and Kamloops tracks all run just blocks from their community’s downtown areas and separate one half of town from the other. Although Dorval has tracks running alongside its highway, the fatalities may be more connected to the major rail yard to the east of the municipal border and reflect fatalities in the general area rather than Dorval itself.

How people are dying

The data analyzed by The Current showed that people are frequently killed by trains in one of five ways: in a derailment, in a collision between two trains, in a workplace accident, at a crossing, or while walking on the tracks.

The first three causes of fatalities are comparatively uncommon. Since 1983, there have been 13 derailments, among them the 2013 Lac-Megantic disaster, in which a brake failure sent a train carrying crude oil hurtling into the centre of town, where it exploded, killing 47 people.

There have been nearly 20 collisions between trains that resulted in deaths, and more than 100 deaths that were specifically related to on-the-job incidents. The remainder of incidents—the vast majority of train-related fatalities—have been the result of people interacting with railway crossings or being present on the railway’s right-of-way when a train passed through.

In the 1980s, crossing deaths were the most common way for people to be killed by trains. But that has been changing. Deadly crossing incidents are becoming less frequent, in part because of new rules that require railways to have more and better safety measures at crossings.

Better control of crossings with bells, lights, and gates—even the replacement of level crossings with overpasses or other infrastructure in some cases—have helped reduce crossing fatalities, according to Gordon Lovegrove, regional rail advocate, Kelowna councillor, former Langley Township engineer, and current UBC Okanagan professor. The introduction of better detection devices that can more accurately trigger crossing warnings has also helped.

“The system protections I’ve just described, [the railways have] updated those and monitored and done better at addressing whatever’s causing people to violate the crossing,” Lovegrove said.

But those upgrades, which have helped cut the number of crossing fatalities by three-quarters from 40 years ago, have done little to stop the deaths of people who are walking on train tracks.

As The Current reported in its story on the deaths in Chilliwack, trains can be surprisingly hard to detect, even by those walking or standing on the tracks. And other than sound the whistle, there’s little an operator can do when they see a person in danger.

“It doesn’t matter what speed they are going,” Lovegrove said about freight trains. “They could be going less than 30 miles an hour, and they’re still going to take a mile to stop.”

Speed is an important factor in train accidents as a whole, as the faster a train is going, the more likely it is to derail. According to Transport Canada, the changing use of distributed power since 2010 has allowed for longer and heavier trains to operate in the country, which has made managing speed more important. (Different classes of track have different speed limits: spur lines have a maximum speed of 10 miles per hour, while most main line track has a speed limit of 60 miles per hour.)

The speed of a train can also make it easier for trains to sneak up on people, both because a locomotive will close distances more quickly, and because there is a shortened gap between the moment its sound waves reach a person standing on the tracks and the arrival of the train itself.

How to stop train deaths

As changes to Canada’s rail crossings regulations have shown, train fatalities can be reduced by making targeted alterations to existing infrastructure.

“It’s just access and barriers to access,” Lovegrove said. But increasing safety along Canada’s railways can be complicated.

Part of the challenge is determining who is responsible for improving crossings and track safety: the railway or the municipality.

In many cases, the city grew up around the railway, meaning the municipality is largely responsible for changes to its infrastructure. In some places like Fort Langley, in the Fraser Valley, the community predates the railway, and it’s the railway that needs to make changes to the crossings.

(The body responsible for the change isn’t necessarily entirely responsible for the cost: railways, municipalities, the province, BC Hydro, and other groups often negotiate who will need to pay for upgrades depending on whose services are affected.)

Both CN and CPKC make efforts to improve safety around their rail lines. Rail police enforce rules around railways, stopping people from trespassing on the tracks. CN said in a response to The Current that they often proactively remove vegetation and improve barriers fences. However, most of the focus on safety for both companies appears to be around public awareness.

“Safety is a core value at CN and we will continue to work with local stakeholders to spread the safety message and educate the public on the dangers of trespassing,” CN spokesperson Ashley Michnowski wrote in an email, adding that “safety is a shared responsibility. “ CPKC shared similar comments.

Former BC Highway Authority manager John Pijl, who worked extensively with three major railways in BC, said he found Canadian rail companies’ safety culture to be more focused on eliminating delays due to accidents, rather than proactively protecting pedestrians and drivers.

Therefore, it is often the municipalities that are advocating for more safety infrastructure in their communities. And although they may not be able to actually make the changes on the tracks themselves, they can still invite rail companies to the table, Lovegrove said.

“[The railways] have been there forever, they typically aren’t making any changes,” he said. “But there could be potential opportunities if there’s something they are thinking about too, and it’s good at the planning stage.”

In Langley, for example, the Township partnered with CN to build an overpass on the Langley Bypass. Cities can also discuss building active corridors and connections for pedestrians who may be using the railways as transportation routes, ensuring they have alternate ways to travel without trespassing on tracks.

But the issue isn’t just who should do the work, Lovegrove said, but also what changes would actually prevent deaths.

“It’s a dynamic system. It’s a bit of a whack-a-mole,” Lovegrove said. “You’ve got to be careful that you don’t try to solve one problem and create two more.”

Closing crossings entirely is one of the most effective ways of reducing train fatalities in a particular area. But eliminating a crossing can make it more challenging for people to get around their community—and even encourage trespassing.

Still, Lovegrove said, some changes are better than none.

“As we have urban interfaces with these trains, the trains have slowed down, or the crossings, fencing, and detection, gate, light, and bells devices have been upgraded,” he said. “One by one, slowly but surely, they try to get there.”

The halving of train fatalities since the 1980s speaks to that progress. Today, there are around 60 fewer fatalities each year in Canada than four decades ago, even though the country’s population is much higher. But cutting the deaths in half again is likely to require much more than infrastructure improvements.

Lovegrove estimates that roughly half of Canadian train deaths today are suicides—although he noted that he does not have data to back up that estimate.

(In the Fraser Valley, which has seen rail deaths increase since 1983, at least one-quarter of all fatal incidents—and almost certainly more—are related to suicide. You can read more about that here.)

“There’s a system we have to change that isn’t to do with mobility, it’s to do with social concerns,” Lovegrove said.

Julian Somers, a clinical psychologist and homelessness researcher at Simon Fraser University, said it is up to the provincial and territorial governments to enact large-scale social programs to help people before they enter crisis.

“The absence of hopefulness is a standout feature that leads us to think about taking our own lives,” he said. “It’s important for us to know that we can help people in these ways that provide a fundamentally different view of their future and reasons for hopefulness.”

With train traffic expected to grow as the country’s population rises, more and more people will come into contact with railways—with potentially deadly consequences. Reducing those deaths will involve continued infrastructure changes and potentially major shifts in how the country supports people in crisis at all stages of their life.

If you or someone you know are thinking of suicide, help is available. Call or text 988 for Canada’s suicide crisis hotline. Call 911 if you are in immediate danger.

The data

The interactive dataset below works best on desktop. It includes more details on the numbers discussed in the story above, including comparisons between provinces.

GO TO THE DATA SET HERE.