Traveling in time

 

                                                                          Punch mock timetable from 1865

 In the lead up to Christmas time has gotten away from me. But then, time has been a bit nebulous this year with very few in-person events as we adapt to "the new normal". Now the meetings I need to track are on Zoom and other internet platforms. Travel time is at a minimum and, in many ways, I miss it.

One thing that can be said about travel, often much more is going on than getting from point A to point B. So much so, that a person can have changed in their thoughts and outlook by the time they reach their destination. This would have been true in 1911, the time I am interested in, and the years leading up to that time in which the travel routes through Canada were laid down. 

I've started research into the travel portion of Harold Chambers' immigration to Canada. It's taking longer than I thought. But the role that time had to play in his initial voyage is interesting. I found it surprising that his port of arrival was Saint John especially when he was heading to the Prairies. But that was because of the time of year as his ocean voyage was in March when routes to ports further inland in Canada were impassable because of ice.

My research will continue as I try to pin down some details of the initial trek to get him to his ultimate destination, but because of this timing I have a longer route on land to track down. I'm sure a lot of that travel was by train; a mode of transport Harold Chambers would have been familiar with from his native England. Maybe more familiar than most as, according to the 1901 census for New Milton, Hampshire, he had worked as a railway clerk.

Railway timetables must have played a significant role in his life. The railway and its timetables also played a significant role in the standardization of time. Before the railways came, towns and villages kept their own time, often different from that of places distant to them. But railroads ran on timetables which needed to synchronize the time in various places so their timetables would work. This led to the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time. 

 

Sources:

1901 Census Online for the UK - accessed in 2002

Standard time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time 

Image:

By Punch magazine - https://www.jstor.org/stable/40930543?seq=12#metadata_info_tab_contents"
Nineteenth-Century Timetables and the History of Reading", Mike Esbester, Book History, Vol. 12 (2009), p. 167., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77351945