Summary

Between 1912 and 1914, the Canadian Pacific Railway built a diversion of its mainline between Toronto and Smiths Falls. On paper it was called the Campbellford, Lake Ontario & Western Railway but in all public advertising it was simply referred to as Canadian Pacific’s Lake Ontario Shore Line. One of its passenger stations was located at Centre Street in Oshawa, just west of where Simcoe Street crossed over the railway. The station building in Oshawa followed a standard CPR “Class B” design, one of only two on the new line with the other being in Cobourg. They were particularly large buildings reserved for large towns or small cities, having a predominantly brick and concrete exterior. While Oshawa Station was only one storey tall it more than made up for this in length. Beyond the usual amenities such as the waiting room, freight room, and station agent’s office, there was also an adjacent express building which was connected through a shared roof. Service to Cherrywood over this new line commenced on June 29th, 1914, and initially only saw four passenger trains per day (one Toronto-Ottawa through train and a local Toronto-Belleville train in each direction). This quickly doubled to eight passenger trains per day by the 1920’s.

On the eve of the Great Depression in 1929, a total of twelve trains were stopping at Oshawa Station each day. Passenger ridership was considerably affected by the depression and service was reduced to ten trains by 1931. In 1933, Canadian Pacific and Canadian National entered an agreement to pool their passenger service together between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. This agreement resulted in the majority of passenger traffic on the Lake Ontario Shore Line being moved to the parallel Canadian National line instead, and service to Oshawa Station was drastically reduced to just two trains per day once it took effect. Although the pool train agreement persisted for over two decades after the depression ended, service to Oshawa Station would slightly increase to four trains by the mid-1940’s. The popularization of automobiles during the early to mid 20th century contributed to a longer-lasting decline in ridership, which only intensified with the completion of Highway 401 through Oshawa between 1947 and 1960. Service to Oshawa Station was cut back to two trains per day by 1961, which would remain the case until it was closed to passengers altogether in 1970. The building remained in use by Canadian Pacific’s passenger service representatives and later by maintenance-of-way crews before it was abandoned. After sitting boarded up and in a state of disrepair for several years, the station was demolished on November 3rd, 1989.

As part of Metrolinx’s planned extension of the Lakeshore East Line to Bowmanville, there is a proposed GO Station for the former Knob Hill Farms/Ontario Malleable Iron Company site. This station will use the Canadian Pacific right-of-way and is also approximately a half kilometre east of the former Canadian Pacific station property. If this project reaches completion, it would reintroduce direct passenger rail service to downtown Oshawa for the first time in over five decades.

Condensed Station Info:

Location:	Served By:	Current State:	Date Built:	Date Demolished:
South end of Centre Street	Canadian Pacific Railway (1914 – 1970)	Demolished	1913	1989