Series consists of records created and maintained by the Canadian National Railway Office of the General Manager of Real Estate. These records include right of way files, title registers, architectural drawings and blueprints, cartographic records, photographs, paintings, newspaper clippings, real estate documents, ledgers and legal contracts, primarily for Western Canada, covering the period 1840-1981 (predominantly 1900-1960s).
Included here are Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and Canadian Northern Railway land records, as well as files from various land development companies associated with the railways.
More specifically, there are 311 ledgers and registers, approximately 181 metres of files and about 1000 plans dealing with farm and townsite land in Western Canada. The ledgers and registers consist of items such as farm or townsite land contract ledgers, farm or townsite land transfer ledgers and deed registers, townsite land sales
registers, transfer schedule ledgers, crop lease registers, land grant registers, railway and townsite map and plan registers, land assessment/valuation registers, and a
number of special registers concerning individual private brokers, companies, or townsites.
There are two major categories of CN land contract file types: farm land and townsite property in Western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) including British Columbia and northwestern Ontario.The vast majority (over 2/3) of all files concern farm land, but the most varied category is townsite property, as many railway townsite land companies, eventually absorbed or amalgamated with the Canadian National Railways,were active in this area.
There are also a relatively small number of GTP subject or case files that pertain to: branch lines; deals with private land brokers; legal files concerning agreements with the Dominion Government and land companies to sell and promote townsite land
for settlement; correspondence relating to the selection of townsite names; Western Canadian townsite land sales; B.C. townsite land sales and correspondence, re: Prince Rupert and Prince George, etc.
The townsite land files derive from the following companies: The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; The Grand Trunk Pacific Development Co. Ltd.; Canadian Northern Town Properties Co. Ltd.; Canadian Land and Investment Co. Ltd.; Transcontinental Townsite Company Ltd.; Terminal Cities of Canada Ltd.; MacKenzie, Mann & Co. Ltd.; Canadian National Railways.
Typically, the townsite plans indicate lots, blocks, streets, roads, railway facilities (ex: station grounds), prominent towns structures (churches, schools, cemeteries, etc.) and physical features (hills,creeks, etc.). Marginalia includes information contract and lease holders. They provide a "snapshot" of the development of town communities, or in the case of Prince Rupert plans, what the railway developers had originally envisioned for the future of the site.
The Farm Land contract files record the sale of farm land by The Canadian Northern Railway, later the Canadian Northern Land Department of Canadian National Railways (eventually the CN Real Estate Department) cover the period from the end of WW I to the 1960s. Basically, the land contract file represents the end of the efforts of The Canadian Northern - through their own land settlement agency and in
conjunction with the Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration - to obtain
settlers and place them on the land with some form of material assistance during the
immigration "boom years" of the inter-war period.
For further details, please see attached Guide To CN Land Records Held At Library and Archives Canada - Winnipeg
There are also lower level sub-series descriptions for details on other CN land records originally compiled by the Office of the General Manager of Real Estate attached to this series:
Right-of-way files and index
Certificate of title register
Plans and reference books Maynooth subdivision
Expropriation plans Atlantic region
Legal map of land records
Drawings of station locations
Index to maps
Bonaventure station
Montreal terminals
Queen Elizabeth Hotel
Train stations
Orient House London England
Valuation records Canadian Northern Town Properties
Contract sales Canadian Northern Land Department
Real Estate daily remittance record
Township plans
Townships acquired
Transfer ledger
Contracts
Bathurst-Spadina Property data
