Honoured by Mr. & Mrs. Johnston C Elliott (“Dinty”)
Charles was born to William and Alice Elliott on 5 June 1891. William was a locomotive engineer who worked on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Mattawa, through North Bay, to Schreiber in the 1880s and 1890s and resided in North Bay. At the age of five, in 1896, Charles moved with his parents and siblings, to Chalk River, Ontario, where he received his elementary education. He graduated from Business College in Pembroke in 1907, and joined the CPR in Chalk River as a yardman in 1908.
He married Edna May deGuehery in Chalk River in 1915 where the couple had two sons – Thomas E. and Johnston C. In 1921, Charles was promoted to night yardmaster in North Bay, and the family moved there where three more children were added to their family – a daughter Betty, and two sons, Wilburt and Gordon. Charles shared the management of the CPR passenger and freight rail yard system with the day yardmaster, William Dreany. Other members of Charlie’s Elliott family who worked for the CPR were his uncle, David J Elliott, and son John, locomotive engineers; his brother, Johnston H.
Elliott, freight and passenger agent; Charlie’s sons Johnston C., clerk, Wilburt C., clerk, and Gordon K., trainman, and son-in-law Verne Grozelle, clerk – truly an early CPR family worthy of recognition on the pergola and Waterfront Park!
Charles
was a member of St. John’s
Anglican Church, charter secretary of North Bay Masonic Lodge No. 420, the
I.O.O.F. and Brotherhood of the Railway Trainmen. Despite his night work, he was devoted to his
family, catering to all their needs, and he enjoyed fishing and his cottage on Lake Nipissing.
He was
promoted to General Yardmaster in the early 1930s and retired due to ill health
in 1948 after 40 years of service. He
passed away in 1952 following a lengthy illness. He was 61.