Courtesy Little Current-Howland Museum Sheguiandah, Ontario
The Little Current Depot

This attractive station marked the end of the journey for passengers arriving at Little Current.  It was built just east of the built up portion of Little Current on lot 9 of the AER Terminals property at the end of Meredith Street.  Constructed in the summer of 1913, it remained a Little Current landmark until the mid-sixties when the CPR demolished it after the cessation of passenger service to the island.  The small, one story station was a frame structure measuring 22 x 47 feet.  The east half of the station contained the baggage handling facilities while the west half contained the passenger waiting room with the agents office in the centre, with of course, the traditional bay window.  Unfortunately no photos or diagrams of the interior have surfaced yet so what the inside looked like remains an unknown.  Perhaps a reader of this page will remember the station, or have a photo or information they would share with us.

	Courtesy Little Current Howland Museum Sheguiandah, Ontario
	Little Current Depot

Note the unusual high-level platform.  This is the only high-level platform that we are aware of on the Algoma Eastern Railway.  It is also one of the few high-level platform small-town stations I am aware of in Canada.  The 1929 Plan Book gives a length of 253’ for this concrete platform which actually started just to the west of the freight shed described previously and continues west onto Lot 34 Meredith Street.  The AER station track continued about 400 feet further west beyond the end of the platform.

This interesting photo shows the end of the station platform with the station in the background.  Although these gentlemen are unknown to the author, they obviously have something to with the unusual freight car parked to the right of the station.  This car contained a shipment of Manitoulin turkeys.
 

Photographer unknown
Little Current Waterfront with AER Depot Copy

Another interesting side note concerning the Little Current station was the presence of a second copy of this building on the watefront at Little Current.  The copy, shown in the photo to the left, is located to the right of the stone gazebo and behind the white statue and was used as a shipping office and marine passenger terminal for steamers calling at Little Current.  We have no other information on this structure and do not know when is was built or demolished.

We have now reached the end of our tour.  Although plans for the AER called for further construction to the south side of the island and then by ferry to the Bruce Peninsula, like many other grandiose schemes of the day, it never came to fruition.  There is some evidence of negotiations for a right-of-way for a further extension of the AER, but nothing ever came of it.  An idea of what the route to Southern Ontario might have been like may be gained by taking Highway 6 south from Little Current, through Manitouwaning down to South Baymouth.  There you will board the MS Che-Che-maun for a pleasant ferry ride through the Thirty Thousand Islands area of Georgian Bay to Torbormory on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula.  We hope that you have enjoyed our tour of the AER.  Although there is little remaining physically of the railway, the history of this line provides a fascinating glimpse of what Northern Ontario short line railroading was all about in the first half of the twentieth century.