Sault filmmaker puts Tony in short-line documentary

NEWS RELEASE

TONY MARTIN, MP

************************* OTTAWA - Dan Nystedt’s six-week cross Canada train journey landed here at Parliament today, with the Sault film producer interviewing MP Tony Martin and other advocates for his documentary on short-line rail.

Nystedt is directing and editing DeRailed: The National Dream.

As Nystedt explains in his Facebook group of the same name, the film will explore the factors behind the deregulation of our nation’s greatest infrastructure: the history of short-line passenger rail, the environmental implications of impending peak oil and the potential role of rail in Canada’s steps towards environmental sustainability.

“The railway built our country and connected Canadians and communities to one another and we need to learn and apply that lesson all over again,” Martin said as he congratulated Nystedt and the project funders including Algoma University, Nordik Research Institute, and the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains.

“The film will shine a light on the short-line railway, for all our municipalities, tourism, shipping, business, First Nations and other supporters who know its enduring value.”

Nystedt’s visit here today was timely, coinciding with Martin’s budget speech this morning where he urged funding for Huron Central Railway (HCR).

“Government should make the investments that are necessary to maintain those vital links between communities, manufacturing centres and the markets they sell their goods in, . . . indicate there is a future for towns like Wawa, White River, Marathon, Nipigon, Red Rock, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins,” Martin said.

“These communities are important, and the resource base that has served the country so well continues to be an important element in any economy Canada will have going forward. Canadians cannot only have railroads that will move freight, but that we can once again in the country look at the possibility of railroads that will move people.”

Martin with other community champions is pressing federal and Ontario governments to commit the next phase of funding the HCR before the end of March.

New Democrats see the HCR as a key line in a larger pan-Northern Ontario transportation network.

Nystedt began his journey riding the Algoma Central Railway to Hearst and the Ontario Northern Railway to Toronto with Ontario Northland Railway.

Several other operators, including Guelph Junction Railway and Tshiuetin Rail Transportation, will also be featured with the epic journey taking him thousands of kilometres between New Brunswick and British Columbia, including places like Labrador, Northern Manitoba and Vancouver Island.

One producer, Linda Savory Gordon, who is co-producing the film with Emily Colombo, has commented on how essential rail transportation is in “a day of global warming and peak oil. What are we going to do in Sault Ste. Marie when we have no rail connection with the rest of the province, let alone the country, and we can't afford to drive long distances anymore with cars?"

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