| Colonial Coach Lines bus accident | |
|---|---|
  Crash site Crash site (Ontario) | |
| Details | |
| Date | July 31, 1953 |
| Location | Morrisburg, Ontario |
| Statistics | |
| Vehicles | 2 (Bus, Truck) |
| Passengers | 37 |
| Deaths | 20 |
| Injured | unknown |
The Colonial Coach Lines bus accident occurred on July 31, 1953 after a passenger bus carrying 37 occupants travelling from Toronto, Ontario to Montreal, Quebec, collided with a truck that was stalled on the side of Highway 2, near Morrisburg, Ontario, killing 20 passengers on board. [1]
On July 31, 1953 at approximately 04:00am, a Colonial Coach Bus Line passenger bus on an overnight express, en route from Toronto, Ontario to Montreal, Quebec, struck a stalled truck with its lights off, on Highway 2 close to Morrisburg, Ontario. [2] The bus careened off the highway down a 25 foot embankment ending up in the Williamsburg canal system in about 6 meters of water. [1] [3] Some passengers would escape by kicking out windows and smashing doors, [2] In the end 20 passengers were dead and 17, including the driver, would escape. [1] The driver of the parked truck would also survive. [1]
This would remain the deadliest traffic accident in Ontario history. [2]
List of deadliest Canadian traffic accidents
Canada, the world's second-largest country in total area, is dedicated to having an efficient, high-capacity multimodal transportation spanning often vast distances between natural resource extraction sites, agricultural and urban areas. Canada's transportation system includes more than 1,400,000 kilometres (870,000 mi) of roads, 10 major international airports, 300 smaller airports, 72,093 km (44,797 mi) of functioning railway track, and more than 300 commercial ports and harbours that provide access to the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 2005, the transportation sector made up 4.2% of Canada's GDP, compared to 3.7% for Canada's mining and oil and gas extraction industries.
Montréal–Trudeau International Airport or Montréal–Trudeau, formerly known and still commonly referred to as Montréal–Dorval International Airport, is an international airport in Dorval, Quebec, Canada. It is the only Transport Canada designated international airport serving Montreal and is situated 20 km (12 mi) west of Downtown Montreal. The airport terminals are located entirely in the suburb of Dorval, while one runway is located in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. Air Canada, the country's flag carrier, also has its corporate headquarters complex on the Saint-Laurent side of the airport. It also serves Greater Montreal and adjacent regions in Quebec and eastern Ontario, as well as the states of Vermont and northern New York in the United States. The airport is named in honour of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada and father of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
King's Highway 2, commonly referred to as Highway 2, is the lowest-numbered provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario, and was originally part of a series of identically numbered highways which started in Windsor, stretched through Quebec and New Brunswick, and ended in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Prior to the 1990s, Highway 2 travelled through many of the major cities in Southern Ontario, including Windsor, Chatham, London, Brantford, Hamilton, Burlington, Mississauga, Toronto, Oshawa, Belleville, Kingston and Cornwall, and many other smaller towns and communities.
Voyageur Colonial Bus Lines, commonly called Voyageur Colonial or just Voyageur, was a Canadian intercity bus company that serves Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, primarily the cities of Montreal, Ottawa and Kingston, Toronto. It was acquired by Greyhound Canada in 1998.
Greyhound Canada Transportation ULC began as a local British Columbia bus line in the early 1920s, expanded across most of Canada, and became a subsidiary of the US Greyhound in 1940.
Ottawa station, or Ottawa Train Station, is the main inter-city train station in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the capital of Canada. It is operated by Via Rail. It is located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) east of downtown Ottawa and adjacent to Tremblay O-Train station in the neighbourhood of Eastway Gardens. The station serves inter-city trains connecting to Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Quebec City on Via Rail's Corridor Route.
Ottawa Central Station was the main inter-city bus station in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was located 1.5 km south of downtown Ottawa in the Centretown neighbourhood and served buses from Greyhound Canada, Ontario Northland and Autobus Gatineau. It closed on June 1, 2021, and the land it sat on is now owned by Brigil, a real estate developer, who plans to build a multi-use space for housing, dining, retail, and other businesses.
The 1997 Les Éboulements bus accident, also known as the St. Joseph Bus Accident, occurred on Thanksgiving Day, October 13, 1997, in Les Éboulements (St-Joseph-de-la-Rive), Quebec, Canada. 44 died as a result of the crash, making it the deadliest traffic collision in Canadian history.
Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA) Flight 831 was a flight from Montréal–Dorval International Airport to Toronto International Airport on November 29, 1963. About five minutes after takeoff in poor weather, the jet crashed about 32 km (20 mi) north of Montreal, near Ste-Thérèse-de-Blainville, Quebec, Canada, killing all 111 passengers and seven crew members. The crash was the deadliest in Canadian history at the time. It was also the deadliest crash of a DC-8 at the time, and, as of 2022, the sixth-deadliest.
Bus companies in Ontario range in scale from small family-run businesses to subsidiaries of large international transportation groups. Many operate yellow school buses for student transportation on behalf of local school boards, while others concentrate on luxury coach charters and tours. Some municipalities use these private companies to run their public transit systems.
Morrisburg is an unincorporated community in the Municipality of South Dundas, located in Eastern Ontario, Canada. The population was 2,398 at the 2021 census.
Road signs in Canada may conform to the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Canada (MUTCDC) by the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) for use by Canadian jurisdictions. Although it serves a similar role to the MUTCD from the US Federal Highway Administration, it has been independently developed and has a number of key differences with its American counterpart, most notably the inclusion of bilingual (English/French) signage for jurisdictions such as New Brunswick with significant anglophone and francophone population, and a heavier reliance on symbols rather than text legends.
The 1972 Bean Station bus-truck collision was a head-on collision involving a double-decker Greyhound bus and a tractor-trailer on U.S. Route 11W in Grainger County, Tennessee, that occurred near the town of Bean Station on the morning of May 13, 1972.
The Eastman bus crash occurred on August 4, 1978 when forty people were killed after the chartered bus they were travelling in suffered brake failure, causing the bus to careen down a steep hill, plunging into Lac d'Argent, just east of Montreal, Quebec, near the town of Eastman. The driver plus 6 volunteers, who were assisting the group on a visit to a theatre performance in another town, escaped from the bus before it sank. The crash is the second deadliest road traffic accident in Canadian history after the 1997 Les Éboulements bus accident that killed 44 people.
The CP Rail crew bus crash occurred May 28, 1980, when twenty-two people were killed after the school bus they were travelling in was side swiped by an oncoming car near Webb, Saskatchewan. The collision remains the deadliest traffic accident in Saskatchewan history.