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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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VYE, EDWARD S. (1854-1940)

VYE, EDWARD S., railwayman; b. Derby, 1854, s/o Henry Vye and Jane Appleby; m. 1877, Catherine M. Fraser, of New Glasgow, N.S.; d. Blackville, 20 May 1940.

Edward S. Vye took up a career in railroading in 1880 when he joined the Intercolonial Railway as a brakeman at Campbellton. He worked at various jobs on the Campbellton-Moncton portion of the ICR until 1887. In that year he was hired as conductor of the train on the Indiantown branch of the Canada Eastern Railway; that is, on the seventeen miles of road between Quarryville and Newcastle.

Vye's boast was that it was he who gave the name "Whooper" to the train of which he was the conductor. He stated that on a wild winter's night in December 1887 the wailing of the wind, in combination with the whooping of lumberjacks who were travelling to town by train for Christmas, made him think of the legend of the Dungarvon Whooper. When the train pulled in at the Newcastle station an Anglican priest stepped up to him and asked what train it was. "This," he replied, "is the Dungarvon Whooper!"

The "ever genial Ned Vye" retired from the railway in 1917, but he rode the Whooper again in 1936, on the fiftieth anniversary of its first run. Readers of the Union Advocate were reminded that it was he who named the train, but others have insisted that the name was assigned by residents along the line. "On the first night that the new local went through," states one published account, "an old lady at Dungarvon River heard the piercing whistle and immediately labeled it 'The Dungarvon Whooper'."

Vye's wife, Catherine M. Fraser, died in 1919. When he died in 1940 he left two daughters, including Tyne A. Vye, the widow of Archibald S. Alcorn.

Sources

[b] tombstone [m] Advocate 6 Jun 1877 [d] Commercial World 23 May 1940 / Advocate 26 Apr 1933, 29 Apr 1936; Commercial World 15 Aug 1940 (article by Fred Phillips); Generations 48, p.49


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