Audio Excerpt

If you're heading towards Banff, LOOK LEFT (loudly)! Everybody awake? GREAT! Heading AWAY from Banff? Look Right! -  See that big space between the mountains? Looks like the gap between my teeth, which I am NOT insecure about hmph! Well unlike my teeth, there’s something in that gap.. Banff! The mountain to the East is Tunnel mountain and way back when, the Stoney people called it "Sleeping Buffalo" because, well.. When you looked at it from the East or West, it looked like one! IIIIII don't see it, but I’ll let that slide. Fast forward to 1888, when Major AB Rogers and his team set out to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, aka CPR. They were in a rush and to save time decided to build the railroad along the the Bow River. Thissss proved troublesome however, with a lot of river crossings and mountainous cliffs in the way, sooo they decided to just, well, go through the mountain! General Manager William Cornelius was pretty angry with the whole tunnel plan (he used some unkind words heh) which caused quite the dilemma.  So how do you think the standoff ended? Did they,

 

A.) Accidentally find an alternative route, 

B.) Start building the tunnel, only to have an avalanche crush it, or,

C.) Complete the tunnel, but shut it down when a test train crashed into the side?

 

The answer is A! An alternative route just north of the mountain was located, which cut the railway down by a mile, saved millions of dollars and avoided two giant hills!! Surveyor Charles Shaw proclaimed it (spoken in gruff man's voice), "the most extraordinary blunder I have ever known in the way of engineering"! The tunnel idea was shut down completely, but the name Tunnel Mountain stuck!