“Blow Your Horn As Loud As You Can”: The Legacy of Robert Swanson

Photo Credit: Gavin Stevenson

Ever since Robert (Bob) Swanson passed away I’ve wanted to write a story about him. So now that I have this site dedicated to topics in Canadian heritage and history, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to tell you a little bit about this remarkable man. His name might not be familiar if you live on the Prairies or even in Ontario or Quebec. Yet, if you’ve ever sailed on a coastal or lake ferry in foggy, rough water anywhere in the world, or heard a train’s shrilling horn as you approach a railway crossing, you have this man to thank. In 1949, Swanson patented the multi chimed air horn which revolutionised how horns are used on trains and ships around the world. This invention has saved thousands of lives worldwide and he was a Canadian from Nanaimo, British Columbia. 

Photo Credit: Nanaimo Archives

Bob Swanson was born Oct 26, 1905 in Reading, England to a working class family. His father was a bricklayer who had a need for adventure. Shortly after Bob was born, his parents packed up everything and moved to South Africa for a short time in search of work. Then, the family decided to move to Vancouver Island in 1907 where the elder Swanson believed he could find steady employment in the coal mining industry. They settled in East Wellington, near the Jingle Pot Mine, in Nanaimo where Swanson found much demand for his skills as a brick layer. When he was three years old, Bob Swanson took his first train ride, which was along the Esquimalt and Nanaimo rail line between Wellington and north Nanaimo. Swanson said in a CBC interview in 1967 that he was hooked on trains from that first ride and, in particular, with their whistles. Steam was still king then in terms of locomotive technology and it would be some years before the introduction of diesel engines would change this.

At the age of 12, Swanson began helping his father to build house chimneys and clean boilers at the Jingle Pot coal mine. By the age of 15, he was showing a talent for mechanics and earned his fourth class papers in steam engineering making him one of the youngest on Vancouver Island to hold such a ticket. It also appears he had quite the knack for eluding the truancy officers in Nanaimo for he had one of the worst records around for playing hooky from school and would spent his days charming his way aboard steam locomotives running up and down the Island. He would eventually leave school to work in various sawmills helping to repair steam donkeys and boilers. Then in 1926, at the age of 21, sawmill owner Pete Inkster gave Swanson his big break that would help launch a world renowned career.

Inkster knew that Swanson had dabbled in the art of producing steam whistles in his spare time and called upon the young man to produce a whistle for his saw mill out along the Nanaimo Lakes logging area. Swanson made a whistle far grander than Inkster had imagined possible. This new steam whistle was so loud it could be heard five miles away and reverberated off the local mountains for seconds after the blast. The first time the whistle sounded about 40 workers at a saw mill three miles away came rushing to Inkster’s mill with buckets of water, axes and shovels thinking they had heard a fire alarm.

Photo Credit: Ian Lindsay/Vancouver Sun

The next few years saw Swanson head to the north coast to work in several logging camps where he wrote about his adventures through a series of poetry books and short stories detailing life in a logging camp. He had been inspired by the great Yukon bard, Robert Service, and strove to emulate his writing. Swanson was so popular as a writer that he outsold all other poets of the 1940s. But his passion remained the steam whistles and perfecting them as a safety devise on ship, trains and mills in his home province. This desire, and his strong engineering capabilities, led him back to the south coast where he became chief engineer at the Port Mellon pulp mill in Howe Sound. His creation of several warning whistles at Port Mellon came to the attention of the management of the Chemainus sawmill on Vancouver Island in 1940. He was asked to produce a whistle that would be sounded at the beginning and end of each work shift. As a result, he produced the largest, and loudest, steam whistle in Canada and it could be heard as far away as Saltspring Island, a distance of 10 miles away. When the whistle was first installed, he wouldn’t open it all the way until the town got used to the loud sound. Once they had, the whistle was blasted at full capacity for the next 50 years until the mill shut down in the 1990s. The whistle is now proudly on display in the Chemainus Museum.

CP Rail diesel locomotive

Steam was being phased out in the mid 1940s with the new diesel driven locomotives around North America. This also meant the end to the steam whistle. A monotone air horn was mounted on trains which was nowhere near as melodious or as loud as the steam whistle had been. In fact, these monotone horns were so difficult to distinguish between regular car horns that the fatality rates at train crossings throughout North America and Europe began to dramatically increase throughout the 1940s. Even on Vancouver Island, Swanson was hearing so many stories about how logging truck drivers thought the horn they heard was from another logging truck warning them they were heading up the switchback. Trains were not the only carriers of these monotone horns. Marine vessel horns also switched from steam to diesel at this time and their horns were almost impossible to hear. Fish boats were colliding with larger sea vessels in the fog, sometimes yielding disastrous results, due to improperly heard horns. It took the death of yet another logging truck driver at a rail crossing in Duncan for Swanson to say enough was enough and set to work on finding a solution.  Swanson felt he had the ability to do something about it. And in 1949, his invention would forever improve the safety of all those who boarded a train or marine vessel.

Photo Credit: Matt Donelly

Swanson wanted to recreate the multi-toned sound of the steam whistle through the use of compressed air, so his solution was the world’s first five chimed horn that each held a separate musical note, but when played together sounded just like an steam whistle. But, unlike the steam whistle, compressed air meant the horns were much louder and the multi-tone sounds were very distinct and would not be confused with monotone car horns. He patented his invention in 1949 and called it the H5. The horns were a massive success and once word got out of this new invention, orders began flooding in from train companies as far away as London, Paris, Miami, Melbourne and Sydney. The demand was so great that he left his position at the Chemainus Mill and created Airchime, the company that made these horns.

Photo Credit: BC Archives

Swanson also built a “Whistle Farm” high up in the mountains of the Nanaimo Lakes district, where he would isolate himself to build and test his air horns without bothering anyone around him. He laughed as he recalled to the CBC in 1967 that the horns did a marvellous job in scaring off the bears and cougars in the area, and the only ones brave enough to stick around were the occasional fisherman who wandered up the Lake road or the colony of Vancouver Island Marmots who didn’t seem to mind all the noise!

Photo Credit: Vancouver Island Marmot Society

But for many Canadians, particularly those on the west and east coasts, Swanson will always be remembered for his distinctive, and very audible, ferry horns which have protected many passengers and crew from accidents in foggy coastal conditions. Having grown up on Vancouver Island, I took it for granted hearing these ferry horns blasting every five minutes in the dense fogs that used to build up in the fall months over the Strait of Georgia on the runs between Nanaimo and Vancouver. Every five minutes, the ferry horn would grow weaker and weaker until eventually they could no longer be heard from the Nanaimo side. These horns have saved countless lives and in the early days of lighthouse decommissions, and before GPS, the ferry horns were sometimes all boaters and fishermen had to warn them of approaching dangers on the seas.

Photo Credit: Vancouver Public Library

Vancouverites know Swanson best as the creator of the Heritage Horns. These 10 horns, each representing a Canadian province, were commissioned by BC Hydro as a centennial project in 1967. Every day, at noon, these air horns would blast out the first four notes of “Oh Canada” from atop the BC Hydro Building at 970 Burrard Street. The horns sounded daily until the company vacated the building in the early 1990s. The horns then fell silent for a time until Canada Place acquired the horns, restored them back to their original condition and mounted them above their conference centre where they have sounded every day at noon since 1994. During the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver residents heard these horns more frequently as every time Canada earned a medal the horns were sounded. Bob Swanson died on October 4^th, 1994. Canada Place had just finished the refurbishment of the Heritage Horns and, ironically, the first time they sounded from their new home was on the day of Swanson’s memorial service.

Photo Credit: Canada Place

Robert Swanson’s airchime horn was produced in several models from the H5 and M5 to the K5LA. Airchime still runs strong from offices in Vancouver, Abbotsford and Surrey, British Columbia and though many companies world wide have produced similar horns, they all trace their roots back to Swanson’s little whistle farm shack up on the banks of the Nanaimo River. Every multi-tone chime produced today by other companies owe their existence to Swanson’s 1949 patent. The whistle farm is in ruins now after Swanson abandoned it in the 1980s to set up shop in Vancouver and perhaps one day, a group of railroad or ferry enthusiasts will work together to repair the shack to its former glory and have it designated as a heritage site. Sixteen years after his passing, Swanson’s legacy lives on in the trains and ferry horns we hear today around the world and the lives he has saved through his invention is phenomenal.

To hear some of these horns Swanson produced, here are a few clips below. The first is a sound that will stir the heart of any person who has ever lived along a coastal region in Canada. This is Robert Swanson, in his own voice, introducing the BC Ferries airchime horn on the run between Horseshoe Bay and Vancouver Island. The next two clips will be familiar to all Canadians no matter where you live. They are the M5 and K5LA airchimes found on the Via Rail passenger trains and the CP/CN freight trains that can be heard throughout every province and territory. These train and ferry horns are still in use and are heard all around the world.

Swanson’s BC Ferry Horn

M5 Train Horn

K5LA Train Horn

So the next time you are on a ferry, or hear the lonely sound of a train horn in the middle of the night, think of Swanson and his efforts to make sure as many people as possible avoided an unfortunate accident with one of these objects.

Photo Credit: Don Merritt

Industrial History Airchime, BC Ferries, British Columbia, Canada Place Heritage Horns, diesel locomotive, forestry, Nanaimo, Newfoundland Ferries, Robert Swanson, Vancouver, Vancouver Island