Caption: On this day, August 13th, in 1886, Canadian prime minister John A. Macdonald drove the last spike of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway at Cliffside, then around milepost 48 from Nanaimo. Mileposts were reversed to run northward from Victoria after CP took over 1905-06-08, with Cliffside becoming milepost 25. In 1958, a stone cairn was constructed to commemorate the 1886-08-13 last spike ceremony.

Ninety-two years after the last spike, on 1978-08-13 during a period of of optimism that CP could be persuaded to continue running E&N passenger service, a re-performance of the last spike ceremony was held with a surprisingly large number of general public attendees, and the northward passenger train (running Passenger Extra since it was a Sunday and the operating timetable had not been updated to reflect the 1978-07-28 introduction of Sunday service) paused briefly for the ceremony at a time (0911 PDT) astonishingly close to the the reported “shortly after 9:00 a.m.” of the original occasion, although the original was on Standard Time.

Southward the same day, there was no crowd, allowing a composition including the cairn and the fresh CLIFFSIDE station name sign on the flagstop platform as CP 9067 + 9103 running as Passenger Extra South passed at 1621 PDT.