TORONTO (CBC) - A Via Rail train from Vancouver arrived in Toronto on Saturday morning after a health scare in northern Ontario.

For more than 10 hours on Friday, the train with 294 people on board was quarantined in the village of Foleyet, 100 kilometres southwest of Timmins, Ont., after an 86-year-old female passenger died.

In addition, an ill passenger was flown to a Timmins hospital with respiratory problems and five others on the train developed flu-like symptoms. Medical officials said Saturday that neither the passenger who was airlifted to Timmins, nor the others who felt ill, tested positive for influenza.

"An assessment of all passengers on a VIA Rail train from Vancouver to Toronto has been completed and results confirm that there was no outbreak of infectious disease," Ontario's Ministry of Health said in a statement.

The woman's death is still under investigation, but an infectious disease has been ruled out, according to the health ministry.

"It happened to be [the] confluence of three [separate events] at the same time," Ontario's acting chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams, said Friday at a news conference in Toronto.

But health officials across the country were praising the quick reaction of emergency response teams, hailing it as a sign the system is working after lessons learned from the 2005 SARS outbreak.

Ontario officials say the woman found dead in a washroom on the train may have died of a heart attack. The doctor on the train who found the woman had earlier been notified about her deteriorating health.

But earlier in the day, authorities said all they knew was that one woman seemingly healthy one moment was dead the next and that a group, including tourists from Australia who might have passed through Asia, was sick.

Fears of Avian flu: officials

"Given that there's still H5N1 [avian influenza] and while we haven't seen much person-to-person spread, one person dying and another person requiring airlifting and a bunch of other people sick, that kind of throws up some quick flags, " said Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada's chief public health officer, in an interview with Canadian Press.

Health officials across the country were pleased with the way the incident was handled.

British Columbia's chief medical health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said public health officials across the country linked into conference calls to share information quickly.

"Had we had that high level of suspicion in Toronto, for example, at the beginning of SARS, they may not have had the number of cases they subsequently had," he said.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser has been critical of provinces outside of Ontario for not moving more quickly to develop formalized systems to deal with public health emergencies.

But Kendall said this incident shows that there is still the will to work together when such emergencies happen.

He said Canada is spending $135 million on a computer system to allow every province and territory to share information in the event of an outbreak.

At Union Station on Saturday morning, passengers said they were a little weary, but in good spirits and looking forward to their vacations or visits with relatives.

Via Rail has crisis counsellors on hand for its staff on the train if they want them. The train will continue on to Halifax.

With files from the Canadian Press

LIKE IT?  LET OTHERS KNOW