Read Ebook: The romance of the Canadian Pacific Railway by MacBeth R G Roderick George

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 285 lines and 68095 words, and 6 pages

les that the undertaking was looked on by some as the very climax of engineering impossibility. Now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and that both Confederation and the Railway are running smoothly, we can look back and see the giants who fought victoriously to create the conditions we now enjoy. Some of these great men did not live to see the realization of their dreams, but they died in the faith that their dreams were so good that they would come true some time. Like the gallant soldiers of all time, they fell, still gripping the sword-hilt and cheering their comrades on to victory. Let us be grateful enough to halt for a moment with bowed heads and lay a wreath of memory on their honoured graves. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, and Canada must not forget her heroes in either.

There were several causes operating, midway in the last century, to lead the older Canada of Ontario and Quebec, and also the Maritime areas of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to consider the advisability of federating together for the good of the whole. The commercial power of the United States had such a magnetic pull upon some of the provinces that the tie which held these Provinces to Britain was being subjected to some strain. Moreover, the Imperial Government noticed with some anxiety that political prejudices and feeling between the various parts of the British possessions made any concerted plan for military action difficult to accomplish. Accordingly, as it is now known and can now be told, Lord Monck, who was the Governor-General in the "sixties," quietly used some pressure to keep Confederation before the minds of public men in the various parts of the country. Besides all that, there was very considerable difficulty in carrying on government in the Canada of Ontario and Quebec, owing to racial differences and double leadership, which meant an almost constant danger of legislative deadlock.

Moreover, the British possessions from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific were like a dumbbell, big at the ends and weak in the middle, as a Westerner once said. There were the immense areas of older Canada and the still more immense areas west of Lake Superior--but the North Shore of that inland sea was a wilderness of unproductive rock where no link of settlement would seem possible. Hence, as the aforesaid Westerner expressed it, "Canada would break off in the middle unless we linked it up with the steel trail." There was much truth in that statement in those early days and highly important truth it was. Many, in our day, cannot realize how swiftly inter-travel and inter-trade over the pioneer railway across Canada brought the East and the West together.

"No pent-up Utica confines our powers The vast, boundless continent is ours."

After some discussion, the Charlottetown Conference adjourned to meet as a larger gathering in Quebec City on October 10th, 1864--a red-letter day not only in the history of Canada, but of the British Empire and the world. The object of the Quebec Conference was as stated above; and therefore there were men there from all the then organized British Provinces. These were men who could have filled places in the "Mother of Parliaments" at the world's metropolis, but who at the Quebec meeting were engaged in the, perhaps, more difficult undertaking of bringing into being, out of diverse elements, a new nation within the Empire. These men were "The Fathers of Confederation," and the famous picture of that conference should be in every Canadian home. Etienne P. Tache, who once said that the last gun fired in North America for British connection would be fired by a French-Canadian, was chairman. From Ontario and Quebec came John A. Macdonald, George Brown, George E. Cartier, A. T. Galt, William McDougall, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Oliver Mowat, Alexander Campbell, James Cockburn, Hector L. Langevin, and Jean C. Chapais. From Nova Scotia there were Charles Tupper, W. A. Henry, Jonathan McCully and R. B. Dickey. From New Brunswick came Samuel L. Tilley, John M. Johnston, Charles Fisher, Peter Mitchell, E. B. Chandler, W. H. Steeves and John H. Gray; Prince Edward Island was represented by Colonel Gray, Edward Palmer, W. H. Pope, George Coles, Edward Whalen, T. H. Haviland and A. A. Macdonald. Newfoundland sent F. B. T. Carter and Ambrose Shea, though it was not yet to come into Confederation.

It is not our purpose, in the present writing, to dwell on this great meeting beyond saying that it led to the Confederation of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1867. Prince Edward Island entered in 1873 and the Western prairie country and British Columbia in 1870 and 1871. The two latter entered with somewhat reluctant feet; Manitoba, retarded by Louis Riel's stand against the incoming of Canada lest the rights of the natives should be ignored; and British Columbia, unready to come in unless the railway across the continent to the Pacific Coast was guaranteed within a given time. These difficulties were finally overcome, but the details do not belong to this story. Suffice it to say that Confederation being accomplished, the new sense of national unity led to combination in the immense undertaking of a railway from sea to sea. The courageous facing of such an enormous task had no precedent in the business history of the modern world. The big Republic to the South of us has done some amazing things, such as the Panama Canal in recent years, but even that commercially daring country only attempted a transcontinental railway when it had nearly forty millions of people. Canada undertook the task when her population was less than four millions. To the onlooking world the attempt must have appeared like "a forlorn hope"--a sort of a "Charge of the Light Brigade" against batteries bristling with obstacles of a wholly unprecedented kind. But there are always some men who are unafraid, and the dream of seers was to be realized. Once Confederation had been accomplished, a transcontinental railway became a national necessity. This was true not only from the standpoint of politics and trade, but from the standpoint also of law and order in the far-flung country. It will be remembered that Louis Riel started a revolt against the incoming of Canadian authority in 1869, and that he held high carnival in the West till Colonel Garnet Wolseley and his soldiers reached Fort Garry from the East, nearly a year after the Riel outbreak started. All this period was not consumed in travel; but it had taken three months' steady travel overland, after mobilization in the East, before Wolseley reached the scene of Riel's revolt. The whole Western country might have been swept by the rebel chief's revolt in that time, and the necessity of swifter communication between the different parts of Canada became painfully apparent. And so, when British Columbia came into Confederation in 1871, there was an understanding that the railway from the East to the Pacific should begin in two years and be finished in ten. This daring pledge was given by Sir John A. Macdonald and his Government at Ottawa, despite the fact that a distinguished explorer and engineer, Capt. Palliser, sent out by the Imperial Government, had reported after four years on the ground, that on account of the mountains being impassable, a transcontinental railway could not be built from sea to sea on British territory. But Sir John Macdonald went ahead and sought to interest some big business men who might form a company to build the Canadian Pacific to the Western sea.

At that time Sir Hugh Allan, head of the Allan line of steamships, was probably the most able and prominent business man in Canada. He was not only interested in steamships on the Atlantic, but had acquired railway interests as well. There is no doubt that Sir Hugh Allan had been pressing upon men in public life the project of a transcontinental railway, which he might lead in building, with the further idea, no doubt, of having another line of steamers on the Pacific. This was a worthy enough ambition for a great Canadian. There is no reason to think that Sir Hugh Allan was mercenary or avaricious, for he had no need of more wealth than he possessed. In any case he, being of the same political party as Sir John Macdonald, as well as a man of great ability and financial power, was one of those in line as a possibility for such a big task.

Accordingly Allan formed a company to build the railway. So also did Mr. D. L. Macpherson and a group of Toronto capitalists, who alleged that Allan was in league with American interests in a degree that would militate against the success of the Canadian Pacific as a Canadian road. Sir John Macdonald tried in vain to get these two projected companies to amalgamate. Finally it seemed to be settled that a new company should be formed of Canadians and that Allan would have control. He was spending money with a lavish hand and when the Dominion election was held in 1872 he furnished the large sum of 0,000 for campaign funds to Macdonald, Cartier and Langevin. It is known that Allan had always contributed to the campaign funds of the party, as others did, but the fact that these campaign funds in 1872 were contributed at a time when a huge contract was pending, made the whole transaction look dangerous. All campaign funds are legally and morally wrong, and the fact that they were customary and that everybody knows they are customary, does not make them right.

In this particular case, Cartier, who was then mentally as well as physically broken down, and who, contrary to Macdonald's advice, ran for an impossible constituency, where he was defeated, seems to have made the largest demands on Allan. It seems clear also that Cartier held out to Allan, hopes of the contract. But it is also clear that the other leaders got certain sums which they used in the campaign. The Macdonald government was elected. After the election a new company, called the Canadian Pacific, was formed, with representative men from all the Provinces as directors. That new board chose Allan as President, it is said, without any pressure from the Government. This is not unlikely, as Allan was, as we have said, the biggest business man in Canada at the time. To this company the Government granted a charter to build the Canadian Pacific, but American interests were to be excluded as the Government insisted. Allan agreed to this and repaid the money the Americans had advanced. The New York men, of course, were annoyed at this and gave the opponents of the Macdonald Government some hints as to those campaign funds from Allan. Then Allan's personal correspondence with American interests during the election year was stolen by a clerk in the office of Allan's solicitor, Mr. J. J. C. Abbott, and, being made public, raised a tremendous political storm.

When the House of Commons met the atmosphere was tense and electric. Only a few days elapsed before Mr. L. S. Huntingdon, for the Opposition, moved for the investigation of the charges that were floating around in regard to these campaign funds, the suggestion being that Sir Hugh Allan got the railway contract in return for his monetary contributions. On an immediate vote the Government was sustained, but there was an uneasy feeling abroad and men of independent mould were breaking away from party ties. Sir John Macdonald, who saw the situation with his usual political sagacity, himself moved for the appointment of an investigating commission, and the House adjourned till that commission would be ready to report. When the House met in October, 1873, the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, leader of the Opposition, moved a vote of non-confidence and supported it by quoting from the report of the commission. The debate in the House was hot. Charles Tupper, the "war horse of Cumberland"--a masterful debater, who later was the tremendous drive wheel of the railway project--supported the Government, but Huntingdon replied that the Government had kept itself in power by the lavish use of money from men who were desiring contracts. Sir John A. Macdonald spoke for nearly five hours in defence of his action, dealing with the whole history of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He made a special appeal for support in order that East and West might be connected by rail and the whole of Canada developed. Sir John, though at no stage of his career a great orator, was possessed of a magnetic manner and could coin phrases that had indescribable force. Such, for instance, was the expression he used once at a great mass meeting in Toronto, when he said dramatically, "A British subject I was born--a British subject I will die." On this occasion, in 1873, in the House, when he made explanation of his policy in regard to the railway contract, he closed his five hours' address in the words: "But, Sir, I commit myself, the Government commits itself, to the hands of this House; and far beyond this House, it commits itself to the country at large. We have faithfully done our duty. We have fought the battle of Confederation. We have fought the battle of unity. We have had party strife, setting Province against Province. And more than all, we have had, in the greatest Province, every prejudice and sectional feeling that could be arrayed against us. I throw myself on this House; I throw myself on this country; I throw myself on posterity, and I believe that, notwithstanding the many failings of my life, I shall have the voice of this country rallying around me. And, Sir, if I am mistaken in that, I can confidently appeal to a higher court--to the court of my own conscience, and to the court of posterity. I leave it to this House with the utmost confidence. I am equal to either fortune. I can see past the decision of this House, either for or against me, but, whether it be for or against me, I know, and it is no vain boast of me to say so, for even my enemies will admit that I am no boaster--that there does not exist in Canada a man who has given more of his time, more of his heart, more of his wealth, or more of his intellect and power, such as they may be, for the good of this Dominion of Canada."

This speech was listened to by a full house and crowded galleries, amongst those present being Lord Roseberry, then on a visit to Canada. Sir John closed his speech about two o'clock in the morning, and the Hon. Edward Blake rose to reply. Blake was probably the ablest and most massively intellectual man that Canada has produced. He lacked the magnetism of Sir John, but had the power, almost to a fault, of dealing with a subject in such detail that when he was through with it there was little left to be said. Mr. Blake was at that time quite sceptical as to the practicability of a transcontinental railway, anyway; but that night in the House of Commons he concentrated his tremendous argumentative oratory against the Government for having, as he alleged, won the election with campaign funds from interested parties.

There was doubt as to the result in the House till some of the independent members who might ordinarily have supported the Government began to indicate otherwise. Curiously enough, Mr. Donald A. Smith , the man who, later on, drove the last spike in the Canadian Pacific Railway, under the Premiership of this same Sir John Macdonald, in 1885, was the member who really dealt the Government its knockout blow in 1873 in the House of Commons. No one knew what the course of Mr. Smith, who was never a party man, would be, and when he rose to speak every one listened with strained attention. His opening words seemed to favour the Government, but he was simply absolving Sir John Macdonald from personal blame. Here is the report of what Mr. Smith said: "With respect to the transaction between the Government and Sir Hugh Allan, I do not consider that the First Minister took the money with any corrupt motive. I feel that the leader of the Government is incapable of taking money from Sir Hugh Allen for corrupt purposes. I would be most willing to vote confidence in the Government , if I could do so conscientiously . It is with very great regret that I cannot do so. For the honour of the country, no Government should exist that has a shadow of suspicion resting on them, and for that reason I could not support them." In the afternoon of that day, November 5th, 1873, Sir John A. Macdonald informed the House that he had placed his resignation in the hands of the Governor-General and that the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie was called upon to form a new administration.

Sir John Macdonald had resigned without waiting for a vote of the House and no one to this day knows just how it would have divided. But the feeling in the country was hot and, like a wise man, he bowed to the inevitable. He said that someday the people would understand and call him back to power. The fact that they did call him back five years later astounded his political foes, one of whom had said in the House, during the debate, that Sir John "had fallen like Lucifer, never to rise again." But he did rise, to the surprise of many. The fact that he came back later on was due, in some degree, to his personal magnetism. But it was also due to the fact that people knew that Sir John had not profited in any personal way and that he and Sir Hugh Allan had become almost obsessed with the idea that the continuance of Sir John in office at that time was absolutely necessary to the opening up and development of Canada. They acted accordingly, as if the end they had in view justified the methods they adopted. Moreover, it was shown that Sir John had definitely told Allan that he would not give the railway contract to him, but to an amalgamation of the two companies. Allan said in connection with the whole matter: "The plans I propose are the best for the interests of the Dominion and in urging them I am doing a patriotic action."

In the meantime, when Sir John resigned, Mackenzie took office and, in a general election shortly afterwards, swept the country. Sir Hugh Allan, unable to raise capital in the presence of the political earthquake and the business depression, threw up the charter for building the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a new programme had to be adopted. For the time being the curtain had to be rung down on the gigantic project.

But while we thus pay him personal tribute, we find that, whether as a result of the dissolution of the Allan Company, or pressure of lean years, or the lack of enthusiasm amongst his following in the House, Mackenzie, despite his good intentions, made little progress with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway during his five years in office. It was not easy for Mackenzie and his supporters, after attacking the general extravagance of Sir John Macdonald's plan for a transcontinental, to accommodate themselves to carrying out the scheme of a railway from ocean to ocean. Edward Blake, Mackenzie's great lieutenant, had openly said more than once that the rounding out of Confederation by pledging a railway to British Columbia within a fixed term was too costly. The population of the West Coast Province was only some ten thousand or so of white people, he said, and this country was "a sea of mountains." One of the chief newspapers of Mr. Mackenzie's party said that the Canadian Pacific "would not pay for axle grease" over certain sections. Mr. Blake, it is true, in 1891 visited the West Coast over the completed railway, and made a brilliantly humorous and eloquent apology for his mistaken conception of the country. But that was too late to help Mackenzie with his problem, and the fact that Mr. Blake and some others of his party actually voted in the House against Mackenzie's proposal regarding the Esquimault railway on Vancouver Island did not help the heavily burdened Premier. But one must allow that it is much easier to be optimistic about British Columbia now than it was at that time. Very few people then dreamed of the development that could and would take place in the Province which Mr. Blake, speaking for thousands in the East, called "a sea of mountains." It looked like that in those days before the world knew that British Columbia had not only mines and forests and fish, but that vast areas would be opened up along the rivers and in the mountain valleys which would prove immensely adapted to agriculture, fruit-growing and dairying. Therefore let us be kind to the men who were sceptical about the whole railway undertaking. We are quoting their scepticism here only to show the problem that Premier Mackenzie had to face when he came into power in 1873. Under all the circumstances he did the best he could at the time--that is, the best that could be done by any man who lacked the full-hearted support of some of his own friends, and who felt that to meet the demands of the naturally impatient and almost resentful British Columbia, was practically impossible in the lean years that seemed imminent and beyond his power to control.

But Mackenzie began on the problem and we find him, in 1874, in an election address to his own constituents in Lambton, Ontario, unfolding his plan. Briefly, the transportation system was to be a sort of amphibious animal. Mackenzie, realizing that traffic by water is the cheapest type of transportation, thought he saw a possibility of securing a transcontinental, without undue cost, by utilizing "the magnificent water stretches" across Canada, linking them together by rail as funds would be available. In this way he claimed that railway construction would be gradual enough to avoid excessive financial expenditure, and that the country would be gradually settled. Settlement would keep abreast with railway construction and thus the possibility of having the railway going ahead of the settlement across an uninhabited, and therefore unproductive, country would be eliminated.

Mr. Mackenzie was perfectly sincere in this, as he was in everything. The plan was not without merit under the circumstances, but it had defects which arose out of a lack of knowledge of the Western country generally, and particularly of the attitude of the people of British Columbia. It also ignored the strange, but characteristic, impulses of human nature in regard to migration. Every now and then in history some section of humanity strikes its tents and goes on the march, railway or no railway. Especially does the Star of the Empire draw people westward. Before there was a railway in the West at all, many of my own kith and kin loaded their few belongings on ox-carts and took their way five hundred miles north-westward to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. And so also will some people go on in advance of the railway, despite all advice to the contrary. For years I heard it said by some that had the Canadian Pacific not been built so rapidly, settlement would have been more compact along the line. But this theory is contradicted by the actual fact, as we saw it, that when the trains were only running to Brandon, west of Winnipeg, settlers were leaving the train there and trekking on westward with prairie schooners. Great numbers may not thus go forward in any particular case, but since a country grows by the enterprise of the adventurous, it becomes the duty of such a country to follow with utilities, the people who thus widen the horizon of the land.

Moreover, Mackenzie's well-intentioned policy of using the water stretches would have made transportation too slow and too expensive for shippers, owing to the constant need for transfers, with necessary delays and damages. And, most important of all, that policy indicated too tardy a construction of the transcontinental to satisfy British Columbia, which had entered confederation on the distinct understanding that a railway would be built to the Pacific within reasonable time.

Mackenzie made an effort, by sending Mr. J. D. Edgar to British Columbia, to secure a modification in the terms of Confederation in regard to railway construction. This mission was resented in British Columbia, and Mr. Edgar was recalled. The people of British Columbia looked on the attempt to change the Confederation terms as a breach of faith on the part of Canada, and said so in their usual straight-flung words. Both parties put the case before Lord Carnarvon, who offered to arbitrate. His award was on the whole rather favourable to Mackenzie's effort for modification, and was accepted in the meantime as the best obtainable. British Columbia, feeling that even the modified terms would not be carried out, began to discuss withdrawing from Confederation, and motions to that effect were actually submitted in the Legislature.

In Victoria arches were numerous. One arch had an inscription, "Our railway iron rusts," and another very conspicuous one had the menacing message "Carnarvon terms or separation."

Lord Dufferin knew his relation to the Crown and to the Government of the day too well to allow his courtesy to run away with his conception of duty as Governor-General of Canada, and so he declined to drive under the arch which had upon it the threat of secession. So he ordered the carriage to detour until that arch was passed. Afterwards Lady Dufferin said, "The Governor-General would have driven under the arch if one letter had been changed so as to have the inscription read 'The Carnarvon Terms or Reparation.'" The incident caused some excitement, but Lord Dufferin knew his constitutional law too well to be moved. On the whole the visit of this brilliant diplomat and magnetic orator made a great impression for good. His speech at the close of the tour of the Coast was a noble eulogy of the wonderful beauty and potential wealth of British Columbia. While not becoming a partisan advocate for the Dominion Government, Lord Dufferin expressed his view that Mr. Mackenzie had done his best under all the circumstances, and would continue so to do while he was in power. The speech of the eloquent and tactful Governor-General had a pronounced effect in allaying the indignation of the people against the Government of the day. They settled down to wait development with as good grace as possible.

All this does not mean that Mr. Mackenzie was inactive in the matter of the transcontinental railway. Considering the facts we have mentioned already, namely, that many of his chief supporters were lukewarm in regard to the whole project, which they considered premature, and the further fact that there was a cycle of lean years, he strove to get things moving, but the chariot wheels dragged. There was no popular enthusiasm over the undertaking, because the times were hard and there was general failure on the part of the people to get a vision of the illimitable possibilities that lay to westward. But some progress was made. Extensive surveys were carried forward. And several contracts were let for the easier portions of the route. The hard places, like the North Shore of Lake Superior, and the mountains in British Columbia, were not attempted. Lord and Lady Dufferin, at Emerson, Manitoba, in 1877, drove the first two spikes in the portion which started at the international boundary-line, where the railways linked up with an American line. This was later called the Emerson Branch, and ran from the boundary east of the Red River through St. Boniface, across from Winnipeg, to East Selkirk. From Selkirk a portion of the railway to Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, was begun. It was the plan of the Mackenzie Government to cross the Red River at Selkirk, and strike westward over the prairies, side-tracking Winnipeg, which was then becoming a considerable centre of population. I recall a locomotive round-house at East Selkirk built in Mackenzie's time, but later abandoned when the line was changed to run through Winnipeg. Budding political orators made merry over this round-house, as being the only assurance they had that a road which would require the stabling of iron horses at a divisional point would some day be constructed.

The slow progress of transcontinental railway building afforded ammunition to the opponents of the Mackenzie Government in the House of Commons. And there is no record of an Opposition ever allowing an opportunity to oppose to go by unused. In one year we find that redoubtable fighter, Dr. Charles Tupper, moving a long resolution urging the Government "to employ the available funds of the Dominion to complete the road." This was voted down. Next year that unique, somewhat peculiar, but quite brilliantly versatile publicist, Mr. Amor de Cosmos, of British Columbia, moved a vote of censure on the Government for the slowness of their building of the road to the Coast. This resolution did not get far in the House. The Coast was so far away that the project of building all the way to the Pacific gave even the Opposition a chill when it came squarely before them. Hon. George W. Ross, a Mackenzie supporter, moved that only such progress should be attempted as would "not increase the existing rates of taxation," which manifestly would mean not much progress. Dr. Tupper came back to the attack in April, 1877, with a motion of censure, but this was negatived also. During all this time that astute statesman, Sir John A. Macdonald, was studying the political horoscope, and all of a sudden, in 1878, he propounded a policy of protection and railway construction which caught the popular imagination and he was swept into power again. There was a swift revival of optimism, because there was a revival of trade, and the wave carried the Canadian Pacific Railway enterprise on its crest to new heights of success.

Whether a protective tariff brings real or fictitious prosperity, and whether it enriches the few or the many, are questions which are fortunately outside the scope of this book. But, anyway, the fact, historically, is that with the advent of Sir John Macdonald and his National Policy of protection in 1878, there came quite a pronounced outburst of new faith in the future possibilities of Canada. There were, no doubt, other subsidiary causes, and some even hold that lean and fat years come in cycles. But, in any case, there was a decided restoration of public confidence in all legitimate business enterprises, and, what was still more important, there came a distinctive national sentiment and pride which made the vast project of the Canadian Pacific Railway from ocean to ocean a distinct possibility.

Portions of the railway had already been under construction by the Mackenzie Government, as we have seen. These portions were mainly east of the Red River, but surveys had been carried on with far-reaching results in the mountain region of British Columbia. These surveys were under the general direction of Mr. Marcus Smith, an engineer of remarkable experience and ability. He had done work in the British Isles and Spain before coming to this side of the ocean, where he was on service in South America, as well as on the Grand Trunk and the Intercolonial in the older parts of what is now Eastern Canada. The other day here, through the kindness of Mr. Newton Ker, now head of the Coast Department of Lands for the Canadian Pacific, I had the privilege of reading a scrap book kept by Mr. Marcus Smith over many years, and willed by him to Mr. Ker. This book indicates that Mr. Smith had a very wide interest in social, civil and political life, as well as in his own special vocation of engineering. The man who gathered that collection of articles together had a big outlook on things, and would regard his work in the mountains as of national significance.

The remarkable explorations of Mr. Walter Moberly, who later discovered the Eagle's Pass by watching the flight of eagles evidently following a fish-stream, had produced good results and his experience in connection with the building of the famous Yale-Cariboo wagon road made his later services specially valuable. Mr. Henry J. Cambie, and Mr. Thomas H. White, his personal assistant and associate in solving the engineering problems through the Fraser River canyons, are still, happily, living in Vancouver, highly regarded as citizens who did their share of nation building. Other noted engineers of that period in British Columbia were H. T. Jennings, H. P. Bell, Henry MacLeod, C. E. Perry, G. A. Keefer, Joseph Hunter, L. B. Hamlin, W. F. Gouin, C. F. Harrington, E. W. Jarvis, John Trutch, C. Horetzky, C. H. Gamsby and, later on, Major Rogers, after whom Rogers' Pass was named, although Moberly always contended that the pass had been discovered by Albert Perry, one of his assistants in a survey in 1866. Of course there were many others, but these are representative of the famous body of men who made their way along the dangerous rivers, through the tangled forests, by precipitous cliffs and across terrific canyons, until they finally found safe location for the steel trail through a region that many had pronounced to be impenetrable--a sort of supernatural barrier interposed between the prairies and the Western sea. Most of these men have, as already intimated, passed over the Great Divide into the Unseen; but, at great cost to themselves in hardship and suffering and privation, they made it possible for the people of to-day to travel in rolling palaces where once they themselves trod with aching and weary feet. Let us highly honour the memory of the engineers and surveyors and their men, who were the forerunners of the mighty engines which now thunder through the echoing mountain passes, along which these heroes of the transit and the chain, long years ago, pursued their painful and precarious way.

The Macdonald Government came back into power in 1878, as we have seen, on the wave of the National Policy movement. But, for two years, they worked on the lines of their predecessors and linked up some of the disconnected portions of the road which Mr. Mackenzie had constructed in various localities, mainly between the Lakes and the Red River. Then Sir Charles Tupper, that militant and aggressive Minister of Railways, took the bold plunge and let to Andrew Onderdonk, a young American railroader of San Francisco, contracts to build portions of the Canadian Pacific through "the sea of mountains" in British Columbia. Canada was young at the railway business, as indicated by the fact that it was an American who got the contract to build the first parts of the mountain road. Later on, as the construction of the road from ocean to ocean began to get under way, Canadians developed by the score into great practical railway builders. Young men who had begun by chopping in the bush grew into contractors for getting out ties for the track-layers, and finally themselves took contracts for actual building of the railway over rock and boulders, through mountain vastnesses and quaking bogs until the steel reached tide water. It was in itself an act of splendid audacity for a people of less than four millions in number to start on the task of throwing a railway across an immense and almost uninhabited continent to the shores of the Western sea. And this daring on the part of the young Dominion was backed gallantly and effectively by scores of native-born Canadians who, with genuine Canadian initiative, learned a new trade and followed it with tremendous energy and skill.

It has been my good fortune and privilege to meet many of these men. Some of them made money and some of them did not. The task of calculating the cost of a piece of work over a given stretch of country, where unexpected obstacles emerged, was not easy. There were stretches on the North Shore of Lake Superior where the old Laurentian rocks had to be blasted to pieces at a cost of half-a-million a mile. There is a well-known muskeg east of Winnipeg where seven tracks went under, till a solid foundation was secured in what looked for a while like a bottomless pit. And there were tunnels and bridges and cuttings in the mountains which challenged the resources of a race of Titans. So, we say, these contractors did not, by any means, always make money. But my knowledge of them leads me to say that very few of the contractors or engineers cared for the money end of it in any case. They felt that they were engaged in a work of significance, not only to Canada and the Empire, but to the world, and that was an inspiration worth while. I recall being told by the secretary to one of the most famous of these railway builders that, so intent was this railway man on his work, that he very often forgot to have money enough in his pocket for personal necessities. In one sense he handled millions; but, only for the precaution of his secretary who knew his ways, this railway magnate would often have been personally stranded. "He thought so little of money," said the secretary, "that he hardly ever carried any with him. But he was generous withal. The real fact was he was so engrossed in the great enterprise of helping to build a road across Canada that he forgot his own personal needs."

Going back to Mr. Andrew Onderdonk, it is interesting to recall his influence on the social life of British Columbia by his importation of a few thousand Chinese coolies to work on railway construction. Mr. Onderdonk claimed that he was unable to get enough white men who were willing to do that particular kind of work. Be that as it may, the present fact is that we have a very large Chinese population in this Province which faces the Orient. It is equally sure that the presence of so many Orientals causes many serious problems. It is fashionable for some people who do not know the history, to lay the responsibility for the presence of Chinese here on the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. But the fact is that it was Mr. Onderdonk who imported these Oriental coolies while the road was still under Government supervision, two or more years before the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was formed. It is only fair always to apportion praise or blame justly, so that every one shall bear his own burden of responsibility without having to carry more than his share. Hence, the company, be it known, was not the originator of the importation of Chinese coolies for the construction of the road. On this subject we are not now moralizing either way, but are simply making a statement of historical fact.

In any case, Mr. Onderdonk knew the business of railway construction and kept steadily on, taking over some portions from other contractors, till he had the steel laid from Port Moody to Kamloops, and made a creditable record for railway building across an exceedingly difficult section of Canada. In fact, Sir Charles Tupper, the militant Minister of Railways, said quite openly that, though the construction of a piece of the road on the Pacific Coast would not mean much till it was linked up with the Eastern part of Canada, he wanted to get the mountain section under construction without delay for certain reasons. One was that the construction of that exceedingly difficult section, if successfully accomplished, would show the possibility of the whole task of the transcontinental being completed in due time. The other, of course, was that the people of British Columbia, fortunately for them, had several ably-insistent and politely-vociferous leaders who would give no rest to any Government till the work of railway construction had actually begun on the Coast. There were some prominent men elsewhere who did not look at things in the same light. An Opposition in Parliament opposes the party in power as a sort of a constitutional principle, nominally at least, for the safety of the country, which otherwise might have unwise legislation imposed on it. But even apart from that, we need not now look with undue criticism on the record of men like the Hon. Edward Blake, a statesman of great ability and integrity who, when Onderdonk was going ahead with his contracts in the mountains, moved in the House of Commons in 1880 that "the public interests require that the work of constructing the Pacific Railway in British Columbia be postponed." Others of his party took the same stand, and it must be admitted that, apart from the prerogative of an Opposition above indicated, the whole project seemed vast enough to appal men who did not personally know the West well enough to visualize its illimitable future. The gigantic undertaking, as already mentioned, looked well nigh quixotic for less than four millions of people, and the fact that there were, in the years following, times when the whole effort seemed on the verge of disaster, ought to restrain our wholesale condemnation of early sceptics. Incidentally, it ought to bring us to the salute when we think of the railway builders who fought their amazing difficulties and, by fighting, gathered strength to win out in the end.

Andrew Onderdonk in the mountains and other contractors between Lake Superior and the Red River, were doing good work, but their detached pieces of road ended in the air. And Sir John A. Macdonald was quick to see that something more had to be done. Accordingly, at a Cabinet meeting at the close of the first session after his return to power, Sir John brought up the question of building railways in the North-West in order to attract immigrants. Sir Charles Tupper, who, being at the head of the Department of Railways, had made special study of the situation, agreed with Sir John that something should be done at once and neither one of them was in love with the idea of Government ownership and operation of railways. Sir Charles thought the policy of a transcontinental should be again emphasized, and that a responsible company should be secured to build it. Sir John said that was always his idea; but it was a "large order" and they had better take a week to think it over. On the appointed day Sir Charles submitted a carefully prepared report in favour of a through line, built, owned and operated by a chartered company. Putting it in brief form, the suggestion was that the Government should complete and hand over to such a company the parts of the railway then built or under construction, estimated at about seven hundred miles, which, when finished, would have cost about thirty-two millions of dollars. The portions of the road then built, or being built, were the lines from Port Arthur to Winnipeg, from Kamloops to Port Moody and the Emerson Branch on the east side of the Red River, from the boundary-line to St. Boniface and Winnipeg. In addition to getting possession of these portions, the company would receive a cash grant of twenty-five millions of dollars, and fifty million acres of land along the railway.

The suggestion was heartily agreed to by Sir John, and the Cabinet was unanimously in favour of the plan proposed. The Cabinet adjourned immediately after the decision was made. The members thereof had good reason to call it a day. The Rubicon had been crossed and the country was on the march to a new destiny. There were to be many obstacles encountered before the objective would be reached. It was a mighty venture of faith, but men of thought and men of action would clear the way.

Meanwhile the contractors on the portions under construction carried on, but the Government was looking eagerly to the financial magnates of the Old Land to form a company to carry out its policy. Yet, despite a visit of Sir John, Sir Charles and the Hon. John Henry Pope to London, there was no rush on the part of British financiers to build a railway across a vast, thinly populated continent. And when it looked as if there was going to be a disappointing set-back, there arose a small group of men on our own continent who were destined to lead in making the projected transcontinental what Lord Shaughnessy, a few hours before his death, called so finely, in a conversation with President Beatty, "a great Canadian property and a great Canadian enterprise." We shall, in the next chapter, meet the men who came to the rescue.

"Playing safe" is a better programme than reckless foolhardiness, but it is a poor programme as compared with the spirit of adventure. Without adventure, based upon faith, humanity's horizon would never have widened out and new continents and new avenues for the expenditure of human energy in great enterprises for the good of mankind would never have been discovered. Satisfaction with present attainment means stagnation, and it is better to reach out after the apparently unattainable than to allow our God-given energies to suffer atrophy through disuse.

In our present study of the building of a great railway across Canada, traversing vast unpeopled plains, and boring its way through what some had declared to be impassable mountain barriers, it is a very interesting thing to find the enterprise somewhat closely linked up with a certain other organization that had been chartered in 1670, under the title of "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay." The big word in that title is the word "adventurers," and it applies both to the men who hazarded their capital and to the men who fared forth from the Old Country into the unknown spaces of the new continent on this side of the sea. This Hudson's Bay Company not only attracted attention to the new world that had still to be conquered, but its able and resourceful employees in the North-West became distinct elements in the progress of the country.

In this particular connection one Donald Alexander Smith who had come out from Scotland as a lad to Labrador, in the service of the Company, had risen to be head of that Company in Canada at the time of Confederation, and was a member of the House of Commons for Winnipeg when the project of a transcontinental railway loomed up as an actual possibility. Mr. Smith was a restlessly ambitious man, or he would not have so risen, and there is no doubt in my mind that when the discussion arose he began to cherish the hope of being an instrument in linking up the East and West in some way by the much-discussed railway.

Since writing this I came across a letter, dated November, 1872, at Stuart Lake, B.C., from the Hudson's Bay Company factor then in charge there, to the officer in charge at another post. This letter not only shows that the Hudson's Bay Company, instead of retarding the opening up of the country by rail as some have affirmed, was actively assisting and making possible the work of explorers and surveyors who were beginning to blaze the way for the road. And it also shows that Mr. Donald A. Smith was, even that far back, on his own behalf and on behalf of the ancient fur-trading organization, contributing his quota in that direction. Here is an extract in the letter from one Hudson's Bay man to another: "The bearer is a botanist belonging to the railway survey who arrived here in company with an engineer, and who is the bearer of a letter from Mr. Donald A. Smith to us men in the service to assist the surveyors as far as possible. He also showed me a letter from Mr. Sandford Fleming, authorizing the engineer who goes down the Skeena to sign any bill of expenses he may have with the Hudson's Bay Company and it will be good. I have told him that you would forward him to Victoria and push him through as quickly as possible. The engineer's name is something like Horetzkie." The writer of that letter had caught the name of the engineer all right. And it shows not only how these Hudson's Bay posts made the work of these and other explorers possible, but in this particular case it links the name of Donald A. Smith with the new day that was dawning.

I do not think that Mr. Smith was by any means the ablest of the men who later formed the Canadian Pacific Railway Company Board. But he was unquestionably the pivot on which the project turned, from its doubtful success as a Government undertaking, to its becoming an accomplished fact as a privately owned and operated concern.

And it happened on this wise. Mr. Smith had to travel frequently between West and East, through St. Paul, Minnesota, on his way from Fort Garry to Ottawa and Montreal, in connection with parliamentary and Company business. In St. Paul he usually called on Mr. Norman W. Kitson, a Canadian, formerly a Hudson's Bay factor, and met along with him another Canadian, James J. Hill, who was then in the coal business. Kitson and Hill were both interested in transportation to the Red River country, and were anxious to get a hold of a three-hundred-mile railway called the St. Paul and Pacific, running from St. Paul to the Red River, and later to westward, if it could be kept going. This road had fallen into misfortune because grasshopper plagues and Indian troubles and massacres had depopulated the territory through which it ran. So the Dutch bondholders had thrown it into the hands of the receiver, and the bonds were not saleable in the ordinary way. Hill and Kitson, who knew more about the country than the Dutch bondholders, felt that the road could be built up into a really valuable concern, and Smith thought the same. But they lacked the capital to acquire it.

Mr. Smith, on arrival in Montreal, told all this to his cousin, Mr. George Stephen, another Scot, who had prospered well in business and was President of the Bank of Montreal. Stephen was a man of unusual strength and vision. They talked it over with Mr. R. B. Angus, also a Scot, and a very able business man, who was, at that time, general manager of the same bank. Stephen and Angus agreed generally with Smith, but they had not then seen the country and were not of the kind to be rash. However, in 1877 Stephen and Angus had to be in Chicago on banking business and, having a few days at their disposal, decided to run up to St. Paul and see Hill and his country. They saw both, as well as the railway, and were satisfied it had a big future. The grasshoppers were disappearing, the Indians were all peaceful or dead, and settlers would rush in to the rich areas. Stephen was a man of swift action when he was satisfied, and so he hied himself away to Amsterdam, got an option on the railway and came back with that option in his pocket. The necessary money was raised, bonds were later on floated, and Stephen, Hill, Angus, Smith , with John S. Kennedy, of New York, took over the railway and the land-grant. We need not follow the history of that St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway ; but everything seemed to come the way of the adventurous Canadians who had risked much on it, and they became multi-millionaires in a surprisingly short time.

It was, in a sense, natural that the men we have mentioned should take hold of the Canadian Pacific undertaking. Some of them, at least, knew the great West-land by actual observation. The others would bank on the statements of those who knew the country. Stephen was the most cautious and so the least inclined to take risks in regard to such a colossal enterprise. But once he entered upon it, we are probably safe in saying that, though he had his hours of depression, he became the mainstay of the Board in the dark storms of difficulty that were at times to settle down on the project during the desperate days that were ahead. All three, Stephen, Smith and Angus, hailed from the land where there is a saying, "A stout heart to a stey brae." And these men and their associates were to face, in every sense of the word, "steep hills" in the financial world as well as in actual rock-ribbed obstacles to railway building, greater than any contemplated by the originator of the inspiring saying quoted above. There was to be a time, as we shall see later, when Stephen's famous cablegram to Smith, in the single Gaelic word "Craigellachie" , would be needed as a ringing admonition to men in Canada whose resources became so completely exhausted that failure seemed practically inevitable.

In the meantime we have only reached the stage in our story where these men, Stephen, Smith and Angus, reinforced by another highly capable, careful and successful Montreal man, Mr. Duncan McIntyre, at the threshold of the gigantic undertaking, were in consultation with the Macdonald-Tupper administration at Ottawa on the subject. They all sensed the almost overwhelming bigness of the task and, although they were attracted by the challenge of its immensity, and were prepared to accept that challenge, they all realized that they should try to secure the co-operation of the world's financial centres before they could even hope for success. Hence we find, in the summer of 1880, Sir John Macdonald, Sir Charles Tupper and John Henry Pope sailing for London, in company with Stephen and McIntyre, to interest British capitalists. Englishmen are generally willing to take a "sporting chance" and plunge into an adventurous scheme. But this project of building a railway across the continent through Canada's far stretches of thinly populated country, with the gigantic engineering problems of the rock region on the North Shore of Lake Superior and the apparently impenetrable barrier of the mountains in British Columbia, was too large an order for the most courageous of London's money magnates. It is doubtless a good thing for Canada that the delegation had to return from London empty-handed. Projects and business concerns owned and operated by long-range directors and shareholders have never been a huge success in Canada, unless practically conducted by local advisory boards, and railways are no exception to that rule. More important still, this fruitless search for financial assistance put Canadians on their mettle by throwing them back on their own resources at the outset, and thus developing the strength and the endeavour which a big undertaking always brings if bravely attempted. It was a good training in national athleticism, and the young Dominion that had to wrestle with difficulties at the beginning developed astonishing strength and initiative power. Later on, when, within a few months of the last spike on the road, the youthful giant had reached the limit of resource, and was in danger of falling short, British capital was to come in to help to a triumphant finish. But the time was not yet.

The delegation to London returned to Ottawa in 1880, and the Government signed a contract with George Stephen, Duncan McIntyre, of Montreal; James J. Hill, of St. Paul; John S. Kennedy, of New York, and four outside this continent, Cohen, Renach & Company, of Paris, and Morton, Rose & Company, of London, though in the latter case it was really the New York firm of Morton, Bliss & Company that went into the organization. It is interesting from a psychological standpoint to find that the name of Donald A. Smith, one of the big three, was not in this original contract. Ever since the day when Mr. Smith had cast his vote in the House of Commons, in 1873, against Sir John Macdonald in the matter of the "Pacific Scandal," as Macdonald's opponents called it, or the "Pacific Slander," as Sir Charles Tupper designated the affair, there was, to put it mildly, a coolness between Smith and Sir John. For these two to be in the conferences that would often arise between the Canadian Pacific directors and the Government, would throw a wet blanket on the meetings. Later on these two became punctiliously friendly, and even though Mr. Smith's name was not visibly in this original Canadian Pacific Railway Company, every one knew that he was actually in it for all he was worth.

The contract terms sound generous enough if we could only keep out of our minds the tremendous extent of the undertaking and the endless risks taken by the new company, in view of the fact that the real cost of the railway from ocean to ocean was almost a haphazard conjecture. Up to the date of the signing of the contract the way through the mountains of British Columbia was unsettled, and the character of the work on the North Shore of Lake Superior was practically unknown. That North Shore problem had frightened Sir Henry Tyler, President of the Grand Trunk, in London, from going into the Canadian Pacific scheme, partly because that eternal wilderness had no prospect of local traffic compared with a line south of the Boundary, but partly also because the interminable miles of rock to be built through looked too formidable to be attacked. Take it all round, the terms of the contract signed in Ottawa may have looked too generous to the man on the street. But only men of courage who visioned the far future would have set their names to a covenant to build thousands of miles of a railway which not only some public men, but some experts also openly declared would "never pay for the axle grease."

Briefly stated, the Government agreed to give the new syndicate the seven hundred miles of railway already built or under contract to be built by the Government, together with twenty-five millions in money and twenty-five millions of acres of selected land in the West. In addition, the syndicate was promised exemption from import duties on all material brought in for construction, from taxes on land for twenty years after Crown patents were issued, as well as freedom from taxes on stock and other property for all time, together with exemption from regulation of rates till ten per cent. had been earned on capital invested. To guard against premature competition by roads connecting with the States, the Government agreed that for twenty years no charter would be granted to any railway south of the Canadian Pacific Railway from any point at or near the Canadian Pacific Railway except such as should run south-west or westward of south-west; nor to within fifteen miles of the Boundary-Line.

In Winnipeg, in my student days in the 80's, I recall hearing many rather stormy discussions over this contract at public meetings, because the West was particularly affected. The two things most strenuously opposed, as being too generous to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, were the grant of land, which was said to be too large, and the section which prevented competing lines being built to the south. Neither of these objections ever seemed to me very reasonable. The land grant looked large; but land was worth very little before the railway came in to make it valuable. In my boyhood I knew that some of the land along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers was sold for fifty cents an acre. If the twenty-five millions of acres given to the railway were valued at pre-railway prices the amount would not be great. When the railway was built the price of land went up with a rush, but it must be borne in mind that it cost the Company millions to bring the railway in, to make the land worth while. And it should also be remembered that the railway made other people's land as valuable as its own, although the increase to the other people did not cost them anything beyond their ordinary taxes. In any case the land went up when the railway came in, but the railway did not come in by magic. It is interesting to recall in this connection that Sumner, a famous statesman in the American Republic, once advocated giving half of one of the great agricultural States in the West to any one who would build a railway through it, as it was of little use till a railway would enter. What some people in Canada, who denounced the Government for giving twenty-five millions of acres, might have said if the Canadian Pacific Railway had been offered one-half of the Middle West, would probably be too incoherent to print.

We may read later something of the cyclonic protests made in my native Province of Manitoba against the section of the contract which denied to any others the right to build railways south of the Canadian Pacific into the States; but, like many other movements, the one against this temporary monopolistic clause was, to say the least, lacking in proper perspective. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company, to enable Canada to keep faith with British Columbia and thus hold Confederation together, was struggling to build two thousand miles of road over a territory where there was little prospect for years of a paying traffic. It is hard to see that it would have been just, without adequate compensation to the Canadian Pacific, to allow other railways to hamstring the transcontinental by building in the only region where there was population enough to give a railway some reasonably remunerative business.

A rather peculiar thing was that no one objected to the cash subsidy except those who attacked the whole business from end to end, as ruinous to the young Dominion. Reasonable onlookers, however, who knew something of the tremendous cost of construction over certain sections, thought the syndicate was mad to tackle it at almost any price. Later on these reasonable people found justification for their view in the fact that construction was costing in some sections half-a-million a mile--though even they would have gasped if they knew that in after years a single tunnel in the mountains was to cost over eight millions to construct. There were some who considered that the free gift to the company of several hundred miles of railway, built by the Government over a term of years, was too generous. But Canadian Pacific Railway experts in 1889 testified before an Interstate Commerce Inquiry, and said that parts of the Government sections were unwisely located, and the cost of joining up with these unwisely located sections was so great that the amount the sections were supposed to represent should be heavily discounted. It is possible that experts will always differ over this big contract of 1880 which, for years, furnished offensive and defensive political orators with abundant ammunition in party conflicts.

The contract which we have been thus studying had to run the gauntlet through Parliament, and we shall follow its course there and the new programme of railway building by the new Company in the ensuing chapter.

When the contract with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was submitted to the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Edward Blake, then leader of the Opposition, and his party, met it with a chorus of indignant and derisive protest. They declared that the Dominion would be ruined by such a contract and that they intended to fight the matter out before the House and the country. There is no need now to cast any personal discredit on Mr. Blake and his following for their action at that time. He was a man of unblemished name and of intense conviction, as evidenced by many facts in his distinguished career. And, besides, he and the leading men in his following then in Ottawa had already committed themselves at former sessions of Parliament by taking the position that the Canadian Pacific would have to be built by slow stages if built at all. Mr. Blake had not then visited the West, and seriously doubted its future. He and Sir Charles Tupper, who introduced the bill, were the combatant officers of their respective parties over this railway problem. So when Mr. Blake declared an itinerating attack on the Canadian Pacific amongst the people of Ontario, where the Grand Trunk, the rival road, had been long in undisputed possession, Sir Charles wrote asking for an opportunity to reply on the same platform. Mr. Blake answered that he would require all the time each evening, as the subject was a big one. This was true, and Blake's exact legal mind led him generally into more exhaustive detail on any subject than an ordinary public audience could appreciate. But Sir Charles had girded on his armour for the fray, and found a plan of action by having his friends announce at each of Blake's meetings that Sir Charles would appear in the same hall the following night to give reply to Mr. Blake. Sir Charles thus had the advantage of having Mr. Blake's speech in hand a few hours after its delivery, and next night was able to assault Mr. Blake's position effectively by a characteristic fighting answer.

To complicate matters for the Government, a rival syndicate was suddenly formed of Ontario capitalists, headed by Sir William Howland, who offered to build the railway for three millions less in money and three millions less in land acreage, and at the same time give up practically all the privileges which the Government had agreed to allow the Stephen group. The Government denounced the Howland syndicate as trying to draw a herring across the trail by making a transparently impossible offer in an effort to break the contract already signed with the other company. There is no reason to think that the Howland syndicate, which was composed of well-known citizens of high standing, would not have tackled the building of the railway if they had got the contract. But the Government had already signed with the other organization and, denouncing the offer of the Howland syndicate as utterly impracticable, and intended only to hamper the construction of the road, Sir Charles Tupper rallied the Government forces and put the original contract through Parliament on a straight vote, in February, 1881.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet