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

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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.

We do not dispute the good intentions of the Howland syndicate; but if the gentlemen of that syndicate really could have seen into the future they would have breathed a sigh of relief when their offer was rejected. They had asked for the contract, but it was a mercy for them that their request was declined without thanks. For if the Stephen men, who knew the country better and had already some extraordinary allies, came up later against so many unexpected obstacles that they were more than once within a hair-breadth of failure, it is safe to say that the Howland men, with their hurried and unconsidered offer, would have ridden for a fall, disastrous alike to themselves and to Canada.

Concerning Mr. George Stephen much might be written, but he was so unobtrusive that, as compared with others, hardly anything has been put in print about the first President. Mr. Smith, his cousin , was much better known and more in the public eye, and no one would think of minimizing Mr. Smith's great achievements and his services to Canada and the Empire. But so far as the Canadian Pacific Railway is concerned, Mr. Smith's greatest contribution was made when, after getting in contact with Hill, he persuaded Stephen to branch out from business in Montreal and become a railroad builder. Once again in this connection let me emphasize, though it anticipates the narrative somewhat, the peculiar sequence in the chain of Canadian Pacific men and events in the following way: Smith secured Stephen, Stephen secured Van Horne, and Van Horne secured Shaughnessy. It was an extraordinary succession, and every link in a chain that holds is worthy of equal honour. These men were different in many ways, but the truth is that, historically considered, no man ever really takes the place of another, even though he succeeds him. Each man must do his own work in his own way and bear his own burden, and in each man's assertion of his own individuality we find the true law of human progress. We can standardize inanimate things such as motor cars, but we are essaying interference with the Divine order when we try to standardize men.

George Stephen was the son of a carpenter and was born, in 1829, in Dufftown, Banffshire, Scotland. His youth was not rose-coloured. He was educated in the parish school , served for a season as herd-laddie on the glebe at Mortlach, and then was sent to Aberdeen to learn the drapery business. One day a customer from Montreal noticed that the clerk signed his name "George Stephen," and it turned out that the customer and clerk were cousins. As a result the young clerk was taken out to Montreal and showed such devotion to business and such capacity, that he became President of the great Bank of Montreal when he was a little over forty years of age. He was a man of a high sense of honour and of intense powers of concentration. He had public gifts and could speak well on political and other topics, but all through life he applied himself principally to business and the development of the country. Years afterwards, when the one-time "herd laddie" at Mortlach and draper's apprentice had become a man of wealth and a peer of the realm, recognized amongst the foremost as a builder of the Empire, he was presented with the freedom of the city of Aberdeen. In his reply to the address of presentation, he shattered some modern theories as to the making of men by saying: "Any success I may have had in life is due in a great measure to the somewhat Spartan training I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, in which I entered as a boy of fifteen. I had but few wants and no distractions to draw me away from the work I had in hand. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and, fortunately, I knew it." All of which would be a good motto for every young lad to paste in his hat, so that he would see it frequently. It is well also to remember that Sir George made good use of the wealth he gained in later years by laborious effort. His benefactions were wide-spread, amongst them being the contribution of half-a-million, to go with a like amount from Lord Strathcona, into the establishment of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. And when Dr. Barclay retired from St. Paul's Church in the same city, it was Lord Mount Stephen who supplemented the donations of others by a princely gift in bonds to the minister of his Montreal days.

It was this great man, George Stephen, then, who became President of the new Canadian Pacific Railway Company in 1880, and continued in that responsible office for the eight most critical years of the company's struggle to live and conquer. On him, in the grim days ahead, was to rest most heavily the burden of financing, although his cousin, Mr. D. A. Smith, was forward in securing the help of financial magnates at every opportunity. The time was to come when these two were to pledge all their private possessions to keep the Canadian Pacific going on to completion. I think it worth while to say here that none of these men seemed to care about money as an end, although they appreciated its value as a means to achievement. They had no reason to go into the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking to make money, for when they began it they all had enough. In fact it is well known that some of them demurred strongly at first for fear they would be left penniless in their old age. But they were all amenable to the appeal for the building of Canada, and that was sufficient. In this connection it is interesting to recall that on May 26th, 1887, Mr. Smith said in the House of Commons, "The First Minister will bear me out when I say that Sir George Stephen and the other members of the syndicate did not approach the Government with regard to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway until the Government had tried in Europe and elsewhere to get others to take it up, capable of carrying it through, but had not succeeded in this. I say distinctly that the gentlemen who undertook the charter, although at first unwilling to assume the responsibility, ultimately consented, more with a view of assisting to open up the country than from any expectation of gain to be derived from it." It is equally interesting to note, in this same connection, the attitude of Mr. James J. Hill, who once wrote to an old Canadian friend saying, "I think you know that I am not anxious about the money part of it. I am sure I have all and more than all I will ever want and all that will be good for those who come after me."

It was in this spirit, then--that of Empire-builders, rather than money-makers--that President Stephen and his associates took up, in 1881, the tremendous task of building the Canadian Pacific Railway across the Dominion of Canada. It was the wide West-land that had called the transcontinental into the orbit of public vision, and though, when Eastern connections would be made, it was inevitable that the headquarters of the road would be in Montreal, where the leading directors lived, offices were first of all opened in Winnipeg. Canada, as already noted, was young in the railway business. Later on she would find her own men for leaders in every department, as we know by this time she has done. But in those days Canada had to go to her big cousin, the American Republic, for railway experts. And so Mr. A. B. Stickney, who was later President of the Chicago and Great Western, was installed as General Superintendent in Winnipeg. With him came, as Chief Engineer, General Rosser, who had been a dashing Confederate cavalry officer in the Civil War. Those were my school days in Winnipeg, and I recall seeing Rosser once--a man of very distinguished bearing. But, for various reasons, neither he nor Stickney remained long, though I confess I never pass the little station of Rosser just west of Winnipeg, but I visualize again the tall, handsome Southerner after whom it was called in those early days.

When these men were going, Stephen turned again to his old friend Hill, who knew all about railroad men, and Hill recommended William Cornelius Van Horne, then General Superintendent of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. This was another of Hill's great contributions to his native Canada. Though these two strong men, Hill and Van Horne, eventually became rivals and heads of practically opposing systems, they doubtless, to the end, recognized the consummate ability of each other. If they had to contend at times they could at least realize

"That stern joy which warriors feel In foeman worthy of their steel."

In any case, Hill's commendation of Van Horne to Stephen in 1881 was whole hearted and emphatic. Hill said that of all the men he knew Mr. Van Horne was altogether the best equipped, both mentally and every other way. A pioneer was needed, and the more of a pioneer the better. And to this Mr. Hill added, in his message to Stephen, "You need a man of great physical and mental power to carry the line through. Van Horne can do it. But he will take all the authority he gets and more; so define how much you want him to have." This last was a well-meant--and somewhat necessary admonition. Mr. Stephen then offered Van Horne a bigger salary than any one in a similar position had ever received in this country. I do not think that the salary was the main thing with Van Horne. Neither would I say that he did not take it into consideration. He was such a many-sided man that he seemed like several men. He could be lavish in entertaining or spending for things that he specially fancied. But he could be close in other ways. No doubt the unprecedented salary was, in his mind, worthy of thought. And one cannot wonder at that, because he was asked to give up a high position in the railway work of the States, with a presidency certain there in a few years at most. He was, in fact, staking the prospects of a career on his decision in favour of moving. But he did not decide to move without some idea of the prospects of the country to which he was invited. So he made a sort of incognito visit to Winnipeg, and took some survey of the vast plains. He saw the possibilities of unlimited grain and root production, and noted the practically inexhaustible soil along the Red River, where the Selkirk settlers had been sowing and reaping for three-quarters of a century. It is interesting to find here, as noted by writers on Van Horne's life, special allusion to the Selkirk settlers. These settlers were stated in an early chapter of the book to be a factor in leading to the inception of the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking, as they had demonstrated the agricultural possibilities of the West. And they are mentioned by Van Horne's biographer, Mr. Vaughan, as one of the elements whose demonstration of the country's suitability for the world's foundation industry helped to draw to Canada the extraordinary man who, in the face of apparently insuperable obstacles, threw a railway line across her wide-flung spaces.

One wonders yet at the fact that Van Horne left an assured career in his own land, the richest country in the world, to come to the Canadian West, which was then, and for some years afterwards, as I recall it, a sort of illimitable and sparsely inhabited wilderness. He came to undertake a railway building project such as neither his own country or any other in the world had ever planned in similar circumstances. No doubt he, with the keen mentality which flashed out in many varied gifts, foresaw the country's future. But no doubt also, as his biographer above-mentioned affirms, and as men, like Sir George Bury, who were intimately yoked up with him in practical work on the road declare, it was the difficulty of the work that successfully appealed to him. The fighting spirit of his imperturbable and determined Netherlands ancestors rose to the challenge of the opportunity, to satisfy what Mr. Vaughan calls his master passion "to make things grow and put new places on the map." So, after visiting Winnipeg and the plains, Van Horne accepted Stephen's offer and came from the States to become a great Canadian who, without forgetting his lineage, grew into a deep devotion to his adopted country.

Reference has been made already to the many-sidedness of this colossus amongst railway builders. Once, many years after his coming, I recall meeting Mr. Van Horne at a dinner in Lord Strathcona's house in Montreal, when nearly all the leading business men of their group were present. I happened to be in the city at the time, and as Lord Strathcona and my father had been close friends in the old Fort Garry days, he asked me up to that dinner. Gentleman of the old school that he was, with the courteous manner and considerateness of the perfect host, he asked Mr. Van Horne to show me through the picture gallery. I had known Mr. Van Horne in a general way as a forceful railroader who had begun in railway work at the age of fourteen, and knew it from the ground upwards in practically all departments, and I also knew something of his taste in art. But I was hardly prepared for the wealth of the acquaintance with painting and literature which his conversation, in easy, flowing language, revealed that evening. And yet this was the same Van Horne who could make men quake with the strength of his invective against incompetency or carelessness in work, and who was apparently at times a mere impersonal dynamo for the purpose of driving seemingly impossible enterprises to completion. There was something more than Napoleonic in the way in which he abolished the word "fail" from the dictionary as he drove his undertakings onward. And yet again he was an inveterate player of practical jokes, and was, on occasion, a sort of big boy with a sufficient spice of fun about him to keep things from becoming dull. If he knew how to work he also knew how to relax, and that is a great thing.

It was this composite man, then, who, at President Stephen's call, threw up golden prospects in his own country and came up to Winnipeg on New Year's eve in 1881, to take practical command of a vast new problematical enterprise. His powers may have been defined by Stephen and his associates, but the definition must have been very much tantamount to a free hand, as the sequel will show.

Mr Van Horne, who was a native son of Joliet, Illinois, struck Winnipeg just as 1882 was dawning, and the thermometer was ranging around forty below zero. Those of us who were born in or near Winnipeg can testify that in such an hour the ozone makes one tingle with energy, and leads to an active life as a natural consequence. Van Horne was an embodiment of driving power anyway, and perhaps the stimulating atmosphere raised that power to a high algebraic degree. Certain it is that every one around Winnipeg, especially in the service of the new railway, realized that a human projectile had been shot into the community and that things had to move on under its impulse or move out of the way. So distinctly was this felt, that not only was the climate rather frigid, but the social atmosphere around offices and clubs took on a certain degree of coolness. That any one should come in from the outside and, after a brief survey, should start in to make swift changes and equally swift appointments, regardless of social or political influence, was not likely to make the man who so acted a general favourite. But in a short time the marvellous efficiency of the man commended him to everybody worth while. His bigness in ignoring any prejudice against him, his hearty, magnetic and utterly unaffected personality, soon won the respect of his men in all ranks and he in turn came swiftly to have a high respect for the courage, ability and initiative of the Canadian people. For a while he had to have around him some experts from his own country, like that Master-Superintendent, John M. Egan, whose ability as a practical railroad builder was a great asset to the new enterprise. But Van Horne soon had a small army of Canadians in training under his own leadership, and to them he became deeply attached. It is now, at least, an open secret that when men back in the States heard that his reception in Winnipeg was rather cool they sent him word "to come back to your friends and let the Canadians build their own road." But Van Horne, knowing that his own brusque entry and method laid him open to some blame for the situation, and knowing also the solid worth of the people to whom he had come, declined to return. Again, a few years later, when the Canadian Pacific Railway project seemed on the point of failure for lack of funds, even though the Directors had put their all in the great venture, some one said to Van Horne that he need not worry, because there were positions waiting for him across the line any time he wished to go there. But he stood by his guns and said that he was not going back to the States--"I'm not going to leave the work I have begun. I'm going to see it through, no matter what position is open to me in the United States." The time was to come, however, when even the iron nerves and the tremendous staying power of this apparently stolid and determined scion of the Netherlands were to be tried to the limit, and when Van Horne found in Canadian men the invincible spirit which made their joint work a sort of miraculous success.

In the meantime, when he had done some highly necessary things in Winnipeg, in that fateful year of 1882, he went down to Montreal to meet President Stephen and the Directors. No doubt there was a mutual "sizing up" of each other, but with satisfactory results. The President and Van Horne took to each other at once, and became thenceforward the two that did the most perfect team work. But they could not have pulled the enterprise far without the steady, persistent co-operation of the other Directors. They all got into the harness and they all fell in with the Western teamster's homely prescription for success: "Keep the tugs tight; never mind the hold-backs."

Thenceforth Van Horne became, till the completion of the Transcontinental, the trusted railway expert and, in this regard, completely supplanted Hill, who had been the only man of the original Canadian Pacific Syndicate who was a practical railroader. Under the leadership of Van Horne, Canada would now begin to grow her own railway men as a home product.

One of the items taken up on the occasion of Mr. Van Horne's first visit to Montreal was the construction of the Railway over the rock-wilderness on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The Mackenzie Government, as we have seen, thought that section could wait for a somewhat indefinite period, and in the meantime Mackenzie said that the great fresh-water sea could be used as a link in transportation. Then, when the Stephen-Hill Syndicate was formed, both of these gentlemen agreed with the policy of not constructing that section until there was more settlement in the West. But Stephen and Hill, not believing in the tardy water-stretches as links in railway construction, proposed to build from the East to Sault Ste. Marie, and there join up with a branch of Hill's road, the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba, to which, as the architect of their fortunes, they were financially and otherwise attached. This of course would have given Hill, in large measure, the control of Canadian traffic from East to West.

It will be recalled that neither Sir John Macdonald nor Sir Charles Tupper, his fighting Railway Minister, approved of this American link in the road, and that in England they had broken with Sir Henry Tyler, of the Grand Trunk, on that particular point. And when Van Horne went east to meet the Directors in 1882, he made short work of the plan which both Stephen and Hill had cherished. He felt that to give Hill's road the haulage of through Canadian traffic over a section of his track would make the Canadian Pacific a sort of subsidiary of his line, and such a situation was abhorrent both to Van Horne's railroad instincts and to his estimate of his ability to run his own road. In a proper sense of the word Van Horne was always egoist enough to assert his own dignity when occasion required. In fact he would let no man rob him of the opportunity of boasting on any occasion when it seemed legitimate and necessary. Hence, when he met the Canadian Pacific Directors, at that first meeting, he drew for them a verbal picture of what the traffic on an all-Canadian route from ocean to ocean was to be in the future, and by the time he was through his visualizing, the President and the other Directors let this new General Manager have his will. Van Horne was no half-way man, and when he started out to build the Canadian Pacific Railway he was going to put emphasis on the word and idea of Canadian. The day was to come when, despite some partisan and political mud-throwing, all true Canadians would acknowledge that the big railroader was right. Of course, this action of Van Horne and the Directors was, as already intimated, the last straw for Hill. He was too keen and clear-headed a man not to understand that he and Van Horne, with their big projects more or less competitive, could not work together to advantage. So he withdrew with some emphasis, but we are not to forget that he made railroaders of Stephen, Smith and Angus, and that through his recommendation, Van Horne came to Canada. The Canadian boy, James J. Hill, who had left his home in Rockwood, Ontario, to seek his fortune in the States, and become a maker of its North-West, also did, for various reasons and motives, a good day's work for his native land.

When Van Horne met the Directors in Montreal they discussed also the momentous question of the route to be followed. When Sandford Fleming was Chief Engineer during the regime of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, the line was mapped out to cross the Red River at Selkirk, thence westward through the North Saskatchewan country, crossing the Rockies by the Yellowhead Pass, and so on to the Pacific. But the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, in 1881, decided for a southerly route through Winnipeg, and across the plains and then through the mountains by the Kicking Horse Pass. For the most part the engineers preferred the Yellowhead Pass, on account of the comparatively easy grades and fewer obstacles in the way. Van Horne favoured the Kicking Horse Pass and the Directors agreed to that also, although up to that time there had been no pass discovered through the Selkirk range that lay right beyond the Rockies like an impregnable rampart. But if no pass was found through the Selkirks, the track might be laid in a more roundabout way along the Columbia. Once again these men were making a big venture under the leadership of Van Horne, who seemed to be having pretty much his own way at the Board meeting. The Directors had secured him at a large salary because he was a practical railroader, and they were evidently going to give him opportunity to earn it by letting him assume heavy responsibility.

The change of route from the Yellowhead to the more difficult Kicking Horse Pass has been much discussed and, in some considerable degree, criticized. But there were weighty reasons for the change as Van Horne saw them. The transcontinental route from the East through the Kicking Horse Pass was one hundred and twenty-five miles shorter that the other, and that is an item, when the costs of construction were considered, as well as time in the trip across the continent. Besides that, the Kicking Horse route, if adopted, would preclude the possibility of any railway building between the Canadian Pacific and the boundary-line and thus draining traffic towards the States. The great valleys of the Kootenay, the Columbia and the Okanagan were more accessible by the Kicking Horse route, and such valleys are supreme in productiveness in British Columbia. And I am not sure but Mr. Van Horne, with his strong sense of the artistic and the scenic splendour of the southern route, felt that in the future it would, as a tourist route of unequalled attractiveness, become one of the greatest and most remunerative assets of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The supremacy of the Kicking Horse route in that regard has been fully recognized by world-travellers. The famous Sir Edwin Arnold, author of "The Light of Asia," who had been in practically all countries, one day said to Mr. Castell Hopkins, of Toronto, as they met on a Canadian Pacific Railway train in the Rockies, "These vast ranges exceed in grandeur the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes, all of which I have seen." The matchlessly inspiring scenery of this route will always remain to make it an irresistible magnet to tourists and travellers generally. For the rest of it, any problem in gradients will vanish at any time desired, by the lowering of grades and electrification, if ever the situation demands such action.

Before leaving the Kicking Horse Pass discussion, it may be interesting to some of our readers to relate the origin of this striking name. When I first went down along the river I recall some one on the train who told his version by saying that the name was given to the river because as it rushed down the grade it was constantly thrown back in splashing spray by the rocks, as if by the kicking of a horse. This is a poetic description of a very turbulent stream where the rocks look vicious enough to kick anything to pieces that might be hurled against them, but it is not the real origin of the name. The prosaic fact is that when, in 1858, Capt. Palliser and Dr. Hector were exploring the region they were leaving the camp by this river one morning and Hector, while trying to round up a straying packhorse, was kicked in the chest by his own riding horse as he was passing him. Hector was laid up in the camp for several days, and the incident was so impressed on the explorers that they anathematized and immortalized this lively animal by calling the river and pass after him.

When Mr. Van Horne went back to Winnipeg from the meeting of Directors in 1882, things looked well around that Western gateway city because the advent of the Canadian Pacific had given rise to a real-estate boom whose intoxicating influence had gone to people's heads so that they were all hilariously rich, at least in imagination, and, therefore, indomitably optimistic. This phase of undue excitement passed, but Winnipeg is my old home city, and hence I am able to testify that in no city with which I am acquainted was it so true, as it used to be said of the people of Winnipeg, that "they lived on hope."

However, it remains true also that the collapse of that famous Western real-estate boom, the crash of which affected every place from the Great Lakes to the mountains, made the task of the Canadian Pacific Board and Mr. Van Horne an exceedingly difficult one right at the outset. The sudden deflation in Western land values and the large number of business failures through the recession of the boom wave shook the faith of outsiders in the country's future and depressed the people within the country at the same time. I have known the West all my life, but I do not recall any period more generally discouraging than that after-the-boom period in the 80's, during which the Canadian Pacific Railway was begun and carried to an amazingly successful completion. The sudden drop in everything, as well as the rumblings and then the outbreak of the Riel Rebellion on the plains, put, in large measure, a damper on immigration; and railway building through an uninhabited land is not exhilarating work.

These were local conditions, but there were other things which sprang up at the very beginning to make the way of the new railway company hard. A few of these things may be indicated for the benefit of the superficial people who think the Canadian Pacific got an easy start. In reality it had from the first to fight every foot of the way against adverse influences. When the Company had to do its financing it found influential forces barring the doors. The Grand Trunk, with its host of big Directors and shareholders in the Old Country, attacked the new transcontinental which would be sure to invade its rich reserves in Eastern Canada; and so the London market was, in large measure, cold to any efforts made by the new Canadian Pacific Board to raise money in the world's financial centre. Similarly the United States railways which were headed for the Pacific saw the danger of a successful Canadian rival, and did all they could to prevent the Canadian Pacific from securing any money in New York. With hostile forces thus operating in these two famous money centres, any one can understand that the new Canadian venture was in for a bad time. And we have to add to all these barbed-wire fences around the money markets abroad, the regrettable fact of almost constant nagging and criticism in Canada from sources of such wide range as the "will-never-pay-for-axle-grease" politicians, and the men who wished to cut in with the railway lines in productive territory while the Canadian Pacific was struggling to cross leagues of unpeopled rocks and plains, not to mention the people who thought the new road should benevolently carry everything for them at bare cost.

Keen-minded men like Mr. Van Horne and the Directors of the Canadian Pacific, saw that the way ahead bristled with difficulties. But they declined to quail. They had started on a great adventure and they were looking far ahead so steadily that they were saved from morbid contemplation of what lay between them and the final triumph. Their attitude toward the unproductive Lake Superior North Shore rock-wastes was typically prophetic. Despite the derisive critics who always have ridiculed the inception of big undertakings, the Canadian Pacific Railway men looked beyond the North Shore to the West-land that would someday become the granary of the Empire. Thus did they keep their courage alive. Like a famous warrior of old, they refused to see the intervening difficulties while they knew that across somewhere was the land of promise and the triumph that was worth a great struggle to attain.

When Van Horne left that meeting of Directors in Montreal he hurried back to Winnipeg with the fire of a great railway-building battle in his eye. He felt he had the support of a strong and determined body of men, and they were fully satisfied that they had in Van Horne a man worth backing. They all began to realize very vividly, from the attitude of the financial world as above outlined, that the fabled achievements of Hercules would have to be made real in the building of the road. Van Horne, as the practical builder, set his mind on his own side of the work. His energy had been pretty well tested out in the States, but he knew perfectly well that anything he had done hitherto was child's play compared to what he was now going to attempt. I was much interested the other day in coming across an item somewhere which suggested that, some years before, Van Horne had been contemplating building a railway in the Western States to tap the Canadian North-West. The vast unpeopled territory, labelled on his map, "British possessions," appealed to his pioneering and adventurous spirit. It was the land of romance and mystery and of illimitable possibilities, where he could blaze new trails and build steel highways over a territory bigger than half-a-dozen European kingdoms.

And now his opportunity had come in an unexpected, but better, fashion, and, as stated, he set his mind upon it with a sort of terrifying concentration. He found that Government contractors in 1881 had built some 160 miles of railway on the plains. He told the Directors in Montreal that he would build 500 miles on the prairie in 1882. He started in to do it and looked to the Directors to pay the bills. Some years after it was all over Van Horne said one day, as a tribute to the President, "Stephen did more work and harder work than I did. I had only to build the road, but Stephen had to find the money." Those who remember them both are ready to say that the honours were even. Each did his part well and each had many helpers.

In view of the fact already stated, that Canada was new to the railway-building business, it is surprising to find that Mr. Van Horne brought very few assistants from the States. Besides Egan, who did most excellent work in construction days out of Winnipeg, Kelson of the Milwaukee road was brought to be general storekeeper at Winnipeg. There was urgent need of a key man in Montreal to be the general purchasing agent for the whole road. And as everything had to be purchased for a new undertaking an altogether unusual man was required. Besides other supplies, the man who came as purchasing agent would have to be a sort of quarter-master-general to feed an industrial army spread out in a long line from East to West and with practically no line of communication along which to transport the necessaries of life. For that position Mr. Van Horne had his eye on a young man named Thomas G. Shaughnessy, who had been on his staff in Milwaukee. Mr. Van Horne had opened up offices over the Bank of Montreal on Main Street in Winnipeg. "One day," says Mr. E. A. James, who was then Mr. Van Horne's private telegraph operator, "there came into the outer office a fashionably-dressed, alert young man, sporting a cane and giving general evidence of being what we call a live wire. He asked for Mr. Van Horne and gave his name as Shaughnessy. I looked up Mr. Van Horne in another office and gave him the message. He said to the gentleman to whom he was speaking, 'I am glad Tom has come; he is the man I want for general purchasing agent.'" And thus another notable star swung into the orbit of the new company. But beyond these just mentioned to take hold at the beginning, Mr. Van Horne said no one else was needed from outside, as the new General Manager found Canadians so full of initiative and energy that he had no difficulty in getting men of calibre and zeal without going beyond the Dominion.

It was still winter of the year in which Van Horne had said he would build 500 miles of the road on the prairie. He had to wait for the spring's approach; but meanwhile he was stacking up supplies at Winnipeg, "from the ends of the earth," as people there said, and in enormous quantities--rails from Britain and the Continent, ties from the woods east of Winnipeg, stone from every available quarry within reach, lumber from the Minnesota country and from the Lake of the Woods. Much of this came in during the frozen months by rail from the south, and the yardmen in the States were delighted to send along whole trains of material for "Van Horne's road" as they called it. The main thing was to get the stuff forward. And Van Horne kept the wires hot in seeing that there would be no delay.

He became suddenly the organizer of an army--not for destruction, but for construction--a great mobile force which was to move steadily forward under the direction of his genius and daring. That army was to use high explosives and unbounded physical energy, but it was with a purpose to enrich and not to devastate the country. It was to use ploughshares instead of swords, but its victories were to be certain and enduring. The fight was to be hot and at times the line would waver, but there would be no retreat. It will be interesting to follow that army with two such leaders as Van Horne as the master builder and Shaughnessy as the matchless provider of supplies.

In 1882, when Van Horne began to swing his cohorts of contractors and their men into the struggle to build a half-thousand miles of railway westward beyond Winnipeg, the Red River went on an angry rampage and flooded out the city and the surrounding country. This was somewhat of a damper at the beginning and, as the sequel proved, it clipped a few miles off the anticipated record. But a record was made notwithstanding. Experienced railway contractors were required, and Van Horne brought Langdon & Sheppard from St. Paul and gave them the work of building from Oak Lake in Manitoba straight across the plains to Calgary. This was a large order, and the contractors evidently knew it, for they startled the community by advertising for an army of three thousand men and four thousand horses. Those who recall conditions at that time will readily concede that there was no unemployment problem abroad in those busy days. No one worth while needed to be unemployed when Van Horne was forcing an undertaking to completion. And to make quite sure that things would be properly completed, this railway building enthusiast organized a large gang of men under his own orders who would follow up the contractors and give the finishing touches after the aforesaid contractors had complied with the literal requirements of their agreement to lay the steel. One can readily see that this flying column of Van Horne's would keep the contractors moving ahead rapidly, lest the flying column should be treading on their heels and remarking on their tardiness. And one can see also that this follow-up work would lead to the soundness of the road-bed for which this pioneer railway was noted from the beginning. Construction was amazingly rapid, but there were no chances taken in regard to the safety of the road.

And so these thousands of men and horses were feverishly, but systematically, at work on the plains, where not many years before the buffalo had roamed with earth-shaking tread. The ploughs and scrapers of this great constructive army were making their way through the buffalo wallows and casting up a high grade where once the Red River cart had worn deep ruts in the rich black mould. Some of us recall busy days on the farms or the hayfield, riding and working on the plains, and, as boys, we had sometimes a feeling that the time of labour was unduly prolonged. Hours of work were not limited in those days, except by darkness and dew at either end of the day. But Mr. Van Horne's army became unlimited as to time, because there were relays working in the night, building bridges and culverts and laying track when conditions allowed--a sort of sleepless army that moved on without cessation. In this way some three miles a day were finished enough to allow the construction trains to follow up with their gigantic loads of material and food for men and horses. In the spring-time there was not much grass for the horses, and all grain had then to be imported to a country which is now the greatest grain-exporting region in the world. Trainloads of stuff were constantly passing over United States roads all the way from the New York seaport, and hundreds of checkers reported on their whereabouts every day, so that they could be counted on by a certain time. All this matter of material was in the wonderfully capable hands of Mr. Shaughnessy, whose brain worked with such unerring activity and precision that supplies were kept up to the minute. Shaughnessy's office in Montreal was as great a hive of industry as was Van Horne's moving army on the plains. And men learned, as they had never learned before, that brain and brawn were both necessary to the carrying on of the world's business and that these are mutually dependent on each other. Capital, labour and management are the inseparable three in the material success of great undertakings, and when the world discovers how these can co-operate and share the results in proper proportion, we will have industrial peace and progress on the earth. That vast army of road-makers on the plains would have been helpless without the directing minds of the men who were the brain centres that kept all in active movement, and the converse is equally the case. And a certain nation that has recently experimented in a new social order by destroying or exiling its men of brain is the outstanding warning of our time against such suicidal folly.

During this period of prairie construction there was something almost uncanny in the way in which Mr. Van Horne seemed to be everywhere. Now in his office in Winnipeg and now on the plains, riding on flat cars or hand cars or in cabooses or, where the rails were not laid, in wagons and buckboards over the prairie. He knew railroading from the ground up and did not hesitate to ventilate his views forcibly if necessary. He would discharge, off-hand, men who were indifferent to their work or who were disposed to shirk carrying out his orders. He sometimes ordered the impossible; but he expected men to try the impossible without question. And yet there was, withal, a heartiness, enthusiasm, magnetism and energetic competency about the big chief that commanded the admiration of the men. They admired his courage and nerve in going on inspection trips, where, despite his weight, he walked ties and trestles at dizzy heights and did other daring things. His practiced eye could calculate what was dangerous or otherwise. One day he asked an engine-driver to go across a ticklish-looking place and the driver demurred. Van Horne, who could drive an engine as well as anyone, said, "Get down and I will take her over myself," and the engineer had such faith in Van Horne's judgment that he said, "If you're not scared I guess I aint," and over he went to the other side.

Under this energetic and unquestioned leadership of Van Horne who, at the same time, saw that the men had abundant food of the best quality obtainable, there was record railway building accomplished on the plain in 1882, there being in one place a phenomenal register of twenty miles in three days. But the handicap of the Red River flood in the spring had delayed operations, and it began to look as if the promised 500 miles of road in 1882 would not materialize. Van Horne called the engineers and contractors together and, metaphorically speaking, read them the Riot Act and demanded that they get on with the work at a faster pace. They declared they were driving to the limit, but that the estimate could not be reached. Van Horne threatened to cancel their contracts unless they would bring in more men and horses and get ahead. This the contractors did and with the added equipment they worked till stopped by the winter cold. Even then Van Horne brought up his flying column and continued until nothing more could be done on the frozen prairie. Then on taking stock it was found that, counting sidings and a section on the South-western Branch in Manitoba, the estimate had been passed, although the actual work on the main line showed about 445 miles, with some more graded ready for the spring. The whole thing was looked on as phenomenal and all the railway world wondered. The Company Directors in Montreal were delighted, and they, in turn, delighted the Dominion Government by declaring that, instead of taking ten years as allowed by the contract, to complete the road from ocean to ocean, the Canadian Pacific would be in operation across the continent in little more than half that time. When one considers that the part of the road built up to the end of 1882, being across the plains, was the easiest section, and that the Laurentian rock wilderness around Lake Superior, as well as the ramparts of the vast mountains, had still to be attacked, the fearless optimism of the Directors and their whirlwind railway builder was amazing. But the work that had been accomplished showed the Government and the people of Canada that things of an unprecedented kind in railway annals were being done in their new country. And it also created in the hearts of people from sea to sea such a feeling of nationhood that they began to realize the illimitable possibilities of Canada. To such an extent was this true that when, later, a day came in which the Company needed the reinforcement of Government backing to carry through the project in the face of unexpected and gigantic obstacles, that temporary backing was finally given with the general approval of all but a few chronic opponents of the road. No thinking person now ever affirms that the Government was wrong in the emergent action taken at a crisis time in the history of Canada.

When the spring of 1883 opened Van Horne was facing the problem of building on the rocky North Shore, finishing the prairie section and then storming the bastions of the mountains which seemed to frown defiance against the invader of their sublime precincts. The North Shore came first of the new sections, as the prairie region could be left to the ordinary routine now that it had gone so far towards the foothills, and would proceed as a matter of course on into the mountains. It was not comforting in that anxious hour to the Directors of the Canadian Pacific and to Van Horne, who had declined to accept any alternative to the North Shore line, to find that, to head off help from financial men, both they and the people who would back them in their big undertaking were held up to ridicule by a Grand Trunk pamphlet issued in London, the money centre of the world. The famous pamphlet practically stated that to build, under the contract, a railway across the North Shore of Lake Superior, was a piece of madness, and hence that men of finance who backed it should be looked after by their friends. It was not comforting reading for the Canadian Pacific men at that particular juncture, but it was a good answer later on to those politicians and agitators who talked as if the Canadian Pacific had despoiled the Dominion in order to build their transcontinental road. The Grand Trunk pamphlet said that the country north of the Lake was a perfect blank even on the maps of Canada. All that is known of the region, it said, is that, "It would be impossible to construct this one section for the whole cash subsidy provided by the Canadian Government for the entire scheme." Thus out of the mouth of a hostile witness there is evidence that the Canadian Pacific Railway subsidy, as outlined in the contract, was considered utterly inadequate, even by men who were making special study of railway undertakings.

In reality the Grand Trunk pamphlet was, in so far as the cost of construction was concerned, based upon a pretty sound conjecture. The cost of the North Shore was terrific and, doubtless, there and at other places, many a contractor discovered that unexpected difficulties had upset his calculations. It is worth while to say here, as applicable to the whole undertaking, that, though the contractors did not know it during the period of their work, the Canadian Pacific, on discovering that a contractor had lost seriously, began investigation with the desire to give a square deal. If they found that the contractor had taken reasonable precautions with his estimates and calculations, but had met with conditions and obstacles beyond his power to have foreseen, or to control when they arose, the Company, without any ostentation, took steps to save deserving men from loss as far as possible. No company in commercial life can be a benevolent association in the ordinary sense, nor can it be reckless with the funds of shareholders who have invested their money in its undertakings. But from the beginning, the Canadian Pacific, while bearing all that in mind, made a reputation for dealing with men, in all matters, in a big way, till, with the passing of the years, there was built up a tradition which made mean and small things a positive contradiction of the Company's policy.

Mr. Van Horne did not require to read the above-mentioned Grand Trunk pamphlet to learn about the difficulty of building on the North Shore of Lake Superior. He knew all that a great deal better than the pamphleteer. The North Shore was a big problem. But as Sir Charles Tupper, the war-like minister of Railways, once said of this railroader: "No problem that ever arose had any terrors for him."

Van Horne, therefore, went ahead. He attacked the problem from the great lake whose north shore he was going to iron down or fill up to a level roadway for the steel track. He decided, therefore, that for the most part he would not build far back from the shore even though tracklaying might be easier there, for he wanted to land supplies for the work by water transportation. This would be cheaper and would facilitate distribution. In order to carry out this plan he acquired the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway, and thus made connection between the East and the Lake at Owen Sound. From that point he had steamers to carry the supplies and land them at certain distances along the North Shore. When the winter set in, these supplies were distributed by horse and mule teams and even by dog-trains, where the snow and the ice on the little lakes off the main shore permitted. With the advent of the summer, small boats on these little lakes, and wagons elsewhere, were used to distribute endless loads of material along the right of way.

Though supplies were thus on hand, it was 1884 before tracklaying on the North Shore was regularly in operation. We get some idea of the immensity of the work and the tremendous energy that had to be put forth to complete it when we find a great host of 12,000 men and 5,000 horses at work on this section as well as a tracklaying machine to relieve the gangs, who found it almost impossible to do track labour in the ordinary fashion, on account of mosquito-infested swamps encountered here and there. Van Horne imported this machine from Chicago. It was new to the French-Canadian track-layers, and its almost human action seemed to them rather uncanny; but they soon adapted themselves to its operation and found it a valued ally. There was an enormous amount of blasting to be done, and to lessen the cost and the danger of importing the high explosives necessary, three dynamite factories were erected to produce the supply for distribution to near-by points. Despite every possible care exercised in this regard, it was inevitable that in such an army of men there would be a good deal of danger in the handling of explosives in the ordinary course of their duty. They knew the danger, but they went on steadily with their work. In consequence there was such considerable loss of human life along that wild section of the railway that those who now enjoy the pleasure and the profit of travel and traffic by the picturesque inland fresh-water sea of Superior, ought to recall that the splendid road-bed was laid, not only at vast cost in substance, but with much sacrifice of that infinitely greater thing, human life. And "if peace hath her victories no less renowned that war," there is no real reason why we should unfairly discriminate between men who have, in the course of duty, given their lives in the one or the other sphere. And there is no reason why we should not value equally the possessions that have come to us by the sacrifice of men in the ways of necessary industry or in the struggles of unavoidable war.

As the work proceeded on the North Shore, some new methods were introduced rather unexpectedly. We say unexpectedly, because there had been very little work done before that time in Canada over similar territory. The process of levelling rocks down was found to be practically impossible, on account of the great expense and time involved in the effort. So the plan of levelling up was tried with excellent results. Wooden trestles were built in a great many places between the rocks. Then the construction trains came over and dumped broken stone until the space below was filled up with the best possible material out of which to make a safe and durable road-bed. In order to get the material for this process, great quarries were opened up all along the line, whence crushed rock was taken to find the new and excellent use just mentioned.

Of course all this tremendous expenditure of labour and capital on the North Shore gave the critics of the whole Canadian transcontinental railway idea a new opportunity. Capt. Palliser's report as to the impracticability of a railway across the continent on British soil, Mackenzie's idea in regard to using the water stretches for transportation as links in a trans-continental system, as well as the early Stephen-Hill plan of linking up with Hill's line at Sault Ste. Marie, and thus having traffic between East and West in Canada go for some few hundred miles through the States--all these arguments were brought out to support the statement that Canada would be ruined by such wild schemes as building a railway section across the barren waste of rock on the North Shore. These persistent endeavours to block the work of construction were having their pernicious effect in sowing the seeds of discontent throughout the Dominion. And, what was much more serious, these statements, sown broadcast in the Old Country, made London centres of finance dubious in regard to the judgment of the railway directors who would undertake such an exceedingly difficult piece of work. This means that the raising of money in London was practically impossible. British investors have always been venturous enough and will, when Empire interests are in the balance, be ready, for patriotic motives, to take some special hazards. But in this case they were being told by mischief-makers, not only that the North Shore section was outrageously expensive, but that, according to the honest opinion of as great an authority as Sandford Fleming, it should not be constructed with the hope of making running expenses until the West had a population of three millions. It had then not many thousands. And the British investors were being also informed by opponents and rivals of the Canadian Pacific that no Imperial interests would suffer if the North Shore construction was postponed indefinitely and traffic allowed to go through the States according to Hill's suggestion. Even the contractors and the men on the North Shore began to lose heart, as men will who are being made to feel that they are engaged in a work that is not only dangerous and unnecessary, but likely to prove unprofitable should the Company become insolvent through the terrific expenditure. And these men began to lose even the incentive to endeavour when they were also told that they were engaged in a task which resembled the mythological case of Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll a great stone up a hill only to have it always slip at the top and roll down again. No man likes that endless and fruitless prospect in his work. Nor does he like working on a tower which will have to be left uncompleted for lack of means.

But amid all this discouragement Van Horne remained doggedly determined to make an all-Canadian line and to build the railway on the North Shore. He doubtless used some strong language in regard to the hostile and the faint-hearted, but he pushed ahead with the stolidly unemotional will-power of his Dutch ancestry. As his ancestors in Holland had successfully dyked against the inroads of the ocean, Van Horne defied the seas of pessimistic and hostile criticism to inundate his life and put out the fire of his purpose. Then in the midst of this struggle an opportunity came his way. And his keen brain seized upon it with the swift precision of a steel-trap in action. One Louis Riel, who had stirred up a rebellion against Canadian authority in 1869, and had been hybernating in Montana for the intermediate years, began stirring up another revolt in the Saskatchewan country in 1884. Those guardians of the North-West, the Mounted Police, scattered over the vast area in small detachments, had notified the Canadian authorities ten months or so before the actual outbreak came in March, 1885. It seems now as if much of the information they gave was tied up in a bundle with red tape and pigeonholed by civil service officialdom in Regina. However, that is not part of our present story, beyond our saying that it looked at one time, to those of us who were on the ground, as if the whole Middle West, with its thousands of war-like Indians, would in a short time be swept by a prairie fire of rebellion which would leave ruin and desolation in its wake. It was vitally necessary that in such an event there should be, without delay, an overwhelming demonstration of force made by the Canadian authorities. Riel was sending his runners through the half-breed settlements and Indian camps, telling these primitive and uninformed people that if they all rose they could drive the Canadians off the plains and have these vast spaces for themselves and the wild game again.

Mr. Van Horne, who had been up and down the prairie part of his line frequently, had been watching the rising cloud of discontent amongst the half-breeds there. He did not worry over the political aspects of the situation, but he saw that if the Indians were to be drawn into revolt there would be a general devastation over the whole country. He at once saw the possibility of demonstrating to the country the value of the railway as a carrier of troops to the West, if necessity arose. He pointed out to members of the Dominion Government that the Company would in such a contingency have a strong claim on the Government for help in the financial crisis to which, by reason of the tremendous expenditure in construction, he saw the road to be swiftly and inevitably heading. A member of the Government told Van Horne that the possibility of having to send troops to the West would undoubtedly put a new face on any application by the Railway to the Dominion for a loan to tide them over their difficulties.

It was only the brilliant and marvellously resourceful work of Shaughnessy, in Montreal, in this period that was making the continuance of the work possible, and that was preventing impatient creditors from launching proceedings against the Company. Thinking "as if his brain were packed in ice," this consummately cool and alert purchasing agent seemed to make a thousand dollars grow where there was only one before. The thousand dollar amount was not actually there, but he handled the situation as if it was visibly in existence. He promised and threatened alternately. He made partial payments and told creditors that if they pressed unduly the Company would do no more business with them. He gave notes and arranged collateral with such extraordinary skill that, so far as I can find, no claim for money due in the ordinary way was ever brought into court, and no note ever signed by the Company ever went to protest. But despite Shaughnessy's masterly handling of the situation, things were desperate enough, although Stephen, Smith and Angus were pledging their private property and turning over their private investments to keep things in operation.

And now the mountain section had to be completed. More millions would have to be found somewhere. No one seemed to know where to replenish the empty treasury, and the mental strain on the members of the Board was terrible. The fight against rocks and swamps and mountains waged by the Company and contractors and men was fierce enough, but it was not to be compared with the constant battle that had to be waged by the Directors against heart-breaking and nerve-shattering financial conditions, for years after the signing of the original agreement with the Government of Canada for the building of the road. In the next chapter we shall study this particular phase of the subject for a space.

We can say at once, in explanation of the financial struggles before mentioned, that the Canadian Pacific Railway was constructed to a finish across Canada in a period of monetary storm and stress. Leaving out of count the early years when the successive Governments were building short stretches here and there, in a way so leisurely that no financial difficulties occurred, beyond the ordinary impecuniosity which haunts all Governments, the period from 1881 to 1885 was pre-eminently a difficult time. During those years everybody was having what men on the prairies call "hard sledding"--an expression taken from the experience of travel with sleighs when the thaw has left bare patches on the plains. On those patches the sleigh runners catch with a disheartening tenacity and impede progress. At such junctures it is fortunate if there are several men travelling together, because by "doubling up" their teams, they can get over the otherwise impossible gap. Life is full of opportunities for mutual helpfulness, and the great railway which now spans the continent and bridges the oceans found itself more than once, in the construction period above mentioned, at the end of its resources and had to call on the Dominion Government for temporary assistance. It was a case where "doubling up" became necessary if the hard places were to be traversed. We are not sure that the Government was as willing and ready to assist as the ordinary good-natured and open-hearted teamster used to be on the prairie. But even a Government, which should be cautious because it handles trust funds for the people, may be brought to see when an unforeseen expenditure can be and must be made, in the interests of the people themselves. In this particular case of the Dominion Government and the Canadian Pacific Railway the Government would not and did not at any time give even a temporary loan till it had made the most exhaustive investigation into the whole problem. There are some facts so outstanding that even a superficial investigation could find, without much delay, why the Company required and deserved temporary assistance by way of loan during the construction period in a trying era.

It should be remembered, to begin with, that the principal men in the Company, Stephen, Smith and Angus, were men of practically independent means before they entered on railroading with Hill in St. Paul. In their association with Hill, owing to causes set forth in a preceding chapter, they had become very wealthy in a short time and hence did not have to take up any further work of the kind. Of worldly goods they had enough and to spare and might have reasonably, from their own standpoint, have continued the even tenor of their ways in their ordinary and familiar occupations in Canada. But Sir John Macdonald, as soon as he knew that their wealth had become great, and that they would be looking for new avenues for investment, approached them with an appeal to undertake the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was the biggest railway construction project in the world, and the proposal to build the road, except by slow stages, was characterized, not only by prominent public men, but by some well-known experts, as sheer madness. Stephen, as we have seen, was not disposed to go into such a huge undertaking at all. There was no mercenary reason why this already successful trio should make this hazardous attempt. However, the appeal of patriotic duty to their country, as well as the fascination of immensity in task, finally drew these Canadian men into the enterprise. And once they took up the matter it is well-known and can now be told that they put not only themselves, but all they had, into the determination to carry it through to a successful issue. Hence they deserved the commendation of the country and not the condemnation, for their gallantry.

My impression is that Donald A. Smith, with that craggy head and beetling brow of his, was the most doggedly determined Director of them all, though less able as a financier and diplomatist than Stephen, to whom, generally speaking, those who know the history of the road quite properly give endless credit for his masterly work as President of the Company. After writing the preceding sentence, I came across the following statement by Sir Charles Tupper, who himself did so much to carry the great project through. He said in 1897: "The Canadian Pacific Railway would have no existence to-day, notwithstanding all the Government did to support the undertaking, had it not been for the indomitable pluck and energy and determination, both financially and in every other respect, of Sir Donald Smith."

I can quite understand some reader putting in a question here, as to how it was that men of such ability, after having estimated the cost of constructing the Canadian Pacific, found themselves at the end of their resources within two years of their taking the contract. It is not enough to say, although it was true, that there was an immense amount of unexpected expenditure in battering the way through the Laurentian rocks on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and in boring a road through the mountains of British Columbia. There were other causes for the hard circumstances that came upon the railway. The chief reasons for the financial difficulties of the Railway Company, beyond what has been already indicated, lay in the facts that, succeeding the boom inflation in the West in 1881, there came a very serious depression all over the country. On account of this, immigration fell far short of what was expected. In consequence, both freight and passenger traffic was very scanty. The Railway Company, for the same reasons, could not realize anything worth while on its land, which was for the first ten years a drag on the Company rather than an asset, as can be readily ascertained by a study of the question. Thus the two main sources of expected revenue failed to materialize. In addition, the threatening discontent of the half-breed population which culminated in the Riel outbreak, further discouraged the incoming of settlers. Resolutions, passed unwisely at conventions in Manitoba, warning immigrants not to come until there were other railways linking up with the States, being used by immigration agents for other countries, created a bad impression as to the Canadian West. And because investors abroad were also influenced against the Canadian Pacific at the financial centres of London and New York, by certain rival railway interests, the assets of the Canadian road could not be turned into money. In this connection it is well to recall again the bitter "Disallowance" agitation carried on against the Canadian Pacific, chiefly in Manitoba, all through the construction period. There was persistent effort made by that Province to charter local railways, mainly linking up with the United States systems, despite the clause in the Canadian Pacific contract with the Government to the contrary. The charters granted by Manitoba were promptly disallowed by the Dominion Government, mainly, first, because of the contract with the Canadian Pacific, second, because money could not be raised to build the main line of the Canadian Pacific if the productive areas along that road should be tapped by rival roads, and, third, because it was contended that the East had made tremendous sacrifices to build the road and that on that account Western traffic ought to go over the North Shore to build up the Eastern part of Canada, rather than go southward to build up a foreign country.

The Canadian Pacific, in self defence, would not yield to the granting of rival charters, and the Dominion Government said they would keep faith according to the terms of the contract. But Manitoba would not be appeased and made many attempts, even to violence, to break the "monopoly" clause. I recall passing on a Canadian Pacific train to Southern Manitoba, and seeing large forces of men at a point where a road from the south was striving to cross the Canadian railway. A Canadian Pacific locomotive on a switch hastily constructed, barred the way and some 200 men stood beside it to prevent the crossing. The agitation checked immigration, and produced altogether a condition exceedingly harmful to the West for a time. But the Canadian Pacific was clearly within its rights and this was part of its battle for life during that period.

One cannot remember that fiery era without recalling how fortunate it was for the Canadian Pacific Railway that its Western representative was William Whyte, a princely type of man, whose courage, imperturbable coolness and inflexible determination made him a tower of strength. People might fight the railway, but no one of right mind could dislike William Whyte, whose high character and immense personal popularity with all classes, including especially all employees of the road, made him unassailable. Leaving much of the administration of his office to men like the genuine, and diplomatic, "Jim" Manson, Whyte gave much time to the "disallowance" problem, and to preventing open trouble as far as possible. But there was general satisfaction when Manitoba, under the continued work of men like John Norquay, Thomas Greenway and Joseph Martin, in the local Government of Manitoba, persuaded the Dominion authorities to cancel the "Monopoly" clause by giving the Canadian Pacific compensation. The whole agitation, however sincere, had greatly hampered the development of the country, and crippled very considerably the efforts of the Canadian Pacific in a confessedly difficult period of wide-spread depression.

Some railways in the wealthy country to the south were, for various reasons, going into the hands of the receivers during the construction period of the Canadian Pacific. So that, despite the consummate ability of the Canadian Pacific financiers, it is small wonder that the Company saw bankruptcy looming up ahead. Even Stephen and Shaughnessy could not make bricks without straw. And all the time Van Horne was driving ahead with construction at top speed. He knew the situation, but declared that any stoppage or even slackening up would lead to the Company being pounced on by creditors, who would wind it up. His view was that the whole undertaking must be kept alive as a hopeful, going enterprise, and that its position would improve immensely when it, refusing to acknowledge defeat, spanned the continent to the Western seas. Even then, Van Horne, as after events proved, had his eye on trade with the Orient as a great feeder to the road. So he went ahead, and let the others find the money, though at times he took a hand, in his trenchant way, in letting the Government know what he thought of the whole situation.

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