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.
Twice the Company had to apply to the Government for either loan or guarantee of bonds and during the months when these matters were hanging in the balance, the founders of the Company and the General Manager and Purchasing Agent, as well as other responsible officials, passed through what can be truly called, agonizing experiences. To these experiences they gave utterance at times. It is anticipating somewhat and disregarding sequence for the moment, but during those years we have it on the word of friends that Stephen returned one evening to the Russel House after a vain effort to get Sir John A. Macdonald to say that he would recommend that a loan should be made. Stephen, upon whom, as President, there was unusual strain, threw himself into a chair in the rotunda and when an acquaintance passing the time of day said, “How are you?” Stephen, without looking up, replied “I feel like a ruined man.” One day he shed tears in the office of Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, not because he cared for himself, but because it looked as if the whole great project of the Canadian Pacific was going to a crash that would block the future of Canada for a time at least. On another night Mr. Stephen, after a hopeless sort of interview with the Government, came down the Russel House stair grip in hand and told Senator Frank Smith, a gallant friend of the railway, that he was going to Montreal to make a personal assignment of all he possessed. Even the redoubtable Van Horne wired frantically one day that the pay car could not go out because there was nothing in it! On another day he said to Mr. Schreiber at Ottawa, “If the Government does not help us we are finished.” And shortly afterwards, meeting Sir John Macdonald in the corridor, he said, “Sir John, we are dangling over the pit of hell and ruin.” On another occasion, when the Directors were in session, the Chairman said, “Gentlemen, it looks as if we had to burst——” But Donald A. Smith looked hard at him and said, “It may be that we must succumb, but that must not be as long as we individually have a dollar.” And it is related that he went out and raised on his personal security enough to meet pressing accounts which Shaughnessy said had to be paid at once.
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 (who was knighted later for his services to the Empire) 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.
It was late in 1883 when the Canadian Pacific, which had been keeping the facts before the Government at Ottawa, made formal application for a loan of twenty-two and a-half millions to ward off failure. The situation was desperate, but the Government, which had a lively recollection of the fight put up against the original contract, was afraid to risk defeat by granting the request. The security offered for the loan was to all appearance ample, as it included a lien on the Company’s main line, the branch lines in Manitoba, and the unpledged land grant. In addition they gave the astonishing pledge that they would clip five years off the contract term and finish the road in 1886. Sir John Macdonald, who always kept his hand on the public pulse, knew that people in the East were being persuaded by the Parliamentary Opposition that the West was being developed at the expense of the East. Men in his own cabinet and many of his supporters in the House, were being infected with that idea, despite all efforts to make them see that, in the long run, the development of the West would be an immense gain to the East. Sir John, with the prospect of a divided cabinet, possible defection amongst his own followers in the House, as well as the bitter attitude of the Opposition and the likelihood of a revolt in the country against the granting of the loan, was indisposed to yield. Things looked black for the Canadian Pacific. Stephen was utterly discouraged after interviews with Sir John, and it was on one of those occasions that he was giving up and leaving Ottawa for Montreal when Senator Frank Smith prevailed on him to wait over till they would have a midnight interview with Sir John. Even that interview seemed fruitless till Mr. John Henry Pope went to Sir John and told him that if the loan was not granted, the Canadian Pacific would go to the wall, the Conservative party would go with it, and all Canada would be in a panic. Sir John did not want to smash Canada nor the Conservative party, and he explained that he was personally in favour of the loan and would try to get his Cabinet and party united in an effort to put it through the House. This was enough for Mr. Pope, who knew Sir John’s powers, and at two o’clock in the morning Pope returned to the well-nigh despairing Stephen and the rest, and uttered simply the tonic words, “Well, he will do it.”
In the meantime Sir Charles Tupper, who, while still holding the portfolio of Minister of Railways, was in London as High Commissioner for Canada, had been cabled for to come to the rescue. He left for Ottawa at once and, on arrival in Canada, found everybody at their wits’ end. He got Mr. Miall, the expert Government accountant, and Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, the highly respected and able Government engineer, to work on the Railway Company’s books in Montreal. They reported everything satisfactory, and Mr. Schreiber, whose word went a long way, recommended the granting of the loan.
But there was still the task of getting the Cabinet united on the subject, and the caucus of the Government members in the House into a favourable and unanimous attitude. Fortunately for the Government and the Canadian Pacific and the country at large, the Cabinet had in its number the rare personalities of the magnetic and diplomatic Sir John Macdonald and the formidable, fearless Sir Charles Tupper, who made a sort of irresistible combination. Sir John could sway by the conciliatory eloquence and the appealing personal touches which held the devoted allegiance of his party to the “old Chieftain” through many extraordinary vicissitudes in his long career. Sir Charles could marshal arguments with the consummate forensic power of which he was a master, and thus became a veritable regiment of storm troops to carry his points and reach his objective. These two men solidified their own party and, despite a fierce resistance from their opponents in the House, the Bill authorizing the loan was carried, as Sir Charles said, “at the point of the bayonet.”
This relief gave the Company a new lease of life and the work, which had never slackened, even though men had to wait for their pay, was forced ahead by the aggressive Van Horne, while Shaughnessy handled every dollar with such consummate skill that it seemed to do the work of two. But the terrific expenditure in construction on the North Shore and through the mountains, caused the twenty odd millions to melt like snow before the sun. Smashing the rocks and levelling up the chasms on the North Shore and finding a sure foundation in shaking and almost bottomless morasses which sucked down material like an insatiable undertow, all meant enormous unforeseen expenditure. The Company would not allow any careless work and, if necessary, the contractors would stay at one spot for months till the road-bed was absolutely secure. Van Horne was rushing to complete the railway, but he was too thorough a railroader to sacrifice security to speed in construction. Expense was of no consequence. He was going to “get the work done right and send in the bills to Stephen and Shaughnessy.”
Just at the juncture when the railway seemed in imminent danger of coming to a sudden halt because its coffers were again bare, and the Government was afraid that the country would not stand for any more assistance to be given to what some thought was a wild commercial venture, an event occurred which threw the Canadian Pacific into the limelight as an undertaking of immense Imperial value. That event was the Riel Rebellion, which Van Horne had foreseen as a possibility and concerning which he had warned the powers at Ottawa when he told them that if it did occur, he would carry troops from the East to the prairies in the space of a few days. Sir John Macdonald and the Government, with a strange pertinacity, born of the mysterious red tapeism of Regina officialdom, refused to think such an event possible. However, it came with sudden and deadly emphasis when at Duck Lake, in March, 1885, on the North Saskatchewan, a small force of civilians and police suffered heavily in a sort of rebel ambuscade. Fifteen years before, this same Riel had, at Fort Garry, run amuck, and then it had taken six months for the soldiers under Col. Wolseley, coming by land and water, to reach the scene. Now, in 1885, with the Lakes frozen and no chance of going through the United States with armed men, the whole middle West might be swept by the carnage of semi-savage rebels on the war path. The time had come for Van Horne to play a winning card, and he played it. The Government made frantic appeal to him because months before he had intimated his willingness to help in such an event. But before their appeal was actually known to the general public, Van Horne had trains ready with steam up at the centres in the East where troops would make their points of departure. He knew that there were gaps on the North Shore and that there would be hardships, but to reduce these to a minimum he stipulated that he and Shaughnessy and the Railway Company officials should have complete control of both transportation and commissariat. He always believed, for he had proven it by many a test, that when men were well fed with nourishing food and stimulated for special effort with strong black coffee, they could do and endure greatly. And so he would not leave the soldiers to the tender mercies of inexperienced quarter masters with meagre supplies on the bleak North Shore of Lake Superior.
In one or two places the soldiers had to march along the shore-ice on the lake. In other places they were taken by teams and sleighs, or else on flat cars over some hastily laid track. They had what might well be called a hard time over part of the way, but soldiers do not expect luxury on active service, and they got through in fewer days to Winnipeg than it had taken of months to accomplish in Wolseley’s expedition, years before. From Winnipeg the troops, with their Western comrades, were distributed by rail and trail over the plains as far as the mountains, and the rebellion was soon quelled. From that day the most fiery opponents of the North Shore section of the Railway, the chief point of critical attack, found their calling gone and had to subside. Some of them would still oppose the whole system through force of habit, but the extraordinary and unexpected service rendered by the Railway in a crisis time would make it comparatively easy for even a cautious Government to give temporary help to the Company, with the consent and approval of the grateful Canadian people. Not only so, but the Canadian Pacific Railway had thus suddenly become of such significance and value as an all-British route across the North American continent, that men in the Old Land who believed in the continuance of the Empire, realized as never before that a new factor in Imperialism had come into history. This railway was seen to be, not only a commercial transportation company which traversed a portion of an overseas Dominion, but a great link in the chain of an Empire that girdled the earth. It would no longer be ignored in the financial circles of London, where the centre of Empire stood.
Meanwhile, right on through the rebellion, the work was being pushed ahead in the mountains, although it was not generally known then that the Company at first had boldly thrust its spear-head against the embattled hills without very definite knowledge of how it was to get through beyond the Rockies. The Kicking-Horse Pass showed the way, along its flashing, frothing river, through the Rockies, but for some time there was doubt about how the Selkirk Range was to be pierced. So anxious was the Company about this problem that Mr. Sandford Fleming, the famous engineer, was summoned by cable from the Old Country to look into the situation. He journeyed by train to Calgary and went by trail through the Kicking Horse, but just then Major Rogers, a hard-bitten, adventurous man, acting on some information given by Walter Moberly years before, discovered the famous pass called Rogers’ Pass to this day. Rogers was an American engineer who, with his son Albert (after whom Albert Canyon was called by Principal Grant of Queen’s University, Secretary to Sandford Fleming on his journeys), had explored amid much hardships to find a pass through the Selkirks. When he did find it, the Company was so pleased that a bonus cheque for $5,000 was sent to Rogers. A few months afterwards Van Horne met Rogers and reminded him that he had never cashed the cheque. Rogers, who was well educated, but rough at times in temper and language, evidently had abundant sentiment withal. For he replied, “Do you think I would cash that cheque? I was not out there for money, but to have a hand in a big project. No, sir, I have that cheque framed in my brother’s house in Waterville, Minnesota, where my nephews and nieces can see it as a token of some work their old uncle did in his time.”
Contractors who became famous later on in various ways were at work on the mountain section. The work on the prairies had been child’s play compared to it. A good old Scotch elder who came in to see me at the Coast twenty years ago was amazed at the enormous task that had been accomplished. In political life in Manitoba he had attacked what people called “the ruinous expenditure” on the road. But he said to me then, in 1903, in Vancouver: “Now that I have seen it I wonder that men ever undertook the work at any price, and so far as I am concerned I am through with criticism of the expenditure on construction.” And then the good man added, “The fact is that if the good Lord had not bored through the mountains with rivers, there is not enough money in the Empire to build to the Coast.” There was much in what this honest man said that day.
The expenditure was almost incredible. Where the rivers ran, there was, for miles on end, the necessity for cutting into the solid rock to get room for the road-bed and trains. There were miles of snowsheds to be built, and tunnels through solid rock almost without number. Up the mountain sides there were built various devices to protect the road and make it safe from slides and avalanches. Rivers were deflected from their channels and retaining walls were built. When I first passed over the road, not many years after it was opened, there seemed to be leagues of trestles, now filled in or replaced by steel or tunnels. Everywhere there was need for the ceaseless flow of millions of money. But Van Horne, who knew all about the business, saw that nothing was left undone to make the road beyond criticism. And so well was the work done that once, shortly after the road was completed, Van Horne, who was taking some arbitrators over the mountains to value the government construction section, had the engineer run over fifty miles an hour to show these gentlemen “that the Company section was a real railroad even if the government sections were not.”
It was no wonder that with the vast expenditure indicated by the above paragraphs the Directors saw that they must raise some more millions or perish.
Accordingly, in 1885, when the Riel Rebellion, by reason of the service rendered by the Canadian Pacific Railway in transportation of troops, had been quelled, Stephen approached the Dominion Government again for assistance. The rebellion services of the railway had solidified the Government support in the House, which was then in session, and had pretty well silenced the Opposition. The assets of the Railway were already subject to a lien for the former loan, but the Government, besides a few minor concessions, finally allowed the Directors to issue $35,000,000 stock, of which it was to guarantee $20,000,000, the rest to be issued by the Railway Directors. Stephen went to London, not very hopefully, to sell this bond issue. The Directors in Canada waited anxiously to hear the result, for the bankruptcy of the road and of the Directors (though they cared less for that) was only hours away if Stephen’s mission failed. Sir Charles Tupper, then High Commissioner for Canada in London, that steadfast friend of the road, had done some most effective preparatory work with the famous banking house of the Barings, of which Lord Revelstoke was the head. Stephen had scarcely begun his explanation of the situation when Lord Revelstoke broke in and said, “We have been looking into the whole matter already. We are satisfied with the outlook in Canada and the future of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and will take over the whole issue of your stock at ninety-one.” Stephen was overjoyed, because the question of the solvency of the great railway was settled for all time. He sent an exultant cable at once to Canada. Mr. Angus and Mr. Van Horne were in the Board Room in Montreal when it was delivered. They read it with a sort of glad surprise too deep for words. They were matter-of-fact men, but they shook hands with some emotion. Then they threw some of the chairs about and danced around the room. The relief to the tension had come and they had to relax somehow. They were human.
They knew in that hour that the road would be completed. And out along the line in the great mountains there would be a station called Revelstoke. And where the steel met from the East and the West, there would be another station named “Craigellachie,” after the Gælic cablegram meaning “stand fast,” which Stephen, as we have already recorded, had sent to his cousin, Donald A. Smith (Strathcona), in the dark days some years before. The name would remind succeeding generations of the men whose steadfastness was like unto that of Craigellachie, the unshaken rock in the old glen of Strathspey.
As we have followed the story of railway construction across the continent, over the North Shore, athwart the vast plains and on into the mountains, our eyes have been on the Western sea. It was to win and hold the illimitable spaces of the North-West that the Canadian Pacific was first conceived, and it was specially to link up British Columbia with her sister Provinces to the east that the iron horses were being driven on steel trails to drink on the sunset shore of Canada.
But we must always keep in mind the fact that this railway was to be transcontinental in its extent, and that it was down by the Atlantic, first of all, that men who saw visions and dreamed dreams forecasted its great destiny by land and sea. They saw it spanning the continent, continuing across the Pacific, and finally, under one system, girdling the globe. Others, earlier, made conjectures and expressed vague hopes, but the most clear and confident note of prophecy was sounded by Joseph Howe at Halifax, in 1851, in the famous speech quoted in our first chapter. Later, in the old Province of Quebec, where in a sense Confederation was first definitely outlined at the Conference of the Fathers of Confederation in 1864, this prophetic note was taken up and rendered more emphatic. Thus were the Atlantic statesmen planning ahead.
Moreover, it is interesting to recall that it was Mr. Sanford Fleming, the engineer of the Intercolonial, peculiarly an Atlantic Railway, who was called on to explore a railroad way to the Pacific. It was his secretary on that expedition, the brilliant and versatile Rev. (later Principal) George Munro Grant, then of Halifax, who made the expression “Ocean to Ocean” current coin in Canada, by publishing a book under that title. And still another Halifax writer, Robert Murray, immortalized the expression, by composing a remarkable hymn with the same designation. Thus were the oceans early linked prophetically by patriotic seers and mystics.
Just now I am looking at the realization of these dreams as portrayed in a unique picture which ought to be found on the wall of every school in Canada. This picture is commonly called “Driving the last spike,” and to the superficial observer, unacquainted with the history of the Canadian Pacific, it means simply the act of joining together the steel rails which met at a given point in the mountains, as the track-layers, working from East and West, finished their protracted task. But, in reality, it means much more than a single isolated act along the progress of the years. It is a composite deed into which is merged and concentrated a long series of astonishing achievements wrought by men of brain and brawn. It represents many mental, moral and physical forces converging into a climax which could only have been attained by the persistent, determined efforts of those who believed that obstacles are thrown in life’s pathway in order that men may wax strong through the overcoming of them.
In this picture, “Driving the Last Spike,” there is nothing to suggest “the shouting of captains and garments rolled in blood.” But for those who will study and enquire, it holds the story of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, by a gallant constructive army whose mission was not to destroy but to build, for the welfare of a nation and lands beyond its borders. That is why I say it should be on the walls of our schoolrooms, in order that teachers might relate to young Canadians the story of an amazing accomplishment on the fields of peace.
Just how amazing and how dangerous was the task of building through certain parts of the mountains, not far from the scene portrayed in the picture, may be gathered from the experiences of the engineering staff. As I am writing I recall that Mr. Noel Robinson, a Vancouver newspaper man who deserves much credit for his work in connection with the work of old-timers, elicited once from Mr. Henry J. Cambie, who put the road through the Fraser River canyons, a few words on the subject. Mr. Robinson says: “In response to some pressure as to the difficulty of laying out the work—apart altogether from the difficulties of construction—Mr. Cambie admitted that these were great. Mr. Cambie spoke particularly of the Cherry Bluffs section, and said that quite a stretch of it was laid out by a few men, as there was only room for a few to work. Two agile men, with experience on sailing vessels, sprung ropes from rock to rock or from tree to tree. Then a few engineers, steadying themselves with these ropes, went along in their bare feet to lay out the work, with a precipice and then Kamloops Lake, of unknown depth, down below them. Mr. Cambie admitted that he was one of these engineers. One of the engineers, Mr. Melchior Eberts, in 1881, while climbing over a bluff covered with snow and ice, slipped and fell head first down a steep slope, to his death.” Speaking of the difficulties, Mr. Cambie went on to say: “We had to increase the curvature beyond anything we had ever seen up to that time on a main line of railway, and in order to get round the face of some of the bluffs we had to construct what we called grasshopper trestles, that is, trestles with long posts on the outside, standing on steps cut in the rock, and on the other side a very short post, if any, because very often we had half a road-bed. These things have since been done away with and their places taken by retaining walls.” In my own conversation with Mr. Cambie he has spoken to me feelingly about the loss of life through the canyons of the Fraser during construction days. Practically all the work was through rock which had to be dynamited in places where it was very difficult to get shelter when shots were fired. Men were drowned also here and there along the river. Thus again we are reminded that this battle in time of peace was only won, like other battles, by great sacrifice. These are things we must never forget when we enjoy the results of the struggles of others in our own or earlier days.
The spot at which the last spike was driven was named Craigellachie, as already intimated. The story of the name has not always been correctly told in this connection, beyond saying that the word was sent as a cablegram from Stephen to his fellow-directors in a crisis hour to encourage them not to give way, though the position seemed hopeless at the time. The expression is in reality not one word, but two, Craig Ellachie. This was the name of a grey rock in a Scottish glen, the home of a famous clan. And the legend is that when the clansmen went forth to war, the windswept pines and heather on the lonely hilltop whispered to the forth-going men the war-cry “Stand Fast, Craig Ellachie.” And now, in a new land, at a place where rails met through the steadfast persistence of these Scottish men and others, the mountains heard the echoing blow of the hammer which is in the forefront of the picture, “Driving the Last Spike.” Contrary to a general impression, created by the importance of the occasion and by some writers, the last spike was not of gold, but iron, like the other millions of them that had been driven all along the line. The event itself was so intensely dramatic that it needed not any conventional setting to give it éclat. Mr. Van Horne, who was not disposed to waste in any case, perhaps felt that iron was more significant of the spirit in which determined men had accomplished the apparently impossible. And so he had said in a matter of fact way, which was in itself abundantly thrilling: “The last spike will be as good an iron spike as there is between the two oceans, and any one who wants to see it driven will have to pay full fare.” The Directors who had passed through the fierce fire of the economic struggle to build the road could not afford, without a sort of sacrilege, to have anything conventional to bring people from the ends of the earth for the occasion. There was grim, but splendid, simplicity about the ceremony that was profoundly appropriate under all the circumstances.
It was on November 7th, 1885, that the rails met in the Eagle Pass section of the road, and a group of men alighted from the train to be present when the last spike would be driven. By general concensus of opinion, the hammer to drive it was placed in the hands of Donald A. Smith. It was a great honour, but worthily bestowed on the white-haired veteran and victor in a hundred fights against obstacles. It was a far cry from the little village of Forres, in Morayshire, to the way station of Craigellachie in the mountains of Canada. But Donald A. Smith, the lad who had left Forres with all his worldly possessions in a carpet bag, and endured cold and snow-blindness in the Labrador till he rose to the higher places in the Hudson’s Bay Company, had now come to stand on Canada’s pioneer transcontinental steel trail and drive the spike that would link up, into a true Confederation, the scattered Provinces of the Dominion.
Mr. Smith had not done much manual labour in recent years. But he was no stranger to physical toil. While in Labrador he had run with his dog trains in winter, and in summer cultivated an astonishing garden and farm, which was a surprise to all who visited the bleak locality. So, despite the years that had elapsed since that time, Smith swung the sledge hammer with a will that day, and the iron spike was driven home to forge a new link of Empire. I have been listening in imagination to the echoes of the hammer-blow through the passes and along the mountain sides, and thence around the seven seas of the Empire. For this was a right royal event, which evoked swift messages from good Queen Victoria, the Marquis of Lorne, and many others who recognized the enormous Imperial significance of what had taken place in the heart of the great mountains under the Red Cross flag. And the day would come when a great war was to break suddenly over the face of the world. In that day of the Empire’s danger she would realize, even more vividly, the value of this Canadian transcontinental road which, by the time of that war, had transformed the Middle West of Canada from a wilderness into a vast storehouse of food supplies. In that day of war the Canadian Pacific would transport by land and sea hundreds of thousands of soldiers and labourers to the sphere of conflict, and, from its own employees, would furnish for the safety of the Empire not only a large quota of fighting men, but some of the most expert railway builders and transportation officers in the world. All this was wrapped up potentially in the thrilling incident of driving the last spike at Craigellachie.
So once more I look at the picture. The camera could not take in a large group, but it is representative in some fair degree of the men who made the event of that day possible. Tracklayers and sectionmen, engineers and contractors, superintendents and Directors, and others, were present, for they all had a share in the victory. Some of them I can pick out in the crowd; others are to me unknown. Some one, whose face is hidden by a bystander, is holding Donald A. Smith’s overcoat, for the veteran had taken it off in order to swing the hammer in workmanlike fashion. The tall figure of Mr. Sandford Fleming, his beard and hair white with the snows that never melt, is conspicuous near the foreground. He will be remembered as the engineer-in-chief who blazed the way through the mountains in the early days, and who, though not then on the staff as engineer, was called from the Old Country in 1883 to help in finding a way through the Selkirks. After retiring from the engineering staff he became a Director of the Company and so remained to the end of a distinguished and highly useful life. Other engineers whom I see in the group are Marcus Smith, a quite remarkable man who had general charge of the Coast section; Major Rogers, the famed finder of Roger’s Pass through the Selkirks; and Henry J. Cambie, who put the railway through the Fraser River canyons, one of the most picturesque, but one of the most difficult, portions along the line. Van Horne did not always love the engineers, whose care in location did not entirely chime in with his ideas of speed in building. But after letting them know his mind in emphatic language, he recognized the sphere of their responsibility, and, after discussing other possible ways, let them have their way if they made out a case. The three above named were near enough to be present at Craigellachie on that eventful day, but they represented a band of very gallant men in the same vocation—men who often ventured their lives in the dangerous places they were investigating. Representing the contractors, who were a legion, we find in the group James Ross, who had much building to do in the mountain section, and who had witnessed many difficulties in dealing with a large army of men of many nationalities. Generally speaking it can be said that the contractors gave themselves with enthusiasm to their work, and the Canadian Pacific was the training school for a host of young Canadians in the business of railway building. In after years many of these men became famous in railway work. Their ambitions, begotten and intensified by their experience on the pioneer transcontinental road, led them into very large enterprises of their own in the same line. Some of their undertakings were premature, in view of Canada’s population, but some day they will enure to the benefit of the country.
While speaking of the contractors, one would like again to say something of the thousands of track and tunnel men, represented at Craigellachie that day by the hundred or two on that section at the time. Their lot had not been easy as they toiled on through summer’s heat and winter’s cold. Every effort was made to the end that they should be well fed and sheltered, where possible, but certain hardships which were inevitable were for the most part cheerfully borne. In the dark days they had to wait for their pay, that being true of all the employees at times. But these men had faith in the big enterprise and took their share of the hard times, saying, as did one business man on the North Shore, who had several thousands coming to him for supplies, “Van Horne will put this thing through and I will wait.” This was showing a good spirit; albeit we ought to remember that the men who were undergoing the most terrific strain were the Directors, who had not only pledged all their private means, but were facing at times the peculiarly unbearable possibility of the whole vast undertaking crumbling into failure before their eyes.
Two of the Directors, Mr. Sandford Fleming and Mr. Harris, appear in the group when the last spike was driven, and behind them stands Mr. John H. McTavish, one of the famous family connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company through many years. Just within that circle in the picture stands a little boy with his neck craned to see the veteran nailing the steel to a tie. He was the water boy who carried drink for the men as they toiled on the road. I sometimes wonder what became of that boy who had the rare privilege of looking on when this extraordinary event in Canadian history took place. He was witnessing what might be called the birth of a nation.
With hands in the pockets of his overcoat, in a characteristic attitude, and apparently gazing intently at the hammer and spike, stands the strong, powerful figure of Mr. Van Horne, the general who had reached his objective after a desperate battle. His favourite type of square-crowned hat is pulled well down, and his whole posture suggests determined strength. His face, withal, has a dreamy cast, and one would give more than the proverbial penny for his thoughts. His mind, no doubt, was dwelling on the struggle through which he had fought for four tremendous years. But he was doubtless also looking into the future. No one knew so well as he did, that though, in one sense, the road was completed, there was another sense in which it had only begun. Many improvements and extensions were still to be made, branch lines and double tracks were to be laid, traffic had to be developed, the land had to be peopled and the obligations of the road, incurred for bringing it to the last spike, had to be met. But it is a striking thing to recall that the total indebtedness of the Company to the Government was met within a year of the opening of the road, and that the Company has never had to ask the Government for a dollar since that time. The road was to prosper immensely, and the man who, in some trepidation, had written this same Van Horne in the darkest days, as to the Company’s securities, and got the laconic telegram, “Sell your boots and buy C. P. R. stock,” did well if he accepted the advice.
Men who were present at Craigellachie when that last spike was hammered home, tell us that for a while after the sound of the blows ceased there was absolute silence. The few hundreds who had the privilege of being there seemed, in a sense, stunned by the enormous significance of the event. Then some one gave a shout—perhaps it was that little “water boy,” because it is like what a boy would do—and then the mountains echoed with a perfect frenzy of cheering, that continued for minutes, breaking out again and again. Mr. Van Horne was called on by the crowd for a speech. Without changing his attitude and with his eyes still upon the junction of the rails, the great railroader said simply and quietly, “All I can say is that the work has been well done in every way.” It was a short speech, but it was a profound tribute to everybody who had taken part in this colossal enterprise. Directors, officials, contractors, navvies, teamsters, stonecutters, bridge builders, train men, telegraph operators and all the rest were embraced in this terse, but heartfelt, and richly-deserved eulogium. And the conductor had a splendid conception of a climacteric moment when he shouted “All aboard for the Pacific,” and the train took its swift way down to the Western sea. Two centuries had gone by since daring British explorers had essayed in vain to go across the North American continent by some hitherto undiscovered waterway to the Pacific. They were amongst the famous forerunners of the gallant and able men who had now, after amazing endeavour, laid the steel across prairie and mountain where not many years before hunters and trappers, by packhorse, snowshoe, travois or wooden cart, had broken adventurous trails. Thus there had now been opened up a new Empire, whose enormous extent and productive capacity would make it one of the wonders of the world and the Mecca for millions of the human race.
Regular passenger service was not inaugurated till the following spring, the first through train reaching Port Moody in June, 1886, and Vancouver in May, 1887. Port Moody was the statutory terminus, but the extension to Vancouver was inevitable, although Port Moody real estate owners naturally threw every obstacle in the way of the railway going farther. Vancouver had been swept by the great fire in 1886, but the courageous inhabitants started to rebuild and there were probably two or three thousand people, under the leadership of the first mayor, Mr. Malcolm A. MacLean, to greet the first train with rousing cheers and an address. It was a great day for Vancouver. A generation has since grown up which does not fully understand, because it does not know. But the people who know the story of the fire-swept area of rocks and blackened stumps into which the first Canadian Pacific train rolled that day, thirty-seven years ago, bringing in with it the dawn of a new day, do not forget. It linked the cold ashes of the new townsite to the throbbing power of Eastern Canada, and put a new name on the map where Orient and Occident looked each other in the face across the Pacific. It is rather a striking coincidence that I am writing these words on the 23rd of May, the anniversary of the arrival of the first Canadian Pacific Railway train in Vancouver in 1887. And on this day, in this Year of Grace 1924, the Empress of Canada, one of the Company’s great steamships, has just come back to this West Coast after a five months’ voyage around the globe. The space of time between is brief, considered as a span in history, but in that time the Canadian Pacific has not only covered the Dominion in all directions with its steel trails, but has compassed all the oceans with her floating palaces.
That day in May, 1887, the prominent officials of the road on the Pacific Division were the heroes of the hour—a group of able and reliable men—Messrs. Harry Abbott, Richard Marpole, W. F. Salisbury, Henry J. Cambie, D. E. Brown, George McL. Brown, H. Connon, Lacy R. Johnson, A. J. Dana, with a faithful band, the forerunners of the present host, in their employ.
As I am writing this paragraph on the eve of May 24th, the anniversary of the birth of good Queen Victoria, of immortal memory, it is fitting to note the following fine letter from the Marquis of Lorne to the Canadian Pacific authorities: “The Queen has been most deeply interested in the account which I have given her of the building of your great railway, the difficulties which it involved and which have been so wonderfully surmounted. Not one Englishman in a thousand realizes what those difficulties were; but now that the great Dominion has been penetrated by this indestructible artery of steel, the thoughts and purposes of her people, as well as her commerce, will flow in an increasing current to and fro, sending a healthful glow to all the members. The Princess and I are looking forward to a journey one day to the far and fair Pacific.” It was in keeping with the idea running through this letter that the Queen conferred a baronetcy on President George Stephen and a knighthood on Mr. Donald A. Smith. And out in the great mountains which these two Scottish men so wonderfully helped to pierce with the steel trail, there are monuments to them in the cathedral peaks, Mount Stephen and Mount Sir Donald, “More enduring than brass.”
Since that day in 1887 there have been, as the Marquis of Lorne’s letter prophesies, a constant succession of most distinguished travellers. The princes of our own Royal line, including our present gracious King and the present Prince of Wales; noblemen, statesmen, scientists, novelists, poets, soldiers, sailors, missionaries and others of world-wide fame, have passed and repassed over this iron highway, entranced and amazed at the richness, the fertility, the resources and the incomparable scenery of the country. Volumes could not record their praise for the country, for the travelling accommodation and for that courtesy and considerateness by employees for which the Canadian Pacific is known the world over. It has always been the aim of the road to see that children, ladies, old and feeble people, can travel alone with the utmost safety and comfort, and the testimony of travellers is that this tradition is steadily maintained under all circumstances. There are doubtless many travelling people who are selfish, unreasonable and hard to please, but generally speaking (and I have seen this exemplified scores of times) the official or employee of the Company proceeds on the assumption that “the passenger is always right,” and in the end everybody is satisfied.
In this connection Lady Macdonald, who went with her distinguished husband, Sir John, on the second regular train to the Coast, wrote in her account of it: “It was quite touching and something new in railway life to find the brakeman grieving over the smoke and apologizing for it.” If there was a forest or prairie fire abroad the train-hands were not to blame. If the reference was to the old coal-burners in the mountains, the Company now uses fuel oil.
To give another example: One day Mr. Van Horne overheard a trainman in rather sharp altercation with an irritable and unreasonable passenger, and speaking to this trainman afterwards, Van Horne said: “You are not to consider your own personal feelings when you are dealing with these people. You should not have any. You are the road’s while you are on duty; your reply is the road’s; and the road’s first law is courtesy.” The reader will see that while, in one sense, this seems to suppress the individuality of the employee, there is another sense in which it honours his position by making him, in that connection, the accredited representative of the Company. Mr. Van Horne inculcated this in many different ways, till employees took a pride in the road. They felt they were part of it. Even Van Horne’s faithful coloured car-porter, the well-known Jimmie French, used to tell passengers “how we built the C. P. R.” It will be recalled that when that porter died, Mr. Van Horne, who grieved greatly over the passing of a friend, walked in the funeral procession as chief mourner. That is the spirit of the road.
It would be impossible to mention a fraction of the famous travellers who have made the Canadian Pacific their way of travel, but there are two of the public men of that period who had been protagonist and antagonist on the subject for years, whose journey to the Coast had more than usual interest on that account. The one was Sir John A. Macdonald; the other was the Hon. Edward Blake.
Sir John and Lady Macdonald crossed to the Pacific on the second train that made the through trip. Sir John, being the head of the Government, was nominally at least the sponsor for the Canadian Pacific, although we must not forget that his Minister of Railways, Sir Charles Tupper, did the larger part of the fighting to get it through. Sir John, however, was always the man who had the last word as to assisting the road, and though he tried the patience of Stephen and Van Horne at times, he was the real originator of the plan and in the end gave it his powerful assistance in the days of stress. Sir John, during that trip over the road in 1886, made one of his characteristically witty and magnetic speeches at a great mass meeting in the McIntyre Rink in Winnipeg. Those were my student days, and the chance to hear the popular Premier, who was on a sort of triumphal trip over the completed road, was not to be missed. My recollection is that the speech was non-partisan, except for a few humorous references, and not very heavy. Sir John was alert and bright even to jauntiness, but he spoke as a man who was through with a puzzling problem and was light−heartedly taking a care-free holiday. His allusion to the Canadian Pacific, a strange blending of pathos and humour, swept the house into a hurricane of cheers. He said “There was a time when I never expected to live to see the completion of this great railway. But I knew it would be completed some day, and in that day I said I would see my friends crossing the continent upon it as I looked down upon them from another and better sphere. My friends on the Opposition side of the House kindly suggested that I would more likely be looking up from below. But I have disappointed all conjecturers, and I am doing this trip on the horizontal.”
It was during that pioneer railway trip that Lady Macdonald loyally rode for part of one day in the mountains on the cow-catcher of the engine, as a way of advertising to the world the safety of the new road. Mentioning Lady Macdonald recalls the story told by that big-hearted humorist, Col. George Ham, whom everybody knows and likes. It appears that Superintendent Niblock, of the Medicine Hat division of the road, had to be away from home when Sir John’s train was due to pass. But desiring to show some courtesy he wired some one at the Hat to send Lady Macdonald a bouquet of flowers. The message appears to have become mangled and when delivered had “flowers” spelled “flour” and “bouquet” contracted to “boq.” This looked unusual, and “boq. of flour” was interpreted to mean “a bag of flour.” This was accordingly despatched to Sir John’s private car, where the porter had no room to spare, and refused to accept it. And so both the courtesy and the gift fell by the wayside, although the intention was good.
The other distinguished public man, as above noted, who travelled to Vancouver over the Canadian Pacific a few years later, was the Hon. Edward Blake. He had steadfastly, consistently and, no doubt, conscientiously, opposed the construction of the road as involving what he called “ruinous expenditure” for a young and sparsely settled country. Mr. Blake’s memory remains as that of one of the ablest and most high-minded statesman in the public life of Canada and, by general consent, the most outstanding intellectual force this country has produced. But, as observed in a preceding chapter, he had never been West before the famous railway debates took place, and therefore underestimated the country and its possibilities. When he did come, in 1891, he made a notable speech in Vancouver. In that speech he not only accepted the situation in a frank and manly way, but, calling on his large vocabulary and his somewhat unsuspected sense of humour, he gave a remarkable description of the country by putting everything in words opposite to the reality. Mr. Blake said: “As I approached this country I was struck by the remarkable change from the rugged and upheaved territory of the plains of the North-West to the smooth and level slope of the Rockies; as I ascended the slope and came upon the somewhat level and monotonous flats of British Columbia; as I travelled by the languid Bow and descended again through the valley of the tranquil Kicking Horse; as I crossed the calm Columbia and travelled down the dead waters of the Beaver and along the placid Illecillewaet and by the drowsy Skuzzy; as I passed by the slow Thompson and last of all by the banks between which the Fraser meanders its sluggish way, I turned to the fertile resources of your shores and viewed the horizon where it spanned the meadows of the Selkirks, the fertile level plains of the Gold Range and the broad plains of the Coast Range, and I reached here converted.” For a while the audience, thinking that Mr. Blake was getting things mixed because this first swift trip was confusing him as to locality, preserved a well-bred, silent attitude, as if much puzzled. In a little while, as he proceeded, they saw that he was purposely and skilfully putting everything in the converse way, and the house simply rocked with delighted laughter in peal after peal. When people are enjoying an uproarious laugh, they cannot cherish resentment. And so when Mr. Blake, dropping the jocular vein, went on to say, “When the railroad was built and finished I felt myself that it was useless to continue the controversy longer, in deference to this whole country which Canada has risked so much to retain,” the people in British Columbia forgave him for calling their Province “a sea of mountains,” and, like true Westerners, declared that he was playing the game in a sportsmanlike way and they would call off their feud.
And thus was the great railway opened from ocean to ocean. Much remained yet to be done in the way of constant improvement of the road and increase of the rolling stock. But the system was in operation, and the trains passed East and West over the once “Great Lone Land” and through the mountain passes. Circumstances have changed somewhat since the following fine verses were written some years ago by the late Pauline Johnson, but in general they still represent the situation. Born in Ontario in the region made famous by her great ancestor, Joseph Brant, ally of the British people, this gifted poetess, with the Indian blood of which she was so proud, saw in the Canadian Pacific trains not just so many cars and engines, but new and living factors in the expanding life of her beloved Dominion. And so she makes “The C. P. R. No. 1, Westbound,” say: