And she calls on “The C. P. R. No. 2, Eastbound,” to say:

Now that we have followed the main line of the Canadian Pacific to the coast and have paid tribute to the actual builders it is fitting to devote a brief chapter to a body of men who, while not taking part directly in the work, did so much to make that work possible that they were often officially thanked by the railway heads for their extraordinary assistance. I refer now particularly to the part played on the stage of Western development by that famous corps, the North-West Mounted Police. I am giving here the original title. Since the time when they were so designated, the prefix “Royal” was given by King Edward, as a recognition of the great services of these knights of the saddle. Still later, when, shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, they were for obvious important reasons distributed all over the Dominion, they were given the present name of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Names have changed, but throughout the fifty years from their organization these riders in the scarlet and gold uniform have done their duty as law-and-order men, inflexible, untiring and incorruptible, in their guardianship of life and property on the widest frontier in the world. The fact that they became an important factor in the conception and building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was foreshadowed in the famous report made by Capt. W. F. Butler (afterwards Sir William Butler, of South Africa,) in the year 1871, when he travelled over the “great lone land” and made recommendation how to preserve law and order in that vast prairie country. The railway would not have come into a country that would not some day be populated, and no country would be populated unless immigrants and homesteaders were given assurance that their lives and property would be protected in the new country. So it was that Butler recommended the formation of a “mobile force,” because a force located at fixed points or forts “would afford no adequate protection outside the immediate circle of these points and would hold out no inducements to the establishment of new settlements.” And Butler says he made his recommendation because he saw “a vast country lying, as it were, silently awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life which rolls unceasingly from Europe to the American continent.” Butler added that, though the Western plains were far from the Atlantic seaboard, “still that wave of human life is destined to reach those beautiful solitudes and to convert their now useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence.” And it is historically true to say that homesteaders began to come to the great lone land with more confidence once the Mounted Police had taken control of the country in the early 70’s. The notable painting, “Any Complaints?” by Paul Wickson, is based on this idea. It represents the police patrol riding up to the homesteader at his plough and asking if he has been troubled by horse thieves, or cattle stealers or lawless Indians. It was because the homesteader could pursue his way in peace that a railway to carry what he imported and exported, had a future. And not only from possible human enemies, but from the terrific danger of prairie fires and such like, did the rider of the plains stand on guard. When one, for instance, sees Constable Conradi, despite warnings that he was attempting the impossible, spurring his horse through rolling clouds of smoke and saving a family from death at the risk of his own life, one realizes how these knights of the saddle gave people a sense of security. Or when one sees thirty of these gallant riders sweeping the plain till they found a lost child and restored her to her mother’s arms, he understands how the presence of these men robbed the life on the prairies of the sense of insecurity. The element of security drew settlers to the plains and thus encouraged railway building.

Coming to railway construction time we have the cases in which the contractors and engineers were terrorized by the Indians in the early stages of their work. One chief, Pie-a-Pot, who had always been a source of trouble on account of his ugly disposition and his evident determination not to acquiesce in the incoming of civilized life, took it into his head one day to camp on the railroad right-of-way on the prairie. The surveyors and engineers worked up to that point and found Pie-a-Pot’s tent squarely in the way. Around him were many other tents and all supported by a big band of braves who, mounted on their ponies, circled around, discharging fire-arms into the air and indulging in war-whoops and other hostile demonstrations. The surveyors and engineers asked the hostile chief to move, but he only laughed at them and urged his braves to more violent exhibitions of their prowess. The men of peaceful occupations discreetly withdrew to a safe distance and halted their work, but at the same time managed to send back word to the Mounted Police headquarters as to the situation. Headquarters sent a message to the detachment of police nearest the scene of disturbance, though it was many miles away. That detachment of police consisted of only two men, a sergeant and a constable. Numbers have never counted either way with the Mounted Police, and so these two in the scarlet and gold uniform rode miles to Pie-a-pot’s camp on the railroad right-of-way. They told Pie-a-Pot that they were instructed to ask him to move out of the way, but the defiant chief sat in front of his tent and encouraged his braves to rush the two police horses with their ponies. The sergeant and constable, however, sat their horses unmoved and again warned the chief, who laughed in their faces. Then the sergeant, pulling out his watch, indicated the minute hand and gave the chief ten minutes to move. The Indians became more violent, but the police sat tight and at the end of the ten minutes the sergeant, throwing his reins to the constable so that the horses would not be stampeded, leaped over Pie-a-Pot’s head and, entering the chief’s tent, kicked out the centre pole and brought it down in a hurry. He did the same with the four tents of the chief’s head-men and then told them to get out at once. The Indians saw the kind of men they had to deal with and so they moved swiftly, and the Canadian Pacific surveyors and engineers went on with their work.

Not long afterwards there was a similar case, though it did not go so far. Eastern contractors and workmen, who had not been used to seeing war-paint, were naturally somewhat alarmed one day when a band of Indians rushed at them with the air of people who owned the earth and wished to hold it for themselves. Superintendent Shurtcliffe of the Mounted Police received an S. O. S. call on that particular occasion from a contractor who was getting out ties from a bush, and had been forced to leave “on the double quick” when a chief with the portentous name of “Front Man” swooped down on his tie gang with a band of yelling Indians. Shurtcliffe summoned “Front Man” and told him how dangerous a thing it was to interfere with the progress of work authorized by the Canadian Government. When Mr. “Front Man” heard that it was practically the Government he had been chasing, he was very penitent and promised the Mounted Police officer that he would behave himself in the future. Whereupon the contractor and his men, with a new appreciation of the men in scarlet and gold, went back to prosecute, unmolested, their peaceful and highly necessary tie business.

There was a famous riot case at the Beaver River in the mountains, early in 1885, where several hundreds of rough men, many of them reckless aliens, went on strike during construction, and were backed by lawless camp-followers at that temporary terminus. There were only some eight Mounted Police to keep order, although many of the navvies and the disorderly characters in the place were heavily armed. The police detachment, however, was commanded by that redoubtable officer, Superintendent Samuel B. Steele (later Major-General Sir S. B. Steele), with his second in command, Sergeant Fury, a short, heavy-set, quiet man who could be all that his name suggested if occasion required. When the strike was pending Steele told the strikers that he would not interfere in the question itself as the police never took sides, but he warned them that they must keep the peace and not commit any acts of violence or he would punish them to the full extent of the law.

A few days later Steele was down in bed with mountain fever, and one of his men, Constable Kerr, had gone to the town to get him some medicine.

When Kerr was coming back he saw a mob being incited by a well-known desperate character to make an attack on the barracks and to destroy the railway property. Kerr, though alone, promptly arrested the man, but he was overpowered by the mob and the prisoner rescued. Kerr reported to Fury, who in turn reported to Steele, who was in bed, as the strikers knew. Steele said, “It will never do to let the gang think they can play with us,” and sent Fury with one of the constables with orders to arrest the man. The arrest was made, but the two policemen were again overpowered and came back to report with their uniforms torn by the mob. The police were not “gunmen” and never used weapons unless as a last resort. The limit had been reached in this case, and Steele said to Fury, “Take three men and go back and shoot any one who interferes to prevent you making the arrest.” Fury went back with Constables Fane, Craig and Walters, while the other four constables guarded the barracks which were slated for attack. Johnston, a magistrate, was there to read the Riot Act, if necessary. In a few minutes there was a shot, and Johnston said “Some one in that gang has gone to kingdom come.” Steele leaped out of bed and went to the window. Craig and Walters were dragging the prisoner across the bridge over the Beaver, the desperado fighting like a demon and a scarlet woman following them with oaths and curses. Fury and Fane were in the rear, trying to hold back a mob of some three hundred men. Steele called on Johnston to come and read the Riot Act, and ignoring his own fevered condition, he grabbed a rifle and started running across the bridge calling the other men to follow. The mob could hardly believe their eyes when they saw Steele and shouted with oaths, “Even his deathbed does not scare him.” In the meantime the desperate prisoner was struggling fiercely with his captors, biting, kicking and shouting till they were on the bridge, when Walters lifted his powerful fist and struck him on the head, and, with Craig, dragged him like a rag into the barracks, where they left him and rushed back to help their comrades. Johnston read the Riot Act and Steele, rifle in hand, told the rioters that if he saw any man of them trying to reach for his gun he would shoot him. He told them to disperse and that if he saw more than ten of them together he would order his men to mow them down. And the little detachment of eight policemen stood there with magazines charged ready to carry out orders. The riot collapsed in five minutes, and the leaders of it were sentenced next day. The trouble never cropped up again. The roughs at the Beaver had tried the game of rioting with the wrong men. And cool, daring men like these were all along the line to keep the lawless in mind of the fact that lawlessness would not be tolerated for a moment in the Mounted Police country.

It is not unexpectedly, then, that we come across two special letters from builders of the great railway, expressing their thanks to the Mounted Police. The first is from Mr. (later Sir) William C. Van Horne, who was not given to saying gushing things. Here it is,

And at the close of the next year we find the following from another very practical man, John M. Egan, General Superintendent of the Western Line, who did not make incursions into the realm of the sentimental. The letter runs as follows:

Taken together these letters, written by matter-of-fact men, are great tributes paid to the men of the Mounted Police for the part they played in those critical periods of the history of the pioneer railway. In such masses of railway men of all kinds and nationalities thrown together in construction times, there was constant danger of disorder under certain conditions. There were amongst these men, many adventurous agitators who cared nothing for the ultimate success of the railway. Had the whiskey-peddlers who always hover around such camps been allowed to ply their nefarious trade, there would have been constant danger to the men themselves from high explosives carelessly handled. And there would have been the ever-present menace of unreasonable outbreaks causing delay and damage to a great and necessary undertaking. No wonder that such highly practical and observant men as Van Horne and Egan understood and gladly acknowledged the co-operation of the Mounted Police in a vast national enterprise.

People have often wondered how this road, traversing some three thousand miles across lonely prairie and lonelier mountains, escaped having its trains held up by robbers, as was common in some other similarly situated countries. In an official report some years after the road opened Superintendent Deane of the Mounted Police at Calgary refers to an effort at train-robbing that year and starts out with the following revealing statement: “It has for years been an open secret that the train-robbing fraternity in the United States had seriously considered the propriety of trying conclusions with the Mounted Police, but had decided that the risks were too great and the game not worth the candle. After the object lesson they received last May, it may be reasonably supposed that railway passengers will be spared further anxiety during the life of the present generation at least.”

The special event to which Deane refers was a train hold-up at Kamloops in British Columbia by a notorious train-robbing expert, Bill Miner, alias Edwards, etc., assisted by two other gunmen, William Dunn and “Shorty” Colquhoun. A train robbery had been committed by the same gang some months before, but local authorities could not trace the robbers. When the second robbery took place at Kamloops, the railway heads thought they could not afford to take more chances, although Provincial Police, especially Fernie, of Kamloops, were doing good trailing work. Mr. Richard Marpole, then Superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway at the Coast, who was always devoted to the interests of the road, wired to General Manager (later Sir) William Whyte to secure the help of the Mounted Police, who were not then on duty in British Columbia. Mr. Whyte telegraphed to Regina to Commissioner A. B. Perry, head of the Mounted Police, who, wiring Calgary to have two detachments ready, left for that point to take charge of the case. From Calgary, Perry (now Major-General and C.M.G., retired after years of distinguished service) sent Inspector Church, an excellent officer, with a detachment, to Penticton to cut off the escape of the robbers over the boundary-line. Perry left for Kamloops with a detachment under charge of Staff-Sergeant J. J. Wilson, with Thomas, Shoebotham, Peters, Stewart, Browning and Tabateau. The weather was bad and the horses secured at Kamloops were poor, but, despite these handicaps, this posse trailed and captured the robbers, after a sharp fight, within forty-eight hours. The effect of that lesson is still apparent, as Deane prophesied.

When the last spike had been driven on the Canadian Pacific Railway at Craigellachie, and there was a through train to the Coast, Steele, above-mentioned, who was back again on Mounted Police work in the mountains, was given a trip to the Pacific out of compliment to himself and the force generally. It was a time when the railway men were trying out the road which they knew had been well constructed. Steele describes his trip in a semi-humorous way, and speaks of the train going at fifty-seven miles an hour, roaring in and out of the tunnels and whirling around the curves. He says it was a wild ride, but adds these fine words, “Many years have passed since that memorable ride, and to-day one goes through the mountains in the most modern and palatial observation cars, but the recollection of that journey to the Coast on the first train through, is far sweeter to me than any trips taken since. It was the exultant moment of pioneer work and we were all pioneers on that excursion.” And we add again, all due honour to the law-and-order men in scarlet and gold who had watched over the construction of the long steel trail.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, after terrific fighting against heavy odds, had reached its objective in the completion of the main line from sea to sea. It was a thin steel line reaching across the continent. But the driving of the last spike at Craigellachie simply gave the Company a base of operation from which to reach out for other conquests, in order that the work already done might prove productive of the best results. Mr. Van Horne, who had a perfect passion for doing new things and for bringing unknown places into the limelight, saw tremendous opportunities looming up for the full play of his abilities in that regard.

It was well for the road and for Canada that he saw the vista thus opening up ahead with the lure of great prospects for the exercise of his powers. Because otherwise he might have taken up work elsewhere. It is well known that more than one board in the States was ready to throw its presidency at the head and the feet of the man whose astonishing record on the Canadian Pacific had attracted the attention of the railway world. In fact Van Horne, on reaching Montreal after returning from Craigellachie, found a letter (and others followed from several directions) from Mr. Jason C. Easton, a great banker and railway man in Wisconsin. The letter expressed the hope that as Van Horne had only agreed to stay with the Canadian Pacific for five years, he would soon go back to the States and take a railway presidency there.

But besides the fact that the bigness of the task still to be undertaken in Canada held him to this country, the truth is that he had become personally attached to President George Stephen and his Scottish-Canadian associates. A little sidelight is thrown upon this phase of the matter by the incident connected with the driving of the last spike by Mr. Donald A. Smith (Strathcona). Mr. Smith owned a country home near Winnipeg, called Silver Heights, once the property of the Hon. James McKay, the handsome and famous frontiersman and interpreter who had such a large share in the making of the successful Indian treaties on the plains. After his removal to Montreal Mr. Smith allowed the house to remain closed except for the caretaker and those who looked after the farm stock and such like. On the way west by special train to Craigellachie, Mr. Van Horne thought it would be a good idea to have the house at Silver Heights opened up and have a spur-track laid to it from Winnipeg, as a surprise to the veteran who was to drive the last spike. When the train returned to Winnipeg the engine was reversed and the special began backing out of the station. Mr. Smith after a while noticed it, and then began to look out of the window. In a little while he said: “Why, gentlemen, if I can believe my eyes this ground looks familiar and there are Aberdeen cattle just like mine and that place looks like my house.” The train stopped and the conductor shouted “Silver Heights.” Mr. Smith was delighted beyond measure and again and again expressed his appreciation of the courtesy and thoughtfulness that had planned the surprise. It was just one of the ways by which the apparently unemotional Van Horne paid chivalrous personal compliment to the men whose character and courage he had learned to respect as they stood by him to their last dollar in the great task to which he had given himself so determinedly for four laborious years.

When Mr. Van Horne reached Montreal, after the opening of the main line, he began to speed up the plans he had been putting already in operation for the perfecting of the road and the increase of traffic in all directions. The quality of the road-bed was of even higher standard than the Government contract required. It will be remembered that once, when the road-bed was still new, Van Horne had aboard his train a number of Eastern men who were going out West in regard to the valuation of the Government section of the road constructed by Onderdonk. While still on the Canadian Pacific section in the mountains, Van Horne walked up the platform at Field and said to the engineer, Charley Carey, a fearless, skilful driver, “Let her out a bit, Charlie, we will show these fellows that they are on a railroad fit to run on, though the Government section is not.” Charlie “let her out” and made a fifty-one-mile run in an hour and wound up by doing the seventeen miles from Golden to Donald in fifteen minutes, and all safe. When they pulled up there, with a flourish and flashing fire on the rails as the brakes were put down hard to prevent running by the platform, the gentlemen from the East needed no further demonstration. The Canadian Pacific road-bed was all right even in those early days.

But Van Horne knew that much had still to be done. Construction had been careful, but rapid, and steel and stone and cement would have to replace many wooden culverts and bridges. Trestles had to be filled in or replaced by stone or steel. Rolling stock, shops, roundhouses, yards, stations, wharves and all manner of similar things had to be provided. Branch lines to feed the main line would have to gridiron the country, and connections would have to be made with the big systems south of the line.

Incidentally, it was as a result of his observation before he came to Canada at all, that he insisted on the Canadian Pacific keeping such auxiliary utilities as the telegraph, express and sleeping car departments. These also in their several ways would be feeders to the main treasury account. They were not the big tent, as Van Horne said, using a circus illustration; but the side-shows, as he called them, went a long way to increase the receipts. It had been the custom in other places to let other organizations have these franchises, but Van Horne said they took the cream of several kinds of business and “left the skim milk to the railway.” Van Horne wanted the cream, as the road would need the money; and so the Dominion Express and the Canadian Pacific Telegraphs and the Railway’s own sleeping cars, got into business for the big Company from the start. And these, like the dining car department and others of the same type, are marvels of service and efficiency, as every one now knows.

To speak about the creation of traffic is to use a somewhat peculiar, but well-founded, expression, because, in this case, it applies to traffic which had practically no existence before. Nothing escaped Van Horne’s notice. In the evening hours when he would be in camp on the prairie during construction time, he took delight in planning sports of various kinds for the men. “A change is as good as a rest,” is an old saying with a lot of truth in it. I have seen men apparently fagged out with a day’s march become lithesome as kittens over a game of baseball in the evening on the plain. Mr. Van Horne, who was a true artist, became interested in the bleached bones of buffaloes amongst the construction tents. And many a great buffalo head with its wide white frontal bone did the big railroader adorn with sketches made in coal or pencil, to the delight of the onlookers. And at the same time he was thinking of traffic in these buffalo bones. In my boyhood I have ridden through acres and miles of prairie where the white bones of the buffalo “lay thick as the autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa.” These acres of skeletons were an indictment against the selfish and greedy buffalo-hunting sporting men who had rounded up the herds, killed them by thousands, and took nothing but the tongue and the hide. Van Horne saw in these vast surface cemeteries how the slaughtered buffalo could still be of value. And so he had men gather up the bones and pile them in great heaps along stations and sidings, to be shipped by trainloads to Eastern factories that were glad to get them. Thus the railroader, who got the material for the cost of gathering, made good profits for the Railway, and at the same time cleared the land of an encumbrance. The man who could think of such things was not likely to fail in creating traffic.

Van Horne was anxious to get the country settled up along the great spaces in the Middle West. So he lured many cattle-men across the line by the advertising he did for the rich grazing lands in the southern portion of the North-West Territories, as the prairie country was then described. He drafted some striking and rather freakish advertisements for billboards in Eastern Canada, thus “capitalizing the scenery” of the Great Lakes and the mountains and making a special bid for tourist traffic. Some of these posters, such as “Parisian Politeness on the C. P. R.” and “ ‘How High We Live,’ said the Duke to the Prince,” are somewhat belittled by smart modern advertisers; but somehow they stuck in the memory of those who saw them, and that is the acid test of all advertising. The stream of tourists or other travellers on the main line was a very small rivulet in those early days, and there are records of cars with one or two passengers. But all passengers became enthusiasts over the comfort and courtesy of the road, so that the movement of travellers is now a steady-flowing river of humanity which, in certain seasons, almost overflows in a great tide of sightseers and business people.

It is interesting to recall in connection with Mr. Van Horne’s endeavours to secure settlers by various immigration plans, that he studied social conditions amongst the incoming settlers. That was before the day of rural telephones and motor cars, and he discovered without much difficulty that one of the obstacles to settlement of the prairies at that period was the dread of loneliness and isolation. And the keen-minded railroader formulated a plan to offset that dread in the minds of possible newcomers. He thought that tracts of land should be surveyed so as to permit settlers to live in communities at the apex of a triangle. In order that they might enjoy the social amenities and advantages of community life while their farms spread out from that place of common residence to the farther extremity of the land they held. It is of additional interest to recall that the introduction of the rectangular system of land survey from the United States led to considerable unrest in the Canadian West. It gave Louis Riel a chance to play on the emotions of the half-breed settlers on the South Saskatchewan River, where these settlers desired to hold their land as the early settlers did on the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, their homes near together on the river bank and the farms running back some distance on the plain. And Riel told the half-breeds that the Government wanted to break up their social life and make it difficult for them to have schools and churches and business places near at hand. In fact, the introduction of the rectangular survey, with its comparative isolation, was one of the prime reasons at the base of the Riel Rebellion. So that Mr. Van Horne had a good idea in operation when he advocated the settlement of newcomers close together. The Government, however, did not adopt the scheme. Some settlers, like the Mennonites, followed the plan of community settlement, even though the square farms made them lose time in going backwards and forwards to their work.

Mr. Van Horne’s efforts for the settlement of the country led also to his company building immense elevator accommodation at the Great Lakes and providing facilities for transport thereto.

There were flashes of humour in this grim fight for the settler. Mr. Van Horne was restively asserting one hard year that the grain-buyers who were paying only thirty-five cents a bushel for wheat were practising highway robbery on the farmer. Mr. L. A. Hamilton, the Company’s land commissioner, said to him, “Why not go in and outbid the grain-buyers.” The idea appealed mightily to Van Horne and he sent Alex Mitchell, a grain man from Montreal, to the West to organize some agency and offer fifty cents a bushel. No one knew that Mitchell was acting for the Canadian Pacific, but when he offered fifty cents a bushel, grain poured in on him till all the cars were full and bags of wheat were piled up along station platforms on account of the car shortage. Then the enemies of the Railway who were on the lookout for chances to find fault with the Railway and who, of course, had no idea that the Railway owned the wheat, attacked the Company because it could not take care of the crop and ship it out of the country. These active enemies got photographs taken to show the congestion of the grain at stations and on platforms along the line. Van Horne said nothing, but had these photographs bought up by scores and sent abroad to show that the prairies were so productive that the railway was caught unprepared to handle the enormous crops. All this was great immigration material, and a boomerang for the men who had gone to the expense of getting the photographs.

These things indicate how eagerly Mr. Van Horne was trying to get the country settled, and generally to build up within its borders, prosperous and successful communities. There is a theory in the minds of some kinds of people that a railway like this has been always bleeding the country to death. Hardly any theory could be more assinine and ridiculous. It could only spring from the alleged brains of the unthinking, even though it passes muster as a piece of stump or soap-box oratory. It may sound well as a vote-catcher, but thinking people will not be deceived by such a manifest contradiction in terms. The country and the railway, in such a case as this, must stand or fall together. Each is necessary to the prosperity of the other. Hence for one to attempt the destruction of the other is practically a round-about, but effective, way for that one to commit suicide. And a business concern has sense enough not to commit suicide. In this connection there is a fine paragraph in a sort of valedictory review of the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, given in 1918 by Lord Shaughnessy, then President of the Company and Chairman of the Board. It is quoted here in advance of the chronological order of our story, because it is specially applicable to the point we are discussing, namely, the interdependence of the country, and the road. The paragraph is as follows: “The shareholders and Directors of the Company have always been impressed with the idea that the interests of the Company are intimately connected with those of the Dominion, and no effort or expense has been spared to help in promoting the development of the whole country.” This statement was intended to cover the whole record of the railway, and Lord Shaughnessy had such an outstanding reputation for stern rectitude and straight-flung veracity that we are fully warranted in taking it at its face value. Hence when we recorded above the efforts of Mr. Van Horne to extend and create the business of the road in the years immediately succeeding the completion of the main line, we were justified in saying that Mr. Van Horne’s endeavours in that regard were in the interests of both the railway and the country. The Canadian Pacific was from its inception an integral factor in creating and extending the social and productive activities of Western civilization.

Mr. George Stephen (first knighted and then raised to the peerage as Lord Mount Stephen, in recognition of his great services to the empire as a railway builder) held the Presidency of the Canadian Pacific from the beginning in 1880 till 1888, when Mr. Van Horne succeeded him. There was something very fine in the deep personal friendship that existed between these two men. And there is something almost pathetic in the correspondence carried on between them over Mr. Stephen’s desire to retire from the Presidency, and later on, when his health and age demanded rest, from the directorate of the road. The President and Mr. Van Horne had been specially close personal friends from the beginning, and their intense struggle to build the railway had cemented their friendship into a type of affection that was unmistakable, even though these two strong men were not of the kind to be demonstrative before the curious onlookers by the wayside of life. Stephen, on undertaking the Presidency in 1881, had indicated even then his purpose to retire when the task of building the road across the continent was completed. The greatness of this task was even then foreseen, although the enormous difficulties that developed, as we have noted in previous chapters, could not have been anticipated by finite vision. The burden of responsibility carried by the President was well-nigh crushing. And there is no doubt that Stephen, at times, felt keenly the fact that not only did some public men in Canada actually oppose what he was trying to do for the country, but that even some of those who had stood as sponsors for the railway undertaking were so slow to appreciate the terrific strain upon Stephen and his colleagues that they only came to their assistance after they were humbly besought for aid. Stephen’s nature was sensitive under these discouragements, but he kept his word and stayed till the main line was built. It was largely at Van Horne’s request that Stephen kept on for two years more and thus gave the General Manager a chance to consolidate and conserve what had been accomplished as well as proceed with extensions and branches. But in 1888 Stephen retired from the Presidency, and Mr. Van Horne was the logical choice to be his successor. In a fine letter which has vivid historical interest to all who know something of the stress and strain of his term of office, Sir George Stephen, under date of August 7th, 1888, wrote to the shareholders of the Company, his resignation. After referring to his determination, at the outset, to remain in office till the completion of the main line, Sir George relates how he remained two years more at the request of his colleagues. Then he goes on to say, “warned now by the state of my health, finding that the severe and constant strain which I have had to bear for the last eight years has unfitted me for the continuous and arduous work of an office in which vigour and activity are essential; feeling the increasing necessity for practical railway experience; and believing that the present satisfactory and assured position of the Company offers a favourable opportunity for taking the step I have so long had in contemplation, I have this day resigned the Presidency of the Company which I have had the honour to hold since its organization.” After referring to the fact that he would continue to have an abiding interest in the Company and remain meanwhile on the Board of Directors, Sir George, reticent and undemonstrative Scot though he was, goes on to say an evidently heartfelt word for the incoming President, as follows: “It is to me a matter of the greatest possible satisfaction to be able to say that in my successor, Mr. Van Horne, the Company has a man of proved fitness for the office; in the prime of life, possessed with great energy and rare ability, having a long and thoroughly practical railway experience and above all an entire devotion to the interest of the Company.” And so Mr. Van Horne succeeded in the Canadian Pacific Presidency, his friend, who was raised to the peerage, choosing the title from one of the lofty peaks in the Rockies. Thus did George Stephen, erstwhile “herd laddie” from the North of Scotland and draper’s apprentice from Aberdeen, become Lord Mount Stephen, and retire to spend his closing years at a beautiful country seat in the Old Country, where he had some rest from the heavy burden of responsibility.

But Mount Stephen still remained on the Directorate of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and many questions were still referred to him and many communications by letter and cable passed between him and Mr. Van Horne. There was some serious effort on the part of Grand Trunk men in London to bring about a unification of the two railways to be operated under the capable direction of Mr. Van Horne and his colleagues. But some indiscreet action on the part of Grand Trunk Directors in regard to advancing rates in order “to get all they could out of the people of Canada,” caused Van Horne to call negotiations off and say he would have no more discussions with men at long range. He had no great love for men who had tried to block the Canadian Pacific in the money markets of London, and he had no faith in the idea that a railway in Canada could be run satisfactorily if men in London were interfering. So the negotiations were ended and the Grand Trunk went on its extraordinary way. But that way is not part of our story.

As we have been discussing the intimate relationship between Mount Stephen and Van Horne, it is interesting to note that, much to the latter’s regret, the former President of the road, on account of his health condition demanding release from business, began to express again his desire to resign from the Board of Directors. He had remained on the Directorate and had been actively interested, as we have seen. But now he must have complete rest from responsibility. He was pressed to stay on the Board with less active participation, but he declared that “he could not be a figurehead and give himself no concern,” a statement which all directors of all companies should take to heart these days. And there is something touching in the fact that Mount Stephen, himself feeling the results of the heavy strain, began to warn Van Horne to be careful of his health and to throw more responsibility on others. As a matter of fact Van Horne was doing this within a short time after he became President. For Shaughnessy was moved up to be a Director and Vice-President and was making his brilliant business qualities felt in the management of the great enterprise he had seen grow from a small beginning.

But Van Horne consented with great reluctance to Mount Stephen’s retirement. The caution of the quiet Scot had been a fine counterpart to the intense and almost headlong impetuosity of the practical railway builder, and a great friendship had grown through the years. So that we are not surprised when we find that Van Horne had written Mount Stephen saying, “Your withdrawal would not be the withdrawal of a Director, but of the soul of the enterprise.” The business world is sometimes as drab and dead and unemotional as a sand waste, but it has its oasis spots, and words like those just quoted mark one of them. During those years, however, it is a notable thing, that whenever a proposal was made even by Mount Stephen to Van Horne, that the business administration of the Canadian Pacific Railway should be conformed to English methods, the bluff railroader refused point-blank. He said that “the English methods work in England, but they will not do here.” He allowed that the English system of stabilizing the financial conditions of a railway was the best, but when it came to operating the road the extent and character of Canada made English methods wholly inapplicable. Mount Stephen knew that Van Horne was a past master at administrative operation, and wisely counselled English capitalists to trust in Van Horne and his Canadian associates to run the road. When I say “Canadian associates” the expression must be understood as meaning that men resident in Canada were to administer and operate the Canadian Pacific Railway. Many of these men were Canadian born; others in the early days were from outside; but throughout the years they have constituted a wonderfully able and efficient and splendidly loyal staff. We have gone forward of events somewhat, owing to our discussing Lord Mount Stephen’s retirement and the relationship subsisting between him and the new President. We may go back a little and see the work of the railway under Mr. Van Horne in that high office. No other name could have been suggested to succeed Mount Stephen, but there is something exhilarating and encouraging to all young men on this continent in contemplating the career of Mr. Van Horne, who though born in another country and of alien parentage, came into the British Dominion of Canada and not only overcame any resentment against his intrusion, but who “made by force his merits known,” till he came to be acknowledged as one of the foremost citizens of Canada.

Mr. Van Horne, both before and after he became President of the Canadian Pacific, set himself not only to create local traffic, travel and immigration as already recorded, but he also very particularly began to secure branch lines and connections as feeders to the long main line from ocean to ocean. In this sort of work he was in his element, planning new lines and building them, buying out old roads and putting new life into them, getting access to the big centres of the East and linking up with the railway systems south of the line. This immense task of opening new lines and establishing new industries has been continued by all Van Horne’s successors till the Dominion and a good deal of the States knows the Canadian Pacific as it knows its city streets and country roads. In fact the Canadian Pacific is so ubiquitous that men take with the utmost gravity the old joke that the clocks of the country are set to the railway time as if the road was in control of the calendar. All these sayings, grave and gay, indicate such a widening of the sphere of this road since the last spike was driven that the mystic monogram “C. P. R.” is understood by every passer-by and the house-flag of the Company’s fleet is known upon the seven seas of the world. About this tremendous expansion and a few of the men back of it we may study more in the next chapter.

Nothing runs itself unless it is running down hill. This saying may be contradicted by advocates of “blind chance” theories, but, generally speaking, it will be accepted as a practically accurate statement of all movements. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company has never allowed things to run themselves. Strong minds and resolute hands were always at work, and nothing was permitted to run unguided and uncontrolled. If this vast transportation system has become one of the wonders of the modern world, it has not just happened, but it is the result of a deliberate and a well-ordered plan in which an intelligent sense of personal responsibility for one’s own share of work is recognized as imperative in order that the whole system may be a success. A human being is not, as is sometimes said, a cog in the wheel, but a living link in the chain of business causation. Every one’s work in every occupation is monotonous in one sense, and in many cases it seems to the worker that his or her task is of very little importance. But one can never estimate the value of work by superficial standards, for the man or woman who gives a telephone number or raps out a message on the key may be the means of transmitting messages that will change the face of the world.

The Canadian Pacific has endeavoured, with a large measure of success, to magnify the significance of every worker’s task and create a feeling of esprit de corps in its great army of over one hundred thousand workers. Hence, for instance, I was not surprised to hear that in a certain city when a merchant had made a foul public attack on the Company, a host of the Company’s employees stayed away from that merchant’s store. They were of the company that had been unfairly attacked, and they were not going to stand for it. It was in that spirit, I suppose, that Mr. Van Horne’s faithful porter, already mentioned, used to put himself along with his “boss,” and speak of both in the expression “we railway men.” All this means that, from the beginning, the Company knew that it would owe its success not to any one man, however great, but to the many who, though guided generally by one dominating force, would be in particular directed by the heads of the various departments.

In the world’s oldest Book, advice of a sage character was given to Moses, the greatest human leader our world has known, by Jethro, his father-in-law. The wise old chief saw that Moses was going to break down because he was trying to do everything himself. And he told Moses that, in order that he might have time and strength for the heavy task of leadership, he (Moses) should share the responsibility with others by “choosing out of all the people able men, and by making them captains over hundreds and fifties and tens.” The Book which contained that wise advice was a text-book in the schools of Scotland when George Stephen, the first President of the Canadian Pacific, was brought up, and one does not need much imagination to see that such a maxim of wisdom became almost unconsciously part of his being. In any case, when he came to be burdened with the Presidency of the great railway, he practised the advice and passed it on also to others. Hence it was that he brought Mr. Van Horne to take over part of the burden. Stephen knew his own limitations. He could raise money, but he could not build railways. Hence also we find this same Stephen, as we have seen, advising Van Horne to put some of his load on others; and so Shaughnessy, the General Purchasing Agent, moved up to be Mr. Van Horne’s first great assistant and understudy, in line to be “the King of Railway Presidents” in his time.

The Canadian Pacific Railway system has now over one hundred thousand people on its payroll, and their remuneration means a monthly expenditure by the Company of nearly eight millions of dollars—an almost incredible sum—for salaries and wages of employees every thirty days. It would be manifestly impossible to give any more than a few outstanding names from this formidable host, and even they would be given with the feeling that they were only representatives of the host of men and women who in all departments have been, for these four decades, carrying on their work in a splendid way.

Titles are now under the ban in Canada, but before that era of extreme democracy arrived, the Crown had recognized the Imperial services of the following men associated with the Company: Lords Mount Stephen, Strathcona and Shaughnessy, Sir William Van Horne, Sir Thomas Tait, Sir George Bury, Sir George McLaren Brown, Sir Arthur Harris, Sir William Whyte, Sir Augustus Nanton, Sir James Aitkens, Sir E. B. Osler, Sir John Eaton, Sir Vincent Meredith and Sir Herbert Holt. Mr. W. R. Baker, who excelled in social qualities during royal visits, was given a decoration by our present King.

But following out our theory as to the importance of every place in service, my recollections swing from the contemplation of the work done by men of such remarkable ability and initiative as those above named, without whom the road could not have succeeded, and I recall more men than I could possibly mention in many volumes who out in the humbler places did their enormously important work. Many an hour, for instance, did I spend on the back platforms of the last coach on the old Southern Manitoba trains with Charlie Panser, than whom no better or more reliable roadmaster ever watched the ties and spikes and fish plates and switches anywhere. Nothing escaped his attention, and his little notebook recorded his observations in his own way. And I think in that connection of all the maintenance-of-way or section men, whose faithful labours through summer heat and winter cold keep the road-bed in amazingly perfect order. I have seen them fighting blizzards on the prairie and watching washouts or slides in the mountains, and all with such astonishing success that there is no more safe roadway in the world than the Canadian Pacific. I look back in another direction and see old Gideon Swain, a big, powerful man, who, despite his “rheumatics,” was general custodian and guard at the old Winnipeg station. He looked after everybody. He was as gentle as a woman in looking after children and their travel-weary parents, but woe betide the tough or loafer who tried to impose on the kindly old gentleman in whose big-hearted organism there slumbered a volcanic energy against wrong. Once I was there when the old board platform was cracking in a forty-below-zero morning. Swain was assisting some ladies and children on a train when two “smart” men came into the circle and began to swear about something. Turning round the old station-guard, who looked like a mountain in his coonskin coat, raised the big stick he always carried and told them in a thunderous voice to “shut up with talk like that before children.” The men tried to explain, but Swain would have none of it, and they simply had to subside and move away with the best grace possible, to escape the wrath of the guardian of the children. Possibly, like old Constable Richards of the Windsor Street Station in Montreal, of whom George Ham writes so fondly, he too has found congenial work beyond the Great Divide where they have both gone. Incidentally, that is a fine human story of old Constable Richards telling Lord Shaughnessy at the station gate in Montreal, when the President was returning from a trip, that he, the old keeper, had been overlooked when others had got an increase of pay, which apparently under regulations could not go to Richards, who was being kept on over the age-limit. The President, keeping some big people waiting, listened to the old gate-keeper’s story attentively. The next day Richards was delighted to get an envelope with notice of increase, and the back pay, but he never knew that Lord Shaughnessy was paying it out of his own pocket.

I have singled out these few men from the rank and file, but they are representative of the loyalty and devotion of thousands in the various departments.

Like them also in this do we find the locomotive engineers and trainmen—steady, careful, cool-nerved men, who know their duty and do it. Gentlemanly conductors are there, also porters, waiters and the rest, who all take pride in the road over which they have their runs. And back of it all are the men in the great workshops, like the “Angus,” in Montreal, and “Ogden,” in Calgary, and others all across the continent, the roundhouses, divisional quarters and similar establishments, where engines and cars are builded and repairs of all kinds made. Then we have the “live-wire” people in the telegraph department, and so on through all the ramifications of a vast organization; but all enter into the life of the system and make it a marvel of co-operative efficiency. Doubtless there are many here and there amongst these employees who growl in regard to some of the conditions of their employment. So have we found men in a military regiment here and there who exercised their privilege of complaining against the conditions of their service. But in both cases let an outsider attack their organization and the esprit de corps and regimental pride will assert itself so that the man who ventures on criticism does well if he escapes without some injury.

We have thus taken a hurried survey of this great host of people in the employ of the Canadian Pacific. But we must not forget that they have been, through these years, marshalled and led by remarkable men all over the system. It is a well-organized army with its parts all closely linked up and related, so that there is a place for every one and every one has to fill that place according to the measure of his ability.

We have written in some fullness already about Sir William Van Horne, because as General Manager he was the guiding hand in the great days when the construction of the main line was carried to completion, and because, both as Manager and President, he began the big task of creating conditions for the support and extension of the road. Branch line feeders in the West, and Eastern Canadian, as well as American, connections, were established and the Pacific shipping service well inaugurated in his day. Notable lines, such as the Crow’s Nest through the Kootenay Valley, and the “Soo” Line, from near Moose Jaw on the prairies to the United States, had been established. Van Horne had said that he would never leave the Canadian Pacific until “it was out of the woods.” By 1897 or so things were looking well for the Road. Stock had run up to par and the land sales for the first time had begun to be worth while as a source of revenue for the Company.

It was evident that Van Horne was beginning about that time to consider modifying his relation to the Railway, and that was so for two or three apparent reasons. The first was that the Company was never the same to him after Mount Stephen had withdrawn from the Directorate. Van Horne missed him terribly on personal grounds. The second was that Van Horne’s powers were more creative than administrative and he knew it. He delighted in making a new thing go, but once it was going well he had a sort of distaste for the detail of keeping it going. He was more interested in putting a road across the country than in running it. He loved the Canadian Pacific and knew quite well that his lieutenant, Shaughnessy, could do the intensive development work and the detailed administration work better than he himself could. Shaughnessy was ten years younger and much more active. In fact Van Horne wished, for the good of the Company, to hand the leadership of it to Mr. Shaughnessy as early as 1895, but Shaughnessy persuaded him to stay on till the Company was more firmly established. And besides, Mr. Van Horne, who said he had wealth enough, wished not only to devote more time to the fine art of painting and other artistic tastes, but to follow up his farm and similar hobbies. Moreover, he saw in such places as the island of Cuba and in other industries than railroading in Canada, opportunities for exercising his restless creative habit of mind.