Accordingly we find this Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, who had started in railroad work at the age of fourteen in another country, and had made such a world-record in constructive enterprises that he received the special recognition of knighthood from the British Crown, voluntarily resigning in June, 1899, from the Presidency of the vast transportation system he had done so much to create and develop. He remained as chairman of the Board and a member of the Executive, retaining his office in the Company headquarters at Montreal and saying to his friends, “I shall still hang around the old stand.” I recall reading a statement made by Edward Gibbon when, after years of work, he finished his world-famous book on the Roman Empire. He said that when he had written the last page he took a turn in his garden. His first sensation was a feeling of relief over the completion of the great task, and then a feeling of something like exultation over what he knew to be an important contribution to the historical literature of the world. And then, he says, he realized a sense of loneliness because he would no longer have his wonderfully congenial daily work, and a sense of loss because something had gone out of his life as a finished chapter in his career.

I think that Van Horne felt all that, when he gave up the Presidency of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to say so is much to his credit. He missed something out of his life. He began to plan trips to fill up the blank, but not very successfully, as we judge from the following account of a visit he paid to Monterey in his private car after having seen California. He says, “I went out on the verandah of the hotel and smoked a big cigar. Then I got up, walked about the verandah and looked at the scenery. It was very fine. Then I sat down and smoked another cigar. Then up again; another walk about the verandah, and more scenery. It was still very fine. I sat down again and smoked another cigar. Then I jumped up and telephoned for my car to be coupled to the next train; and, by George, I was never so happy in my life as when I struck the C. P. R. again.” There is humour in this, but there is pathos also. Van Horne was too keen-minded a man not to have foreseen this situation. And we repeat, as a lasting proof of his devotion to the Canadian Pacific, that when there came the hour when he felt it was in the interests of the Railway to transfer the growingly intensive and complex detail of its administration to the sinewy business hands of Shaughnessy, whose amazing powers as a financial administrator and master of detail had been amply tested through seventeen eventful years of the railway’s history, Van Horne resigned from the Presidency. And thus it was that Shaughnessy became President in June, 1899. From this date, although Van Horne remained on the Executive, he in large measure passed out of the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He retained all his financial interests in the Road, and was always ready to assist as Chairman at Board meetings by counsel; but to all intents and purposes he felt he had done his share and was now, by his own choice, handing the work over to his successor.

But to a man of Van Horne’s initiative and creative talent, idleness was unthinkable, and so, when he had unloaded the heavier burden, he took up some others less weighty, for exercise to keep himself fit. Accordingly we find him going into such concerns as the Laurentide Pulp Company and the Windsor Salt Company, and with his usual energy he made them successful. Then he went to Cuba as a free lance, and by building railways and other industries he did more for Cuba, as has been said, than Spain had done in centuries. He continued to reside in Montreal, busy with many projects, and when the end of life was at hand he said in effect what Cecil Rhodes, whom he somewhat resembled in driving power, had said: “So little done; so much to do.” What Van Horne actually did say was, “I see so much to do that I wish I could keep active for five hundred years.” But this strong scion of Netherland stock had done a great day’s work, and his high place in the temple of railway fame is secure for all time. Though of Dutch descent and American birth, he had become a British Empire builder under the Red Cross flag; but his dust reposes in the old graveyard of his people in Joliet. On the day of his funeral every wheel on the vast Canadian Pacific system came to a stop in silent tribute to the memory of a Napoleonic fighter in the fields of peaceful industry. His legal advisor and friend through many years, George Tate Blackstock, of Toronto, himself a man of most unusual ability, bore testimony to “the stupendous virility of his conceptions and exertions.” “He had his faults,” said Blackstock, and he indicates an approach to egotism in many of Van Horne’s sweeping statements, but it was not the “egotism of impotence, but of power.” And there is a place in the battle of life for self-assertion of the right kind.

We have already met in these pages his successor, Mr. Thomas G. Shaughnessy. In most ways he was unlike Van Horne. Born in Milwaukee, of Irish descent, he was tall and athletic in appearance, and altogether different in that respect from the stocky and heavily-built descendant of Holland. A newspaper friend of mine, Mr. Hope Ross, of Winnipeg, in a reminiscent article on Lord Shaughnessy, has the following interesting note on his appearance and manner, which carries out the impression made by the same Shaughnessy as a young man on Mr. E. A. James and noted in an earlier chapter. Mr. Ross says:

It was this appearance and type of the President that gave Punch the opportunity to make the famous cartoon, “The Canadian Pacific.” The cartoon was just a fine upstanding photograph of Lord Shaughnessy. He was an embodiment of the vast system of transportation, and Punch had caught the right idea, as usual.

Generally speaking, the opinion of many—perhaps of most people, about Lord Shaughnessy—was that he was a keen, swift and rather hard man. He could be all that on occasion, and he was usually dignified in his manner, as became the head of a great enterprise. But those who knew him well say he was one of the kindest of men. Temperamentally he was generous, and was always ready to give assistance to those in need, or, as George Ham put it, Shaughnessy helped many “a lame dog over the stile,” and said nothing about it. But the fact remains that the popular impression, as we have indicated, was that he was keen and rather hard and that impression was a quite wrong deduction, due to his distinguished manner and detached attitude. It is well to remember that he was head of an immense army, and that discipline requires a certain amount of dignity in the officer commanding.

To have that and also to possess the warm human heart is to have an ideal officer, like “The Beloved Captain,” as painted for us in Donald Hankey’s famous book of war experiences. Here again I quote from the article written by Mr. Ross as it illustrates well the many-sidedness of the dignified railway President. Mr. Ross says:

I can quite imagine this scene at the old station I knew well in the early days. It was not then so ornate or so much protected by fences and gates, but it afforded opportunities for deeds of the kind recorded above. It was a fine, but perfectly spontaneous act, on the part of the famous President, who saw from his private car the plight of the immigrant mother.

Mr. Ross adds another story which reveals a depth of feeling in this great President, which even the reporter who had been in touch with him for years had not discovered. Sir William Whyte, that princely man who had been such a tower of strength to the Canadian Pacific in its most difficult days, and who had not long before retired when two years over the age limit, had passed away somewhat suddenly during a visit to California. The funeral was, of course, in Winnipeg, where he had been the foremost citizen. Incidentally those of us who knew Sir William Whyte say a hearty amen to the allusion made to him by Mr. Ross in the following paragraph:

This mention of Lord Shaughnessy and Sir William Whyte leads me to recall an incident of which both these railway men were part. Both held very strongly that the use of intoxicating drink should be pared down to the minimum if it was used at all. Once I recall that certain saloons in the North End of Winnipeg were enticing the employees of the railway to their premises by putting out notices that pay cheques would be cashed after bank hours. And one bitter winter night a railway employee who had used the proceeds of his cheque too freely for liquor was found frozen to death in the back-yard of the saloon. I saw Mr. Whyte about it the next day and he was furious over the action of the saloon keepers. He said, “We will change our method of payment, if necessary, for the welfare of the men and their families, and perhaps make drinking a dismissable offence whether on or off duty. Trainmen and others off duty may be called up for duty any time and they ought to be fit in order to avoid danger to themselves and others.” One day when both Shaughnessy and Whyte were on a train which stopped at Moose Jaw, where the Company had a hotel at the station, Shaughnessy saw some trainmen entering the bar-room. He called to the General Manager of Western Lines (that was part of Mr. Whyte’s title) and said, “Whyte, close up that bar.” Whyte asked, “Now or at the closing hour of the day?” And Shaughnessy said, “Close it now, and do not allow it ever to open again.” It is quite well known that Lord Shaughnessy would not tolerate the practice of drink or any habits usually associated with it.

Lord Shaughnessy’s power as an executive officer lay partly in the characteristics indicated already, but mainly in his tremendous prestige as a man of business whose ability as such was acknowledged the world over. When he was General Purchasing Agent for the Company he introduced a system of accounting which is said to have been adopted by the Corporation of the City of New York. There was no movement in the world of finance that he did not know about, and his mastery of the complex problem of international credits, led to his being called into the councils of the Empire both in peace and war. During the nineteen years of his Presidency, the Canadian Pacific was brought into a system of operation which was the last word in efficiency, so that, as already mentioned, he was called “King of Railway Presidents” on this continent, where the biggest railway interests of the world are in operation. His services in the years of the Great War are spoken of more fully in a chapter on that special subject. Little wonder then, that this famous chief executive officer of the Canadian Pacific was honoured by the King, first by knighthood and later by a peerage under the title Baron Shaughnessy, K.C.V.O., of Montreal, Canada, and of Ashford, County Limerick, Ireland.

When the Great War, which left him with a proud, but wounded, heart because of the death of his gallant son, Fred, at the Front was well over and things became more normal, Lord Shaughnessy felt that he should relinquish the Presidency. His age and strength admonished him that he should take things easier and call a younger man to the office to deal with the tremendous problems of the reconstruction period. So, after forty-one years of service with the road, he retired in 1918 from the Presidency, which he had occupied since 1899, but he retained to the end the office of Chairman of the Executive Board. Mr. E. W. Beatty was called to the place in succession to the “King of Presidents” and is proving that the choice was a wise one. Later on we shall write more particularly of Mr. Beatty, this youngest President of such an immense organization.

It was characteristic of Lord Shaughnessy to insist, despite Mr. Beatty’s protest, on the young President taking the large and ornate office room which Presidents had always occupied. Lord Shaughnessy kept busy at his office in the Board room every day in Montreal, till a sudden weakness of the heart carried him away after a few hours illness, on December 10th, 1923. Few incidents in the thrilling history of this pioneer transcontinental Canadian railway are so wonderfully touching and, in a true sense, dramatic, as the incident connected with Lord Shaughnessy’s death. Mr. Beatty was in to see him shortly before the end came, and to Mr. Beatty Lord Shaughnessy said: “Take good care of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is a great Canadian property and a great Canadian enterprise.” There is nobility and solemnity in the incident. It was a long way from the entrance of young Shaughnessy to the Milwaukee Railway, at the age of fifteen, to that scene in the sick-room in his Montreal mansion. But he had been put in charge of a great trust in the Canadian Pacific, and to that trust he was “true till death.”

The passing of Lord Shaughnessy was deeply mourned by the employees of the road, who were proud of their great “Chief.” And that mourning was practically world-wide. Perhaps no better summing up of his career was written than in the London Times editorial, where, after speaking of his coming from abroad, the writer goes on to say:

The mantle of Lord Shaughnessy fell upon Edward Wentworth Beatty who, on Lord Shaughnessy’s passing, became President and also Chairman of the Board. A young man not far over the forties in years was Mr. Beatty when he took up the mantle and assumed the high office of the Canadian Pacific Presidency. First of the Canadian-born to occupy this responsible position, he bids fair to measure up fully to all its imperious demands.

There are unthinking people in the world who have a sort of compassionate way of wondering whether a man can fill the place of a great predecessor. But in reality each man fills his own place, and by the full play of his own individuality makes his own contribution to history. Each may do work his predecessor could not have done, and, while keeping up a continuity, each brings a new force into the march of human progress. It may be interesting in this connection to recall and summarize the work of these men who, up to this date, have headed the Canadian Pacific. Hence an extract from an article by the present writer on the subject, in the press recently, may be introduced in line with the statement just made:

New occasions teach new duties, and the present railway situation in Canada is unprecedented. President Beatty is evidently treading firmly, but cautiously, along a new trail and his self-control and keen study of the situation indicate a remarkable insight and foresight which will make for a great tenure of a tremendously potent position.

Biographically it may be noted that Mr. Beatty is the son of a noted steamship operator on the inland seas of Ontario. The future President had good opportunity for education in Thorold and Toronto University, before he entered on the study of law in the office of Adam Creelman, who was counsel in Toronto for the Canadian Pacific. When Mr. Creelman moved to headquarters at Montreal, he took Mr. Beatty with him. Mr. Beatty’s ability and devotion to work made his promotion to the position of Chief Counsel and a Vice-Presidency rapid. He so studied every phase of the Company’s great system that his succession to the Presidency came in natural sequence.

It goes without saying that all the Presidents were aided and advised by an exceedingly able staff of wise and experienced men. Where there is such a host, it is manifestly impossible to even mention many without seeming “to make invidious distinctions,” as a student once answered when he declined to name the major and the minor prophets on an examination paper. But, in addition to those whose names appear elsewhere in these chapters, a high place amongst the early men who helped to really build up the Canadian Pacific is given by general consent to David McNicoll. Once when a friend in Ontario referred to him as “Dave” he followed it up by saying that they went to school together in Arbroath, Scotland, and that “Dave” always had great ability. After some experience on a railway in the Old Land, McNicoll joined the Canadian Pacific in 1883, when times were hard. He rose steadily to be a Vice-President and General Manager. He was an encyclopedia on all matters pertaining to the road, studied maps till the whole country was an open book to him, and he became known as an incessant worker with all the grim determination and reliance of his race. He met difficult situations without flinching, and was a tower of strength to the road till he practically broke his health through excessive toil. His work is commemorated by Port McNicoll, as Mr. R. B. Angus and Mr. I. G. Ogden are commemorated in the great shops bearing their names.

Then we have such men as Vice-Presidents W. R. McInnes, with the Company since 1885; George M. Bosworth, head of the Pacific Ocean services; Grant Hall, with the railway since 1886, a mechanical genius; A. D. McTier, who began clerking in the baggage department in 1887, and is now Vice-President, a man of vision; Mr. D. C. Coleman, who started as clerk in the engineering department at Fort William and who is now Vice-President at Winnipeg, a man with much literary taste and a hobby for collecting books; Charles R. Hosmer, who organized the telegraph service at the beginning; and others whose names will emerge in the closing chapter, with some account of a few special features in the life of the road. One does not forget the press service embodied in Col. George H. Ham, who has popularized the Railway in many lands, nor George Murray Gibbon, a writer of ability, who now presides over the publicity department at Montreal. All over the immense system I can see the faces of men in all departments who were and are contributing to the success and boundless efficiency of this world-wide organization. They do not tolerate carelessness, in themselves or others, and, to an extraordinary degree, they are imbued with the spirit of the great leaders of the Company who sought to make the whole system a builder of Empire and a contributing factor to the well-being of the world.

The world’s literature in all the ages has much to say about the mystery and the wonder and the power of the sea. In ancient days Homer made frequent use of the expression, “the loud resounding sea,” and, in modern times, Byron apostrophizes the unconquerable ocean and seems glad to think that while

But here, as elsewhere, the language of writers who have the Theistic view of things strongly developed is supreme for its vividness and power. Thus we find the Psalmist saying, “They that go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, these behold the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.” No finer reflection of that saying has been seen in our day than the verses,

“The Western Sea” beyond the sunset shore of British North America always had a romantic and fascinating attraction for explorers and navigators. As indicated in a previous chapter, the hope of discovering a north-west passage by a sea channel from the Atlantic to the Pacific had lured some of the most dauntless navigators to hardship and death a few centuries ago. There is a picture somewhere of an old sea-rover in uniform and decorations, studying a map of British North America on which his clenched, determined hand rests, and underneath he is represented as saying, in this regard, to his eager little grandson, “This must be done, and Britain must do it.” Well, Britain’s seamen discovered, after endless persistence, that there was no north-west passage by sea. But gallant British explorers who remembered the motto on a famous battle-axe, “I either find a way or make one,” rested not till they forced a pathway by land to the ocean of their dreams.

For nearly a century after Alexander Mackenzie, the indomitable Stornaway Scot, made the pioneer trail to the West Coast, “from Canada by land in 1793,” a limited trade was carried on laboriously, by trail and canoe and packhorse, in the mountain region. But when Canada was brought into a Confederation by linking together the old Provinces in the East, men of vision saw the vast possibilities of the Western seaboard. In 1851, as already noted, Joseph Howe, in Nova Scotia, had outlined the future in a vivid word-painting and caused others to see the ever expanding destiny of British America. He pictured the day when not only would “the whistle of the locomotive be heard in the heart of the Rocky Mountains,” but when Canadian enterprise would reach out to trade with the teeming millions of the Orient that lay facing the Pacific shore. Nor should we forget that Sir Hugh Allan, the master-trader on the Atlantic out of Montreal, long ago coveted for Canada a business not only trans-Atlantic and trans-continental, but trans-Pacific as well.

These visions of trans-Pacific trade and passenger traffic came to swift realization soon after the Canadian Pacific Railway reached tide-water at Port Moody, on the West Coast, on July 4th, 1886. Port Moody, as we have seen, was the legal terminus of the steel trail across Canada. The Company sent a live-wire agent to Port Moody to look after the freight and passenger traffic. This agent was a young man named David E. Brown, who now lives retired in a beautiful home in Vancouver, appropriately named “The Bunkers,” and appropriately situated in the locality called Shaughnessy Heights. Brown was born of Scottish parents in the County of Grey, in Ontario, and still retains, on occasion, the distinctive accent of his people. He learned the way of Western railroading under that soldierly man, Mr. Robert Kerr, a great handler of freight traffic at Winnipeg, and Brown made such a place for himself in the esteem of his chief that he was assigned to the farthest strategic point where the rails struck tide-water at Port Moody. It was a great chance for a young man, and Brown had the will and the ability to make the most of it. Accustomed to handling freight inland, he was now to tackle coast traffic all along British Columbia and up to Alaska, for his line. And, to add to his responsibilities, he was only three weeks at Port Moody when a sailing brig, the W. B. Flint, an 800-ton clipper with a “Blue-nose skipper,” tied up at the wharf with a cargo of tea from Yokohama, to be shipped over the new Canadian Pacific Railway to the East. In some places and at some periods in our day the arrival of a brig with 800 tons of cargo would seem a quite insignificant event, but the prow of that particular brig clove open a new doorway to world commerce. She did not belong to the Canadian Pacific Railway, but led the way from the Orient for the Company’s steel-clad coursers which now bridge the oceans and link four continents under the ensign of the greatest transportation system in the world. But all that was not done in one day.

Following the pathfinding W. B. Flint to Port Moody in that July of 1886, came two other sailing vessels with similar cargo, only that the Oroyo, the last of the three, had its cargo so badly damaged by water, through imperfect hatches, that it was not worth much. Brown, the young agent, had some things to learn as to what constituted delivery and acceptance of cargo in such a case, but he met the situation so well that the Railway came out safely in the end. It was perhaps this resourceful handling of a new kind of business that so attracted the attention of headquarters at Montreal to the young agent at Port Moody that they sent Brown to the Antipodes and the Orient to work up business for the Railway from those regions.

This was an eventful commission, but before we follow Mr. Brown on the trip let us go back and see how the traffic from the Orient began with the three sailing vessels that came to Port Moody in 1886. It was through the New York firm of Everett, Frazar & Co., who had some connection in Yokohama, that Montreal headquarters of the Canadian Pacific Railway brought this about. It looks like the work of the persistent, courageous and far-seeing Van Horne. He used to say that he was “going to make it possible to send a traveller around the world on one ticket over one system.” And, no doubt, he also determined that as much as they could secure of the world’s freight traffic would be routed over the same far-flung lines of travel. He must have planned with his usual daring, because the tea clipper reached Port Moody on July 20th, 1886, and the first through train from Montreal had only arrived there on July 4th. It would have been awkward if the cargo of tea from Japan had to be dumped on the primitive wharf with no train in sight to carry that cargo to its destination in Eastern Canada. Perhaps, too, it was Mr. Van Horne who, through Mr. George Olds, of the traffic department, sent Brown to the Orient. Anyway, I have had the privilege of seeing a sheaf of personal, intimate autograph letters from Van Horne to Brown, extending over many years and discussing in the most delightful and self-revealing way, such artistic subjects as Chinese vases, pottery, antiques and curios, in which both were interested. Mr. Van Horne did not throw money away by any means, but here and there in the letters he asks Brown to purchase some special rarity at what looks to most of us very generous figures.

Mr. Brown established connection for the Canadian Pacific Railway with New Zealand and Australia also. Australia was rather hesitant, though interested, but Brown appealed to them on grounds of Empire loyalty—“hands across the sea and let the kangaroo shake hands with the beaver.” Brown waited in Australia and took part in a celebration that gave a hearty send-off to the first steamer on the way to Vancouver.

Mr. Brown made his headquarters at Hong-Kong for fourteen years, and in that time combed the Orient for traffic for his line. He made successful visits as far as Bombay and Calcutta, to establish connections, and called at the Island of Ceylon in the same connection.

A typical case was that of his call at Ceylon. He ascertained that the authorities were contemplating sending a large exhibit to the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1894. They did not know just how best to ship to points beyond New York. But Mr. Brown went to the Commissioner in charge and said “I represent the Canadian Pacific Railway, and I can give you transportation right into the exhibition grounds at Chicago.” They thought this was daring for so young a man, but they talked it over and finally Brown got the business, shipping over a P. & O. steamer to Hong-Kong, thence on his own line to Vancouver and on to Chicago by rail. It looks simple now, but it was a bold venture at the time. It was beginning to fulfil Mr. Van Horne’s expectations of sending people around the world on one ticket.

One great thing which makes travel desirable is the opportunity of meeting with interesting and famous people. During one of his trips in the South Seas Mr. Brown met and travelled with Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife and daughter. And what could be more interesting than to meet and talk with “R. L. S., of Scotland and Samoa,” and visit him in his own island home under the hill, where the dust of the great writer now reposes on the summit?

Incidentally, I might add, “R. L. S.” made special reference to Mr. Brown, as appears in one of his books, saying characteristically, “I am the general provider for my household (wife and daughter). I have just supplied them on deck with the company of the Canadian Pacific Railway agent, and so left them in good hands.”

Mr. Brown, as mentioned above, remained fourteen years in the Orient with headquarters in Hong-Kong, but after having had three serious illnesses there he was ordered by doctors to leave that climate. So he returned to Vancouver, where the Company gave him the position of General Superintendent of Trans-Pacific Steamships, a position he retained till his retirement on pension in 1906.

Mr. Allan Cameron, who has had very wide experience in several departments of railway service in different parts of the world, is now in charge of the Oriental end of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Service, with headquarters at Hong-Kong, and is making special study of inter-trade relations between Canada and the Far East. At the Vancouver end of the business no one of the old-timers is better known and better liked than the highly competent ships-husband, Mr. James A. Fullerton. He is now retired, but still haunts the waterfront and takes great interest in the fleet that he has seen grow from very small beginnings. Captain Beetham, a practical sea-faring man himself, is in control of the Pacific shipping, with headquarters at Vancouver, while Captain Troup, who knows the coast-wise and inland lake and river business like a book, is in general charge of that important department. With efficient help in the offices and special agents at home and abroad, the business in a generation has kept constantly expanding, as the next paragraph specially notes.

In the meanwhile, as the years passed from the arrival at Port Moody of the first “tea clipper” from Japan, the Company’s trans-Pacific business had grown by leaps and bounds. Following the “tea clippers” from the Orient to Port Moody, the Company in 1887 chartered three steamships, the Batavia, Parthia and Abyssinia, from Glasgow ship-builders, to go on a regular trans-Pacific run from Vancouver; and the latter’s first outbound cargo was only forty tons of freight. In 1890 the British Government contracted to give the Company a subsidy annually, on condition that three twin-screw steamers were put on the route between Vancouver, Japan and China. It was to fulfil this contract that the famous Empresses first made their appearance from the Glasgow shipyards, specially built for the Canadian Pacific, namely the Empress of India, the Empress of China, the Empress of Japan, and they began their work in 1891.

It was not until 1903, under direction of Lord Shaughnessy, that the Canadian Pacific went into the shipping business on the Atlantic. The business on the Atlantic did not have to be created by the C. P. R. in the same sense as the Pacific trade, and I dwell less upon it for that reason. The Company purchased fifteen ships from a going concern, the Elder Dempster Line. This was a good beginning, but more ships soon became necessary, and the Empress of Britain and the Empress of Ireland were added in 1906, when the Monteagle joined the Pacific fleet. Then, in 1914, the Metagama and Missanabie were added on the Atlantic, the latter being later torpedoed in war time. The Melita and Minnedosa came on in 1917 and 1918. More recently the largest ship of all in the Canadian Pacific service, the Empress of Scotland, has been added on the Atlantic, and the Empress of Canada and the Empress of Australia began the run on the Pacific. These last-named three are, literally and without exaggeration, floating palaces. There are single, double and family rooms, suites and special rooms with every possible convenience, reception rooms, gymnasium, nursery, swimming pool, concert and motion picture halls, and practically everything necessary to the comfort of travel. At the date of this writing the Empress of Canada, the Empress of Scotland and the Empress of Britain are just returning from trips around the world with special parties who have been six months visiting the chief places of interest under special guidance. The Empress of Australia, built in Germany and coming to the Canadian Pacific as a result of the War, is most ornately and beautifully finished and furnished throughout. The directions on the taps and such like appear in German and English, representing the before and the after period of the War. This superb vessel, under command of Captain S. Robinson and a gallant crew, in 1923 was just casting off from the wharf at Yokohama when the terrific earthquake upheaved that city and overwhelmed it with tidal waves and fire. The Australia became voluntarily a refugee vessel, saved many hundreds of lives and, cancelling her trip to Vancouver, took the refugees to Kobe, besides giving practically all her stores of food and clothing to the destitute. For this gallant act, which involved the Company in very heavy financial loss, I heard the Captain and crew specially thanked by President Beatty and other officials of the organization. In so doing these officials showed not only their pride in their men, but their desire to magnify the human side of business. More recently Captain Robinson has been decorated by His Majesty King George V with the Order of the Commandership of the British Empire, and has been lionized and decorated at many points on the world tour of the Empress of Canada, to which he was transferred. The Captain has said little to the public about the fearful incident of the earthquake and the sea blazing with burning oil around his vessel. But he had to make his official report to the Department of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and despite his efforts to minimize the greatness of the exploit of himself and his gallant crew, the incident is fully abreast of the noblest traditions of British seamanship.

In order to indicate in a brief way the wide ramifications of the Canadian Pacific Steamship service, we add that a few years ago this Company took over the old-established Allan Line, out of Montreal, and thus added eighteen more ships to her fleet. There is a score of vessels exclusively for freight on the high seas in all parts of the world, and there are many vessels, some of them palatial, doing business on the coasts and inland lakes of Canada, in some cases as links to the rail services, in others as extensions or feeders of the same. On the Great Lakes of Canada are five splendid steamships; on the coasts of British Columbia, and from Seattle to Alaska, there are twenty-five more staunch vessels, while on the lakes and rivers of British Columbia there is nearly another score. There is steamship service also between St. John, New Brunswick, and Digby, Nova Scotia, while the Canadian-Australasian Line, one result of Mr. Brown’s pioneer efforts, operates between Vancouver, Victoria and the Antipodes.

All this sounds like a formal list of facts, but it is an amazing record of achievement in the course of less than two score years. From the tea-laden clipper of eight hundred tons that tied up to the wharf at Port Moody in 1886, the tonnage has rolled up to the vast total of considerably over half-a-million. The Railway Company which in 1886 chartered three tramp steamers for the Pacific Ocean trade, now has an immense fleet of its own on the great oceans, on the Mediterranean, Carribbean, Adriatic and South China Seas, as well as upon the wide coasts and inland waters of this broad Dominion of Canada. From the small beginning the Canadian Pacific has become the world’s greatest transportation system under one management by sea as well as by land.

Back of all that material and visible result is the astonishing story of the thought and action of strong men which is difficult to put down on paper. There have been master minds as well as courageous hearts and willing hands at work during all these years, thinking, planning and executing daring things for the expansion and extension of this vast enterprise. It has been my privilege to know many of these men in almost all branches of the service. My judgment is that, on the whole, these men were singularly free from any desire for personal gain. They had the far mightier stimulus of being engaged in a world business for the development of hitherto unrealized natural resources in many lands, and, subconsciously perhaps, they felt that the main object of their endeavours was the ultimate advantage of all mankind. In that frame of mind giants toiled in the early days, and there is no reason to think that their type is not reproduced in the men of to-day.

The Canadian Pacific Railway was and is a triumph of constructive endeavour in the days of peace. We have spoken of the army of men at work, from the turning of the first sod, all through the grading, the tracklaying and the operation of the road, as a peaceful mobile army which moved with tireless tread in the march of civilization. It was the business of these men to build and not to destroy, to gather together and not to scatter abroad, to conserve and not to dissipate the natural assets of Canada. In doing this work the Railway would be performing a great task in relation to the stability of human society and would send coursing through the arteries of commerce that national and international trade which has so much to do with the calm health of the world. But, alas! there are times when the peace of the earth is rudely interrupted by some megalomaniac who kicks the anthill of the world’s population and sends the inhabitants into wild confusion. In such times it becomes necessary to resist and subdue the disturber, if need be, by force. Pacifism is a high ideal if all would seek to work it out together; but, changing to another figure of speech, we all know that it is useless to reason with a mad dog running amuck on the world’s thoroughfare. Hence there are occasions, unhappily, when the peaceful have not only to stand on the defensive but to carry war into the enemy’s country, so as to compel the inciter to war to remember that other people have a right to life and liberty and happiness on this round globe. On such occasions the machinery of traffic has to be temporarily diverted, in some degree, from its accustomed employment and swung into the conflict for ultimate peace.

In this regard the great railway of which we are writing has done its startlingly large share at home and abroad. It will be remembered that the road was not finished over the North Shore of Lake Superior when Mr. Van Horne, who had, months before, offered help in such a possible emergency case, transported troops to the scene of the Riel outbreak on the North and South Saskatchewan. We spoke specially of the North Shore in relation to bringing troops from the Eastern Provinces, but we must also bear in mind that troops were rushed from Winnipeg westward with pronounced effect. Those were my student days in Winnipeg, but it was my privilege to be one of the Winnipeg Light Infantry which was specially raised and rushed on the new road by troop train to Calgary. This was an exceedingly important movement, because the massacre at Frog Lake, down the North Saskatchewan from Edmonton, had taken place and the Indian tribes were very restless all over the vast area from the boundary line away to the north. We left some companies at points in what is now Southern Alberta where the war-like tribes of the Blackfeet, Piegans, Bloods and others had their habitat. Their great chief, Crowfoot, befriended in the early days by the Mounted Police, was loyal, but young braves under the prevailing excitement might break away and were none the worse of seeing a few red-coats in the locality. From Calgary the rest of our regiment, along with the 65th of Montreal, and a few splendid Mounted Police and Scouts, marched north to Edmonton. We passed through some tribes that were very much agitated by Riel’s runners, and on to Edmonton, which, but for the timely arrival of our column, would have shared the fate of Forts Pitt and Victoria, not far away, which had already been looted and burned by the Frog Lake and other Indians under Big Bear and Wandering Spirit. Similarly, were troops rushed westward from Winnipeg to Swift Current, whence they marched for the relief of Battleford, which was beleaguered by Indians, and farther east others went on the railway till they came to the point nearest Batoche, where Riel and Gabriel Dumont were at the centre of revolt. Riel had sent his runners out in all directions, saying to the Indians that there were only a few Mounted Police in the country and that the Queen’s soldiers could not reach the Far West. My own recollection is that the Indians amongst whom we came were positively amazed at the suddenness of our appearance in their remote districts. Prevention is better than cure, and there is no doubt at all but that the effect of the inflammatory appeal of Riel was headed off by the swift arrival of soldiers. But for this the whole prairie might have been overrun by maddened Indians, who would have made many massacres like that of the nine unfortunate white men whose mangled bodies we buried on the Frog Lake Indian Reserve. After the rebellion was crushed, the Government at Ottawa took many Indian Chiefs to the Eastern Provinces in order that these Indians might see the strength of “the Queen’s people.” This trip was an effective deterrent on any more uprisings and not the least of the influences for peace were the “fire wagons” that drew trains along steel trails with such swiftness that the Indian ponies were left hopelessly behind. The Riel outbreak was not a great war, but it might have led to massacre, pillage and ruin only for the demonstration of power made possible by the railway transport before the flame of revolt got fairly started. For that service, of enormous value to Canada and the Empire, we who knew the situation will always be grateful for the work of the Canadian Pacific in a critical hour. The swift suppression of the Riel revolt put the all-Canadian railway conspicuously on the map of the Empire as a new element of power in her far-flung battle-line.

When the Great War broke over the world so suddenly in 1914, the Canadian Pacific had, in the interval since Riel’s outbreak and the primitive line of that day, grown into the world’s greatest transportation system by land and sea. It is remembered now of course that the War took most people unawares, so that they acted in the emergency according to the attitude their manner of thinking had developed. It is a striking comment on the thinking of President Shaughnessy, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, that while others in various places hesitated he at once put the resources of the Company, with its world-wide system on land and sea, at the disposal of the Empire. This was all the more remarkable when we recall that he was foreign born and had only come to Canada when he had grown to man’s estate. The fact was that he had become intensely Canadian. It seems a law of human life that people come to love the cause for which they make sacrifices. Shaughnessy had sacrificed much for Canada and its progress. He had left his own country and his home at an age when these mean much and when for him certain promotion on well-established roads was within reach. He had come to a new enterprise in a comparatively new country with an uncertain future and he had passed through circumstances that imposed upon him, for some years, a mental strain which amounted to positive suffering. I do not suppose that either he or Van Horne ever became less attached to their native land to the south of the line, but the stupendous undertaking of Canada’s pioneer transcontinental railway so absorbed the intense devotion of all their energies that they became profoundly Canadian. They did not love the United States less, but the immense enterprise to which they gave the best years of their lives in Canada bound them with unmistakable loyalty to their adopted country. When the War broke out, Mr. Van Horne had retired from active service in the Canadian Pacific and was in poor health, but his heart was in sympathy with Canada and he exerted himself to do what he could. Shaughnessy, as we have said, wheeled the whole system into line to help win the War. The transcontinental trains had to be kept moving with precision, to transport troops and to rush to the front stores of food from the granary of the Empire on the Western plains. But the huge workshops were turned into shell factories and became hives of industry for the manufacture of the destructive enginery of war. Shaughnessy, at the request of the Home Government, loaned to the work of war transportation some of the ablest officials of the Company in that department. In an effort to reorganize the broken-down transportation of Russia, Shaughnessy sent to that strange land one of the keenest minded officials of the Canadian Pacific in the person of George Bury, who was knighted for the efforts he made there in a period seething with discontent and revolution.

Although it would not do to cripple the system at the home base, every facility was given to employees to enlist for military service abroad. I have seen with Mr. F. W. Peters, the popular and efficient General Superintendent of the Railway in British Columbia, a copy of the instructions issued by Shaughnessy and sent out to leading officials all over the system. It was intimated therein that to all employees who enlisted, their full pay would be continued for six months (many thought the war would be brief) and that places equivalent to those they had occupied when they enlisted would be given to those who returned. There were over eleven thousand enlistments and of these about eleven hundred were killed in action. So well was the promise as to re-employment kept that former employees to the number of nearly eight thousand were taken on again, and in addition some fourteen thousand other returned soldiers were given situations—a most remarkable showing. It is quite well known that the Company also did all it could for the dependants of those who did not return.

In tribute to the unreturning brave the Canadian Pacific erected permanent memorials in bronze and tablets all over the system in order that succeeding generations might not forget. Upon each bronze monument and each tablet are these fine words: