Crossing the Prairie
In 1882, when Van Horne began to swing his cohorts of contractors and
their men into the struggle to build a half-thousand miles of railway
westward beyond Winnipeg, the Red River went on an angry rampage and
flooded out the city and the surrounding country. This was somewhat of a
damper at the beginning and, as the sequel proved, it clipped a few
miles off the anticipated record. But a record was made notwithstanding.
Experienced railway contractors were required, and Van Horne brought
Langdon & Sheppard from St. Paul and gave them the work of building from
Oak Lake in Manitoba straight across the plains to Calgary. This was a
large order, and the contractors evidently knew it, for they startled
the community by advertising for an army of three thousand men and four
thousand horses. Those who recall conditions at that time will readily
concede that there was no unemployment problem abroad in those busy
days. No one worth while needed to be unemployed when Van Horne was
forcing an undertaking to completion. And to make quite sure that things
would be properly completed, this railway building enthusiast organized
a large gang of men under his own orders who would follow up the
contractors and give the finishing touches after the aforesaid
contractors had complied with the literal requirements of their
agreement to lay the steel. One can readily see that this flying column
of Van Horne’s would keep the contractors moving ahead rapidly, lest the
flying column should be treading on their heels and remarking on their
tardiness. And one can see also that this follow-up work would lead to
the soundness of the road-bed for which this pioneer railway was noted
from the beginning. Construction was amazingly rapid, but there were no
chances taken in regard to the safety of the road.
And so these thousands of men and horses were feverishly, but
systematically, at work on the plains, where not many years before the
buffalo had roamed with earth-shaking tread. The ploughs and scrapers of
this great constructive army were making their way through the buffalo
wallows and casting up a high grade where once the Red River cart had
worn deep ruts in the rich black mould. Some of us recall busy days on
the farms or the hayfield, riding and working on the plains, and, as
boys, we had sometimes a feeling that the time of labour was unduly
prolonged. Hours of work were not limited in those days, except by
darkness and dew at either end of the day. But Mr. Van Horne’s army
became unlimited as to time, because there were relays working in the
night, building bridges and culverts and laying track when conditions
allowed—a sort of sleepless army that moved on without cessation. In
this way some three miles a day were finished enough to allow the
construction trains to follow up with their gigantic loads of material
and food for men and horses. In the spring-time there was not much grass
for the horses, and all grain had then to be imported to a country which
is now the greatest grain-exporting region in the world. Trainloads of
stuff were constantly passing over United States roads all the way from
the New York seaport, and hundreds of checkers reported on their
whereabouts every day, so that they could be counted on by a certain
time. All this matter of material was in the wonderfully capable hands
of Mr. Shaughnessy, whose brain worked with such unerring activity and
precision that supplies were kept up to the minute. Shaughnessy’s office
in Montreal was as great a hive of industry as was Van Horne’s moving
army on the plains. And men learned, as they had never learned before,
that brain and brawn were both necessary to the carrying on of the
world’s business and that these are mutually dependent on each other.
Capital, labour and management are the inseparable three in the material
success of great undertakings, and when the world discovers how these
can co-operate and share the results in proper proportion, we will have
industrial peace and progress on the earth. That vast army of
road-makers on the plains would have been helpless without the directing
minds of the men who were the brain centres that kept all in active
movement, and the converse is equally the case. And a certain nation
that has recently experimented in a new social order by destroying or
exiling its men of brain is the outstanding warning of our time against
such suicidal folly.
During this period of prairie construction there was something almost
uncanny in the way in which Mr. Van Horne seemed to be everywhere. Now
in his office in Winnipeg and now on the plains, riding on flat cars or
hand cars or in cabooses or, where the rails were not laid, in wagons
and buckboards over the prairie. He knew railroading from the ground up
and did not hesitate to ventilate his views forcibly if necessary. He
would discharge, off-hand, men who were indifferent to their work or who
were disposed to shirk carrying out his orders. He sometimes ordered the
impossible; but he expected men to try the impossible without question.
And yet there was, withal, a heartiness, enthusiasm, magnetism and
energetic competency about the big chief that commanded the admiration
of the men. They admired his courage and nerve in going on inspection
trips, where, despite his weight, he walked ties and trestles at dizzy
heights and did other daring things. His practiced eye could calculate
what was dangerous or otherwise. One day he asked an engine-driver to go
across a ticklish-looking place and the driver demurred. Van Horne, who
could drive an engine as well as anyone, said, “Get down and I will take
her over myself,” and the engineer had such faith in Van Horne’s
judgment that he said, “If you’re not scared I guess I aint,” and over
he went to the other side.
Under this energetic and unquestioned leadership of Van Horne who, at
the same time, saw that the men had abundant food of the best quality
obtainable, there was record railway building accomplished on the plain
in 1882, there being in one place a phenomenal register of twenty miles
in three days. But the handicap of the Red River flood in the spring had
delayed operations, and it began to look as if the promised 500 miles of
road in 1882 would not materialize. Van Horne called the engineers and
contractors together and, metaphorically speaking, read them the Riot
Act and demanded that they get on with the work at a faster pace. They
declared they were driving to the limit, but that the estimate could not
be reached. Van Horne threatened to cancel their contracts unless they
would bring in more men and horses and get ahead. This the contractors
did and with the added equipment they worked till stopped by the winter
cold. Even then Van Horne brought up his flying column and continued
until nothing more could be done on the frozen prairie. Then on taking
stock it was found that, counting sidings and a section on the
South-western Branch in Manitoba, the estimate had been passed, although
the actual work on the main line showed about 445 miles, with some more
graded ready for the spring. The whole thing was looked on as phenomenal
and all the railway world wondered. The Company Directors in Montreal
were delighted, and they, in turn, delighted the Dominion Government by
declaring that, instead of taking ten years as allowed by the contract,
to complete the road from ocean to ocean, the Canadian Pacific would be
in operation across the continent in little more than half that time.
When one considers that the part of the road built up to the end of
1882, being across the plains, was the easiest section, and that the
Laurentian rock wilderness around Lake Superior, as well as the ramparts
of the vast mountains, had still to be attacked, the fearless optimism
of the Directors and their whirlwind railway builder was amazing. But
the work that had been accomplished showed the Government and the people
of Canada that things of an unprecedented kind in railway annals were
being done in their new country. And it also created in the hearts of
people from sea to sea such a feeling of nationhood that they began to
realize the illimitable possibilities of Canada. To such an extent was
this true that when, later, a day came in which the Company needed the
reinforcement of Government backing to carry through the project in the
face of unexpected and gigantic obstacles, that temporary backing was
finally given with the general approval of all but a few chronic
opponents of the road. No thinking person now ever affirms that the
Government was wrong in the emergent action taken at a crisis time in
the history of Canada.
When the spring of 1883 opened Van Horne was facing the problem of
building on the rocky North Shore, finishing the prairie section and
then storming the bastions of the mountains which seemed to frown
defiance against the invader of their sublime precincts. The North Shore
came first of the new sections, as the prairie region could be left to
the ordinary routine now that it had gone so far towards the foothills,
and would proceed as a matter of course on into the mountains. It was
not comforting in that anxious hour to the Directors of the Canadian
Pacific and to Van Horne, who had declined to accept any alternative to
the North Shore line, to find that, to head off help from financial men,
both they and the people who would back them in their big undertaking
were held up to ridicule by a Grand Trunk pamphlet issued in London, the
money centre of the world. The famous pamphlet practically stated that
to build, under the contract, a railway across the North Shore of Lake
Superior, was a piece of madness, and hence that men of finance who
backed it should be looked after by their friends. It was not comforting
reading for the Canadian Pacific men at that particular juncture, but it
was a good answer later on to those politicians and agitators who talked
as if the Canadian Pacific had despoiled the Dominion in order to build
their transcontinental road. The Grand Trunk pamphlet said that the
country north of the Lake was a perfect blank even on the maps of
Canada. All that is known of the region, it said, is that, “It would be
impossible to construct this one section for the whole cash subsidy
provided by the Canadian Government for the entire scheme.” Thus out of
the mouth of a hostile witness there is evidence that the Canadian
Pacific Railway subsidy, as outlined in the contract, was considered
utterly inadequate, even by men who were making special study of railway
undertakings.
In reality the Grand Trunk pamphlet was, in so far as the cost of
construction was concerned, based upon a pretty sound conjecture. The
cost of the North Shore was terrific and, doubtless, there and at other
places, many a contractor discovered that unexpected difficulties had
upset his calculations. It is worth while to say here, as applicable to
the whole undertaking, that, though the contractors did not know it
during the period of their work, the Canadian Pacific, on discovering
that a contractor had lost seriously, began investigation with the
desire to give a square deal. If they found that the contractor had
taken reasonable precautions with his estimates and calculations, but
had met with conditions and obstacles beyond his power to have foreseen,
or to control when they arose, the Company, without any ostentation,
took steps to save deserving men from loss as far as possible. No
company in commercial life can be a benevolent association in the
ordinary sense, nor can it be reckless with the funds of shareholders
who have invested their money in its undertakings. But from the
beginning, the Canadian Pacific, while bearing all that in mind, made a
reputation for dealing with men, in all matters, in a big way, till,
with the passing of the years, there was built up a tradition which made
mean and small things a positive contradiction of the Company’s policy.
Mr. Van Horne did not require to read the above-mentioned Grand Trunk
pamphlet to learn about the difficulty of building on the North Shore of
Lake Superior. He knew all that a great deal better than the
pamphleteer. The North Shore was a big problem. But as Sir Charles
Tupper, the war-like minister of Railways, once said of this railroader:
“No problem that ever arose had any terrors for him.”
Van Horne, therefore, went ahead. He attacked the problem from the great
lake whose north shore he was going to iron down or fill up to a level
roadway for the steel track. He decided, therefore, that for the most
part he would not build far back from the shore even though tracklaying
might be easier there, for he wanted to land supplies for the work by
water transportation. This would be cheaper and would facilitate
distribution. In order to carry out this plan he acquired the Toronto,
Grey and Bruce Railway, and thus made connection between the East and
the Lake at Owen Sound. From that point he had steamers to carry the
supplies and land them at certain distances along the North Shore. When
the winter set in, these supplies were distributed by horse and mule
teams and even by dog-trains, where the snow and the ice on the little
lakes off the main shore permitted. With the advent of the summer, small
boats on these little lakes, and wagons elsewhere, were used to
distribute endless loads of material along the right of way.
Though supplies were thus on hand, it was 1884 before tracklaying on the
North Shore was regularly in operation. We get some idea of the
immensity of the work and the tremendous energy that had to be put forth
to complete it when we find a great host of 12,000 men and 5,000 horses
at work on this section as well as a tracklaying machine to relieve the
gangs, who found it almost impossible to do track labour in the ordinary
fashion, on account of mosquito-infested swamps encountered here and
there. Van Horne imported this machine from Chicago. It was new to the
French-Canadian track-layers, and its almost human action seemed to them
rather uncanny; but they soon adapted themselves to its operation and
found it a valued ally. There was an enormous amount of blasting to be
done, and to lessen the cost and the danger of importing the high
explosives necessary, three dynamite factories were erected to produce
the supply for distribution to near-by points. Despite every possible
care exercised in this regard, it was inevitable that in such an army of
men there would be a good deal of danger in the handling of explosives
in the ordinary course of their duty. They knew the danger, but they
went on steadily with their work. In consequence there was such
considerable loss of human life along that wild section of the railway
that those who now enjoy the pleasure and the profit of travel and
traffic by the picturesque inland fresh-water sea of Superior, ought to
recall that the splendid road-bed was laid, not only at vast cost in
substance, but with much sacrifice of that infinitely greater thing,
human life. And “if peace hath her victories no less renowned that war,”
there is no real reason why we should unfairly discriminate between men
who have, in the course of duty, given their lives in the one or the
other sphere. And there is no reason why we should not value equally the
possessions that have come to us by the sacrifice of men in the ways of
necessary industry or in the struggles of unavoidable war.
As the work proceeded on the North Shore, some new methods were
introduced rather unexpectedly. We say unexpectedly, because there had
been very little work done before that time in Canada over similar
territory. The process of levelling rocks down was found to be
practically impossible, on account of the great expense and time
involved in the effort. So the plan of levelling up was tried with
excellent results. Wooden trestles were built in a great many places
between the rocks. Then the construction trains came over and dumped
broken stone until the space below was filled up with the best possible
material out of which to make a safe and durable road-bed. In order to
get the material for this process, great quarries were opened up all
along the line, whence crushed rock was taken to find the new and
excellent use just mentioned.
Of course all this tremendous expenditure of labour and capital on the
North Shore gave the critics of the whole Canadian transcontinental
railway idea a new opportunity. Capt. Palliser’s report as to the
impracticability of a railway across the continent on British soil,
Mackenzie’s idea in regard to using the water stretches for
transportation as links in a trans-continental system, as well as the
early Stephen-Hill plan of linking up with Hill’s line at Sault Ste.
Marie, and thus having traffic between East and West in Canada go for
some few hundred miles through the States—all these arguments were
brought out to support the statement that Canada would be ruined by such
wild schemes as building a railway section across the barren waste of
rock on the North Shore. These persistent endeavours to block the work
of construction were having their pernicious effect in sowing the seeds
of discontent throughout the Dominion. And, what was much more serious,
these statements, sown broadcast in the Old Country, made London centres
of finance dubious in regard to the judgment of the railway directors
who would undertake such an exceedingly difficult piece of work. This
means that the raising of money in London was practically impossible.
British investors have always been venturous enough and will, when
Empire interests are in the balance, be ready, for patriotic motives, to
take some special hazards. But in this case they were being told by
mischief-makers, not only that the North Shore section was outrageously
expensive, but that, according to the honest opinion of as great an
authority as Sandford Fleming, it should not be constructed with the
hope of making running expenses until the West had a population of three
millions. It had then not many thousands. And the British investors were
being also informed by opponents and rivals of the Canadian Pacific that
no Imperial interests would suffer if the North Shore construction was
postponed indefinitely and traffic allowed to go through the States
according to Hill’s suggestion. Even the contractors and the men on the
North Shore began to lose heart, as men will who are being made to feel
that they are engaged in a work that is not only dangerous and
unnecessary, but likely to prove unprofitable should the Company become
insolvent through the terrific expenditure. And these men began to lose
even the incentive to endeavour when they were also told that they were
engaged in a task which resembled the mythological case of Sisyphus, who
was condemned to roll a great stone up a hill only to have it always
slip at the top and roll down again. No man likes that endless and
fruitless prospect in his work. Nor does he like working on a tower
which will have to be left uncompleted for lack of means.
But amid all this discouragement Van Horne remained doggedly determined
to make an all-Canadian line and to build the railway on the North
Shore. He doubtless used some strong language in regard to the hostile
and the faint-hearted, but he pushed ahead with the stolidly unemotional
will-power of his Dutch ancestry. As his ancestors in Holland had
successfully dyked against the inroads of the ocean, Van Horne defied
the seas of pessimistic and hostile criticism to inundate his life and
put out the fire of his purpose. Then in the midst of this struggle an
opportunity came his way. And his keen brain seized upon it with the
swift precision of a steel-trap in action. One Louis Riel, who had
stirred up a rebellion against Canadian authority in 1869, and had been
hybernating in Montana for the intermediate years, began stirring up
another revolt in the Saskatchewan country in 1884. Those guardians of
the North-West, the Mounted Police, scattered over the vast area in
small detachments, had notified the Canadian authorities ten months or
so before the actual outbreak came in March, 1885. It seems now as if
much of the information they gave was tied up in a bundle with red tape
and pigeonholed by civil service officialdom in Regina. However, that is
not part of our present story, beyond our saying that it looked at one
time, to those of us who were on the ground, as if the whole Middle
West, with its thousands of war-like Indians, would in a short time be
swept by a prairie fire of rebellion which would leave ruin and
desolation in its wake. It was vitally necessary that in such an event
there should be, without delay, an overwhelming demonstration of force
made by the Canadian authorities. Riel was sending his runners through
the half-breed settlements and Indian camps, telling these primitive and
uninformed people that if they all rose they could drive the Canadians
off the plains and have these vast spaces for themselves and the wild
game again.
Mr. Van Horne, who had been up and down the prairie part of his line
frequently, had been watching the rising cloud of discontent amongst the
half-breeds there. He did not worry over the political aspects of the
situation, but he saw that if the Indians were to be drawn into revolt
there would be a general devastation over the whole country. He at once
saw the possibility of demonstrating to the country the value of the
railway as a carrier of troops to the West, if necessity arose. He
pointed out to members of the Dominion Government that the Company would
in such a contingency have a strong claim on the Government for help in
the financial crisis to which, by reason of the tremendous expenditure
in construction, he saw the road to be swiftly and inevitably heading. A
member of the Government told Van Horne that the possibility of having
to send troops to the West would undoubtedly put a new face on any
application by the Railway to the Dominion for a loan to tide them over
their difficulties.
It was only the brilliant and marvellously resourceful work of
Shaughnessy, in Montreal, in this period that was making the continuance
of the work possible, and that was preventing impatient creditors from
launching proceedings against the Company. Thinking “as if his brain
were packed in ice,” this consummately cool and alert purchasing agent
seemed to make a thousand dollars grow where there was only one before.
The thousand dollar amount was not actually there, but he handled the
situation as if it was visibly in existence. He promised and threatened
alternately. He made partial payments and told creditors that if they
pressed unduly the Company would do no more business with them. He gave
notes and arranged collateral with such extraordinary skill that, so far
as I can find, no claim for money due in the ordinary way was ever
brought into court, and no note ever signed by the Company ever went to
protest. But despite Shaughnessy’s masterly handling of the situation,
things were desperate enough, although Stephen, Smith and Angus were
pledging their private property and turning over their private
investments to keep things in operation.
And now the mountain section had to be completed. More millions would
have to be found somewhere. No one seemed to know where to replenish the
empty treasury, and the mental strain on the members of the Board was
terrible. The fight against rocks and swamps and mountains waged by the
Company and contractors and men was fierce enough, but it was not to be
compared with the constant battle that had to be waged by the Directors
against heart-breaking and nerve-shattering financial conditions, for
years after the signing of the original agreement with the Government of
Canada for the building of the road. In the next chapter we shall study
this particular phase of the subject for a space.