THE HISTORY OF THE C.P.R.
To establish a great country and christen it after one of its
districts—in other words, to take the name of a locality and make it
apply over a region stretching away for thousands of miles—is to
provide succeeding generations of schoolboys with an opportunity to form
life-long misconceptions. If, when London was made into a county, it had
been christened Pimlico, we should have a rough parallel to what
happened in the case of British North America.
Knowing that Canada has existed for more than three centuries, people
are apt (as I have previously pointed out) to scratch and shake their
heads over the fact that, while the United States in the south have
acquired a population of 92,000,000, Canada numbers only 8,000,000
inhabitants. It takes a lot of explanation to make them understand that
historic Canada was a comparatively small area abutting on the St.
Lawrence River; and that modern Canada—the huge country stretching from
the Atlantic to the Pacific—is only thirty-eight years old.
You have to hammer away at the fact that the word “union” is the key to
the extraordinary contrast afforded by the population of Yankee North
America and the population of British North America; that the reason why
there was expansion in the south was because the States were united, and
that the reason why, until recent years, there was no expansion in the
north was because, until recent years, the provinces were ununited.
They were ununited politically (a common allegiance not involving
concerted action) and they were ununited physically.
Political union came by stages. The four principal eastern provinces
(Canada West, Canada East, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia), as we have
seen, joined forces forty-four years ago; distant Manitoba threw in its
lot with them three years later; remote British Columbia entered the
combination during the following twelve months, on condition that its
isolation should be remedied by a railroad; and in 1873—or just
thirty-eight years ago—with the adhesion of the remaining eastern
province (Prince Edward Island) there came into existence the vast
Dominion of Canada, embracing not merely the regions named above, but
the enormous intervening and adjoining areas known as the North-West
Territories.
Political union was accomplished, but its permanence was contingent upon
physical union also being accomplished, for British Columbia had
stipulated for a railroad. Thus the newly-created Federal Government
found themselves confronted by a task which for magnitude and difficulty
would have been worthy the statesmanship of a Julius Cæsar. They had to
furnish their geographical colossus with a steel backbone. They had to
lay parallel rails round a wide arc of the earth’s
circumference—traversing the untracked wilderness, skirting mountains
and chasms, hewing a way through forests, blasting a way through rock,
filling up bogs, lowering lakes and bridging rivers innumerable; they
had to make a level roadway three thousand miles long, placing sleepers
a foot apart along its entire length, and building stations at intervals
of sixteen miles.
The gigantic enterprise was put in hand; but continuity of policy proved
impossible with a national executive that was subject to party changes.
At the end of several years only 700 miles of line had been laid, and
the Government were anxious that someone else should go on with the job.
Eight daring capitalists formed themselves into a syndicate, and
undertook to have the line constructed by 1891 in consideration of
receiving twenty-five million dollars and twenty-five million acres of
prairie. They made splendid progress, but, presently running short of
cash, they asked the Government to lend them £6,000,000—accommodation
that was granted on the understanding that the line should be finished
in 1886, or five years earlier than had been originally stipulated. It
was finished in 1885, and a few months later trains were running across
Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Hence its name, The Canadian
Pacific Railway—long ago colloquialised by universal usage into the
“C.P.R.”
Federation rendered modern Canada possible. But modern Canada was
created by a railway—by that railway—by the C.P.R. In 1881, before the
line was commenced, the Dominion had 4,324,810 inhabitants, of whom
4,153,800 lived in the settled areas in the East—areas forming but a
small fraction of the new country. The balance of population—171,000
persons, of whom nearly half were Red Indians—was distributed as
follows: 66,000 in Manitoba, 49,000 in British Columbia, and 56,000 in
the remaining far-stretching regions of Canada. To-day there are more
than a million and a half people in those territories where, before the
railway was made, there were only 171,000; and—with the tide of
immigration gaining in momentum every year—the national affairs of this
earth provide no anticipation more assured than that the present
inhabitants of Central and Western Canada are but the vanguard of a
population which, within the experience of persons now living, will be
counted by tens of millions.
Most railways have come into existence merely to serve a nation’s needs.
It was, as we have seen, the higher fate of the C.P.R. first to create
the nation whose needs it was to serve. Out of that fact sprang
traditions that have moulded the destiny and that conserve the character
of one of the most gigantic, most powerful, most prosperous, and most
public-spirited corporations in the world. It is sometimes said that a
joint stock company has no soul to be saved and no hindquarters to be
kicked. Irreverent remarks of that sort do not apply to the C.P.R. Those
who have lived or travelled in Canada will not need to be told about
that remarkable and unique institution. But the rest of the world are
not in a position to know, and certainly could never guess, the rôle
filled by that railway in a stirring national drama. To the Bourses of
Europe the C.P.R. is only a triumphant corporation that makes a clear
annual profit of over £5,000,000, that is constantly and successfully
extending its enterprises, and that issues to its proprietors at par new
stock that commands a high premium. But those facts merely reveal the
C.P.R. in its public character. Its domestic character is the
interesting study.
The C.P.R. is the servant, friend, partner (and, I had almost written,
pal) of the settler in Central and Western Canada. No soul, indeed! Why,
of the C.P.R.’s several titles to the world’s esteem, the first place
must be given to what I can only call its psychological worth.
One of the growing community of prosperous grain-growers in Alberta was
telling me the story of his early experiences—how he arrived with his
large family on the land, and how he and his sons set to work and built
their house. “Yes,” I said, “but where did you and your family live
before the house was ready?” “Oh,” he replied, “the C.P.R. very kindly
lent us a shack to be going on with.”
Another settler, also reviewing his initial efforts, explained that,
being a muff at his new work, he failed to make timely arrangements for
harvesting his first crop, which consequently was ruined. “Having
counted on the grain to see me through,” he added, “I was fairly broke.
But the good old C.P.R. came to my rescue. They gave me work near my
place and paid me well, and next spring they lent me horses and fitted
me out with seed—in fact, they helped a lame dog over the stile.” A
third Canadian farmer had bought irrigated land from the C.P.R. on the
usual basis of easy annual payments. “But,” he explained, “the minor
canals had not been completed in our neighbourhood, and water did not
reach my ditches until two months after I got there. Having to run up to
Calgary, I called in at the C.P.R. and told them about it. They were
most apologetic, and said they were very much to blame, as the land
ought not to have been sold as irrigated land until the water was
actually there; so, quite of their own accord, they gave me an extra
year’s grace before my first payment became due.”
There is a conscientiousness about the C.P.R., a thoughtfulness, a
something that is downright human, not to say kind-hearted. In
travelling across the ocean and the land you see the big things of the
C.P.R.—its magnificent liners, its palatial hotels, its superb feats of
engineering—but somehow the real greatness of the company seems to lie
in the little personal acts of which I have given three examples. It is
difficult to find a definition that fits the C.P.R. To liken it to a
philanthropic society is out of the question; one cannot associate the
idea of philanthropy with an organisation which, with its stock ranging
well above 200 “on Change,” distributes over £3,000,000 per annum in the
form of a 10-per-cent. dividend. The C.P.R. leaves upon the mind an
intangible impression of a paradoxical character. It suggests a sort of
Socialist Government run by shareholders for profit.
Chatting with a puzzled C.P.R. officer, I tried to make him realise how
deeply a visitor from England was impressed by the C.P.R. in its
ethical—quite apart from its engineering and financial—aspect.
“But, don’t you see,” he argued, “that the C.P.R. is directly interested
in the success of every settler, and that the greater his success the
more grain and other freight will he send over our line? Besides, the
more a man prospers out here, the more powerful is he as a human magnet
to attract friends and relatives from the old country. Looked at from
those points of view, every new arrival is an important asset, and we
have to see to it that the asset matures. In other words, if through
inexperience or want of cash the settler meets with difficulties at the
outset of his career, we have a definite interest in helping him through
those difficulties. As a matter of fact, in advancing money for seed,
etc., we run no appreciable financial risk, since certain success awaits
the Canadian farmer who sticks to his work, provided he possesses the
necessary modicum of common sense. If he is any good at all, we know he
will get on all right, even if he does not know that himself. Therefore
I assure you the action of the C.P.R. has a strictly business, not to
say selfish, basis.”
[Illustration: TYPICAL NEW TOWN IN SASKATCHEWAN, VIEWED FROM THE
PRAIRIE]
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN A NEW TOWN]
Yes, yes, I could see all that; but, still, the virtues of the C.P.R.
had not been explained away to my satisfaction. Many transportation and
other companies have an interest in serving the public, but they act
within the limited sanction of prearranged routine, and their servants
are held in leash by red tape. I had never before come across a
capitalistic corporation which offered a helping hand to anyone in need
of it, dealing with each case on its merits. I had never before
encountered a capitalistic corporation which, through its thousand and
one agents, acted in all matters with ungrudging and anxious zeal. All
along the broad tract of country that it serves, the C.P.R. is a
watchful, ministering, unseen, personal force. It is actuated by an
almost paternal but wholly unobtrusive sense of responsibility towards
the country it has created and the people that country contains. I might
fill this chapter with different examples of how interest is shown and
assistance rendered. I can even give an example that is of purely
personal application to myself. Last autumn it became known to the
C.P.R. that I, a visitor from England, was laid up with a temporary
indisposition in a hotel at Gleichen, Alberta. The C.P.R. wrote to say
it was sorry! You may smile, gentle reader, but such was the pleasant
fact; nor am I prepared to deny that the process of convalescence was
assisted by the knowledge that, in my short lapse from health, I had the
brotherly sympathy of an institution that represented £80,000,000 of
capital.
Common sense scouts the idea that the C.P.R., in the pains it takes to
assist the farmers of the prairies and the fruit-growers of British
Columbia, is actuated by a conscious desire for more freight (it already
carries 113,000,000 bushels of grain per annum), or for more passengers
(of whom its yearly total has grown to 11,000,000—a figure, by the by,
which, since it is larger than the population of the Dominion, shows
that many Canadians travel frequently). Nay, the country having now
entered upon an era of rapid and automatic growth, the prosperity of the
C.P.R. is bound to increase, irrespective of what may be called the
fraternal side of its activities. What is more, it has been shown to the
satisfaction of financial experts that even were the C.P.R. divorced
from its railroad, and the revenue derived therefrom, it could continue
to pay its 10 per cent. dividend.
No; I am convinced that to explain the personal services that the C.P.R.
renders to the community, to understand why the C.P.R. is a kind of
joint stock Government, we must hark back to the conditions that fixed
its traditions.
In its early days the C.P.R. had to face powerful enemies, great
difficulties, and the burden of anxiety that is inevitable where heavy
capital outlay has to precede opportunity of remunerative revenue. Its
critics said the line could never pay. Its promoters were supported only
by their faith—their faith in a population that had not yet arrived.
Nowadays it is difficult to realise that in 1885 men had still to be
convinced of the fertility of the western prairie. For centuries it had
yielded the world nothing but the furry coats of the animals roaming its
unpopulated wilds. Even amid the strenuous work of constructing the line
at high pressure—with gangs of engineers, navvies and station-builders
forming a great graded army of men, accompanied by thousands of horses,
which pressed forward in orderly sequence from section to section, each
camp of toilers working in an organised relation to the base of supplies
following them across the country—even at that initial stage of its
vast enterprise did the C.P.R. begin studying the interests of the
future settlers. Special agricultural gangs were put on the construction
trains, and at intervals of about twenty miles they alighted and
ploughed a few acres, which were afterwards seeded, with the result
that, though the cultivation was of the roughest, and no measures were
taken to keep marauding animals at bay, such heavy and excellent crops
were produced that the high potentialities of soil and climate were
triumphantly advertised. Thus early did the C.P.R. “show the way” and
identify itself with the practical interests of settlers in the West. It
had land to sell them, it was providing them with lines of
communication, with means of transport. It followed that the new
population would be largely dependent upon the railway. But the railway
would be wholly dependent upon the new population. Its fortunes were
contingent upon this one factor—whether people should come and prosper
and be satisfied. That factor controlled the C.P.R.’s policy and
established its principles. For its rescue from the sea of financial
indebtedness could alone be effected by the settler.
To the extent of that indebtedness I have already given some clues. Let
me give a few more.
The 200-miles section along the north shore of Lake Superior cost
£2,400,000, a path having to be blasted through granite and flint, in
which process £420,000 worth of dynamite was used. At Pic River stone
piers had to be built to carry an iron truss bridge at an elevation of
one hundred and ten feet above the water level. At Jackfish Bay three
miles of winding track were necessary to accomplish half a mile of
progress, the bridges, tunnels and galleries on that section costing
£300,000. In 1882 four thousand men, having 3,400 horses and 1,700
four-wheeled wagons, were at work on the road, fixing rails, sleepers,
spikes, fishplates and bolts. In fifteen months 677 miles of main track
and 48 miles of sidings were constructed, ten million cubic yards of
earth being moved in the process. Between Calgary and the Bow River Pass
from two to three miles of bridges had to be made. Between Port Moody
and Kamloops—213 miles—the engineers had to cut twenty tunnels,
representing a total length of one mile and three-quarters, through
granite and crystalline limestone. In the mountain district of the west
the line had to reach a height of 5,321 feet above sea level. Kicking
Horse Pass presented engineering problems which could only be
successfully surmounted by protracted toil; but British Columbia was
impatient for the railway, and so at that point a temporary section was
constructed which sacrificed the easy gradient elsewhere secured, and
for years afterwards several powerful locomotives were required to pull
each train up the consequent “Big Hill.” That formidable incline has
since been superseded by an alternative section, costing £300,000, and
being seven miles of winding track, which embraces two spiral tunnels
through the mountain, and two steel bridges (separated by only a few
hundred yards) over the Kicking Horse River, which, by the way, is
crossed nine times by the C.P.R., six of the bridges being within a
distance of twelve miles. Another zig-zagging piece of work occurs in
the Illecillewaet Valley, where the line turns south, crosses a high
bridge and curves back almost to the starting-point, but at a lower
level, then forms another great curve across a ravine, being 120 feet
lower down on its return, afterwards doubling upon itself and crossing
and recrossing the river; so that a spectator on one of the neighbouring
heights can see a sinuous railway that reveals six tracks running almost
parallel to one another, each on a different level and each supported
largely by huge trestle bridges. Miles upon miles of the line, where
precipitous mountains are skirted, had to be protected by timber
corridors roofed at an angle to deflect avalanches.
[Illustration: ENCAMPMENT OF CHIEF MOSKOWEKUM OF THE CREE TRIBE]
The Red Indians, not yet fully subdued, caused some inconvenience to the
constructors of the C.P.R. Many of the imported navvies went in dread of
the painted braves, who were a little disposed to presume on the fears
they excited. Fortunately, the North-West Mounted Police were in
existence, and the historian of that force, Mr. A. L. Haydon, has told
us what occurred.[1] I give the following account of a typical incident:
“It was in the early days of the C.P.R.’s progress across the prairies
that the Pie-a-Pot incident occurred. Readers of Mrs. Steel’s stories
may remember one which tells how a Hindu fanatic squatted in the
permanent way of a new railway line in India and resisted all efforts to
dislodge him, until at length he was run over and killed. The fanatic in
question had a religious motive for his defiant attitude. So much could
hardly be said of Pie-a-Pot the Cree, who took it upon himself to play
the same game. Pie-a-Pot and his band had been giving no little trouble
to the police about this time. He and another chief named Long Lodge had
left their reserve and were wandering about the country at large. This
proceeding was contrary to the law, and particularly so as their
followers were all armed, and had the reputation of being a turbulent
crowd.
“What happened to bring Pie-a-Pot into sudden collision with the police
was this. Fetching up with his band at last at a point some little
distance ahead of the railway line, he encamped. His tepees were put up,
the carts unloaded, the horses sent out on the prairie to feed, and
there was every indication that the wanderers had found a choice spot
from which they did not intend to move. By and by the railway track
advanced closer towards them, and the contractors looked askance at the
Indian settlement.
“Pie-a-Pot paid no attention to the oncoming army of white men. He was
there first; it was his chosen location; let them shift him if they
dared. The railway authorities sent emissaries demanding his evacuation
of the spot; but Pie-a-Pot laughed at them, while his ‘bucks’ rode
excitedly about on their ponies and fired off rifles at random, and
shouted of what they would do to the whites if it came to a fight.
Matters were at a deadlock. The railway men could not go on so long as
the Indian camp blocked the way.
“Then the Lieutenant-Governor of the Territories was appealed to, and
ere long there came a despatch from the North-West Mounted Police
headquarters at Regina to the little post at Maple Creek, much to this
effect: ‘Please settle trouble; move on Indians.’ On receipt of the
message two men were at once detailed for the task. One was a sergeant,
the other was a constable. With a written order to Chief Pie-a-Pot, an
official notice to quit, they rode out quietly to the camp and made
known their instructions.
“Their arrival was a signal for a fresh outburst on the part of the
Indians. In their nomadic life the members of this band had not yet, to
put it literally, run up against the law as personified by the
North-West Mounted Police. They knew them by reputation to be firm,
hard-dealing men whose hand was heavy upon the wrong-doer, but they had
no practical experience from which to learn caution. So they surrounded
the two guardians of law and order, jeering at them, backing their
ponies into the police horses, and otherwise trying to discompose them.
The sergeant and the constable, in their scarlet tunics, with the
smart-looking pill-box forage caps set at an angle on their heads,
meanwhile sat still, the former reading his order, which was that
Pie-a-Pot must break camp and take the northward trail.
“To this command the chief insolently refused to listen. The sergeant
pulled out his watch. ‘I will give you fifteen minutes,’ he said calmly.
‘If by the end of that time you haven’t begun to comply with the order,
we shall make you.’ The quarter of an hour passed without any sign of a
move being made. Pie-a-Pot sat in front of his tent and smoked. Round
him and the policemen had gathered all the rest of the tribe, ‘bucks,’
squaws and children, most of them yelling abuse and urging on the bolder
spirits among them to still further exhibitions of defiance. The firing
of rifles almost in the faces of the red-coats was one form of sport
indulged in, but it was of no avail.
“ ‘Time’s up!’ said the sergeant, replacing his watch in his pocket.
Then that amazing man dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to his
companion, and walked over to Pie-a-Pot’s tepee. One kick of his foot at
the key-pole and the painted buffalo-skin covering collapsed. Ignoring
the shrieks of the discomfited squaws thereunder, and the threats of the
men, the sergeant proceeded through the camp, kicking out key-pole after
key-pole until all the tents had been overthrown. ‘Now git!’ was what he
said—or might have said, in the absence of any exact record of his
utterances. And it is some tribute to his sagacity that Pie-a-Pot did
so.”
There was not, it will be noted, any real fight left in the Indians; but
this could not be said of the allied race, the Half-Breeds. They were at
that time on the eve of their rebellion; and it is interesting to note
that the C.P.R. was completed in time to be of service in that affair.
On May 18, 1885, the last rail was laid in the line skirting Lake
Superior, and the very next day the Montreal artillery militia passed
over that line on their way to assist in suppressing the Riel rising.
And soon the procession of immigrants was moving across the country, to
quicken Manitoba and British Columbia into vigorous growth and found the
intermediate provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Then the C.P.R. saw
that its faith would be justified. A beginning had been made in tapping
the agricultural and mineral riches of Western Canada. The railway was
the steel key that had unlocked a treasury of incalculable
wealth—wealth that poured forth, and continues to pour forth, in a
stream ever expanding with the growth of population. Solicitude for the
well-being of new settlers became the bed-rock of C.P.R. policy. On that
basis, the company won its way to a prosperity that was assisted by
developments which, in their magnitude and the foresight that inspired
them, were fitting sequels to the original enterprise. Early the C.P.R.
provided three steel steamships to traverse the Great Lakes—craft since
supplemented by magnificent Clyde-built vessels. Later it made a new
water connection, with car ferries plying between Windsor, in Ontario,
and Detroit, in Michigan. Afterwards the C.P.R. turned its attention to
the lakes and rivers of British Columbia; and to-day on those waters it
controls some twenty vessels, several of them of considerable size and
appointed with superb quarters for travellers. Another fleet of twenty
steamships carry passengers and merchandise between ports on the coast
of British Columbia. But the C.P.R. has not been content merely to
navigate Canadian waters. Early it established a trans-Pacific service
connecting the Dominion with China and Japan, the pioneer vessels being
replaced in 1891 by the famous _Empress of India_ and her sister ships,
which established a new standard of comfort in ocean travel. A later
development was the trans-Atlantic service, also furnished with superb
liners, and providing new means of communication between Canada and
Liverpool, London, Bristol and Antwerp. Thus the C.P.R. has already
extended its sphere of operations two-thirds round the world; all that
is needed to complete the circle being a service of C.P.R. aeroplanes
across Europe and Asia. The company’s combined fleets include
sixty-seven steamships—a number about equal to all the battleships of
the United States, Japan, France and Russia. The C.P.R. vessels, placed
end to end, would form a line three and a half miles long. Between them
they consume every day 2,903 tons of coal. Their crews and shore staffs
form an army of 11,294 men. They annually cover a mileage equal to
fifty-seven journeys round the earth.
Nor, on the land, has the C.P.R. been content with its three thousand
miles of track stretching across the continent. To-day it controls over
eleven thousand miles of railway, on which there are running 1,534
locomotives, 1,870 passenger cars and 48,850 freight and cattle cars.
Besides owning and working so many means of communication, this amazing
railway company has endowed Canada with a chain of sixteen fine hotels,
including the famous Château Frontenac at Quebec—a stately structure
that cost £600,000 and has accommodation for a thousand guests; the
Royal Alexandra, at Winnipeg, which, like the hotel at Vancouver, yields
a yearly profit of £12,000; the Empress, at Victoria, which annually
puts £14,000 into the coffers of the company; and the luxurious hotels,
fitted with exquisite taste, at Lake Louise, Banff, and other health
resorts in the mountains.
There is one thing that the C.P.R. does not do—it does not go in for
farming. It might do so. It has enough land to carry on farming
operations upon a scale commensurate with its other affairs, and to the
tune of an annual profit that could not fall far short of £10,000,000.
Providing and organising the necessary labour would constitute a
difficulty (because, in a country where everybody can secure his own
freehold, and grow prosperous in cultivating it, no one is content long
to till the soil for an employer, let the wages be never so high).
Still, the history of the C.P.R. affords abundant proof that it is not
to be baulked by a difficulty; and therefore we must look in another
direction for the reason why the C.P.R. does not farm, and probably has
never so much as thought of doing so. Such action would be contrary to
the purpose, policy and principles on which the fortunes of the C.P.R.
have been founded. It is there to assist, not to compete with, the
population. It sells its land. The quantity it sold last year was
975,030 acres, at an average price of £2 13s. 3d. per acre—an average
price, by the way, that leaves out of account the irrigated land, of
which 145,421 acres were sold, at £5 10s. 9½d. per acre.
Mention of the irrigated land prompts some reference to an undertaking
which, while sufficiently interesting on its own merits, serves as an
excellent illustration of the enterprising spirit in which the C.P.R.
promotes the welfare of Western Canada and its people.
Part of the territory that came into the possession of the company was a
stretch of land—between Calgary and a point some thirty miles west of
Medicine Hat—which, while its capacity to produce bumper crops had been
demonstrated, was liable in certain seasons to suffer from an inadequate
rainfall. And since an occasional loss of crop is apt to have a
demoralising effect, more particularly on new settlers who have not had
time to accumulate a financial reserve, the C.P.R. decided that, before
putting those 3,000,000 acres on the market, it would counteract the
natural shortcoming, and ensure the agriculturist against loss, by
carrying out a system of irrigation. For this purpose the area was
divided into three sections—a Western Section, a Central Section and an
Eastern Section. The Western Section was put in hand first, and, at an
expenditure of over £1,000,000, the C.P.R. tapped the Bow River with a
canal seventeen miles long, and of a width that varied from 60 feet at
the bottom to 120 feet at the water level; it constructed a reservoir
three miles long, half a mile wide and 40 feet deep; and it excavated
1,600 miles of primary and secondary canals (the former being 120 feet
wide by 10 feet deep) and distributing ditches. These extensive works,
involving the removal of more than 8,000,000 tons of earth, necessarily
occupied some years; and thus, long before the canals and ditches had
reached their limits, the artificial water supply had been tested for a
season or so on parts of the area that were dealt with first. That early
experience was conclusive; and the land was eagerly taken up. Now the
C.P.R. have commenced to irrigate the Eastern Section—an area of
1,100,000 acres—and the work, which will occupy about three years, is
estimated to cost £1,700,000. In this case heavier expenditure is
necessitated by a greater difficulty in reaching the source of supply,
and 3,500 miles of canals and ditches have to be constructed. Afterwards
the Central Section will be put in hand.
On visiting a number of irrigated farms in the Western Section, I found
their prosperous proprietors enthusiastic in praise of artificial
watering, of which, indeed, the fruits were visible. Not that an
abundant harvest is the only advantage yielded by the system. In the
glorious Canadian sunshine, herbage is liable to become so dry that a
chance spark will set it on fire; and farmers bore grateful testimony
that, when this has befallen, the opening of an irrigation ditch proved
an easy means of arresting the trouble. Again, food fishes are swept
down the excavated waterways; and many an agriculturist, on discovering
trout and pike flopping about in his furrows, has found himself with a
strengthened faith in the wisdom of the C.P.R.
Nor must I omit to mention a new style of colonisation that has been
devised and introduced by this inventive and indefatigable company.
Hitherto, in the history of Canada and other new countries, the rule has
been for a settler to arrive on empty land, and find himself compelled
to build a habitation, dig a well, knock up outhouses and erect fencing
before he can address himself to the crucial matter of cultivating the
soil. In a flash of inspiration, it occurred to the C.P.R. that this
awkward and irksome beginning of the new life is not inevitable; and
that, before offering land for sale, they might just as well put the
required buildings and appurtenances upon it, so that the new-comer who
buys it shall be spared protracted initial labours for which, in all
probability, he lacks the necessary training.
This novel idea grew and blossomed. The C.P.R. fenced off a number of
holdings, and upon each built a neat little home, with a living-room,
sleeping apartments, and a kitchen fitted with a large cooking stove. On
each homestead it also built stabling and a barn, provided a source of
drinking water, and set up fences. Nor did the C.P.R. stop there. In
each case it ploughed forty acres of the land, and, in the following
spring, seeded them. It thus prepared a group of “Ready-made Farms”—to
quote the name bestowed upon these remarkable innovations in the domain
of colonisation. They were offered on the C.P.R.’s usual terms of
payment by instalments—the first of twelve annual instalments to be due
after the first crop was harvested. It was merely stipulated that each
family should possess at least £200, to carry them over the initial
stage of their new existence.
The arriving stream of Canada’s immigrants—or, rather, the assembling
army of Great Britain’s emigrants—provided many competitors for these
new opportunities. I do not know whether the C.P.R. made a selection
from among those competitors, or whether it accepted the earliest
applicants. But, having visited last autumn the first group of
Ready-made Farms to be occupied, I can testify that the hundred new
neighbours, whether chosen by chance or discrimination, looked to be the
sort of energetic and enthusiastic men who could be trusted to profit by
the favours of fate. Those farmers (who, for the most part, followed
other callings in the old country) had found their first crops in
vigorous growth; and when I arrived they were largely occupied—with
powerful machinery bought by the communal purse—in enlarging their
areas of cultivation.
And in this connection I cannot forbear to mention a visit I paid, in
that district, to one of the C.P.R. experimental farms. There I found an
enthusiastic professor of agriculture, whose duty it was not only to
test various grains and roots under local conditions of soil and
climate, but to place his knowledge at the disposal of C.P.R. settlers
who were in doubt or difficulty. During my brief stay several inquirers
were attended to, their problems ranging from how potatoes should be
stored to where a couple of good horses could promptly be purchased.
Meanwhile, the professor’s buggy was waiting at the gate, and it seemed
he was due to depart on a round of visits to farmers who, as I gathered,
wanted to be shown how they could use their land to greatest advantage.
Thus this great corporation, originally and nominally a railway company,
has brought nation-building to an art and a science.
Finally, I cannot refrain from mentioning two incidents that gave me
personal peeps at the internal working of the C.P.R. Standing one Sunday
afternoon on the crowded platform of Moose Jaw railway station, I
witnessed the arrival of a train which, since no passengers were allowed
to enter it, was easy to identify as a “special.” It held my attention
for another reason. From an office on the permanent way there issued a
squad of men clad in white overalls, immaculately clean, each with a
bright little nosegay pinned to his breast. Some carried short ladders,
others held pails, and each was armed with either a mop or a swab. Thus
variously burdened, they ran with smiling faces to the train, and in a
twinkling their many hands were busy on its exposed surfaces. Nor had
two minutes passed before those dirty and travel-stained cars were aglow
with polished panels, bright windows and shimmering brass. As the train
moved out of the station I caught sight of a military looking figure
standing in the gangway at the rear, his face alight with gratification.
It was all a profound mystery to me until I sought explanations from one
of the festive grooms, as he stood to recover breath after his late
exertions.
“Oh,” he proudly panted, “that was Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, president of
our road! I guess we sort of give him a surprise.”
A few months later I had occasion to visit the headquarters of the
C.P.R. at Montreal; and, reaching an upper story of the great building,
I found myself in the outer lobby of the directors’ department. It was,
as luck would have it, a Saturday afternoon, and therefore I feared to
find the place deserted even by such minor authority as could deal with
my unimportant business.
“Everyone gone?” echoed the astonished office boy. “You bet your life
they haven’t. The president’s in there”—indicating an office with his
thumb. “There’s a vice-president in here”—again pointing—“and another
vice-president over there”—directing my attention to yet a third door.
“They’re mighty busy. Who d’you want to see?”
Having satisfied his curiosity on that point, I ventured to remark that
they were working late.
“Late!” he protested. “It ain’t late. Why, they’ll be here till eight or
nine to-night—Sir Thomas and the rest of ’em. And me, too! There’s
always a lot to do on Saturdays.”
In a few words I told him of the week-end institution that had taken
deep root in business circles on British soil.
“That wouldn’t suit us,” declared the C.P.R. office boy emphatically.
“What! Go off pleasuring when there’s work to be done? Not likely!”
-----
Footnote 1:
“The Riders of the Plains.” (Andrew Melrose.)
[Illustration: SUNFLOWERS GROWING ON THE PRAIRIE AT VERIGIN: FOOD FOR
THE DUKHOBORS]