Greeted Train With Music.
I have travelled on many a “first train” since then, but none of more importance than the first Imperial Limited which left Montreal for Vancouver on the evening of June 18, 1899. The train was the acme of comfort for the transcontinental traveller. In order that an opportunity might be given of judging of its equipment, I invited a number of Montreal and Quebec newspapermen to make the run as far as the Federal capital on a special car attached to the new train. Fred Cook was then the dean of the Press Gallery, and Parliament being in session, I sent him a wire telling him of the party, and asking him to meet us at the Central Station when the train arrived at midnight. Fred has the reputation of being able to organize a symposium or birthday party in quick time, but on this occasion he did more than I reckoned. He can also crack a joke or take one with the best. I heard the story later of what happened from his colleague, Frank McNamara, who has been for some years in newspaper work on the Pacific coast. Showing my telegram to McNamara, Cook said, “Frank, we have to do this reception in the best style. Will you join?” McNamara said, “What is the proposal?” “Well,” was the answer, “I will get Jimmy Ellis (the Mayor) to come down to the station and present the keys of the city to George and the press men, and we will also have a fine band of music to welcome the guests, and to speed the Imperial Limited on its initial trip.” “Bah,” snorted McNamara, “where are you going to get a band at that hour?” “There has been a band tooting around the streets of Ottawa for the past week, and for a fiver I am sure they will come out,” was the reply. It was a band of the genuine German variety of five pieces. McNamara fell in with the suggestion, and both hied themselves off to Billy Clements’ hotel on Besserer Street, where the sons of the Fatherland were staying.
They saw the leader, who at first demurred at the suggestion, fearing trouble with the police. When Cook told him that the Mayor was to be there and that he would guarantee that everything would be all right, the Germans consented for a ten-spot to be at the station with their instruments. And so at midnight on that eventful occasion, the first Imperial Limited rolled into the Central Station at Ottawa. The special car with the press party stopped in the yards owing to the length of the train, and we had to walk up the cinder path until we reached the platform. There, at the end of the platform, were those five confounded Germans blowing away for all they were worth “The Watch on the Rhine.” A procession was formed and, headed by the band, now playing “Rule Brittania” (was it a premonition?) with the mayor on my right and the ex-mayor on my left, and thirty newspaper men following two by two, we started up Sparks Street to the Parliament Buildings in which a brass band played for the first time in history. It was one of the funniest of my many varied experiences. Guests in the old Russell House, awakened from their slumbers, stuck their heads out of the windows and gazed in wonderment; the bobbies at the street corners, seeing the mayor in the party, stood and grinned; citizens on the streets enquired, “What’s up?” Swinging up Sparks and Metcalfe Streets, and then across Wellington street and up the centre walk, still headed by the sons of the Fatherland, we marched into the Parliament Buildings. Of the joyous time we had for the next hour or two I say nothing, but next morning there appeared in the newspapers all over the world an account of the arrival of this wonderful train at Ottawa; of the civic reception, and of the triumphal procession through the streets led by the band of the “Governor-General’s Foot Guards.”
The world believed that Ottawa had stood still to let the Imperial Limited pass through.