The next year saw steel laid right to Calgary and immense progress made between Lake Nipissing and Thunder Bay. This piece of work caused J. J. Hill to drop out of the C.P.R., and to become a business enemy of Van Horne’s. Hill, an Ontario farm boy, had induced Donald Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona) and his cousin George Stephen (Lord Mountstephen) to join him in getting hold of a Minnesota railroad that had been financed by Dutch bondholders. This road developed into the Great Northern, out of which Smith and Stephen made, it has been stated, more money than they did out of the C.P.R. These associates created the syndicate which obtained the C.P.R. charter, and began construction. Things were dragging, and it seemed likely that the ten years stipulated for with the Canadian Government would be needed to complete the road to the Coast, when Hill recommended that Van Horne be made general manager, with large powers. The appointment was made, but before long, Hill and Van Horne clashed, as strong men often do.
When Van Horne took hold, a railway was under construction from Callender (just east of North Bay) to Sault Ste. Marie, where it was to tie in with the Hill road and its Winnipeg connections. The line from Port Arthur to Winnipeg was well advanced; and the utmost use was to be made of the possibilities of lakes navigation for communications with Eastern Canada under all-Canadian auspices. But it was figured that the line around Superior would be too costly and too unremunerative an undertaking for many years. All the traffic during non-navigation months would go over the Hill line—and that was one of several reasons for Hill’s going into the C.P.R.
Van Horne wasn’t afraid of the emptiness between Lake Nipissing and Thunder Bay. He figured the through traffic would be enough to offset the disadvantage of practically no local business through the wilderness. He saw that, with Hill in the strategical position he had marked out for himself, the C.P.R. couldn’t well be its own master—rather, perhaps, that Van Horne couldn’t be its master. Sir John Macdonald and the Government had always wanted to reach the West over all-Canadian rails. And so it came about that Van Horne’s arrival at Montreal, after the 1882 construction season, for his permanent headquarters, synchronized with the beginning of the Superior Division construction or, rather, with the sending in of supplies during the winter, for the 1883 work. It turned out that three seasons’ construction completed the Lake Superior Division, and the first trains from Montreal to Winnipeg ran in the fall of 1885.
The new atmosphere which had begun to affect railway business in Canada can be partially appreciated by those who were not within its influence. A tremendous, and at times terrifying, power had come on to the job of Canadian development. The Grand Trunk bucked it openly in London, and quietly derided it in Canada. In Montreal, though, we were so far from the West—always bear in mind that it wasn’t till late in 1885 that you could travel in the same train across the Province of Ontario—that the tales which came through of what was happening in the North West seemed about as far-fetched as Mark Twain’s yarn of the jumping frog.
For instance, it was a matter of knowledge that the C.P.R. charter provided for the line to be built through the Yellowhead Pass, since taken by the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern, and to end about where Prince Rupert now is. The route had been changed; and instead of going through Battleford, the newly-established capital of the North West Territories, and up the North Saskatchewan Valley, the C.P.R., we were informed, was going to Fort Calgary up the Bow river (which becomes the South Saskatchewan where it is joined by the Red Deer), and was then to get through the mountains, and reach the Pacific ocean—somehow. And, in very truth, it was some somehow.
First of all there were doubts as to whether a railway could be put through the Kicking Horse Pass. Then, once over the Great Divide, the Fraser Valley must be reached either by crossing the mighty Selkirk range, or by going hundreds of miles round the big bend of the Columbia. No pass through the Selkirks was known. Few men believed one could be found. But Van Horne headed his road for the foothills, taking chances on making a fairly economical approach to the Pacific ocean, to obtain which he sent explorers into the appalling waste of mountains. At last, after incredible hardships, Major Rogers and a companion named Carrol found the Pass that is forever associated with the major’s name; and the C.P.R. went through, as all the world knows.
I shall come to a very pleasant duty presently, when something is to be said about railway location, and some of the locators I have known and worked with. It will be seen that they are all of the Rogers spirit, though, happily for themselves, they are not all of the Rogers attitude towards their own financial interests. Rogers was a Yale graduate of high standing, but a lover and liver of the wild, if ever there was such a creature. His discovery of the Pass, made during days of semi-starvation, and dreadful peril to man and beast, was acknowledged by the C.P.R. with a check for five thousand dollars. Van Horne, meeting Rogers in Winnipeg a year later, reminded the major that he hadn’t cashed the check.