There is a tradition among his friends that when Mackenzie saw the finish of these contracts in the West he made up his mind to retire on his competence, and devote himself to farming at his native Kirkfield, and to public service in Victoria county. Sir Sam Hughes used to tell, with as much relish as Sir Donald tells of the contest over the mules, how he beat Mackenzie for the Conservative nomination for Victoria and Haliburton in 1891.
But life’s strenuous endeavour was not over for Sir William Mackenzie in his early forties. Unexpectedly he became connected with the modernization of the street railway in Toronto—the beginning of nearly thirty years of achievement such as has not been approached in Canada by any native son. From a commitment to an electric railway in Toronto to a similar enterprise in Winnipeg was a natural development of a genius for courageous initiation, the range of which I do not think he himself recognized at that time.
The ambition to construct and control a transcontinental railway was the result of an evolution in two mentalities, working in a single partnership. Just when it was first consciously entertained perhaps neither Sir William nor Sir Donald was aware. Certainly, nothing of the kind was contemplated when their first venture as railway owners and operators, as distinct from contractors, was undertaken, and I came into it as the first operating officer.
The conditions affecting the nativity of the Canadian Northern were extensive and peculiar. The Sutherland project of a railway from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay had halted at Oak Point, forty miles from Winnipeg, on the east shore of Lake Manitoba. But the idea of laying steel to the Bay was never abandoned; and the Dominion charter of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company gave the right to build to tidewater, via northwestern Manitoba, in 1889. The Manitoba Government was friendly to the scheme from the very practical point of view of providing facilities for farmers who, though they were in fine country, could not profitably market their excellent crops, some for reasons for which they had no responsibility, and some for reasons which, perhaps, they might have avoided. They could not flourish without railway transportation.
The main line of the Canadian Pacific came into Winnipeg from almost due north for twenty miles. Originally, it was to have passed through Selkirk, leaving ambitious Winnipeg as an important station on a branch to the American boundary. The line was built almost to the river, opposite Selkirk, and a round house was erected at Selkirk. Instead of going west through Portage la Prairie, it was projected straight northwestward between Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, crossed Lake Manitoba at The Narrows, and continued northwesterly to the Swan River, where it turned southwesterly, till it was a few miles north of Fort Pelly.
Thence it took a due west route to the Elbow of the North Saskatchewan, near to where that river is now crossed by the Canadian Northern main line. Then, instead of crossing the river, the C.P.R. was to skirt the southern bank to Battleford, and strike the Saskatchewan again on its long northwesterly stretch, about twenty miles above Fort Edmonton, which is the Edmonton of to-day. A new Edmonton was to arise on the C.P.R. main line, about seventeen miles south of the present capital of Alberta.
This route was across sections of the prairie country marked on the Government map, printed in Sandford Fleming’s great report of 1880, as having “soil of rich quality and pasture land more or less fertile.” The map is the first in which, to quote from its superscription, “An attempt has been made to distinguish the general physical character of the country, on the routes followed by different explorers and scientific travelers.” The map is one of the most interesting proofs of the wisdom with which the Canadian Northern lines in the West were planned; taking in, as they do, the territory first pre-empted by the Canadian Pacific main line, which was also commonly known as “The Fertile Belt”.
There was a second location of the C.P.R. main line, which was to leave Portage la Prairie eight miles to the south, and was to swing round the Riding Mountains, virtually on the route afterwards taken by the Manitoba North Western, and was to cross the Assiniboine a little below where Kamsack now is, and pick up the original location at Nut Hill, about twelve miles straight north of the present little station of Rama on the Canadian Northern main line, two hundred and forty miles from Winnipeg.
The Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company was chartered to enter this originally selected territory of the Canadian Pacific main line. Nervy farmers, knowing good country when they saw it, went into the district around Lake Dauphin, through which the C.P.R. was to come. Some stuck to their places, even after it seemed that hope of a railway in their time was vain. There were others, known as the judgment-proof settlers. They had fled from conditions which made it impossible for them to profit by their experience, and had come from hard times to harder.