The operating situation here was somewhat similar to what obtained at Parry Sound. The engineer was Entwistle, of whose connection with administrative work three things are worthy of note, because they are not likely to be repeated. Some time after the E.Y. and P. was superseded by the Canadian Northern’s arrival from the east, at the end of 1905, Entwistle was made superintendent. But very soon he asked to be allowed to resume his place at the throttle—an illustration of the frequent phenomenon of a refusal of responsibility, which every executive officer of any large enterprise has observed with considerable disappointment. It is surprising how many men decline higher jobs with higher pay, entirely because they are short of faith in their own ability to master unfamiliar affairs. We shall revert to this timidity towards ambition.
A town was named after Entwistle, on the Canadian Northern, west of Edmonton. All the coal for his engine on the E.Y. and P. was dug by the section man from the bank within a few feet of the track on the Edmonton side of the river.
Somewhere is a chart showing the charters that went into the Canadian Northern Railways. It looks like an elaborated genealogical tree of the kings of England, beginning with the Heptarchy. During my second year in Toronto the purchases were made which afforded those who could read the signs of the times an indication that a second Canadian transcontinental railway was taking shape, and that oceanic strategy had already become a daily factor in the scheme. This was before the Grand Trunk Pacific project was publicly launched.
Quebec has had its share of railway enterprises which did not pan out as their promoters expected, but which have played a vital part in the economic development of the province. The most remarkable of the local pioneering railways was the Quebec and Lake St. John. It was built as a colonization road to Lake St. John—the Chapdelaine country, as it may yet come to be called. The early financial troubles of this road look romantic through hindsight; but they were grievous to be borne when they occurred. For instance, there were times when the train could not leave the station at Quebec until the general manager had borrowed enough money from the passengers to buy coal for the locomotive.
The people who promoted this railway also began the Great Northern of Canada, to connect Quebec with Montreal as its first considerable achievement. It left the Lake St. John line at Riviere à Pierre, fifty-seven miles from Quebec, and made for Montreal along the edge of the Laurentian mountains by way of Grand Mere and Shawinigan, where vast paper and power developments have since taken place.
The Great Northern came into the market in 1904, along with its right to enter the east end of Montreal from Joliette, on the charter of the Chateauguay Northern. The Canadian Northern obtained it, with terminals at Quebec harbour, including a million-bushel elevator, since burned to the ground. Of this railway, re-named the Canadian Northern Quebec, I became president. Alone, it was a lame duck. As a connecting link it struck a promissory note.
Railroading in Quebec under these conditions was a very different business from working in the audit department of the Grand Trunk twenty years before. Then, of course, one was occupied with routine, which mainly concerned territory west of Montreal. The Canadian Northern Quebec was Quebec through and through. Railway conduct in the French province has several interesting distinctions.
Whenever a piece of new line was to be opened the occasion was utilized for a celebration in which all varieties of public men participated.
The Quebec and Lake St. John was so essentially a colonization road that everybody took an interest in it and expected to take passes out of it. I am anticipating my story a little; but not spoiling its propriety, by mentioning the opening of a short branch to La Tuque, on the St. Maurice river, where the National Transcontinental crosses that wonderful stream and turns westward. The Canadian Northern had recently acquired control of the road, and I was president of it also. As the branch had been undertaken, and all but completed before our regime, it seemed well for me to be represented at the inauguration by a deputy. A special train went up from Quebec. Cabinet ministers, judges, senators, M.P.P.’s, bankers, merchants were there—every section of the community sent delegates. At La Tuque there was a dinner with speeches in a frigid freight shed, and everybody returned home feeling he had contributed something to a new chapter of the province’s industrial history. The branch hasn’t fulfilled expectations—indeed, it has not been operated for several years, but it had its uses.
That inaugural was in 1907. By that time the opening of a branch line in the West had become so much a matter of course that we thought nothing more of a new service as a historical event than we did of issuing a temporary time card until the next revision of the established schedules.