Trains of Recollection / Drawn from Fifty Years of Railway Service in Scotland and Canada, and told to Arthur Hawkes

by D. B. Hanna

So far as the scheme for a main line connecting Winnipeg with Edmonton had been developed in 1900, it was intended to make the route via Prince Albert. MacLeod’s view was that a really big line must be built where the C.P.R. main line had first been projected; and that our track from Grand View should be extended to where the old and still used telegraph line to Prince Albert from Qu’Appelle ran from the station at Humboldt towards the South Saskatchewan River, fifteen miles north of and below Saskatoon, then a little station mainly used for traffic to and from Battleford, the former capital of the North West Territories, eighty miles from any railway.

During the summer of 1901 it was determined to prospect the route from Prince Albert to Edmonton, and also to apply for a charter for a main line to be built from Grand View via Humboldt and the Battleford country, keeping to the south of the North Saskatchewan River west of Battleford. While the preliminaries of the application to Parliament were proceeding in the East, MacLeod was to find river crossings—one of the South Branch, about fifteen miles below Saskatoon, and such crossings of the North Branch, in the Battleford country as might seem desirable.

So, on December the fifteenth MacLeod and C. R. Stovel, our right of way man, who was married to a half-sister of Sir William Mackenzie, drove out of Prince Albert to prospect a line to Battleford and beyond, and to locate crossings. To-day a branch line connects Prince Albert with North Battleford, and covers almost precisely the ground that MacLeod and Stovel examined in very hard weather. Very few people were in the country; but it was possible to find a stopping place every thirty or forty miles. They carried their own bedding, mainly of rabbit robes. They came through the wooded country to Shellbrook, then through the Thickwood Hills, traversing parts of two Indian reserves.

A settler with whom they stayed told them he hauled his grain eighty miles to Battleford—a three days’ journey. They came round the north of Redberry Lake, and after dark on Christmas Eve were descending the slope to the North Saskatchewan River about where Brada now is. They could see the dim lights of the old capital, across the valley, on the tongue of land just above the confluence of the Battle and Saskatchewan rivers. Between untrailed snow and tired horses, it was nine o’clock before they reached the town, intending to rest the team over Christmas.

Battleford’s Christmas joy did not please them; and at noon they decided to pull out and look for a crossing up the river. The original C.P.R. survey was kept south of the North Branch, to take in Battleford. But MacLeod had learned that this meant crossing twenty lateral streams, with expensive bridging of each, and most of them on land that was too slippery to afford comfortable economical safety. His idea was to make two crossings of the North Branch, one near the Elbow, where the great current sharply changes its direction from southeast to northeast, and the other above Battleford—which has been done advantageously from every point of view, as everyone knows who is familiar with the country on both sides of the river.

Christmas Day, then, MacLeod and Stovel left Battleford. Twenty-five miles west was Bresaylor postoffice, their objective for more information. The postmaster was Mr. Taylor. He and his neighbours, Bremner and Saylor, had trekked all the way from the Portage Plains, looking for a good location, and had settled thus near the great Saskatchewan because the country was the most like the Portage Plains they had seen. The postoffice name was a compromise—the first syllables of Bremner, Saylor and Taylor, as the Canadian National time table of to-day discloses.

But what about the river valley to the west, which must be explored for many miles for a suitable crossing? Beyond Bresaylor the only habitation was a shack in which two boys were living while wintering Bresaylor cattle on hay which had been put up during the summer, near the Big Gully; the tributary beyond which it was not desirable to bridge the Saskatchewan. The shack was about thirty-five miles west by north of Bresaylor, and almost straight north of the present town of Maidstone. A trail to it was visible in the deep snow. But it had scarcely been travelled, and the going was heavy, and slower for horses than a used road was for a walking man.

The two pathfinders spent Christmas night in Bresaylor postoffice. All next day they drove for the shack. Darkness fell with no indication of dwelling or cattle. For five more hours the weary team was driven over the scarcely discernible trail. Between nine and ten o’clock MacLeod and Stovel stopped, intending to endure the cold of a very bad night, in the petty shelter of a poplar-and-willow thicket. As they were making ready they heard a bark—it was the ranchers’ dog; and comfort and food for men and beasts were assured.

Next morning the search for a crossing must be made by MacLeod alone. There was no way of getting the team and sleigh through the river bottom, two hundred feet below the plain. Off the ice the bush, brush, tortuous banks of the stream, and drifts of snow would make the travel tediously slow. Driving on the ice was impossible. Where the current was extra-swift—and the Indian name of the Mississippi of the North means “Swift-flowing-water”—the ice was far too thin to carry anything as heavy as a pair of horses. So, Stovel must drive along the southern edge of the river valley for, say, fifteen miles, and watch for his chief coming down the ice. Then he could keep pace with him, for a meeting at dusk, and Bresaylor could be made for the night.