In no sense do these discussions profess to be a history of the Canadian Northern, or of the two remarkable men whose partnership made the railway. Perhaps I was daily too deeply immersed in meeting the responsibilities which grew out of the superintendency between Gladstone and Dauphin, to be qualified to present the story in its historical perspective. But that immersion at least gave me, in many respects, a unique all-around intimacy with the enterprise itself, and its bearing upon the expanding life of Canada during a most fateful quarter of a century.
Sir William Mackenzie spent much of his time on trans-Atlantic missions. He was also interested in many other undertakings which absorbed their due proportion of his time. Sir Donald Mann, whose capacities are in keeping with the solidity of his physical frame, did a great deal of planning ahead. The problem of access to the Pacific was very much in his mind for twenty years, though he said little about it. The railway policy on which the British Columbia Government appealed to the country in December, 1909, was worked out during Sir Donald’s visit to Victoria in the preceding winter. Negotiations for charters were almost entirely in his hands.
It was not a sinecure to keep pace with the multitudinous demands for equipment in men, material and methods which arose out of the addition of an average of nine furlongs of railway per day to the system, for the first eighteen years; and of a total of 1,958 miles in 1915. Between six and seven hundred towns and shipping points are on the map as the direct result of that record, with every phase of which I was closely associated. We had good fortune in assembling an able, loyal and economical staff. Errors were made, of course—who makes no mistakes never makes anything. But if the story of the rise and fall of the Canadian Northern is ever written by some man who can by no possibility be called an interested partisan, his finding, on the unquestionable facts, can only be that the creators of the enterprise deserved more of their country than it is now possible for both of them to receive.
CHAPTER XV.
Speaking some truth about the difficulty of operating a railway for the nation.
On this continent there surely never was such a weird phantasmagoria of railroad changes as occurred during and immediately following the war.
Canada led the Western Hemisphere into the fight that was to save freedom, and was to magnify Canning’s saying about the New World redressing the balance of the Old. The cost of the war in economic disturbance, during its progress, and since the delusive peace, was as little foreseen as its immediate cost in blood and treasure. What Armageddon did to North American railways is not yet appreciated by the millions who use them.
As the war worsened, the Canadian railway situation worsened with it. The penalties of overbuilding were felt on every side. There was extraordinary development of war industries; but the cessation of immigration, the attendant drag upon agriculture and commerce; and the curtailment of ordinary measures of maintenance and betterment made it inevitable that very heavy expenditures must be faced as soon as peace returned.