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

by D. B. Hanna

Except for the infinitesimal proportion of men to whom nothing in public service is so important as the chance to get their hands on some public post or property, I think the public sentiment west of Montreal was, and is, all for keeping politics out of all the railway administration for which Parliament became responsible by the taking over of the Canadian Northern, and the receivership of the Grand Trunk Pacific.

During private ownership, the few attempts which were made to influence appointments by friends of Governments which had given guarantees had failed ignominiously. When the Canadian Northern became a National liability altogether, the war was almost at its worst. The acquisition of the system meant so much obligation that few supporters of the Government felt like making a party holiday out of the transaction. The war had for three years been the universal preoccupation, when, in 1917, party considerations were subordinated to the formation of a Union Government. From the point of view of starting with a clean slate, as far as the attentions of old-fashioned machine politicians were to be apprehended, conditions could not be more favourable for nationalizing thousands of miles of railway, hitherto privately directed. Indeed, the Government exercised its authority over the Canadian Northern, before the Union Government arrived, by appointing as directors: Mr. W. K. George of Toronto, Mr. William Christie of Winnipeg, and Mr. Harry Richardson of Kingston. This happened almost without Parliamentarians or the public waking up to its significance.

Mr. Richardson was appointed to the Senate. Senator Nicholls of Toronto had been a director of the Canadian Northern from the beginning. While the final transfer to the Government was still in the future, certain legislation was pending affecting the railway, and these two senators resigned their directorships so as to avoid every appearance of political advantage being associated with the railway.

It was in the spring of 1918 when the complete surrender of the Canadian Northern to the Government was announced. On May 15th Sir Robert Borden described to the House of Commons the administrative policy of the Government:

“As to the immediate future, I have already said that we do not intend to operate the Canadian Northern system directly under a department of the Government. It is our intention to operate it at present through the corporate machinery by which it has been operated in the past. There will be a reconstituted Board of Directors. We shall endeavour to get the best men we can; and we shall not interfere with them. We shall leave the administration and operation of the road to be carried on absolutely under that Board of Directors, and we shall use every means available to the Government (and, if necessary, we shall come to Parliament for that purpose) in order that anything like political influence, political patronage or political interference—I am using the word ‘political’ in its narrowest sense—shall be absolutely eliminated from the administration of that road.”

This was the only policy which could be laid down with adequate appreciation of the magnitude of our task. It would be less than justice to Sir Robert Borden to refrain from saying that he and his Government lived up to that declaration. The same is true of his successor, Mr. Meighen. Neither directly nor indirectly did either of these Prime Ministers make a single communication to me, or intended to reach me, as far as I have the slightest inkling, with a view to influencing any decision likely to affect any man’s good will towards the Government.

Up to that time Government railways to the north of the St. Lawrence, had not been operated on the basis of political advantage which had affected the Intercolonial management from the beginning. The National Transcontinental, between Quebec and Winnipeg, except for the grain traffic to Fort William, was a sort of waif, with so scanty a revenue that, with the war occupying everybody’s mind, nobody interested in votes seemed to pay it any attention. It found practically nothing for idle political hands to do. Satan was busy elsewhere.

Between the Ottawa and the Pacific, members of Parliament had not all their lives seen the section men of the only railway in their region changed with every change of Government, because they were friends of the departing Administration, and friends of the incoming Government had been promised their jobs.

The election of December, 1917, was followed by limitations of patronage which the old-style politicians did not like; but which they knew it was futile then to attempt to revoke. Sir Robert Borden’s declaration was received without vociferous enthusiasm and without audible complaint from his supporters.