You may realize from what has been written about Canada’s big corporation, that the C.P.R. is—But listen to this: It appears the company issued notices to some hotels, restaurants and storekeepers, protesting against the unauthorized use of its initials, “C.P.R.” One such notice was mailed to Timothy O’Brien, who was the proud proprietor of the “C.P.R. Barber Shop” in a prairie village. Tim’s reply is entitled to a niche in the temple of fame, and is here reproduced without comment:
“Dear Sir:—I got your notis. I don’t want no law soot with yure big company, or I don’t want to paint a wife and family to sport. I no yure company owns most everything—ralerodes, steemers, most of the best land and the time, but I don’t know as you own the hole alphabet. The letters on my shop don’t stand for yure ralerode but for sumthin better. I left a muther in Ireland, she is dead and gawn, but her memories are dear to me. Her maiden name was Christina Patricia Reardon, and what I want to no is what you are going to do about it. I suppose you won’t argue that the balance of my sine what refers to cut rates has got anythink to do with yure ralerodes. There aint been no cut rates round these parts that I nos of.
(Sgd.) Timothy O’Brien...”
The officials of the big railroad are reported to have acknowledged themselves answered.
Flour for Lady Macdonald.
When John Niblock was superintendent of the C.P.R. at Medicine Hat, Sir John and Lady Macdonald passed through to the Coast on the second transcontinental train from the east. John was out on the line, and missed the Chief—but disappointed as he was, he was not altogether phazed. He wired to Medicine Hat for the agent to send a bouquet of flowers to the Earnscliffe, the car Sir John always used. The telegraph operator was a green hand, and couldn’t send very well, so when the wire reached Calgary, it read:
“Send boq flour to Lady Macdonald with my compliments. (Sgd.) John Niblock.”
The operator couldn’t make out what a “boq”—the contraction for bouquet—meant, and so substituted “bag.” When the agent lumbered down to the Earnscliffe, the steward absolutely refused the flour as he was already stocked up. So Lady Macdonald lost both the bouquet and the bag of flour.
Good-bye, My Reader, Good-bye.
And now the curtain is rolling down, for seventy-three years make a very long act. Recalling three score and ten of them—thirty-three of which have been spent in the service of the company—remembering the all-important events that have happened during that period, and the radically changed conditions of life and living, remindful of the numerous retirements and demises of fellow-workers in the world-wide vineyard of the C.P.R., one cannot but realize that the corridors of the company’s offices will not long be trodden by the older ones of this generation, and that many of us will soon perhaps not even be a memory. With free one-way transportation to the Great Beyond, and a full consciousness of all our good deeds and misdeeds, of the things we should have done and have not done, and of the things we should not have done but did, with no pretensions to having been too good, nor apprehensions of having been too bad, and with a solemn belief that if we were unable always to be right, we sought to be as nearly right as we could, we shall fearlessly face the great overshadowing problem: “Where do we go from here?” The answer will come from the unknown world.