"Before very long", he declared, addressing Parliament, "the English traveller who lands at Halifax will be able in five or six days to cover half of the continent inhabited by British subjects."
How Cartier's prophecy has been fulfilled we all know. The traveller landing to-day at Halifax can reach Victoria by means of the Canadian Pacific in less than six days. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company has become one of the greatest corporations in the world, operating not only a great transcontinental railway, and a chain of palatial hotels, but also possessing magnificent fleets on the Atlantic and the Pacific, with its vessels now encircling the globe. It has progressed stage by stage until under the able direction of its present distinguished head, Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, it has attained the greatest position in its history. The company's expansion has in fact been one of the marvels of history, and with the continued development of the Dominion, its achievements, great as they have been, will undoubtedly be surpassed in the future. Cartier, by his strenuous advocacy of the construction of the road in days when faith in the future was at a discount, gave another evidence of his great foresight as well as of his faith in the future of the Dominion which he did so much to establish.
Cartier and Macdonald
No review of Cartier's career, however summary, would be complete without some reference to the alliance that existed between him and that other great Canadian statesman, Sir John A. Macdonald, an alliance which was for a long period a most important factor in the public life of Canada. In his great painting "The Fathers of Confederation," the artist Harris most appropriately places Macdonald and Cartier conspicuously in the centre of the group, and the names of those two great statesmen must forever be linked in connection with that epoch making measure.
Macdonald and Cartier began their public careers within a few years of each other, Macdonald being first returned to Parliament in 1844, while Cartier became a member in 1848. The two men first became closely associated as members of the same Government, the MacNab-Taché Ministry, formed in 1855, in which ministry Macdonald held the portfolio of Attorney-General for Upper Canada while Cartier was Provincial Secretary, the first public office he held. From that time until the day of Cartier's death, the association between the two men remained practically unbroken. Their alliance, as has been well said, was based on equal consideration for the rightful claims of both nationalities.
Each of the two men had qualities not possessed by the other. Macdonald had a magnetic personality, he was a consummate tactician, an incomparable leader of men. He had that genius which enables its possessor to seize and make the most of an opportunity. He had that quality so indispensable in a great leader of gaining the loyal and devoted support of men of widely different characters and temperaments. Macdonald in short combined the grasp of a statesman with the arts of a politician. Cartier excelled as an administrator, he was a tireless and indefatigable worker who never spared himself and who expected others to follow his example. He studied and analyzed all subjects which he had to handle to the very bottom, and when he came to discuss them he had a complete mastery of all the details. He was strong, nay, even dogmatic, in his convictions; once his mind was made up he pursued the path he had marked out for himself with persistent determination, heedless of all obstacles in his way. To his followers his word was law, and he exacted from them an unswerving obedience. His energy was prodigious: he deserved the designation given to him by Gladstone when that great statesman said that Cartier was "un homme qui semble être légion",—a man who was a legion in himself. Cartier's was essentially a strong and determined character.
It was of course impossible that men of such different temperaments as Macdonald and Cartier and representing often such divergent interests, should not have their differences sometimes, but whatever differences they may have had never interfered with the high personal esteem and regard they entertained for each other.
At a great banquet given in his honor by the Bar of Toronto on February 8th, 1866, Macdonald took occasion to pay a warm and generous tribute to his French-Canadian colleague who was one of the guests of honor.
"I wish to say," declared Macdonald, "that Hon. Mr. Cartier has a right to share in the honors which I am receiving to-night, because I have never made an appeal to him or to the Lower Canadians in vain. There is not in the whole of Canada a heart more devoted to his friends. If I have succeeded in introducing the institutions of Great Britain, it is due in great part, to my friend, who has never permitted under his administration that the bonds which attach us to England should be weakened."