The romance of the Canadian Pacific Railway

by R. G. MacBeth

The contract which we have been thus studying had to run the gauntlet through Parliament, and we shall follow its course there and the new programme of railway building by the new Company in the ensuing chapter.

CHAPTER VII
The New Company

When the contract with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was submitted to the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Edward Blake, then leader of the Opposition, and his party, met it with a chorus of indignant and derisive protest. They declared that the Dominion would be ruined by such a contract and that they intended to fight the matter out before the House and the country. There is no need now to cast any personal discredit on Mr. Blake and his following for their action at that time. He was a man of unblemished name and of intense conviction, as evidenced by many facts in his distinguished career. And, besides, he and the leading men in his following then in Ottawa had already committed themselves at former sessions of Parliament by taking the position that the Canadian Pacific would have to be built by slow stages if built at all. Mr. Blake had not then visited the West, and seriously doubted its future. He and Sir Charles Tupper, who introduced the bill, were the combatant officers of their respective parties over this railway problem. So when Mr. Blake declared an itinerating attack on the Canadian Pacific amongst the people of Ontario, where the Grand Trunk, the rival road, had been long in undisputed possession, Sir Charles wrote asking for an opportunity to reply on the same platform. Mr. Blake answered that he would require all the time each evening, as the subject was a big one. This was true, and Blake’s exact legal mind led him generally into more exhaustive detail on any subject than an ordinary public audience could appreciate. But Sir Charles had girded on his armour for the fray, and found a plan of action by having his friends announce at each of Blake’s meetings that Sir Charles would appear in the same hall the following night to give reply to Mr. Blake. Sir Charles thus had the advantage of having Mr. Blake’s speech in hand a few hours after its delivery, and next night was able to assault Mr. Blake’s position effectively by a characteristic fighting answer.

To complicate matters for the Government, a rival syndicate was suddenly formed of Ontario capitalists, headed by Sir William Howland, who offered to build the railway for three millions less in money and three millions less in land acreage, and at the same time give up practically all the privileges which the Government had agreed to allow the Stephen group. The Government denounced the Howland syndicate as trying to draw a herring across the trail by making a transparently impossible offer in an effort to break the contract already signed with the other company. There is no reason to think that the Howland syndicate, which was composed of well-known citizens of high standing, would not have tackled the building of the railway if they had got the contract. But the Government had already signed with the other organization and, denouncing the offer of the Howland syndicate as utterly impracticable, and intended only to hamper the construction of the road, Sir Charles Tupper rallied the Government forces and put the original contract through Parliament on a straight vote, in February, 1881.

We do not dispute the good intentions of the Howland syndicate; but if the gentlemen of that syndicate really could have seen into the future they would have breathed a sigh of relief when their offer was rejected. They had asked for the contract, but it was a mercy for them that their request was declined without thanks. For if the Stephen men, who knew the country better and had already some extraordinary allies, came up later against so many unexpected obstacles that they were more than once within a hair-breadth of failure, it is safe to say that the Howland men, with their hurried and unconsidered offer, would have ridden for a fall, disastrous alike to themselves and to Canada.

By the action of the Dominion Parliament, in adopting the contract and giving it the force of law, in February, 1881, the field was clear for Mr. George Stephen (who was elected President of the new Company) and his colleagues. They lost no time in unlimbering their artillery and going into action with the bearing of men who knew they were going to have a hard battle, but were moving steadily forward as gentlemen unafraid.

Concerning Mr. George Stephen (who chose his peerage title from the mountain that was called after him in British Columbia, and so became Lord Mount Stephen) much might be written, but he was so unobtrusive that, as compared with others, hardly anything has been put in print about the first President. Mr. Smith, his cousin (later Lord Strathcona), was much better known and more in the public eye, and no one would think of minimizing Mr. Smith’s great achievements and his services to Canada and the Empire. But so far as the Canadian Pacific Railway is concerned, Mr. Smith’s greatest contribution was made when, after getting in contact with Hill, he persuaded Stephen to branch out from business in Montreal and become a railroad builder. Once again in this connection let me emphasize, though it anticipates the narrative somewhat, the peculiar sequence in the chain of Canadian Pacific men and events in the following way: Smith secured Stephen, Stephen secured Van Horne, and Van Horne secured Shaughnessy. It was an extraordinary succession, and every link in a chain that holds is worthy of equal honour. These men were different in many ways, but the truth is that, historically considered, no man ever really takes the place of another, even though he succeeds him. Each man must do his own work in his own way and bear his own burden, and in each man’s assertion of his own individuality we find the true law of human progress. We can standardize inanimate things such as motor cars, but we are essaying interference with the Divine order when we try to standardize men.

George Stephen was the son of a carpenter and was born, in 1829, in Dufftown, Banffshire, Scotland. His youth was not rose-coloured. He was educated in the parish school (the world owes much to many an unknown school-teacher), served for a season as herd-laddie on the glebe at Mortlach, and then was sent to Aberdeen to learn the drapery business. One day a customer from Montreal noticed that the clerk signed his name “George Stephen,” and it turned out that the customer and clerk were cousins. As a result the young clerk was taken out to Montreal and showed such devotion to business and such capacity, that he became President of the great Bank of Montreal when he was a little over forty years of age. He was a man of a high sense of honour and of intense powers of concentration. He had public gifts and could speak well on political and other topics, but all through life he applied himself principally to business and the development of the country. Years afterwards, when the one-time “herd laddie” at Mortlach and draper’s apprentice had become a man of wealth and a peer of the realm, recognized amongst the foremost as a builder of the Empire, he was presented with the freedom of the city of Aberdeen. In his reply to the address of presentation, he shattered some modern theories as to the making of men by saying: “Any success I may have had in life is due in a great measure to the somewhat Spartan training I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, in which I entered as a boy of fifteen. I had but few wants and no distractions to draw me away from the work I had in hand. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and, fortunately, I knew it.” All of which would be a good motto for every young lad to paste in his hat, so that he would see it frequently. It is well also to remember that Sir George made good use of the wealth he gained in later years by laborious effort. His benefactions were wide-spread, amongst them being the contribution of half-a-million, to go with a like amount from Lord Strathcona, into the establishment of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. And when Dr. Barclay retired from St. Paul’s Church in the same city, it was Lord Mount Stephen who supplemented the donations of others by a princely gift in bonds to the minister of his Montreal days.

It was this great man, George Stephen, then, who became President of the new Canadian Pacific Railway Company in 1880, and continued in that responsible office for the eight most critical years of the company’s struggle to live and conquer. On him, in the grim days ahead, was to rest most heavily the burden of financing, although his cousin, Mr. D. A. Smith, was forward in securing the help of financial magnates at every opportunity. The time was to come when these two were to pledge all their private possessions to keep the Canadian Pacific going on to completion. I think it worth while to say here that none of these men seemed to care about money as an end, although they appreciated its value as a means to achievement. They had no reason to go into the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking to make money, for when they began it they all had enough. In fact it is well known that some of them demurred strongly at first for fear they would be left penniless in their old age. But they were all amenable to the appeal for the building of Canada, and that was sufficient. In this connection it is interesting to recall that on May 26th, 1887, Mr. Smith (Strathcona) said in the House of Commons, “The First Minister will bear me out when I say that Sir George Stephen and the other members of the syndicate did not approach the Government with regard to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway until the Government had tried in Europe and elsewhere to get others to take it up, capable of carrying it through, but had not succeeded in this. I say distinctly that the gentlemen who undertook the charter, although at first unwilling to assume the responsibility, ultimately consented, more with a view of assisting to open up the country than from any expectation of gain to be derived from it.” It is equally interesting to note, in this same connection, the attitude of Mr. James J. Hill, who once wrote to an old Canadian friend saying, “I think you know that I am not anxious about the money part of it. I am sure I have all and more than all I will ever want and all that will be good for those who come after me.”

It was in this spirit, then—that of Empire-builders, rather than money-makers—that President Stephen and his associates took up, in 1881, the tremendous task of building the Canadian Pacific Railway across the Dominion of Canada. It was the wide West-land that had called the transcontinental into the orbit of public vision, and though, when Eastern connections would be made, it was inevitable that the headquarters of the road would be in Montreal, where the leading directors lived, offices were first of all opened in Winnipeg. Canada, as already noted, was young in the railway business. Later on she would find her own men for leaders in every department, as we know by this time she has done. But in those days Canada had to go to her big cousin, the American Republic, for railway experts. And so Mr. A. B. Stickney, who was later President of the Chicago and Great Western, was installed as General Superintendent in Winnipeg. With him came, as Chief Engineer, General Rosser, who had been a dashing Confederate cavalry officer in the Civil War. Those were my school days in Winnipeg, and I recall seeing Rosser once—a man of very distinguished bearing. But, for various reasons, neither he nor Stickney remained long, though I confess I never pass the little station of Rosser just west of Winnipeg, but I visualize again the tall, handsome Southerner after whom it was called in those early days.