When these men were going, Stephen turned again to his old friend Hill, who knew all about railroad men, and Hill recommended William Cornelius Van Horne, then General Superintendent of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. This was another of Hill’s great contributions to his native Canada. Though these two strong men, Hill and Van Horne, eventually became rivals and heads of practically opposing systems, they doubtless, to the end, recognized the consummate ability of each other. If they had to contend at times they could at least realize
“That stern joy which warriors feel
In foeman worthy of their steel.”
In any case, Hill’s commendation of Van Horne to Stephen in 1881 was whole hearted and emphatic. Hill said that of all the men he knew Mr. Van Horne was altogether the best equipped, both mentally and every other way. A pioneer was needed, and the more of a pioneer the better. And to this Mr. Hill added, in his message to Stephen, “You need a man of great physical and mental power to carry the line through. Van Horne can do it. But he will take all the authority he gets and more; so define how much you want him to have.” This last was a well-meant—and somewhat necessary admonition. Mr. Stephen then offered Van Horne a bigger salary than any one in a similar position had ever received in this country. I do not think that the salary was the main thing with Van Horne. Neither would I say that he did not take it into consideration. He was such a many-sided man that he seemed like several men. He could be lavish in entertaining or spending for things that he specially fancied. But he could be close in other ways. No doubt the unprecedented salary was, in his mind, worthy of thought. And one cannot wonder at that, because he was asked to give up a high position in the railway work of the States, with a presidency certain there in a few years at most. He was, in fact, staking the prospects of a career on his decision in favour of moving. But he did not decide to move without some idea of the prospects of the country to which he was invited. So he made a sort of incognito visit to Winnipeg, and took some survey of the vast plains. He saw the possibilities of unlimited grain and root production, and noted the practically inexhaustible soil along the Red River, where the Selkirk settlers had been sowing and reaping for three-quarters of a century. It is interesting to find here, as noted by writers on Van Horne’s life, special allusion to the Selkirk settlers. These settlers were stated in an early chapter of the book to be a factor in leading to the inception of the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking, as they had demonstrated the agricultural possibilities of the West. And they are mentioned by Van Horne’s biographer, Mr. Vaughan, as one of the elements whose demonstration of the country’s suitability for the world’s foundation industry helped to draw to Canada the extraordinary man who, in the face of apparently insuperable obstacles, threw a railway line across her wide-flung spaces.
One wonders yet at the fact that Van Horne left an assured career in his own land, the richest country in the world, to come to the Canadian West, which was then, and for some years afterwards, as I recall it, a sort of illimitable and sparsely inhabited wilderness. He came to undertake a railway building project such as neither his own country or any other in the world had ever planned in similar circumstances. No doubt he, with the keen mentality which flashed out in many varied gifts, foresaw the country’s future. But no doubt also, as his biographer above-mentioned affirms, and as men, like Sir George Bury, who were intimately yoked up with him in practical work on the road declare, it was the difficulty of the work that successfully appealed to him. The fighting spirit of his imperturbable and determined Netherlands ancestors rose to the challenge of the opportunity, to satisfy what Mr. Vaughan calls his master passion “to make things grow and put new places on the map.” So, after visiting Winnipeg and the plains, Van Horne accepted Stephen’s offer and came from the States to become a great Canadian who, without forgetting his lineage, grew into a deep devotion to his adopted country.
Reference has been made already to the many-sidedness of this colossus amongst railway builders. Once, many years after his coming, I recall meeting Mr. Van Horne at a dinner in Lord Strathcona’s house in Montreal, when nearly all the leading business men of their group were present. I happened to be in the city at the time, and as Lord Strathcona and my father had been close friends in the old Fort Garry days, he asked me up to that dinner. Gentleman of the old school that he was, with the courteous manner and considerateness of the perfect host, he asked Mr. Van Horne to show me through the picture gallery. I had known Mr. Van Horne in a general way as a forceful railroader who had begun in railway work at the age of fourteen, and knew it from the ground upwards in practically all departments, and I also knew something of his taste in art. But I was hardly prepared for the wealth of the acquaintance with painting and literature which his conversation, in easy, flowing language, revealed that evening. And yet this was the same Van Horne who could make men quake with the strength of his invective against incompetency or carelessness in work, and who was apparently at times a mere impersonal dynamo for the purpose of driving seemingly impossible enterprises to completion. There was something more than Napoleonic in the way in which he abolished the word “fail” from the dictionary as he drove his undertakings onward. And yet again he was an inveterate player of practical jokes, and was, on occasion, a sort of big boy with a sufficient spice of fun about him to keep things from becoming dull. If he knew how to work he also knew how to relax, and that is a great thing.
It was this composite man, then, who, at President Stephen’s call, threw up golden prospects in his own country and came up to Winnipeg on New Year’s eve in 1881, to take practical command of a vast new problematical enterprise. His powers may have been defined by Stephen and his associates, but the definition must have been very much tantamount to a free hand, as the sequel will show.