He became suddenly the organizer of an army—not for destruction, but for construction—a great mobile force which was to move steadily forward under the direction of his genius and daring. That army was to use high explosives and unbounded physical energy, but it was with a purpose to enrich and not to devastate the country. It was to use ploughshares instead of swords, but its victories were to be certain and enduring. The fight was to be hot and at times the line would waver, but there would be no retreat. It will be interesting to follow that army with two such leaders as Van Horne as the master builder and Shaughnessy as the matchless provider of supplies.

CHAPTER IX
Crossing the Prairie

In 1882, when Van Horne began to swing his cohorts of contractors and their men into the struggle to build a half-thousand miles of railway westward beyond Winnipeg, the Red River went on an angry rampage and flooded out the city and the surrounding country. This was somewhat of a damper at the beginning and, as the sequel proved, it clipped a few miles off the anticipated record. But a record was made notwithstanding. Experienced railway contractors were required, and Van Horne brought Langdon & Sheppard from St. Paul and gave them the work of building from Oak Lake in Manitoba straight across the plains to Calgary. This was a large order, and the contractors evidently knew it, for they startled the community by advertising for an army of three thousand men and four thousand horses. Those who recall conditions at that time will readily concede that there was no unemployment problem abroad in those busy days. No one worth while needed to be unemployed when Van Horne was forcing an undertaking to completion. And to make quite sure that things would be properly completed, this railway building enthusiast organized a large gang of men under his own orders who would follow up the contractors and give the finishing touches after the aforesaid contractors had complied with the literal requirements of their agreement to lay the steel. One can readily see that this flying column of Van Horne’s would keep the contractors moving ahead rapidly, lest the flying column should be treading on their heels and remarking on their tardiness. And one can see also that this follow-up work would lead to the soundness of the road-bed for which this pioneer railway was noted from the beginning. Construction was amazingly rapid, but there were no chances taken in regard to the safety of the road.

And so these thousands of men and horses were feverishly, but systematically, at work on the plains, where not many years before the buffalo had roamed with earth-shaking tread. The ploughs and scrapers of this great constructive army were making their way through the buffalo wallows and casting up a high grade where once the Red River cart had worn deep ruts in the rich black mould. Some of us recall busy days on the farms or the hayfield, riding and working on the plains, and, as boys, we had sometimes a feeling that the time of labour was unduly prolonged. Hours of work were not limited in those days, except by darkness and dew at either end of the day. But Mr. Van Horne’s army became unlimited as to time, because there were relays working in the night, building bridges and culverts and laying track when conditions allowed—a sort of sleepless army that moved on without cessation. In this way some three miles a day were finished enough to allow the construction trains to follow up with their gigantic loads of material and food for men and horses. In the spring-time there was not much grass for the horses, and all grain had then to be imported to a country which is now the greatest grain-exporting region in the world. Trainloads of stuff were constantly passing over United States roads all the way from the New York seaport, and hundreds of checkers reported on their whereabouts every day, so that they could be counted on by a certain time. All this matter of material was in the wonderfully capable hands of Mr. Shaughnessy, whose brain worked with such unerring activity and precision that supplies were kept up to the minute. Shaughnessy’s office in Montreal was as great a hive of industry as was Van Horne’s moving army on the plains. And men learned, as they had never learned before, that brain and brawn were both necessary to the carrying on of the world’s business and that these are mutually dependent on each other. Capital, labour and management are the inseparable three in the material success of great undertakings, and when the world discovers how these can co-operate and share the results in proper proportion, we will have industrial peace and progress on the earth. That vast army of road-makers on the plains would have been helpless without the directing minds of the men who were the brain centres that kept all in active movement, and the converse is equally the case. And a certain nation that has recently experimented in a new social order by destroying or exiling its men of brain is the outstanding warning of our time against such suicidal folly.

During this period of prairie construction there was something almost uncanny in the way in which Mr. Van Horne seemed to be everywhere. Now in his office in Winnipeg and now on the plains, riding on flat cars or hand cars or in cabooses or, where the rails were not laid, in wagons and buckboards over the prairie. He knew railroading from the ground up and did not hesitate to ventilate his views forcibly if necessary. He would discharge, off-hand, men who were indifferent to their work or who were disposed to shirk carrying out his orders. He sometimes ordered the impossible; but he expected men to try the impossible without question. And yet there was, withal, a heartiness, enthusiasm, magnetism and energetic competency about the big chief that commanded the admiration of the men. They admired his courage and nerve in going on inspection trips, where, despite his weight, he walked ties and trestles at dizzy heights and did other daring things. His practiced eye could calculate what was dangerous or otherwise. One day he asked an engine-driver to go across a ticklish-looking place and the driver demurred. Van Horne, who could drive an engine as well as anyone, said, “Get down and I will take her over myself,” and the engineer had such faith in Van Horne’s judgment that he said, “If you’re not scared I guess I aint,” and over he went to the other side.

Under this energetic and unquestioned leadership of Van Horne who, at the same time, saw that the men had abundant food of the best quality obtainable, there was record railway building accomplished on the plain in 1882, there being in one place a phenomenal register of twenty miles in three days. But the handicap of the Red River flood in the spring had delayed operations, and it began to look as if the promised 500 miles of road in 1882 would not materialize. Van Horne called the engineers and contractors together and, metaphorically speaking, read them the Riot Act and demanded that they get on with the work at a faster pace. They declared they were driving to the limit, but that the estimate could not be reached. Van Horne threatened to cancel their contracts unless they would bring in more men and horses and get ahead. This the contractors did and with the added equipment they worked till stopped by the winter cold. Even then Van Horne brought up his flying column and continued until nothing more could be done on the frozen prairie. Then on taking stock it was found that, counting sidings and a section on the South-western Branch in Manitoba, the estimate had been passed, although the actual work on the main line showed about 445 miles, with some more graded ready for the spring. The whole thing was looked on as phenomenal and all the railway world wondered. The Company Directors in Montreal were delighted, and they, in turn, delighted the Dominion Government by declaring that, instead of taking ten years as allowed by the contract, to complete the road from ocean to ocean, the Canadian Pacific would be in operation across the continent in little more than half that time. When one considers that the part of the road built up to the end of 1882, being across the plains, was the easiest section, and that the Laurentian rock wilderness around Lake Superior, as well as the ramparts of the vast mountains, had still to be attacked, the fearless optimism of the Directors and their whirlwind railway builder was amazing. But the work that had been accomplished showed the Government and the people of Canada that things of an unprecedented kind in railway annals were being done in their new country. And it also created in the hearts of people from sea to sea such a feeling of nationhood that they began to realize the illimitable possibilities of Canada. To such an extent was this true that when, later, a day came in which the Company needed the reinforcement of Government backing to carry through the project in the face of unexpected and gigantic obstacles, that temporary backing was finally given with the general approval of all but a few chronic opponents of the road. No thinking person now ever affirms that the Government was wrong in the emergent action taken at a crisis time in the history of Canada.

When the spring of 1883 opened Van Horne was facing the problem of building on the rocky North Shore, finishing the prairie section and then storming the bastions of the mountains which seemed to frown defiance against the invader of their sublime precincts. The North Shore came first of the new sections, as the prairie region could be left to the ordinary routine now that it had gone so far towards the foothills, and would proceed as a matter of course on into the mountains. It was not comforting in that anxious hour to the Directors of the Canadian Pacific and to Van Horne, who had declined to accept any alternative to the North Shore line, to find that, to head off help from financial men, both they and the people who would back them in their big undertaking were held up to ridicule by a Grand Trunk pamphlet issued in London, the money centre of the world. The famous pamphlet practically stated that to build, under the contract, a railway across the North Shore of Lake Superior, was a piece of madness, and hence that men of finance who backed it should be looked after by their friends. It was not comforting reading for the Canadian Pacific men at that particular juncture, but it was a good answer later on to those politicians and agitators who talked as if the Canadian Pacific had despoiled the Dominion in order to build their transcontinental road. The Grand Trunk pamphlet said that the country north of the Lake was a perfect blank even on the maps of Canada. All that is known of the region, it said, is that, “It would be impossible to construct this one section for the whole cash subsidy provided by the Canadian Government for the entire scheme.” Thus out of the mouth of a hostile witness there is evidence that the Canadian Pacific Railway subsidy, as outlined in the contract, was considered utterly inadequate, even by men who were making special study of railway undertakings.

In reality the Grand Trunk pamphlet was, in so far as the cost of construction was concerned, based upon a pretty sound conjecture. The cost of the North Shore was terrific and, doubtless, there and at other places, many a contractor discovered that unexpected difficulties had upset his calculations. It is worth while to say here, as applicable to the whole undertaking, that, though the contractors did not know it during the period of their work, the Canadian Pacific, on discovering that a contractor had lost seriously, began investigation with the desire to give a square deal. If they found that the contractor had taken reasonable precautions with his estimates and calculations, but had met with conditions and obstacles beyond his power to have foreseen, or to control when they arose, the Company, without any ostentation, took steps to save deserving men from loss as far as possible. No company in commercial life can be a benevolent association in the ordinary sense, nor can it be reckless with the funds of shareholders who have invested their money in its undertakings. But from the beginning, the Canadian Pacific, while bearing all that in mind, made a reputation for dealing with men, in all matters, in a big way, till, with the passing of the years, there was built up a tradition which made mean and small things a positive contradiction of the Company’s policy.

Mr. Van Horne did not require to read the above-mentioned Grand Trunk pamphlet to learn about the difficulty of building on the North Shore of Lake Superior. He knew all that a great deal better than the pamphleteer. The North Shore was a big problem. But as Sir Charles Tupper, the war-like minister of Railways, once said of this railroader: “No problem that ever arose had any terrors for him.”