It would be impossible to mention a fraction of the famous travellers who have made the Canadian Pacific their way of travel, but there are two of the public men of that period who had been protagonist and antagonist on the subject for years, whose journey to the Coast had more than usual interest on that account. The one was Sir John A. Macdonald; the other was the Hon. Edward Blake.
Sir John and Lady Macdonald crossed to the Pacific on the second train that made the through trip. Sir John, being the head of the Government, was nominally at least the sponsor for the Canadian Pacific, although we must not forget that his Minister of Railways, Sir Charles Tupper, did the larger part of the fighting to get it through. Sir John, however, was always the man who had the last word as to assisting the road, and though he tried the patience of Stephen and Van Horne at times, he was the real originator of the plan and in the end gave it his powerful assistance in the days of stress. Sir John, during that trip over the road in 1886, made one of his characteristically witty and magnetic speeches at a great mass meeting in the McIntyre Rink in Winnipeg. Those were my student days, and the chance to hear the popular Premier, who was on a sort of triumphal trip over the completed road, was not to be missed. My recollection is that the speech was non-partisan, except for a few humorous references, and not very heavy. Sir John was alert and bright even to jauntiness, but he spoke as a man who was through with a puzzling problem and was light−heartedly taking a care-free holiday. His allusion to the Canadian Pacific, a strange blending of pathos and humour, swept the house into a hurricane of cheers. He said “There was a time when I never expected to live to see the completion of this great railway. But I knew it would be completed some day, and in that day I said I would see my friends crossing the continent upon it as I looked down upon them from another and better sphere. My friends on the Opposition side of the House kindly suggested that I would more likely be looking up from below. But I have disappointed all conjecturers, and I am doing this trip on the horizontal.”
It was during that pioneer railway trip that Lady Macdonald loyally rode for part of one day in the mountains on the cow-catcher of the engine, as a way of advertising to the world the safety of the new road. Mentioning Lady Macdonald recalls the story told by that big-hearted humorist, Col. George Ham, whom everybody knows and likes. It appears that Superintendent Niblock, of the Medicine Hat division of the road, had to be away from home when Sir John’s train was due to pass. But desiring to show some courtesy he wired some one at the Hat to send Lady Macdonald a bouquet of flowers. The message appears to have become mangled and when delivered had “flowers” spelled “flour” and “bouquet” contracted to “boq.” This looked unusual, and “boq. of flour” was interpreted to mean “a bag of flour.” This was accordingly despatched to Sir John’s private car, where the porter had no room to spare, and refused to accept it. And so both the courtesy and the gift fell by the wayside, although the intention was good.
The other distinguished public man, as above noted, who travelled to Vancouver over the Canadian Pacific a few years later, was the Hon. Edward Blake. He had steadfastly, consistently and, no doubt, conscientiously, opposed the construction of the road as involving what he called “ruinous expenditure” for a young and sparsely settled country. Mr. Blake’s memory remains as that of one of the ablest and most high-minded statesman in the public life of Canada and, by general consent, the most outstanding intellectual force this country has produced. But, as observed in a preceding chapter, he had never been West before the famous railway debates took place, and therefore underestimated the country and its possibilities. When he did come, in 1891, he made a notable speech in Vancouver. In that speech he not only accepted the situation in a frank and manly way, but, calling on his large vocabulary and his somewhat unsuspected sense of humour, he gave a remarkable description of the country by putting everything in words opposite to the reality. Mr. Blake said: “As I approached this country I was struck by the remarkable change from the rugged and upheaved territory of the plains of the North-West to the smooth and level slope of the Rockies; as I ascended the slope and came upon the somewhat level and monotonous flats of British Columbia; as I travelled by the languid Bow and descended again through the valley of the tranquil Kicking Horse; as I crossed the calm Columbia and travelled down the dead waters of the Beaver and along the placid Illecillewaet and by the drowsy Skuzzy; as I passed by the slow Thompson and last of all by the banks between which the Fraser meanders its sluggish way, I turned to the fertile resources of your shores and viewed the horizon where it spanned the meadows of the Selkirks, the fertile level plains of the Gold Range and the broad plains of the Coast Range, and I reached here converted.” For a while the audience, thinking that Mr. Blake was getting things mixed because this first swift trip was confusing him as to locality, preserved a well-bred, silent attitude, as if much puzzled. In a little while, as he proceeded, they saw that he was purposely and skilfully putting everything in the converse way, and the house simply rocked with delighted laughter in peal after peal. When people are enjoying an uproarious laugh, they cannot cherish resentment. And so when Mr. Blake, dropping the jocular vein, went on to say, “When the railroad was built and finished I felt myself that it was useless to continue the controversy longer, in deference to this whole country which Canada has risked so much to retain,” the people in British Columbia forgave him for calling their Province “a sea of mountains,” and, like true Westerners, declared that he was playing the game in a sportsmanlike way and they would call off their feud.
And thus was the great railway opened from ocean to ocean. Much remained yet to be done in the way of constant improvement of the road and increase of the rolling stock. But the system was in operation, and the trains passed East and West over the once “Great Lone Land” and through the mountain passes. Circumstances have changed somewhat since the following fine verses were written some years ago by the late Pauline Johnson, but in general they still represent the situation. Born in Ontario in the region made famous by her great ancestor, Joseph Brant, ally of the British people, this gifted poetess, with the Indian blood of which she was so proud, saw in the Canadian Pacific trains not just so many cars and engines, but new and living factors in the expanding life of her beloved Dominion. And so she makes “The C. P. R. No. 1, Westbound,” say:
“I swing to the sunset land—
The world of prairie, the world of plain,
The world of promise and hope and pain
The world of gold and the world of gain,
And the world of the willing hand.