The Canadian Pacific Railway system has now over one hundred thousand people on its payroll, and their remuneration means a monthly expenditure by the Company of nearly eight millions of dollars—an almost incredible sum—for salaries and wages of employees every thirty days. It would be manifestly impossible to give any more than a few outstanding names from this formidable host, and even they would be given with the feeling that they were only representatives of the host of men and women who in all departments have been, for these four decades, carrying on their work in a splendid way.
Titles are now under the ban in Canada, but before that era of extreme democracy arrived, the Crown had recognized the Imperial services of the following men associated with the Company: Lords Mount Stephen, Strathcona and Shaughnessy, Sir William Van Horne, Sir Thomas Tait, Sir George Bury, Sir George McLaren Brown, Sir Arthur Harris, Sir William Whyte, Sir Augustus Nanton, Sir James Aitkens, Sir E. B. Osler, Sir John Eaton, Sir Vincent Meredith and Sir Herbert Holt. Mr. W. R. Baker, who excelled in social qualities during royal visits, was given a decoration by our present King.
But following out our theory as to the importance of every place in service, my recollections swing from the contemplation of the work done by men of such remarkable ability and initiative as those above named, without whom the road could not have succeeded, and I recall more men than I could possibly mention in many volumes who out in the humbler places did their enormously important work. Many an hour, for instance, did I spend on the back platforms of the last coach on the old Southern Manitoba trains with Charlie Panser, than whom no better or more reliable roadmaster ever watched the ties and spikes and fish plates and switches anywhere. Nothing escaped his attention, and his little notebook recorded his observations in his own way. And I think in that connection of all the maintenance-of-way or section men, whose faithful labours through summer heat and winter cold keep the road-bed in amazingly perfect order. I have seen them fighting blizzards on the prairie and watching washouts or slides in the mountains, and all with such astonishing success that there is no more safe roadway in the world than the Canadian Pacific. I look back in another direction and see old Gideon Swain, a big, powerful man, who, despite his “rheumatics,” was general custodian and guard at the old Winnipeg station. He looked after everybody. He was as gentle as a woman in looking after children and their travel-weary parents, but woe betide the tough or loafer who tried to impose on the kindly old gentleman in whose big-hearted organism there slumbered a volcanic energy against wrong. Once I was there when the old board platform was cracking in a forty-below-zero morning. Swain was assisting some ladies and children on a train when two “smart” men came into the circle and began to swear about something. Turning round the old station-guard, who looked like a mountain in his coonskin coat, raised the big stick he always carried and told them in a thunderous voice to “shut up with talk like that before children.” The men tried to explain, but Swain would have none of it, and they simply had to subside and move away with the best grace possible, to escape the wrath of the guardian of the children. Possibly, like old Constable Richards of the Windsor Street Station in Montreal, of whom George Ham writes so fondly, he too has found congenial work beyond the Great Divide where they have both gone. Incidentally, that is a fine human story of old Constable Richards telling Lord Shaughnessy at the station gate in Montreal, when the President was returning from a trip, that he, the old keeper, had been overlooked when others had got an increase of pay, which apparently under regulations could not go to Richards, who was being kept on over the age-limit. The President, keeping some big people waiting, listened to the old gate-keeper’s story attentively. The next day Richards was delighted to get an envelope with notice of increase, and the back pay, but he never knew that Lord Shaughnessy was paying it out of his own pocket.
I have singled out these few men from the rank and file, but they are representative of the loyalty and devotion of thousands in the various departments.
Like them also in this do we find the locomotive engineers and trainmen—steady, careful, cool-nerved men, who know their duty and do it. Gentlemanly conductors are there, also porters, waiters and the rest, who all take pride in the road over which they have their runs. And back of it all are the men in the great workshops, like the “Angus,” in Montreal, and “Ogden,” in Calgary, and others all across the continent, the roundhouses, divisional quarters and similar establishments, where engines and cars are builded and repairs of all kinds made. Then we have the “live-wire” people in the telegraph department, and so on through all the ramifications of a vast organization; but all enter into the life of the system and make it a marvel of co-operative efficiency. Doubtless there are many here and there amongst these employees who growl in regard to some of the conditions of their employment. So have we found men in a military regiment here and there who exercised their privilege of complaining against the conditions of their service. But in both cases let an outsider attack their organization and the esprit de corps and regimental pride will assert itself so that the man who ventures on criticism does well if he escapes without some injury.
We have thus taken a hurried survey of this great host of people in the employ of the Canadian Pacific. But we must not forget that they have been, through these years, marshalled and led by remarkable men all over the system. It is a well-organized army with its parts all closely linked up and related, so that there is a place for every one and every one has to fill that place according to the measure of his ability.
We have written in some fullness already about Sir William Van Horne, because as General Manager he was the guiding hand in the great days when the construction of the main line was carried to completion, and because, both as Manager and President, he began the big task of creating conditions for the support and extension of the road. Branch line feeders in the West, and Eastern Canadian, as well as American, connections, were established and the Pacific shipping service well inaugurated in his day. Notable lines, such as the Crow’s Nest through the Kootenay Valley, and the “Soo” Line, from near Moose Jaw on the prairies to the United States, had been established. Van Horne had said that he would never leave the Canadian Pacific until “it was out of the woods.” By 1897 or so things were looking well for the Road. Stock had run up to par and the land sales for the first time had begun to be worth while as a source of revenue for the Company.
It was evident that Van Horne was beginning about that time to consider modifying his relation to the Railway, and that was so for two or three apparent reasons. The first was that the Company was never the same to him after Mount Stephen had withdrawn from the Directorate. Van Horne missed him terribly on personal grounds. The second was that Van Horne’s powers were more creative than administrative and he knew it. He delighted in making a new thing go, but once it was going well he had a sort of distaste for the detail of keeping it going. He was more interested in putting a road across the country than in running it. He loved the Canadian Pacific and knew quite well that his lieutenant, Shaughnessy, could do the intensive development work and the detailed administration work better than he himself could. Shaughnessy was ten years younger and much more active. In fact Van Horne wished, for the good of the Company, to hand the leadership of it to Mr. Shaughnessy as early as 1895, but Shaughnessy persuaded him to stay on till the Company was more firmly established. And besides, Mr. Van Horne, who said he had wealth enough, wished not only to devote more time to the fine art of painting and other artistic tastes, but to follow up his farm and similar hobbies. Moreover, he saw in such places as the island of Cuba and in other industries than railroading in Canada, opportunities for exercising his restless creative habit of mind.
