Accordingly we find this Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, who had started in railroad work at the age of fourteen in another country, and had made such a world-record in constructive enterprises that he received the special recognition of knighthood from the British Crown, voluntarily resigning in June, 1899, from the Presidency of the vast transportation system he had done so much to create and develop. He remained as chairman of the Board and a member of the Executive, retaining his office in the Company headquarters at Montreal and saying to his friends, “I shall still hang around the old stand.” I recall reading a statement made by Edward Gibbon when, after years of work, he finished his world-famous book on the Roman Empire. He said that when he had written the last page he took a turn in his garden. His first sensation was a feeling of relief over the completion of the great task, and then a feeling of something like exultation over what he knew to be an important contribution to the historical literature of the world. And then, he says, he realized a sense of loneliness because he would no longer have his wonderfully congenial daily work, and a sense of loss because something had gone out of his life as a finished chapter in his career.
I think that Van Horne felt all that, when he gave up the Presidency of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to say so is much to his credit. He missed something out of his life. He began to plan trips to fill up the blank, but not very successfully, as we judge from the following account of a visit he paid to Monterey in his private car after having seen California. He says, “I went out on the verandah of the hotel and smoked a big cigar. Then I got up, walked about the verandah and looked at the scenery. It was very fine. Then I sat down and smoked another cigar. Then up again; another walk about the verandah, and more scenery. It was still very fine. I sat down again and smoked another cigar. Then I jumped up and telephoned for my car to be coupled to the next train; and, by George, I was never so happy in my life as when I struck the C. P. R. again.” There is humour in this, but there is pathos also. Van Horne was too keen-minded a man not to have foreseen this situation. And we repeat, as a lasting proof of his devotion to the Canadian Pacific, that when there came the hour when he felt it was in the interests of the Railway to transfer the growingly intensive and complex detail of its administration to the sinewy business hands of Shaughnessy, whose amazing powers as a financial administrator and master of detail had been amply tested through seventeen eventful years of the railway’s history, Van Horne resigned from the Presidency. And thus it was that Shaughnessy became President in June, 1899. From this date, although Van Horne remained on the Executive, he in large measure passed out of the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He retained all his financial interests in the Road, and was always ready to assist as Chairman at Board meetings by counsel; but to all intents and purposes he felt he had done his share and was now, by his own choice, handing the work over to his successor.
But to a man of Van Horne’s initiative and creative talent, idleness was unthinkable, and so, when he had unloaded the heavier burden, he took up some others less weighty, for exercise to keep himself fit. Accordingly we find him going into such concerns as the Laurentide Pulp Company and the Windsor Salt Company, and with his usual energy he made them successful. Then he went to Cuba as a free lance, and by building railways and other industries he did more for Cuba, as has been said, than Spain had done in centuries. He continued to reside in Montreal, busy with many projects, and when the end of life was at hand he said in effect what Cecil Rhodes, whom he somewhat resembled in driving power, had said: “So little done; so much to do.” What Van Horne actually did say was, “I see so much to do that I wish I could keep active for five hundred years.” But this strong scion of Netherland stock had done a great day’s work, and his high place in the temple of railway fame is secure for all time. Though of Dutch descent and American birth, he had become a British Empire builder under the Red Cross flag; but his dust reposes in the old graveyard of his people in Joliet. On the day of his funeral every wheel on the vast Canadian Pacific system came to a stop in silent tribute to the memory of a Napoleonic fighter in the fields of peaceful industry. His legal advisor and friend through many years, George Tate Blackstock, of Toronto, himself a man of most unusual ability, bore testimony to “the stupendous virility of his conceptions and exertions.” “He had his faults,” said Blackstock, and he indicates an approach to egotism in many of Van Horne’s sweeping statements, but it was not the “egotism of impotence, but of power.” And there is a place in the battle of life for self-assertion of the right kind.
We have already met in these pages his successor, Mr. Thomas G. Shaughnessy. In most ways he was unlike Van Horne. Born in Milwaukee, of Irish descent, he was tall and athletic in appearance, and altogether different in that respect from the stocky and heavily-built descendant of Holland. A newspaper friend of mine, Mr. Hope Ross, of Winnipeg, in a reminiscent article on Lord Shaughnessy, has the following interesting note on his appearance and manner, which carries out the impression made by the same Shaughnessy as a young man on Mr. E. A. James and noted in an earlier chapter. Mr. Ross says:
“Many years ago Sir Thomas, as he was then, arrived in Winnipeg depot with a party, and an inexperienced reporter at once picked him out as the leader. His dress, his quick manner, his general appearance, his commanding demeanour, his attitude, all indicated and revealed his position. As to his dress, President Shaughnessy seemed on every occasion that I ever saw him as though he had just stepped from the band box. Everything he wore looked as though put on that moment for the first time. No one would, however, suggest that he was overdressed, but just perfectly, as the successful head of a great corporation should be.
“In his general appearance Sir Thomas was the incarnation of prosperous big business. In nearly twenty years’ reporting around the Canadian Pacific depot, and later about the Royal Alexandra Hotel, I met no Eastern banker, railway executive, manufacturer, statesman, or other who seemed to personify and embody what is known as the business power of the East as he did.”
It was this appearance and type of the President that gave Punch the opportunity to make the famous cartoon, “The Canadian Pacific.” The cartoon was just a fine upstanding photograph of Lord Shaughnessy. He was an embodiment of the vast system of transportation, and Punch had caught the right idea, as usual.
Generally speaking, the opinion of many—perhaps of most people, about Lord Shaughnessy—was that he was a keen, swift and rather hard man. He could be all that on occasion, and he was usually dignified in his manner, as became the head of a great enterprise. But those who knew him well say he was one of the kindest of men. Temperamentally he was generous, and was always ready to give assistance to those in need, or, as George Ham put it, Shaughnessy helped many “a lame dog over the stile,” and said nothing about it. But the fact remains that the popular impression, as we have indicated, was that he was keen and rather hard and that impression was a quite wrong deduction, due to his distinguished manner and detached attitude. It is well to remember that he was head of an immense army, and that discipline requires a certain amount of dignity in the officer commanding.
To have that and also to possess the warm human heart is to have an ideal officer, like “The Beloved Captain,” as painted for us in Donald Hankey’s famous book of war experiences. Here again I quote from the article written by Mr. Ross as it illustrates well the many-sidedness of the dignified railway President. Mr. Ross says: