“Once, when a Winnipeg newspaper man asked him why the Canadian Pacific had not launched out into certain projects of railway building in a new direction, he said: ‘The future is always uncertain, and an executive must always be prepared to meet contingencies that may arise and circumstances that may emerge. The Canadian Pacific is a very large enterprise, and its success is so vital to Canada that we must exercise due caution. The surplus assets and the liquid assets must be kept in a condition to meet all emergencies.’
“Mr. Beatty had come to the Presidency in a new day, when legal as well as financial problems are numerous. Mr. Beatty is an experienced railway lawyer, as well as a keen man of business. He is cool rather than impetuous. He has a personality as suggestive of reserve power as an engine with steam up ready to go when the time comes. But he will make no hasty and premature rushes at anything. He speaks well in private and in public and he is thinking all the time. He has become a leading figure, but he will never become diffuse or aimless in his thinking or speaking. He has his powers harnessed and so under his control that he will not be thrown off the track by outside forces. He will go far in the railway world.”
New occasions teach new duties, and the present railway situation in Canada is unprecedented. President Beatty is evidently treading firmly, but cautiously, along a new trail and his self-control and keen study of the situation indicate a remarkable insight and foresight which will make for a great tenure of a tremendously potent position.
Biographically it may be noted that Mr. Beatty is the son of a noted steamship operator on the inland seas of Ontario. The future President had good opportunity for education in Thorold and Toronto University, before he entered on the study of law in the office of Adam Creelman, who was counsel in Toronto for the Canadian Pacific. When Mr. Creelman moved to headquarters at Montreal, he took Mr. Beatty with him. Mr. Beatty’s ability and devotion to work made his promotion to the position of Chief Counsel and a Vice-Presidency rapid. He so studied every phase of the Company’s great system that his succession to the Presidency came in natural sequence.
It goes without saying that all the Presidents were aided and advised by an exceedingly able staff of wise and experienced men. Where there is such a host, it is manifestly impossible to even mention many without seeming “to make invidious distinctions,” as a student once answered when he declined to name the major and the minor prophets on an examination paper. But, in addition to those whose names appear elsewhere in these chapters, a high place amongst the early men who helped to really build up the Canadian Pacific is given by general consent to David McNicoll. Once when a friend in Ontario referred to him as “Dave” he followed it up by saying that they went to school together in Arbroath, Scotland, and that “Dave” always had great ability. After some experience on a railway in the Old Land, McNicoll joined the Canadian Pacific in 1883, when times were hard. He rose steadily to be a Vice-President and General Manager. He was an encyclopedia on all matters pertaining to the road, studied maps till the whole country was an open book to him, and he became known as an incessant worker with all the grim determination and reliance of his race. He met difficult situations without flinching, and was a tower of strength to the road till he practically broke his health through excessive toil. His work is commemorated by Port McNicoll, as Mr. R. B. Angus and Mr. I. G. Ogden are commemorated in the great shops bearing their names.
Then we have such men as Vice-Presidents W. R. McInnes, with the Company since 1885; George M. Bosworth, head of the Pacific Ocean services; Grant Hall, with the railway since 1886, a mechanical genius; A. D. McTier, who began clerking in the baggage department in 1887, and is now Vice-President, a man of vision; Mr. D. C. Coleman, who started as clerk in the engineering department at Fort William and who is now Vice-President at Winnipeg, a man with much literary taste and a hobby for collecting books; Charles R. Hosmer, who organized the telegraph service at the beginning; and others whose names will emerge in the closing chapter, with some account of a few special features in the life of the road. One does not forget the press service embodied in Col. George H. Ham, who has popularized the Railway in many lands, nor George Murray Gibbon, a writer of ability, who now presides over the publicity department at Montreal. All over the immense system I can see the faces of men in all departments who were and are contributing to the success and boundless efficiency of this world-wide organization. They do not tolerate carelessness, in themselves or others, and, to an extraordinary degree, they are imbued with the spirit of the great leaders of the Company who sought to make the whole system a builder of Empire and a contributing factor to the well-being of the world.