CHAPTER III
Giants in Action
In an early chapter of the most famous of all Books, reference is made to the inhabitants of the earth at a certain period, in the descriptive statement, “There were giants in those days.” This is generally accepted as indicating the physical stature and strength of those ancient men. But there have been periods since that time concerning which we could repeat the statement in the light of their distinctive achievements, not necessarily because of the physical prowess, but because of the mental and moral energy of the men who wrought great deeds.
Such days, it seems to me, have been found in Canadian history in the period of the heroic men and women who pioneered in all the provinces, in the period when strong men grappled with the problems of confederating the scattered colonies of British North America into one Dominion, and in that period when the young Dominion, with only a few millions of people, undertook and accomplished, with incredible speed, the gigantic task of binding the provinces together by a band of steel. It is, briefly, with the confederation achievement, but, much more extendedly, with the building of the first transcontinental that our present writing deals. The battle of the pioneers was principally against poverty and climatic conditions. The battle for Confederation was intensified by political, racial and even religious issues, though ultimately none of these was much affected, as provision was made for the autonomy of the Provinces in their own affairs. The battle for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was first of all between political gladiators who differed as to the practicability and value of it. But when construction actually began, the struggle was against rival interests, and difficult financial conditions, as well as against such terrific natural obstacles that the undertaking was looked on by some as the very climax of engineering impossibility. Now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and that both Confederation and the Railway are running smoothly, we can look back and see the giants who fought victoriously to create the conditions we now enjoy. Some of these great men did not live to see the realization of their dreams, but they died in the faith that their dreams were so good that they would come true some time. Like the gallant soldiers of all time, they fell, still gripping the sword-hilt and cheering their comrades on to victory. Let us be grateful enough to halt for a moment with bowed heads and lay a wreath of memory on their honoured graves. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, and Canada must not forget her heroes in either.
There were several causes operating, midway in the last century, to lead the older Canada of Ontario and Quebec, and also the Maritime areas of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to consider the advisability of federating together for the good of the whole. The commercial power of the United States had such a magnetic pull upon some of the provinces that the tie which held these Provinces to Britain was being subjected to some strain. Moreover, the Imperial Government noticed with some anxiety that political prejudices and feeling between the various parts of the British possessions made any concerted plan for military action difficult to accomplish. Accordingly, as it is now known and can now be told, Lord Monck, who was the Governor-General in the “sixties,” quietly used some pressure to keep Confederation before the minds of public men in the various parts of the country. Besides all that, there was very considerable difficulty in carrying on government in the Canada of Ontario and Quebec, owing to racial differences and double leadership, which meant an almost constant danger of legislative deadlock.
Moreover, the British possessions from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific were like a dumbbell, big at the ends and weak in the middle, as a Westerner once said. There were the immense areas of older Canada and the still more immense areas west of Lake Superior—but the North Shore of that inland sea was a wilderness of unproductive rock where no link of settlement would seem possible. Hence, as the aforesaid Westerner expressed it, “Canada would break off in the middle unless we linked it up with the steel trail.” There was much truth in that statement in those early days and highly important truth it was. Many, in our day, cannot realize how swiftly inter-travel and inter-trade over the pioneer railway across Canada brought the East and the West together.
All these considerations, realized out of actually existing or foreseen conditions, impelled the statesman of Canada in the 60’s to take definite steps towards confederating the old provinces and then annexing the vast territories all the way to the Pacific Coast. And here entered the giants. Thus, for instance, in 1864 that great tribune of the people, Mr. George Brown, of the Toronto Globe, reported in favour of Confederation from a committee of the Canadian Legislature. About the same time the Legislatures in Nova Scotia, mainly through the efforts of Dr. (later Sir Charles) Tupper; in New Brunswick, through the influence of Mr. Samuel L. Tilley; in Prince Edward Island, by the exertions of the Hon. W. H. Pope, passed resolutions appointing delegates to a Conference in Charlottetown for the purpose of discussing a uniting of the Maritime Provinces. When that Conference met in Charlottetown a deputation from Ontario and Quebec was received consisting of unusually strong men, namely, John A. Macdonald, George Brown, George E. Cartier, A. T. Galt, T. D’Arcy McGee, Alexander Campbell and Hector L. Langevin. As a result of the Charlottetown meeting larger horizons loomed upon the vision of that remarkable gathering. The souls of the men who then assembled yearned beyond the sky-line of their own immediate surroundings and, thinking of the extent of British Possessions in North America, they were inspired and attracted by the greater task of confederating them all into one great Dominion from sea to sea. It was a tremendous task for that early day, but the men who faced it were giants who could not rest satisfied with being cabinned and cribbed in a narrow circumference, but who said:
“No pent-up Utica confines our powers
The vast, boundless continent is ours.”
After some discussion, the Charlottetown Conference adjourned to meet as a larger gathering in Quebec City on October 10th, 1864—a red-letter day not only in the history of Canada, but of the British Empire and the world. The object of the Quebec Conference was as stated above; and therefore there were men there from all the then organized British Provinces. These were men who could have filled places in the “Mother of Parliaments” at the world’s metropolis, but who at the Quebec meeting were engaged in the, perhaps, more difficult undertaking of bringing into being, out of diverse elements, a new nation within the Empire. These men were “The Fathers of Confederation,” and the famous picture of that conference should be in every Canadian home. Etienne P. Tache, who once said that the last gun fired in North America for British connection would be fired by a French-Canadian, was chairman. From Ontario and Quebec came John A. Macdonald, George Brown, George E. Cartier, A. T. Galt, William McDougall, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Oliver Mowat, Alexander Campbell, James Cockburn, Hector L. Langevin, and Jean C. Chapais. From Nova Scotia there were Charles Tupper, W. A. Henry, Jonathan McCully and R. B. Dickey. From New Brunswick came Samuel L. Tilley, John M. Johnston, Charles Fisher, Peter Mitchell, E. B. Chandler, W. H. Steeves and John H. Gray; Prince Edward Island was represented by Colonel Gray, Edward Palmer, W. H. Pope, George Coles, Edward Whalen, T. H. Haviland and A. A. Macdonald. Newfoundland sent F. B. T. Carter and Ambrose Shea, though it was not yet to come into Confederation.
It is not our purpose, in the present writing, to dwell on this great meeting beyond saying that it led to the Confederation of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1867. Prince Edward Island entered in 1873 and the Western prairie country and British Columbia in 1870 and 1871. The two latter entered with somewhat reluctant feet; Manitoba, retarded by Louis Riel’s stand against the incoming of Canada lest the rights of the natives should be ignored; and British Columbia, unready to come in unless the railway across the continent to the Pacific Coast was guaranteed within a given time. These difficulties were finally overcome, but the details do not belong to this story. Suffice it to say that Confederation being accomplished, the new sense of national unity led to combination in the immense undertaking of a railway from sea to sea. The courageous facing of such an enormous task had no precedent in the business history of the modern world. The big Republic to the South of us has done some amazing things, such as the Panama Canal in recent years, but even that commercially daring country only attempted a transcontinental railway when it had nearly forty millions of people. Canada undertook the task when her population was less than four millions. To the onlooking world the attempt must have appeared like “a forlorn hope”—a sort of a “Charge of the Light Brigade” against batteries bristling with obstacles of a wholly unprecedented kind. But there are always some men who are unafraid, and the dream of seers was to be realized. Once Confederation had been accomplished, a transcontinental railway became a national necessity. This was true not only from the standpoint of politics and trade, but from the standpoint also of law and order in the far-flung country. It will be remembered that Louis Riel started a revolt against the incoming of Canadian authority in 1869, and that he held high carnival in the West till Colonel Garnet Wolseley and his soldiers reached Fort Garry from the East, nearly a year after the Riel outbreak started. All this period was not consumed in travel; but it had taken three months’ steady travel overland, after mobilization in the East, before Wolseley reached the scene of Riel’s revolt. The whole Western country might have been swept by the rebel chief’s revolt in that time, and the necessity of swifter communication between the different parts of Canada became painfully apparent. And so, when British Columbia came into Confederation in 1871, there was an understanding that the railway from the East to the Pacific should begin in two years and be finished in ten. This daring pledge was given by Sir John A. Macdonald and his Government at Ottawa, despite the fact that a distinguished explorer and engineer, Capt. Palliser, sent out by the Imperial Government, had reported after four years on the ground, that on account of the mountains being impassable, a transcontinental railway could not be built from sea to sea on British territory. But Sir John Macdonald went ahead and sought to interest some big business men who might form a company to build the Canadian Pacific to the Western sea.