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AA. _^^_>_^^%^^_>^___^_y^_^ THE STORY OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY BY KEITH MORRIS Author of 'Canada for British Gold and British Enterprise/ 'The Anglo-Canadian Year Book," "Louis Botha/ etc. (ILLUSTRATED) LONDON WILLIAM STEVENS LIMITED, Henrietta Streei Co vent Garden, W.C 1916 CONTENTS I.—Pathfinders pages 1-41 II.—Pathmakers 42-61 III.—Craigellachie ... 62-73 IV.—The Saving of British Columbia ... 74-86 V.—The Highway to Asia 87-92 VI.—Superstructure 93-108 VII.—The Making of a Nation ... 109-128 APPENDIX Canadian Pacific Finance: A Story in Figures 129-154 f ILLUSTRATIONS Lord Shaughnessy, Chairman and President, Canadian Pacific Railway... Frontispiece facing page A Mountain Trail Statue of Lord Mount Stephen, First President of Canadian Pacific Railway, in Windsor Street Station, Montreal Construction in the Mountains After Working Hours in a Construction Camp Canadian Pacific Trans-Continental Express at Glacier, British Columbia Sir William Van Horne Vancouver Harbour Canadian Pacific Liner : " Empress of Russia" Canadian Pacific Liner : " Metagama " On the Verandah, C.P.R. Banff Springs Hotel Mountaineering in the Rockies Settlers Arriving at Strathmore, Alberta Canada at Play The Land of Promise Windsor Street Station, Montreal : Headquarters of Canadian Pacific Railway 13 22 42 46 62 72 79 87 99 101 103 116 124 127 144 PATHFINDERS. FROM a deep canyon in the heart of a range of Canadian mountains there emerged on a September day a group of unkempt and weather-scarred men. They continued their stumbling march over a ground covered by masses of rock, fallen trees, long rank ferns, and poisonous devil's club. At mid-day they halted, wearied and hungry, and each man ate his perilously meagre rations. Then one of the party, a tall, bearded man with a commanding presence and distinguished appearance, despite the raggedness of his attire, turned to a younger man beside him and gave him a few words of instructions. The younger man fired two rifle shots in rapid succession. All the men then listened intently. The report of a gun shot was heard in reply. The rifle emitted another three shots—and again a gun shot was heard—once—twice—three times. " Thank God! we have established our connections ! " the tall, bearded man, evidently the leader, exclaimed. The longed for supplies were there as arranged. All anxiety for the future was over. The party hurried forward, eagerly and excitedly overcoming the obstacles underfoot. After a little time they halted to rest, and the young man again 2 PATHFINDERS pulled the trigger of his loaded rifle. Two shots, more distinct from their closer proximity, were heard. The men again advanced, elation marked on every countenance. Going straight in the direction of the sound, they strove to follow it. Soon they were out of the green woods and before them lay the waters of the Columbia. On the opposite shore, about a mile distant, they observed the smoke of a camp. A series of hurrahs broke from the men—their friends from Kamloops were there at the appointed meeting-place. From the opposite bank two canoes shot out. As the men in the canoes came into sight, a look of amazement and bitter disappointment sprang into the tense faces of the watchers. The canoes contained Indians—only. The two parties met at the water's edge. The Indians could not speak English, but with the help of a little " Chinook " the travellers learned that no one had arrived from Kamloops. It was the Indians who had replied to the shots. 'We were in the heart of the desert and asked for bread. We did not even get a stone, but met hungry Indians ready to devour the little store we had brought with us.' The tall, bearded man was Sandford Fleming, Chancellor of Queen's University and world-famed engineer. The younger man who fired the rifle shots was his son; the other two men were Dr. Grant, Principal of Queen's University, and Albert Rogers. Five packers completed the party which had emerged from the canyon. Sandford Fleming was PATHFINDERS making his memorable journey over the proposed route of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the mountains to the Pacific. Sandford Fleming's diary of his journey is a vivid exemplification, not only of the hardships endured and perils encountered by him and his companions, but by the men who were the first pathfinders for the railway which was to stretch in an unbroken line from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The tales of heroism, of deeds of daring and self-sacrifice performed in the endeavour to wrest from the mountains their jealously-guarded secrets, constitute a record as thrilling in its nature as the stories woven by a wizard of romance. Fleming's journey is especially historic in that it was the first human connection made between the three mountain passes discovered by Dr. Hector, Walter Moberly and Major Rogers respectively and the first over the entire route of that portion of the great transcontinental highway between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean. His narrative constitutes a permanent tribute to great explorers and brave men. S Our journey this day was over exceedingly rough ground,' reads a passage in his diary. * We have to cross gorges so narrow that a biscuit might be thrown from the last horse descending, to the bell-horse six hundred feet ahead, ascending the opposite side. The fires have been running through the woods and 4 PATHFINDERS are still burning; many of the half-burnt trees have been blown down, probably by the gale of last night, obstructing the trail and making advance extremely difficult/ Nor did the road improve as they advanced ; many miles of burnt woods still lay before them. The air was still and quiet, otherwise they would have had the additional risk of blackened tntnks falling upon them, with disastrous consequences. On they went, down and up gorges hundreds of feet deep, among rocky masses, where the horses had to clamber up as best they could amid sharp points and deep crevices. ' The trail now takes another character. A series of precipices run sheer up from the boiling current to form a contracted canyon. A path has, therefore, been traced along the hillside, ascending to the elevation of some seven or eight hundred feet. For a long distance not a vestige of vegetation is to be seen. On the steep acclivity our line of advance is narrow, so narrow that there is scarcely a foothold; nevertheless we have to follow for some six miles this thread of trail, which seemed to us by no means in excess of the requirements of the chamois and the mountain goat. \\We cross clay, rock, and gravel slides at a giddy height. To look down gives one an uncontrollable dizziness, to make the head swim and the -view unsteady, even with men of tried nerve. 11 do not think I can ever forget that terrible walk; it was the greatest trial I ever experienced, PATHFINDERS 5 We are from five to eight hundred feet high on a path of from ten to fifteen inches wide and at some points almost obliterated, with slopes above and below us so steep that a stone would roll into the torrent in the abyss below. There are no trees or branches or twigs which we can grip to aid us in our advance on the narrow, precarious footing. We become more sensible to the difficulties we encounter each step as we go forward. The sun came out with unusual power; our day's effort has caused no little of a strain, and the perspiration is running from us like water. I, myself felt as if I had been dragged through a brook, for I was without a dry shred on me.' The travellers arrived at Major Rogers' camp weary and footsore after their terrible march of many miles over rough ground high up on the mountain side, over a path every step of which was a renewed difficulty, a path crossed only because of the very desperation of their circumstances. Having entered on the journey they would not turn back, and they had to face the difficulties in their front cost what it would. Before them lay a seemingly impenetrable barrier— the Selkirk Mountains, through which the railway was to battle its way westwards. Major Rogers had discovered a pass two years before, and Sandford Fleming determined to traverse the newly-found cleft in the mountains. Rogers offered to accompany them part of the route, and to send his nephew, Albert, 6 PATHFINDERS who had accompanied him in his exploratory expedi tion, the entire distance. A horse trail had been opened to the summit of the Selkirk Range, and a short way down the Illecillewaet. Beyond that point lay the wilderness in all its native ruggedness, without a path for the human foot, with the river and mountain gorges only as landmarks and guides. Early the next morning the travellers were in a canoe floating down the Columbia River. Looking back they saw the rocky range which they had crossed at such peril. The terrace on which they stood at sunset lay along the foot of the hills, and a second terrace was seen to follow the Kicking Horse River, some twelve hundred feet high. The ground from the canyon of the Kicking Horse River ascended to this terrace, and it was along the face of this upper shelving acclivity that the narrow ledge of pathway was traced, which Fleming had followed for miles. ' I never wish to take another such walk. I dared not look down. It seemed as if a false step would have hurled us to the base, to certain death/ At noon the party left the canoe, having overtaken the packers and the horses, and proceeded on foot until they reached a rugged mountain defile, leading up to the summit, which they were to cross. The mountain peaks rose high above them, and, although it was far advanced in the forenoon, the sun had not yet ascended to the lofty horizon. They crossed many old avalanche slides. On the PATHFINDERS southern side of the mountains, as they wound their way, great scaurs, banked with snow, were seen two or three hundred feet above the bottom of the narrow valley through which a creek flowed. To the north lay a glacier some fifty yards thick at its overhanging termination. Five miles from their previous night's camp they left the creek and followed a small stream to the south. Half a mile further they reached the summit of the pass, the discovery of which had solved one of the mightiest and heart wearying problems which confronted the pathfinders for the Canadian Pacific highway. It was an occasion for celebration. ' I recollected that I had a package of cigars, a gift from a genial Ottawa friend. They had crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic with me during the present summer, and it was little thought that when they came into my possession that their aroma would mingle with the atmosphere of a summit in the Selkirk Range. They are produced. We have no wine, so we can only congratulate Major Rogers over the cigars on the discovery of a pass so far practicable and on certain conditions appearing to furnish a solution of crossing over the Selkirk Range/ I As we quietly rested, enjoying our cigars in the midst of the remarkable scenery which surrounded us on every side, Major Rogers described to us various details connected with the discovery of the pass. . . With his nephew he had climbed a mountain on its PATHFINDERS northern bank, and from the summit he looked down on the meadow on which we were then resting. Major Rogers, pointing to the height directly in front of us said :—" There Al. and I stood; we could trace through the mountains a valley, and the conclusion was established in my mind that it led to the unexplored branch of the Illecillewaet. We also traced a depression to the east, which we considered might lead to the upper waters of the Columbia. And so it proved." The travellers were in high spirits. Feeling that some memorial should be preserved of their visit there, they organised a Canadian Alpine Club. Sandford Fleming, " as a grandfather/ was appointed interim President, Dr. Grant, Secretary, and Sandford Hall Fleming, Treasurer. A meeting was held and they turned to one of the springs rippling down the Illecillewaet and drank success to the new organisation. Unanimously they carried resolutions of acknowledgment to Major Rogers, the discoverer of the pass, and to his nephew for assisting him. ' The air is bracing, the day is fine. We have regained our freshness and elasticity, and to show ^hat we still are young and unaffected by our journey we deem it proper to go through a game of leap-frog, about the only amusement at our command, an act of Olympic worship to the deities in the heart of the Selkirks! Our packers looked upon our performance gravely, without a smile/ PATHFINDERS 9 Thus and then was played the first recorded game of leap-frog in the Selkirk Mountains. The hour arrived to leave the pleasant meadow in Rogers Pass and pursue their journey. A trail had already been cut as far as it was made passable. Beyond that point the Fleming expedition would be the first to cross the Selkirk Range from its eastern base on the Upper Columbia. The descent was comparatively rapid. Soon the travellers came in sight of a conical peak which stood out majestically among its fellows. There, they thought, was a fit spot for the virgin attempt of the Canadian Alpine Club, They named it Syndicate Peak; Major Rogers declared that it would be the summit of his ambition to plant on its highest point the Union Jack on the day that the first transcontinental train passed through the gorge in which they stood. They continued along the valley walled in by mountains thousands of feet in height. Trudging slowly over the newly cut trail high up among the rocks, they descended again to the flat with all its horrors of devil's club until, at last, they reached a surveyor's camp, twenty-four miles from the summit of the pass. The horses had now to leave them, it being impossible for them to proceed further. The trail had reached its end, and the men had now to carry on their shoulders what they required, through an untrodden forest without path or trail of any kind. They said good-bye to Major Rogers and to the 10 PATHFINDERS surveyors, f In saying good-bye to them we were bidding farewell to all civilization which had forced itself into the mountains. . . . We were now turning our back on civilized life and its auxiliaries, again to meet them, we trusted, at Kamloops. Our world was for a time in our little band. We knew nothing of the country before us and we had no assistance to look for from the world behind us. We were following a tributary of the Columbia to the waters of that river, and this was the one guide for our direction. One by one we march off in Indian file to the forest/ The story of the journey through a wilderness unknown, as recorded by the diarist, is a story of hardships and suffering. Over and under fallen trees of immense size they crawled and crept, and the men soon showed that they felt the weight of their, burdens. Their halts were frequent. The dripping rain from the bush and branches saturated them from above. Tall ferns, reaching to the shoulder, and devil's club through which they had to crush their way made them feel as if dragged through a horse- pond, and the perspiration rolled from them in streams. They met with obstacles of every description. The Panax horridus were numbered by millions and they were perpetually wounding the men with their spikes as they struck against these. (' Devil's club!' a later traveller bewailed. ■ What an experience is devil's club! Imagine a bare stick an inch thick PATHFINDERS II and five to eight feet high with a spread of tropical- looking palmated leaves on the top, set off by a bunch of bright red berries. The entire surface of the stick is covered by sharp, fine spines and the canes grow so close together that sometimes it is impossible to force a way through them without using an axe. The points of the spines break off in the flesh, causing it to fester and become very painful/) The advance was varied by ascending rocky slopes and slippery masses, and again descending to a lower level. They waded through alder swamps and trod down skunk cabbage and the terrible prickly aralia. Their daily march averaged about three miles, and at the end of each all were utterly exhausted ; their first business at the frequent halting places was to extract the poison laden prickles from their hands and legs. 'Last night we discussed the suggestion of constructing a raft, and with the current float down to the Columbia. As we look upon the water foaming past us and the numerous rocks and obstacles in the stream, we are satisfied that no raft could live long in such a torrent. The valley is narrow and is skirted by lofty mountains, wooded up their sides and of considerable elevation; but owing to the height of the trees we cannot see their summit. Occasionally during the day we have beheld snow peaks peering above the lower levels. In some parts of the valley a stray sunbeam never penetrated the lower ground. p Darkness at an early hour enshrouds the base of 12 PATHFINDERS the peaks, so the cook has to bake to-morrow's bread by the light of the fire. Suddenly thunder is heard and the red glare of lightning iUuminates all around us. For some time we are threatened with rain and at length it falls in torrents. The thunder and lightning are now seen and heard through the valley, and our one danger is that a heavy wind may spring up, and, as often happens, root up many of the forest trees around us; but our trust is in Providence as we wrap ourselves in our blankets to sleep. ' By the morning the thunder had ceased and the thick tall trees around us stood erect; the air is thick with mist .... We mount our packs, for we all carry something, and start onwards for another hard day's march. 'The scene of our midday meal of cold pork and bread was the junction of two clear streams from the mountains, the more bright and crystal-like from contrast with the chocolate-looking water of the Illecillewaet. We resolve to encamp somewhat earlier, so that the men may dry their clothes by day-light. It was fair weather when we halted by a picturesque brook, tired and weary enough. The spot we selected was a turn at the Illecillewaet where the boiling, roaring torrent sweeps past with formidable fury On the river there is a forest scene of dark cedars, while here and there lie immense prostrate trunks, some of them eight or ten feet in diameter, covered with moss. Beyond the A Mountain Trail. 1 PATHFINDERS 13 river the mountains frown down upon us as defiantly as ever ' It is Sunday, so we venture to sleep a few five minutes longer, and as we hear the roar of the rapids which seem to shake the very ground, we wonder how we could have slept through it. It rained all night; none of the men had tents and they nestled by the trees and obtained what protection they could. Our waterproofs were divided among them as far as they would go, and such as did not possess them were more or less drenched. ' Looking skywards through the openings in the thick overhanging branches there seems a prospect of the clouds rising. Sunday though it be, with our supplies limited, we are like a ship in mid-ocean : we must continue our journey without taking the usual weekly rest, which would have been welcomed by us all. Dr. Grant called us together, and after the simple form of worship which the Church of Scotland enjoins under such circumstances, we start onwards. 'The walking is wretchedly bad. We make little headway, and every tree, every leaf, is wet and casts off the rain. In a short time we are as drenched as the foliage. We have many fallen trees to climb over, and it is no slight matter to struggle over trees ten feet and upwards in diameter. We have rocks to ascend and descend; we have a marsh to cross in which we sink often to the middle. For half a mile we have waded, I will not say picked, our way 14 PATHFINDERS to the opposite side, through a channel filled with stagnant water, having an odour long to be remembered. Skunk cabbage is here indigenous and is found in acres of stinking perfection. We clamber to the higher ground, hoping to find an easier advance, and we come upon the trail of a cariboo, but it leads to the mountains. We try another course, only to become entangled in a windfall of prostrate trees. ' The rain continues falling incessantly : the men, with heavy loads on their heads, made heavier by the water which has soaked into them, become completely disheartened, and at half-past two o'clock we decide to camp. Our travelling to-day extended only over three hours; we have not advanced above a mile and a half of actual distance and we all suffer greatly from fatigue. I question if our three days' march has carried us further than ten miles/ The strain of the terrible travelling began to tell upon the party, and an attempt to systematize the marching was made. ' Hitherto our rests had been irregular. Our halts were long and we were drenched with perspiration; we got chilled, so we laid down the rule to walk for twenty minutes and rest for five. Dr. Grant is appointed the quarter-master general for the occasion, with absolute authority to time our halts and our marches by the sound of a whistle, and when he sees fit to call special halts after extraordinary efforts. ' Our period of progress for twenty minutes often seems very long, and we wearily struggle through PATHFINDERS 15 the broken ground and clamber over obstacles, eagerly listening for the joyful sound to halt proclaimed by the whistle/ Thus the explorers struggled forward. In the lower canyon of the Illecillewaet they climbed from rock to rock, grasping roots and branches, scrambling up almost perpendicular ascents, ' swinging ourselves occasionally like experienced acrobats and feeling like the clown in the pantomime as he tells the children " here I am again." * At some places the loads had to be unpacked and the men had to draw each other up, by clinched hands, from one ledge to another. They had another chapter of the Kicking-Horse Valley experience; passing cautiously along a steep slope where a false step was certain disaster ; creeping under a cascade, over a point of precipitous rock and surmounting obstacles, which, unless they had to go forward or die from starvation, would have been held to be insurmountable. Was ever such a journey made by human beings before ? The very deities of the mountains, one might fancy, heralded them as heroes. 'As we were preparing to rest for the night a bright glare of lightning and a sharp peal of thunder warn us to protect our clothes as best we can against rain. We saw but one flash and heard its accompanying loud crash to remind us that each night of our descent by the Illecillewaet we have been saluted after dark by heaven's artillery/ When they emerged from the lower canyon of the i6 PATHFINDERS Illecillewaet their terrible struggles against nature in her fiercest mood were forgotten in the anticipation of the longed-for succour. ' We expect the party from Kamloops with supplies to meet us there. It is the eleventh of the month. I had named the eighth of September as the date at the latest when we should reach the place appointed/ But alas for their hopes! The provisions from Kamloops were not there—as already narrated. It was the bitterest trial of all. Sandford Fleming and his companions decided to cross the Columbia in the Indian's canoes and to send back the packers to McMillan, the surveyor, as they had promised him. ' We divided our little store of provisions with the fine fellows who had carried ouv impedimenta down the Illecillewaet so that they would have enough to take them back to McMillan's camp. I added a letter of approval to their chief. No men ever more deserved thanks than they did. They were all made of the truest and best of stuff and let me here make my acknowledgments to them for their admirable conduct. . . . These men had been put to the test, and showed of what material their manhood was made/ Arrived at the western bank of the Columbia, the little group of travellers made a fire on the beach and sat down to eat their scanty dinner, after which they seriously considered their situation. They were fatigued beyond measure, and every joint ached. PATHFINDERS 17 The skin of all of them was lacerated, in places, and their hands were festering from the pricks of the devil's club. And they had not yet come to the end of their work. They were well aware that there were tremendous difficulties yet to be met in reaching Kamloops. Their supply of food was nearly exhausted, and what they had left they had to carry themselves. They felt grievously disappointed that the men from Kamloops were not there as arranged, and their absence had a terribly depressing effect on the spirits of the party. ' Our decision as to the course we are to take cannot be long delayed, as our slender stock of provisions will last but a few days. In this painful embarrassment, and it was painful, we asked ourselves the question : Would it be prudent to go risking the chance of meeting the party from Kamloops, or do the circumstances compel us to give up the idea of crossing the Gold Range and force us to enlist the services of the Indians to take us down the Columbia, some two hundred miles to their own village, from which point we can find our way to Portland in Oregon in twelve days, and then by Puget's Sound reach our destination in British Columbia ? This mode of procedure was most repugnant to us; but, however desirous we were to cross the Gold range of mountains, we had seriously to consider the situation. I may seem to exaggerate the doubt and misgiving which had thus crossed my mind. But the facts of the case must be borne in mind that our I iS PATHFINDERS dependence rested entirely upon receiving the supplies from Kamloops; this source failing, none was open to us. Had our stock of provisions been exhausted and no Indians been present on the Columbia, I do not see that our fate would have been different to that of many an explorer: starvation. There was only one deduction to be drawn from the absence of the Kamloops party : that there had been misapprehension or misfortune, and that we could not look for assistance where we stood!' The party were in a grave dilemma. It was evident, under the circumstances, that they had to act independently of others, and, in view of the state of their provisions, they had to determine at once on the course to be taken. Their united feeling was strong that they should not abandon the Eagle Pass. They recognised that after a night's rest immediate action was imperative, that they ought in no way to delay, but to proceed onward, leaving behind them tent, blankets, baggage, and everything not absolutely required, carrying only the remnant of food they still had, with a small frying pan, and so work their way westward as best they could. Evening came on. All that was to be heard was the peculiar sound of the rapidly flowing stream and the distant roar of the Falls of the Illecillewaet, Gloom gave way to hope when five men, of whom four were Indians, appeared next morning on the flats of the Columbia, a short distance from Fleming's camp. The anxious travellers rushed to meet them ; I fcATHFINDEftS t§ their deliverers had arrived. The leader, McLean, gave Fleming letters from the Hudson's Bay Company's agent. Among them was a sheet of foolscap setting forth a list of the provisions sent. But where was the food ? The sheet of paper alone represented the provisions, for it was all that the Company's party had brought with them. The stores entrusted to them to bring to the Columbia had been cached at a point five days distant, and they had brought with them barely enough food to supply their own wants. Consternation again made its unwelcome presence felt in the minds of the travellers from the east. McLean explained. The terribly rough nature of the ground through the Eagle Pass had caused unforeseen delay. Many parts of the valley were blocked by fallen trees of gigantic size; and the obstructions, owing to masses of rock,. the lakes, swamps, and a general ruggedness, had proved to be formidable. No attempt had been made to bring on any of the provisions beyond the point which the horses could not pass. At that spot the whole was cached, and one of the Indians had been detailed to remain behind in charge of the animals. There was not a moment to be lost in making a start. It was discovered that the Indian hunters who were camped near by were well acquainted with the country for some distance back of the Columbia; it had been their hunting ground. One of these was engaged as a guide to take the party on their way 20 PATHFINDERS by the least difficult route, to the extent of his knowledge of the country. ' We imagined that we were making the best of starts. We all started forward in Indian file with that springy gait which marks men having confidence in themselves. The guide, however, led us to his own camp. He did so without explanation or remark. He entered his wigwam and we remained outside. The proceeding was inexplicable, until we learned that he had to repair his moccasins before he could start. We halted three quarters of an hour, while the squaw deliberately plied her awl and leather thong, the Indian in the meanwhile sitting motionless, smoking his pipe and looking into the embers of the fire. We could only imitate his patience and await the result. At length, in the same silent way he re-appeared and started without comment on the trail. We submissively followed. The thought crossed my mind that in this case knowledge was power/ After travelling seven miles the party reached the summit of Eagle Pass. As night came on they set fire to a hollow cedar tree. It flamed -rapidly and illuminated the scene around for the whole evening. The moon shone in the heavens, but the dense forest intervened and the camp remained in shadow. They had entered the third range of mountains and after crossing the summit had passed beyond the waters flowing into the Columbia. They had reached the waters of the Eagle River, which found their way through valley and gorge to the turbulent Eraser. 1 PATHFINDERS 21 On the third day from their entrance into Eagle Pass they arrived at the cache. Never was the sight of food more welcomed by wayfarers in the wilderness. McLean and the four Shuswap Indians, dispatched from Kamloops with supplies for the travellers, had helped to finish the meagre remnant of stores which Sandford Fleming and his companions had carried across three mountain summits from the Bow River, and the party arrived at the cache without even a crumb of bread in their possession. All was now well with the travellers, and they proceeded on their journey with fighter hearts than they had known for many a day. 'At Savona's Ferry I received messages by telegraph, and I was reminded of being once more within the circle of artificial wants and requirements. For the last thirty days we have been out of the world, knowing nothing beyond the experiences of our daily fife. Our leading thoughts were of the difficulties which lay in our path and of the labour necessary to overcome them. There was nothing vicarious in our position ; there was no transfer of care or labour to others. Each one had to accept what lay before him, and our world for the time was in our little circle. Now we are reminded that we are again in another condition of being/ There is a note of kindly lament in the closing portion of Sandford Fleming's diary of the journey, of a nature which showed the bigness of the man and leader. 'At Victoria I am to part with Dave 2_. PATHFINDERS Leigh, the last of the men who had been with us in the mountains. He joined us at Bow River, and had determined to see us to the end of our journey. From the day when we commenced with pack-horses to cross the range of mountains, Dave has stood by us and has gallantly helped in many a difficulty. He is a powerful Cheshire man, such as one would fancy a northern Englishman to be: honest, self reliant, plain-spoken and staunch, with a peculiar habit of calling a spade a spade. He has cooked for us in all circumstances, there is no other word for it, heroically. He did his share of the packing, and if there was a load a shade heavier it was caught up by Dave with some saying of his own, and off he trudged as if it were a plaything. He had done everything for us that a man could do with unfailing cheerfulness, and has followed our fortunes for many a mile. He has driven pack horses, paddled canoes, rowed boats, built rafts, stretched our tent, driven handcars, cooked our food and indulged in many a hearty objurgation at skunk cabbage and devil's club. He crosses the Straits of Georgia, and then at Victoria we have to say good-bye/ The search for a path for the Canadian Pacific Railway is an epic in adventure. It began as far back as 1857, In that year an Imperial Commission was established by the British Government ' to inquire into the suitability of the Statue of Lord Mount Stephen, First President of Canadian Pacific Railway, in Windsor Street Station, Montreal. PATHFINDERS 23 Colony of Canada for settlement and the advisability of constructing a trans-continental line of railway through British territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and thus to connect and at the same time to provide a safer and more direct means of communicating with the British possessions in the Orient/ in the official phraseology. To Captain Palliser, an officer of the Waterford Artillery Militia, was given the task of exploration. Assisting him were Lieutenant Blackiston, of the Royal Artillery, and John Sullivan as geographers, Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Hector and M. Bourgeau, as botanist. For four years the British party worked in the wilderness—a wilderness extending from the British boundary line to the height of land in the far north, and from the western shores of Lake Superior to the waters of the Pacific. Over the plains and through mountain passes they carried on the work of investigation. The Palliser expedition is memorable in the history of the Canadian Pacific in that one of the great passes through which the railway now follows—the Kicking Horse—was discovered by Dr. Hector, an event commemorated in the granite shaft which was later erected in his honour near the " Great Divide." Dr. Hector and his party suffered intensely from the pangs of hunger, caused by the unanticipated scarcity of game. Near the confluence of two rivers, the leader received a severe and painful kick from one of the 24 PATHFINDERS pack horses, an episode which gave the name Kicking Horse to the river and to the pass. But the relentless necessities of hunger compelled the explorer, disabled and wracked by pain, to proceed without delay, and at the utmost speed possible in the circumstances. Success crowned his efforts. ' In that pass/ said Captain Palliser, referring to the discovery, ' Dr. Hector has observed a peculiarity which distinguished it from others we have examined, viz: the absence of any abrupt step at the commencement of the descent to the west. This led him to report very favourably upon the faculties offered by this pass for the construction of a wagon road, and even the project of a railway by this route across the Rocky Mountains might be reasonably entertained/ But Captain Palliser's report to the Imperial Commission shattered the hopes of the British Government. It was an unqualified disapproval. 'I cannot recommend the Imperial Government to countenance or lend support to any scheme for constructing, or it may be said, forcing a thoroughfare by this line of route, either by land or water, as there would be no immediate advantage commensurate ■with the required sacrifice of capital; nor can I advise such heavy expenditure as would necessarily^ attend the construction of an exclusively British line of road between Canada and the Red River Settlement. .... The knowledge of the country as a whole would never lead me to advocate a line of communis cation from Canada across the continent to the PATHFINDERS 25 Pacific, exclusively through British territory. The time has now for ever gone by for effecting such an object, and the unfortunate choice of an astronomic* boundary fine has completely isolated the Central American possessions of Great Britain from Canada in the east, and almost debarred them from any eligible access from the Pacific Coast on the west/ Before Captain Palliser returned to England to present his report, he met at Victoria a man who was afterwards to play a prominent part in the pathfinding for an overland railway to the Pacific— Walter Moberly. To Moberly Palliser said that all hopes of obtaining a feasible line by which to construct a railway through British Columbia would have to be abandoned, as the Gold range of mountains, immediately to the west of the Columbia river presented an unbroken and impassable barrier. Walter Moberly had his own opinion on the subject. Five years later, having been appointed assistant to the Surveyor General for British Columbia, he organized a fight party to explore the Gold, Selkirk, and Rocky Mountains. He soon reached the Great Shuswap Lake and made a forced march to its south arm, where he observed a valley running easterly, apparently through the Gold Range, and in the very direction in which the explorer wished to find a pass. ' I arrived at the Eagle River and on the top of a tree near its mouth I saw a nest full of eaglets, and 26 PATHFINDERS the two old birds on a limb of the same tree. I had nothing but a small revolver in the shape of firearms ; this I discharged eight or ten times at the nest, but could not knock it down. The two birds, after circling round the nest, flew up the valley of the river; it struck me then, if I followed them, I might find the much wished for pass.* Circumstances prevented the explorer from following the river through the valley for more than a short distance. He returned to the head of Shuswap Lake and conducted his party over the watershed to the Columbia River. He then dispatched his Indians for more supplies, and, accompanied by Perry, ' the mountaineer/ and an Indian boy in a canoe they had made from a tree, started down the Columbia to connect with a branch party at the head of Upper Arrow Lake. ' We swept along at a grand rate and, at last, found the river getting narrow, with high rocky banks and overhanging cliffs. I was in the middle of the canoe taking bearings, estimating distances, etc., the Indian boy in the bow and Perry steering. The boy suddenly exclaimed :—" Wake closhe chuck—konaway name- luce " : "Bad water—all will be killed" ; he put in his paddle and lay down in the bottom of thcr canoe. I crawled over him, and, getting hold of his paddle, Perry and I managed to keep the canoe out of the whirls that threatened to suck us down. At one moment we were on the edge of one of these dangerous places, and the next swept a hundred PATHFINDERS 27 yards away by a tremendous " boil." Sometimes one end of the canoe became the bow, and at other times the opposite end; but at length we reached a little sandy cove and landed in still water. We had run the " Little Dalles " without knowing it.' Moberly, like Sandford Fleming on another occasion, met with disappointment through the non-arrival of the connecting party at the appointed meeting-place. He returned up the river, in which they had recently come face to face with Death, the poling against the terrific current demanding herculean efforts. At a landing-place he came across a link with the past in the shape of a very old blaze on a fir tree. On this blaze were inscribed the latitude and longitude, signed by David Thompson, astronomer and explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, with the date A.D. 1828. Moberly's latitude agreed with that of the Englishman, their longitudes differing slightly. ' It was valuable information for me,' Moberly generously acknowledged. The intrepid traveller now ascended the mountains on the west side of the Columbia River, for the purpose of reaching the ridge range and following it to the boundary line, if need be, in his search for a pass. From the summit of a high peak he saw a valley extending to the far off Shuswap Lake, and a continuation of it running westerly to the Columbia River, and also a valley extending far to the southward. ' Was this the anxiously wished for pass ? How 28 PATHFINDERS much depended upon it? How would it affect the future prospects of British Columbia? These and many other questions passed through my thoughts during that almost sleepless night. Before daylight, leaving my companions, who could not understand my hurry, to follow after me, I was off to the bottom of the valley and, on reaching the stream, found the water flowing westward and a low valley to the eastward. I blazed a cedar tree and wrote upon it:— " This is the pass for the Overland Railway." ' Walter Moberly had discovered the path in which, twenty years later, the rails from the east met those from the west and the last spike was driven. With the incident of the eagles in his mind he named it Eagle Pass. The explorer's self-designed task was not yet completed. Grim work lay ahead of him. Entering the Selkirks by the deep gorge-like valley of a river which joined the Columbia from the east immediately opposite the mouth of Eagle Pass—the valley from which Sandford Fleming and his companions emerged eighteen years later, weary, worn and hungry, looking for food which was not there—he forced his way through dense underbrush, incessant cold rain, over jagged rocks and fallen trees to the forks where it~ divided into two streams of nearly equal size. The general bearing of one valley above the forks was north-east; that of the other nearly east. The latter valley was evidently one that, judging from its general bearing, would be most likely to afford a PATHFINDERS 29 pass in the desired direction, and Moberly decided to follow it. But the Indians had not the dauntless spirit of their leader. The explorer tried to induce them, by every possible persuasion, to accompany him all the way across the Selkirk Range. All his efforts were unavailing. Winter had set in, they said, and the party would be caught in the snow and never get out of the mountains. Death lay ahead. Moberly, to his chagrin, had to abandon his exploration of the valley. He reported to the British Columbian Government that it was his belief that the only feasible pass through the Selkirk Range would probably be found in that region, and urged that future explorations should be made in the direction of the south-easterly branch of the river, which he had named the Illecillewaet, in the nomenclature of the Indians who were with him, meaning ' a very rapid stream/ Sixteen years afterwards, acting on this suggestion, Major Rogers traversed the valley and discovered the pass through which the railway was destined to cross the Selkirks. The entrance of British Columbia into the Confederation of Canada, in 1871, was an epoch making event in the history of the Canadian Pacific. In the terms of union the Canadian Government undertook to secure the commencement, within two years, of a railway from the Pacific Ocean towards the Rocky 3<> PATHFINDERS Mountains, and from a point east of the Rocky Mountains towards the Pacific, having in view a through line of railway to connect the sea-board of British Columbia with the Atlantic, and to complete the transcontinental system within ten years from the date of the union. The work of exploration and surveying was entrusted to Sandford Fleming as engineer-in-chief. It was a stupendous undertaking. Through the forests of Ontario, along the rugged shores of Lake Superior— a vast inland sea—across the buffalo-tracked prairies of the North-West Territory, and over five hundred miles of towering mountains beyond, a route had to be discovered and surveyed. Attached to the army of surveyors were specialists, whose duty it was to study and report on the botanical, geological, clima- tological, and topographical features of the country, both along the proposed fine of the railway and in the tributary territory. The location of a telegraph was also undertaken ; the great railway engineer had his dream of a Canadian Pacific oceanic cable, connecting the Dominion with China, Japan, India, and Australasia, a dream the subsequent realisation of which was an outstanding achievement in a noble career. From Ottawa to Red River the surveying parties had to overcome physical obstacles of the most trying nature. The country was practically unknown. The few fur traders who penetrated the region followed the canoe routes of lakes and rivers, and the region PATHFINDERS 31 in the interior had never been trodden by civilized man. Dense forest with heavy undergrowth barred the way of the pathfinders, who had to literally hew their way westward. The work on the prairies was less ardous, although it had its own peculiar difficulties. In the mountains the obstacles were on a gigantic scale. Rocks, forests of fallen trees, rushing torrents of glacial origin—all had to be traversed. ' Deeds as worthy of record as any ever done in battle/ says Begg, ' were of almost daily occurrence on the C.P.R. surveys, and, although they have not yet formed the subject of romance or poem, the heroes of them can look with pride to the result of their pluck and endurance : the Canadian Pacific Railway—a lasting monument to Canadian enterprise and patriotism/ The Canadian Pacific surveyors had their own anthem, written by one of themselves. In every camp, from Lake Superior to the heart of the Rockies, they sang their song of cheer, forgetting the toils and vicissitudes of the day in the merry glow of the camp fire, their voices awaking echoes which had never before responded to human notes. ' The C.P.S.,' sung to the air of Les Deux Gendarmes, has earned the right to a place among the folk songs of Canada: Far away from those we love dearest, Who long and wish for home, The thought of whom each lone heart cheereth, As 'mid these North-West wilds we roam. 32 PATHFINDERS Yet still each one performs his duty and gaily sings: Tra, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, Hurrah! the jolly C.P.S.! They're at home upon Superior's shore, Hurrah! we'll drink to them success, And a safe return once more. From all parts of our new Dominion As strangers each the other met, We'll strive for each one's good opinion, And part with nothing but regret. And as we trudge along the line, boys, We'll gaily sing: Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, Hurrah! the jolly C.P.S.! In the woods or prairies, wild and free, Hurrah! we'll drink to them success, Wherever they may be. When home in spring we are returning, A tired and weather-beaten band, We'll find the lamp of love still burning For us, by some fair, constant hand. For wives and sweethearts—cheer them hearty, And gaily sing :— Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, Hurrah! the jolly C.P.S.! Hurrah! for those at home we love so dear, May Heaven each loved one there bless, For sweet home we'll raise a cheer. PATHFINDERS 33 It is an anthem hallowed by memories of the wilderness. For ten years Sandford Fleming and his assistants laboured at their task. In initiating the work the chief drew up a general plan of action. He urged that every effort should be directed to the discovery of the shortest and best route through the forest region, from Ottawa to the Red River, which would touch or connect with Lake Superior; that the line over the prairie should traverse the best area for future settlement, and that the greatest possible energy should be brought to bear on the work of exploration in the Rocky Mountains zone in order to discover a practicable line which would best subserve the interests of the country, and lead to the most eligible harbour on the Pacific coast. The problem of the mountains was the greatest problem of all. The difficulties met with in the mountain region was so great that the engineers were almost baffled. At the end of 1875 thirteen separate lines had been run through the valleys of British Columbia, eleven of which converged from their coast termini to the Yellow Head Pass, and the end was not in sight. Year after year the work was carried on, fine after line was located and abandoned, till in the autumn of 1879, an Order-in-Council was passed, adopting the route through the Yellow Head Pass to Burrard Inlet, on the Pacific Ocean. The importance of the mass of information gathered 34 £ATHFlftDEl-§ by the Canadian Pacific surveyors is inestimable. For the first time Canadians learned the true value of the ' Great Lone Land/ The wilderness of the West was transformed into a Land of Possibilities. From the inception of the explorations and surveys, in 1871, until the year 1880, the enterprise was in the hands of the Dominion Government. In that year the great undertaking was transferred by the Government to a corporation which was destined to become a household name throughout the world—the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Events now moved rapidly. The Company decided to change the route selected by the Government to a more southerly direction. Attention was turned to the Bow River and Kicking Horse passes, and the valley of the Columbia. Major Rogers, who had been appointed engineer in charge of the mountain division, discovered the gateway of the Selkirks. Moberly had sixteen years before discovered the path through the Gold Range on the same course, and the new fine was tentatively adopted. Verily, the mists were clearing. The story of Major Rogers' discovery of the pass which bears his name has been written by his nephew, Albert Rogers, who accompanied his uncle on his expedition up the Illecillewaet valley. It is a thrilling record of intrepid fearlessness and adventurous energy. The spirit of the man—an American—was PATHFINDE&S 35 exemplified in the boldness of his plans. His purpose was to make his way from the Pacific coast across an unknown mountain region and meet his assistants, whom he had despatched by a well travelled route to Bow River Gap, on the east side of the Rockies, at the end of two months* time. By his indomitable push he accomplished his object, fifteen days later than the time set, having covered all but about one hundred miles of the mountain portion of route as finally adopted, and having made a long detour into the United States for supplies. Twenty-two days were consumed in travelling from St. Paul to Kamloops, where the outfit was secured for the journey through the wilderness. Eight days more were absorbed in estimating distances: trying to find out how far an Indian could travel between suns with-one hundred pounds on his back and no trail, how little food he would require to do it—the exigencies of exploration prohibit superfluous burdens —and what kind of food was best under such conditions ; what protection from the weather would be required and the possibilities of supplementing the larder by killing game. After much trouble, which resulted in subsidising the Indian Chief, Louie, and with the assistance of the priest in charge of the Mission, ten strapping Indians were enlisted under a contract which Albert Rogers admits was of rather an ironclad nature : their services would be given without grumbling until discharged, and if any went back without a letter of good report, his wages would wr 36 PATHFINDERS go to the church, and the chief would lay one hundred lashes on the bare back of the offender! These essential prehminaries arranged, Major Rogers chartered a small steamer to take the party to mouth of Eagle River on Shuswap Lake. Landing at the mouth of the Eagle, the two explorers bade farewell to the last sign of civilization. An old canoe was found at the mouth of the river and this was utilised in transporting the outfit as far as possible. After caching the canoe and taking their packs on their backs, they discovered that, meagre as the commissary seemed, it was not possible to carry it along in its entirety. The necessary cachings and returns made the journey across the Gold Range to the Columbia one of fourteen days of hard travel. On reaching the Columbia, they built a raft of cedar logs large enough to carry the supplies and the explorers, the Indians svdrnming, with one hand pushing the raft to make the crossing, and landed a mile above the mouth of the Illecillewaet. From now they pushed forward, making twenty- minute runs, with five minute rests, picking their way over mudfalls, scaling perpendicular rock-points, wading through beaver swamps dense with underbrush and the fiendish devil's clubs, the Indians balancing all the time one hundred pounds on the back of the neck. ' I am convinced,' says Albert Rogers, ' but for the fear of the penalty of returning without their letters of good report, our Indians would have deserted us.' PATHFINDERS 37 Although at this season the days were very long and the party travelled from early till late, they were five days making sixteen miles. Reaching the forks of the Illecillewaet, they followed the valley which Moberly had described in his report as the direction most likely to lead to a pass through the Selkirks— the direction he would have taken had not his Indians refused to accompany him. A mile and a half from the mouth of the east fork they came to a wonderful canyon, where the river, far below, was compressed into a narrow, roaring, boiling torrent. This gorge > was later named Albert Canyon by Dr. Grant during/ his journey with Sandford Fleming, in honour of Major Rogers* nephew. For five days their course was across snow avalanches some of which had started from the very peaks and had left a clean path behind them, crushing huge trees into matchwood. On and on they struggled until they reached a point where the stream seemed to fork, and in front of Major Rogers there appeared the main range of the Selkirks. The whole success of his journey and the possibilities of getting a direct route for the great national thoroughfare depended upon the gateways that might be at the head of either of these streams. At the forks the travellers decided to cache everything that would impede travel, and make a forced march up the north fork to the summit. Taking all the Indians with them—they did not dare to leave the Shuswaps with the supplies, which were getting 38 PATHFINDERS alarmingly low, and short rations had already begun to tell on the party by the number of holes they had taken up in their belts—Major Rogers and his nephew, with two days* rations, started over the crust of snow, keeping in the lee of the great mountains which they had named Syndicate (afterwards changed to Mount Sir Donald), and in the shadow of which they travelled until they arrived at a large level opening. This they crossed and discovered that the water divided there, running east and west. From the opening of the summit they had seen a strip of forest extending about half-way up the mountain between two snow-slides, and decided to make an ascent at that point. Cutting each a good tough, dry, fir stick and adjusting their light packs, the party began to climb. The terrible travelling with heavy loads through the valley, soaked to the skin by rain and wet brush, wading in snow and ice-water, and sleeping in but one-half pair of blankets to each man, had begun to show on all their faces. Gaunt as greyhounds, their lungs and muscles were of the best, and they soon reached the timber line, where the climbing became very difficult. They crawled along the ledges, getting a toe-hole here and a finger-hole there, keeping in the shade as much as possible and kicking toe-holes in the snow crust. When several hundred feet above the timber line, the men followed a narrow ledge around a point that was exposed to the sun. Four of the Indians in the lead had tied their pack-straps to each other's belts in order to help over bad places. PATHFINDERS 39 The leader had made several attempts to gain the ledge above by crawling on the soft snow. Then a catastrophe happened. By some awkward move the Indian fell backward with such force as to miss the ledge upon which the other three stood. Headlong the four fell, striking upon a very steep incline some thirty feet below. Down this they rushed, rolling and tumbling, tangled up in their pack straps, until they disappeared from view over another ledge. ' Our hearts were in our mouths/ Albert Rogers narrates, ' fearing the worst might have happened to them. Dead Indians were easily buried, but men with broken legs, to be carried out through such a country and with barely food enough to take us back to the Columbia River on a forced march, made a problem which even strong men dreaded to face. Anyone who has been a mountain climber knows that there are times when going down is a great deal more dangerous and difficult than going up. Slowly descending, we had nearly reached the timber line when one of the Indians, with an exclamation, pointed to four black specks moving across a snow-slide far below. Our glasses were quickly turned on them. There they were, and, to our great relief, all were on their pins making down the mountain as fast as possible/ The travellers had lost several hours of the best part of the day for climbing, but they had started for the top and what Major Rogers purposed that he performed. The sun had long set in the western heavens when they reached the summit. 40 PATHFINDERS The extreme exhaustion of the explorers was forgotten in the panorama of glory which spread before them. ' Such a view! Never to be forgotten! Our eyesight carried from one bold peak to another for miles in all directions. The wind blew fiercely across the ridge, and scuddy clouds were whirled in the eddies behind the great towering peaks of bare rocks. Eveiything was covered with a shroud of white, giving the whole landscape the appearance of snow- clad desolation. Far beneath us was the timber-line, and in the valleys below the dense timber seemed but a narrow shadow which marked their course. We had no wood for fire, no boughs for beds, were wet with perspiration and eating snow to quench our thirst; but the grandeur of the view, sublime beyond conception, crowded out all thoughts of our discomforts/ ' Standing upon a narrow ridge at that great elevation, mid nature crowned by solitude, where a single false move would land one in the Great Beyond, man feels his weakness and realizes how small is human effort when compared with the evidences of nature's forces/ Crawling along this ridge, the explorers came to a small ledge protected from the wind by a great perpendicular rock. There they decided to wait until the crust again formed on the snow and the morning fight enabled them to travel. At ten o'clock it was still twilight in the peaks, but the valleys below were filled with the deepest gloom. The shivering men PATHFINDERS 41 wrapped themselves in their scanty blankets and nibbled at their dry meat and bannock; stamping their feet in the snow to keep them from freezing, and taking turns at whipping each other with their pack straps to keep up circulation of the blood. Two years after Major Rogers' discovery of Rogers Pass, Sandford Fleming made his historic journey at the request of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and reported favourably on the feasibility of the proposed route through the mountain passes. Canada's great highway was found. PATHMAKERS. After the pathfinders, the pathmakers. A mighty work was theirs, a work worthy of the Trojans. For nigh three thousand miles these builders built, spanning a continent with a line of steel, hacking and dynamiting their way from ocean to ocean, toiling, sweating, and cursing, but ever going forward. Through forests, over swamps and rivers, over prairies, through rocks and mountains they laid the rails. From all parts of the world were gathered men for the army— Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Teutons, Latins, Slavs, Mongolians and Hybrids—a veritable army of construction, with engineers as officers and William Van Home as Commander-in-Chief. Two phases of the great achievement stand out, pre-eminent,—the construction of the line along the shore of Lake Superior, and the building through the mountains west of the prairies. In his preliminary and personal survey of the wilderness on the north shore of Lake Superior, Van Home found what he afterwards described as " two hundred miles of engineering impossibilities." The country through which it was necessary to traverse was a waste of forest, rock and " muskegs," or swamps. Almost every mile of the road had to be hewn, blasted, or filled up. Enemies of the railway cried out that this portion of the line would alone take twenty years to build—if construction were possible. 42 *1 Sbn Huwg ^*2S ^^E SpS_* K^j^plf OT i^^^^^f^^^R^B ^p^ii^tv H [? O JM ||fe^>'^: _ &£fjjj _-_BK5f_____l 8 ____fc_l tS-f j_5______l 1 H wbmKf TKjH | 8 0 H O fff&-~ ..- \\ \\ )____! 9___t f«_. „____&**5ff i % |«^f^B Constr fffJBltM W^^Mf: - % PATHMAKERS 43 It was built in four. But the work was tremendous. Of the twelve million dollars expended on the construction of this section of two hundred miles, over two million dollars were literally blown up—in explosives. Twelve thousand men, two thousand teams of horses, and twelve steamers for the transport of material and provisions were employed in the work. But gigantic as was the task of building the line along the rock embedded shores of Canada's inland sea, it sinks into comparative insignificance when compared with the stupendous exploit of crossing the mountains. Only the traveller who has journeyed through this mountain zone, with its cloud-splitting peaks, wild and gloomy canyons and roaring mountain torrents can realise—and but vaguely realise—the nature of this unequalled feat of construction. Every conceivable engineering problem was encountered and overcome. ' Every foot of the mountain division of the road was contested and probably every mile of tunnel and track was sealed with the blood of men. The bridging of fathomless chasms and the piercing of many mountains were accomplished only after herculean labour. There are bridges on this mountain division that hang in air— mere spider webs of iron—three hundred and odd feet above the river they span. There are places where masonry is plastered, so to speak, against the solid rock of mountains. There are ledges midway between heaven and earth, and elevations where the whirling trains plunge headlong into clouds and deep. E 44 PATHMAKERS cool ravines where the road bed- disputes with the darkness the realms of mysterious mountain torrents. There are miles of tunnels and bridges without number/ The mountain portion of The Canadian Pacific Railway stands for all time as a monument to the dauntless hearts and daring genius of its engineer- builders, giants among men. Among the rank and file of the army of construction in the mountains was a young man, known by the nickname of " Texas," an appellation bestowed upon him by a working companion by reason of the huge brimmed hat he wore. Obviously a man of education, the Englishman had become ' Arbiter elegantiarum' for the particular gang of which he was a member, and in the evening he and his companions would gather around the fire, exchanging yarns, singing songs, and in other ways manifesting their appreciation of the hours of rest after the hard work of the day. " Texas" has narrated his experiences in the Canadian Pacific railroad camps. But his readers know him by his real name—Morley Roberts. ' We were a strange gathering at night-time/ the author muses, ' and not without elements of the picturesque, I fancy, in our strange interior of log-hut and its confused forms on blocks of wood before the fire, which burnt brightly and threw a glare on the darkness through the entrance, that did not boast a door, but only a rude portiere of sewed sacks. We PATHMAKERS 45 sang at times strange melancholy unknown ditties of love in the forests, songs of Michigan or Wisconsin, redolent of pine odour and sassatras, or German Liede, for we were more cosmopolitan than a crowd of EngHshmen would be at home, and did not insist only on what we could understand. I myself often sang to them both English and German and Italian songs, and it seems strange to me now to think that these forests heard from me the strains of Mozart's "L'Addio," sung doubtless out of tune, as it was also out of place, perhaps, and the rigorous tune of "La donna e mobile." But even songs like these were appreciated, and often called for, with "Tom Bowling," or some other English sea songs. Then we would tell each other stories or yarns, and I would repeat some of my travels in Australia for them, or explain how large London was, or tell those who had never seen the ocean, stories of my own and my brother's voyages or those of the great English sea-captains.' ' Such evenings came to be a recognised institution. . I wrote for them a song which was very much admired as the culmination of genius. It was a song of the C.P.R., or Canadian Pacific Railroad, and all I remember is the chorus, which was : ' For some of us are bums, for whom work has no charms, And some of us are farmers, a-working for our farms, But all are jolly fellows, who come from near and far, To work up in the Rockies on the C.P.R. 46 PATHMAKERS ' From which specimen,' the author is careful to explain, I the reader will not estimate my poetical powers so highly as the simple railroad men/ In these musical gatherings the men had the example of their chief ; for is it not recorded that sometimes after night-fall the strains of some classic aria would float out over the wild mountain passes—strains from a violin played by William Van Home, greatest of railroad builders? Song and music awakened the echoes of the mountains as the shadows of night fell on the railway camps, but hard and strenuous work was the order of the day. Morley Roberts depicts this, the all-important phase of the railroaders' life, as experienced by him. ' In the daytime there was the usual labour, such as drilling holes in the rock to blast it with powder, whose explosion sometimes threw the heavy stones a hundred yards into the torrents of the foaming river. We would dodge behind trees and get into all sheltered places till the shot was fired, then come out again and take away the debris, hammering the larger blocks to pieces and shovelling up the smaller into the carts. Then there were slopes to make smooth and round rocks and stones to be picked up from the borders of the Kicking Horse, to make a " rip-rap " or stone wall at the bottom oi the embankment, where the river would shape it when swollen with melted snow. It was often laborious and wearisome, and I never looked at the scenery except, perhaps, when After Working Hours in a Construction Camp PATHMAKERS 47 clouds gathered overhead, and rain-mist crawled along the ramparts of the hill, filling the valley, until a shower would come upon us suddenly and as suddenly depart; for then, when the mountain wind rolled up cloud and mist, the sun shone bright upon the hills above, dazzling our eyes with a sheet of new snow that had fallen on us below as rain. ' Our camp was right on the banks of the river, which ran in a sharp curve round the base of the hill through which the tunnel was being cut. The Kicking Horse was furious as usual there, rushing at the rocks which impeded its course and breaking about them in foam, or leaping with a swing and a dive over the lower and rounded boulders. Beyond it, on the other bank, was a thick wall of pine and fir, and overhead the vast slope of mountain. Our side was decorated with a medley of various-shaped tents, round and square and oblong, so that it was difficult at night for a stranger to avoid tripping himself up with the pegs and ropes, or half strangling himself with the stays carried from the ridge-poles to the trees growing about all the encampment. Besides the tents there were two large log-huts or shanties, built out of half-squared timbers with the bark only partly removed, and up a little slope, on the other side of the road which ran through the camp, stood a little log-house and kitchen for the accommodation of some of the " bosses " and the head contractors. Beyond this the hill ran up gradually into a maze of fallen timber, with one little melancholy cleared space, where a simple and rude 48 PATHMAKERS grave held the body of an unknown and friendless man who had been killed some short time before I came. And still further on was the summit of the low hill under which the tunnel was to be, and above again mountain piled on mountain. ' The work was of a hazardous and dangerous character. The hill was being attacked on both sides at once, and at the west end, down stream, the tunnel was advanced to some distance, but at the east end, though there, too, the hole had been run into the hill, the work was to do over again, owing to the tunnel having " caved " in, in spite of the huge timbers. ' The hill was composed of gravel on the top, then a thick stratum of extremely tenacious blue clay, and beneath that a bed of solid concrete which required blasting. We had to remove the immense mass of clay and gravel which had come down when the " cave" had occurred, and to cut back into the hill some distance until it appeared solid enough for the new tunnel to be commenced. As the cut in the hill was now very deep, we worked on three " benches." . . . The highest gang worked in comparative safety ; the next in some peril, as they had to look out for the rocks that might fall in their own bench and for those from the upper bench as well; but the lowest gang were in danger of their lives all the time, as from both benches above them came continually what rocks escaped the vigilance of those working over their heads. ' I worked here myself, and without any exaggera- PATHMAKERS 49 tion I can say I never felt safe, for every minute or so would come the cry : " Look out below! " or " Stand from under!" and a heavy stone or rock would come thundering down the slope right amongst us.' ' In the gray half-light of the early morning/ narrates another worker in the mountains, ' but little imagination would have been needed to believe that the dimly-seen forms which peopled the rocky river banks were the advance guard of an army making its laborious way towards some naturally fortified stronghold. So at least it seemed to me as each morning I pursued my difficult and often dangerous path to the particular part of the work on which I was engaged. Here, in the mountains, the right of way followed the river canyons, sometimes close down to the edge of a torrent, again pressing high up on the side of some tremendous valley, every here and there crossing a deep ravine, mere clefts in the gigantic towering bulk of rocks, at the bottom of which, perhaps hundreds of feet below our path, ran turbulent, brawling streams of wonderfully clear, ice-cold water. ' Looking ahead it would seem as if the grade must inevitably run straight into some one of the stupendous mountains which barred its progress, but inevitably there was some way round. Perhaps the river would be crossed suddenly, and the road He along the farther bank, only to re-cross the stream a few hundred yards farther on, seeming to spring from the last foothold on the steep slope ending in a sheer precipice, to the rocky abutment on the farther side which offered a 50 PATHMAKERS fresh chance of clinging to its weather-beaten crags. Or, perhaps, a tunnel would have to be cut through a seemingly impassable spur of rock overhanging the river bed itself, and again a new valley would open up for the road to follow. ' The work proceeded in the winter as in the summer, but with increasing discomfort. Steadily, steadily every day, the white soft snowflakes fell, so soft, so wet, and so impalpable that one hardly knew whether it was snowing or raining except that, as one climbed wearily over the path back to camp in the dark, an incautious mis-step proved that the depth was greater than in the morning. ' Long before daylight the men would start down the path, each in turn stopping before the door of the powder house to pick up a keg of powder, or, if he was unlucky, a box of d*ynamite. ' Then to work, and, perhaps, a wait till it got fight enough to see to smite the drill fairly on the head. The darkness cleared away slowly. The wet flakes, instead of striking invisibly, could now be distinguished from the air by sight. Next, the timber at the far side of the river loomed out from the river mists, and the mists themselves seemed to clear off and hang like a ceiling across from the trees on one side to the rough rock on the other. ' Presently the chant arose, and clink! clink! the hammers went on the drill, stopping every now and then while the drill-holder scraped out the powdered rock from the depths of the hole with a long thin rod PATHMAKERS 51 flattened at the end. Perhaps the hole was too deep for striking, and then a long churn-drill came into use : left, half-turn, downward drive ; left, turn again, and so on, boring its way twenty, or even thirty feet into the solid rock. ' When a row of such holes had been drilled, and the drilling gang moved on to fresh work, the holes would be all charged with powder, fuses placed in position, and the charges tightly " tamped " down with clay. Then, while the call: "Fire, Fire, F-i-r-e!" warned all and sundry to get to cover, the fuses were touched off. A second later the whole face of the rock heaved outwards to the river, and the valley roared with the echoes of the terrific explosion. How the echoes rang, too! First, concussion of the blast and the near-by echoes of the woods, river, and foggy pall; then rattle and bang up and down the valley, gradually dying away to nothing, only to start into renewed fife as the sound reached some distant, tremendous precipice, the new crash echoing and re-echoing from every crag that had been awakened by the first explosion, till one would swear that the whole valley was full of big guns, and that an artillery duel was at its height/ From the Pacific eastwards to Kamloops, a distance of two hundred and thirteen miles, seven thousand men, mostly Chinese, were meanwhile vigorously hewing their way. This part of the railway was constructed by the Dominion Government. The contrac- 52 PATHMAKERS tors had a formidable task. Between Yale and Lytton the Fraser River had cut its way through the Cascade Mountains, plunging in foaming cataracts through deep lateral gorges, flanked in places by spurs of perpendicular rock, and offering a continuous resistance to the pathmakers. Along nineteen miles of the route thirteen tunnels had to be pierced. In many places the roadway had to be hewn out of the rock. The work was of a dangerous nature, the men being often lowered hundreds of feet down almost perpendicular cliff for the purpose of blasting a foothold on the mountain side. Supplies had to be sent to the camps on pack animals over trails ' never before deemed practicable except by Indians, and by them only with the aid of ladders.* As the work advanced transportation became even more difficult, until it was resolved to attempt the passage of the ferocious Fraser canyon to the navigable water above, and a steamer was built for the purpose. But where could be found the daring navigators who would pilot the vessel through the turbulent and angry waters of the wildest of all the world's canyons ? It was a task to strike terror to the heart of the boldest. ' One captain after another, looking at the tiny craft and at the " Scylla and Charybdis" beyond, declared the feat impossible,' records Begg. 'At length two brothers consented to undertake the task. With a steam winch and capstan, and several large hawsers, they set forth on their voyage, with a crew of seventeen men, the steamer being in charge of a PATHMAKERS 53 skilled engineer. The severest struggle was at a point called China Riffle, where the power of the engines and steam winch, with fifteen men at the capstan, and a hundred and fifty Chinamen laying hold of one of the ropes, barely sufficed to pull the vessel over the shoals. Overcoming the difficulty and passing through Hell Gate and Black Canyon, where the stream runs at some twenty miles an hour, the Skuzzy was able to convey her first load of freight from Boston Bar/ Work on the prairies proceeded with a rapidity unparalleled in the history of railway construction. In fifteen months' time, notwithstanding a winter's interruption, over seven hundred miles of track were laid by the contractors, a feat which roused the admiration of the vigorous Van Home himself. The camp of each considerable " outfit" on the prairies presented an almost military appearance. One or two large dining-tents, with the cooks' quarters and the office tent were generally in the centre. All round stood orderly lines of small two-man tents, and at one side the big horse tents and the rows of wagons. ' Early dawn brought the cry of " Roll out, teamsters," from the " corrall boss," and by the time the men had shaken themselves out of their blankets the horses—herded during the night by " horse wranglers "—had been driven in ready to be caught and fed. Then breakfast, followed by the cry of " Hook up" from the foremen, and the whole 54 PATHMAKERS force would commence its first five-hour stretch of work. " Unhook " at noon, and dinner; another five hours' work before supper; and then—the blankets, till the morning of a new day/ Thus progressed the mighty work of conquering a wilderness. While the army of railway builders were fighting their way victoriously through mountains and forests, over plains and rivers and swamps, the organizers of the Company were fighting their own grim battles in the realms of finance—fighting for the money which was to supply the sinews of war. The story of their struggles and ultimate victory is as thrilling as the story of construction. Ere victory was secured George Stephen, and his cousin, Donald Smith had mortgaged their very homes, but through all vicissitudes the flag was held high. In the terms of the contract—the most eventful contract ever entered into between a Government and a commercial corporation—the Dominion Government agreed ' to complete and hand over to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company the line between Port Arthur and Winnipeg and the line from Savona's Ferry to Port Moody, and a branch already complete from Emerson to Winnipeg ; also to grant the Company a cash bonus of twenty-five million dollars and twenty- five million acres of land.' The Company on their part pledged themselves to build the intervening PATHMAKERS 55 portions—comprising over three-fourths of the transcontinental main fine—within a period of ten years. The history of the agreement is told by Sir Charles Tupper in his " Recollections of Sixty Years," written two years before the aged statesman's death in England, in 1915. Sir Charles Tupper, who became Premier of Canada, was Minister of Railways during the early stages of the building of the railway. ' Sir John A. Macdonald, in forming his Cabinet, in 1878, tendered me the portfolio of Railways and Canals, and assigned to me the chief task of inaugurating a vigorous policy in regard to the building of the line from the head of the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast/ The 'vigorous policy' soon bore good fruit. When Macdonald was returned to power a portion only of the line between Port Arthur and Winnipeg had been placed under contract, it being the policy of his predecessor, Mackenzie, to place steamboats on the intermediate water-stretches through the Lake of the Woods, leaving a gap in the railway of over two hundred miles. The new Government at once decided to link up this gap and immediately placed the contracts for the additional construction, thus providing an all-rail route from Port Arthur to the Red River. Two years later the Minister of Railways awarded the contracts for building the line from Yale to Savona, near Kamloops, and later for the work from Yale to Port Moody, the Pacific terminus. Afterwards the Company, ' of their own volition 56 PATHMAKERS and at their own expense,' extended the fine farther westward along Burrard Inlet, thereby laying the foundations of the city of Vancouver. The Government had strong opposition to overcome in the maintenance of their railway policy, but they kept to their chosen path. Sir Charles Tupper was an especially valiant and strenuous champion of the great enterprise. ' Sir John A. Macdonald, who was also Minister of the Interior, observed in Council that he had made up his mind that a system of local railways was needed in the North-West in order to attract immigration. He spoke of his intention of going to England that summer for the purpose of enlisting capital in the project. " I want you all to meet me here this day week with any suggestions or advice you can offer," was his injunction to his colleagues. 1 " Sir John," I replied, " I think the time has come when we must take the advance step. I want to submit a proposition for building a through line from Nipissing in Ontario to the Pacific Coast." ' " I'm afraid, Tupper, that's a rather large order. However, I shall be pleased to consider anything you have to submit," was his genial comment.' On the appointed day Sir Charles Tupper presented his report to Council. He recommended, in brief, that the contract be entered into with a responsible company for the completion of a transcontinental railway on the terms already recorded. ' I gave reasons for my belief that the undertaking could be carried PATHMAKERS 57 to a successful conclusion, and that strong men could be induced to take hold of the enterprise. " I heartily agree with you," declared Sir John in the whole- souled, generous spirit that always characterised him after I had concluded my remarks in favour of a through line, to be built, owned, and operated by a chartered company. Our colleagues concurred, and the report was unanimously adopted.' The ' strong men ' were found. ' We entered into an agreement with a number of capitalists, who later became known as the " Canadian Pacific Railway Syndicate," to build the transcontinental railway on the precise basis of my report and recommendation to the Government.' And fortunate it was for Canada that the syndicate included such men as George Stephen and Donald Smith, for the test was great, and the efforts required to achieve success almost superhuman. The Dominion was not known to the world as it is to-day, and the population of the country was but four million people, with little, if any, superfluous capital at their disposal. When the United States, with a population of forty millions, linked Omaha with the Pacific coast, it was heralded as a stupendous achievement. How much more stupendous was this achievement of the organizers of the Canadian Pacific! The year 1884 was a critical one in the history of the Company. The enormous expenditure involved in the building of the railway during the preceding three years resulting from the magnitude of the work 58 PATHMAKERS had emptied the coffers. They endeavoured strenuously to secure more money in London, but their efforts came to naught. In New York they met with a similar fate. ' I had gone to Birmingham,' narrates Tupper, ' to propose a vote of thanks for an address on Canada to be delivered by the Marquis of Lome, a former Governor-General. Lord Norton, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies when Federation was carried, presided, and it had been arranged that I was to spend a holiday with him at his country seat at Hams. During the course of the lecture I received a cable from Mr. Pope, acting Minister of Railways, informing me that the Canadian Pacific Railway was in financial difficulties, and urging me to return home at once. At that time I was acting High Commissioner, but still held the portfolio of Railways and Canals/ Sir Charles Tupper crossed the Atlantic by the first steamer available. On reaching Ottawa he sent for an expert accountant in the Government service, and the Government Chief Engineer, and instructed them to proceed to Montreal to examine the books of the Company. ' As soon as they had reported I recommended that Parliament be asked to authorise the Government to advance the Canadian Pacific Railway thirty million dollars for four years at four per cent. per annum on the condition that the Company agreed to finish the road five years sooner than the contract called for—namely, by 1886, instead of 1891. In Parliament I advocated the granting of the loan on that ground/ PATHMAKERS 59 The loan was granted and for a time all went well. But not for long. The railway absorbed money as a sponge absorbs water, and ere a year had passed the coffers were again empty. The outlook was black indeed, for the Premier refused to sanction another Government loan to the Company. At this juncture the President of the Company and his associate, Donald Smith, flung their entire fortunes into the undertaking, determined as ever to maintain the work of construction. But again the coffers were emptied. The situation had now become desperate. Ruin stared the two cousins in the face, but they fought on and the flag still flew. The President went frequently to Ottawa for the purpose of inducing the Premier to render the assistance which had become vitally essential to victory, but Macdonald, to whom credit is due for his powerful co-operation in the earlier stages of the Company's history, was seemingly relentless. Senator Smith, a member of the Cabinet, and a man of much political and personal influence, joined forces with Stephen and pleaded strenuously with the Premier on behalf of the afflicted railway. William Van Home joined also in the financial fray. ' The Company were within a day of the due date of a large amount of liabilities/ a writer, who was acquainted with much of the inner history of the Canadian Pacific in its earlier years, states. When Van Home was advised of the situation he rushed to Ottawa by a special train that made a record trip and put the circumstances squarely before the then 6o PATHMAKERS Minister of Railways and Canals, the Hon. J. H. Pope, who was so impressed by the vigorous presentation of the facts, and of what a continued refusal would result in, that he at once sought Sir John Macdonald, and, aided by Sir Frank Smith, secured the Premier's acceptance of the Company's proposals and a guarantee to the Company's bankers, which enabled them to tide over the financial difficulties/ Van Home afterwards described the scene to his friends. In a room next to that in which the discussion—a discussion momentous in its consequences to the Company and to Canada—took place, he sat with several of the others vitally concerned, awaiting the Government's decision. ' I guessed that sound would come best to me if I stood in the room opposite the glass door which would help to act as a resonator. But though I could hear each voice as it spoke, I was unable to make out clearly what anyone said. It was an awful time. Each one of us felt as if the railway was our own child and we were prepared to make any sacrifice for it, but things were at a dead-lock and it seemed impossible to raise any more money. We men ourselves had given up twenty per cent, of our salaries and had willingly worked, not overtime but double-time, and as we waited in that room, we thought about these things and wondered whether all our toil was going to be wasted or not, and what would happen if Canada were ruined. . , . 'At last Joe Pope came in with a yellow paper in PATHMAKERS 61 his hand. He said that the Government were prepared to back the Bank of Montreal to the extent then required. ' I think we waited till he left the room,' Van Home said, ' I believe we had that much sanity left us! And then we began. We tossed up chairs to the ceiling ; we trampled on desks ; I believe we danced on tables. I do not fancy any of us knows now what occurred, and no one who was there can ever remember anything except loud yells of joy and the sound of things breaking!' Victory was now assured. All obstacles had been overcome and construction work on the great transcontinental railway proceeded with the utmost vigour. The day of triumph loomed close. ■p— CRAIGELLACHIE. In the story of nations there are episodes which shine, resplendent, pre-eminent, as planets in the starry heavens. Of such is the ceremony of the driving of the last spike in the Canadian Pacific Railway. By that simple yet momentous act the confederation of the Dominion of Canada became a living reality. A new world's highway had been opened, and the dream of statesmen and pathfinders had become a concrete fact. The setting was worthy of the drama. Craigellachie, where the rails from the Atlantic first met those from the Pacific, lies in the Eagle Pass, over which towers in majesty the snow-crowned crags of the Gold Range. The Pass itself is but a narrow gorge, in which the Spirit of the Mountains holds undisputed sway. On the seventh day of November, in the year 1885, the shrill whistle of a locomotive reverberated through the stillness of the ages. It was the heralding of a new era in the life of a nation. From a private passenger car," Saskatchewan," there stepped, among others, three men, representatives of the human force and power that had made the completion of a mighty undertaking possible. They were Donald Alexander Smith, William Van Horne, and Sandford Fleming. To Donald Smith was given the task of honour. And right well did the future Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal wield the hammer which drove the spike into position. 62 (4 O 5 o o t 6 CRAIGELLACH1E 63 Sandford Fleming describes the historic scene. \\ The work was carried on in silence. Nothing was heard but the reverberations of the blows struck by him. It was no ordinary occasion ; the scene was in every respect noteworthy, from the groups which composed it, and the circumstances which had brought together so many human beings in this spot in the heart of the mountains, until recently an untracked solitude. Most of the engineers, with hundreds of workmen of all nationalities who had been engaged in the mountains were present. ' Everyone appeared to be deeply impressed by what was taking place. The central figure in the group was something more than the representative of the Railway Company which had achieved the triumph he was consummating. His presence recalled memories of the Mackenzies and McTavishes, the Stuarts and McGillivrays, the Frasers, Finlaysons, McLeods and McLaughlins, and their contemporaries, who first penetrated the surrounding territory. From his youth he had been connected with the Company (Hudson's Bay Company), which had for so long carried on their operations successfully from Labrador to the Pacific, and California to Alaska, To-day he was the chief representative of that vast organization which before the close of the last century had sent out pioneers to map out and occupy the unknown wilderness, and which as a trading association is in the third century of its existence. 'All present were more or less affected by a formality If 64 CRAIGELLACHIE which was the crowning effort of years of labour, intermingled with doubts and fears, and of *oft-renewed energy to overcome what at times appeared unsur- mountable obstacles. Moreover, was it not the triumphal termination of numberless failures—the successful solution of the frequently repeated attempts of the British people, ever since America has been discovered, to find a new route to Asia ? ' To what extent the thoughts of those present were turned to the past must, with that undemonstrative group, remain a secret with each individual person. This much may be said : to all, the scene was deeply impressive, and especially to the many hundreds of workmen, who, from an early hour up to the last moment, had struggled to do their part, and who were now mute lookers-on at the single individual actively engaged—at one who in. his own person united the past with the present, the most prominent member of the ancient company of "Adventurers of England," as he was the representative of the great Canadian Pacific Railway Company. ' The blows on the spike were repeated until it was driven home. The silence, however, continued unbroken, and it must be said that a more solemn ceremony has been witnessed with less solemnity. It seemed as if the act now performed had worked a spell on all present. Each one appeared absorbed in his own reflections. The abstraction of mind, or silent emotion, or whatever it might be, was, however, of short duration. Suddenly a cheer spontaneously CRAIGELLACHIE 65 burst forth, and it was no ordinary cheer. The subdued enthusiasm, the pent-up feelings of men familiar with hard work, now found vent. Cheer after cheer followed, as if it was difficult to satisfy the spirit which had been aroused. Such a scene is conceivable on the field of hard-fought battle at the moment when victory is assured/ Several hours later a message was flashed across the Atlantic. It was from Queen Victoria, and conveyed the royal congratulations to the people of Canada on the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a work which Her Majesty regarded as c* of great importance to the whole British Empire." It was more. It was a work pregnant with results of importance to a whole world. Fleming does not record his own thoughts on this memorable occasion. But in his retrospective reflections it may be that an address he gave to an Ontario audience nigh thirty years before recurred to his mind. In an address delivered in Toronto, in 1904, he took his hearers back in fancy to this earlier lecture, and pictured the country lying west of Lake Superior —the Great Lone Land—as it was before the advent of the life-spreading steel, and the dreams and aspirations which even then were cherished by a few far-seeing visionaries of Empire. He recalled that in 1858 there was not throughout the whole extent of North or South America a single transcontinental «F*- 66 CRAlGELLACHtE railway; that there was scarcely a mile of railway in the United States west of the Mississippi, and a very small mileage west of Chicago; that the greater and by far the most valuable portion of what is now known as the Dominion of Canada was held as a vast hunting-ground by the Hudson's Bay Company, ' and it was indeed fortunate that it was so held, as the present and future generations of Canadians will testify/ At that date the provinces and territories west of the longitude of Lake Superior were not thought of. British Columbia itself was not even a Crown Colony. The city of Ottawa as the capital of the Dominion was unknown. Winnipeg did not then exist. Ten years later, there were only a few people around Fort Garry and along the banks of the river, known as the Red River settlers. Exclusive of pure Indians there were probably not more than eight thousand people in the whole North- West. The settlers were shut off from the outer world, except by such means of communication as that furnished by dog-trains in winter and canoes in summer, together with Red River carts. But even at that period of Canada's history there were a few public-spirited, sanguine men who had the hardihood to peer through the pine forests and the wooded wilderness of a thousand miles to Canada's richest heritage, the prairie region. Their mental vision carried them across the rolling prairies another thousand miles to gaze on the mountains with the setting sun and the ocean beyond them. These daring, C_UlGELLACHl_- 67 yea, visionary spirits did not think Canada was destined to stop short at the Georgian Bay and the tier of counties lying eastward of Lake Simcoe.x There were dense forests to subdue. The Ottonabee, the Trent, the Ottawa, and other rivers had abundance of water power to prepare for exportation the timber then growing in the tributary forests. It required no seer to see that these forests would become exhausted, and that new fields and other sources of industry would have to be sought out. Precisely as there are to-day, there were men then who inscribed on their banner, the words, " Build up Canada," and visionary and impracticable as it seemed to many, they formed the resolution to carry their standard across the home of the buffalo and the distant Rocky Mountains. This was the inception of the Canadian Pacific Railway. By a large number of people it was regarded as an idle fancy, the dream of chimerical men, never to be realized. The enormously large works involved were not common at that stage in the history of engineering undertakings. The proposal to build a railway through uninhabited British North America, over one of the great mountain ranges of the globe, across a roadless continent, respecting much of which nothing was known, when looked at soberly by the practical man presented to him a project which passed at a single leap from the plane of ordinary undertakings to the lofty sphere of enterprises of the grandest description. It surpassed in every element 68 CRAIGELLACHIE of magnitude and cost, and probably also in physical difficulties, any work ever previously undertaken by man. ' But what were the purposes to be achieved ? Were they not inestimably important ? Wonderful commercial results could be counted on, and it was felt that the national, the imperial, advantages and possibilities were far beyond the conception of the most sanguine of far-seeing men. The undertaking would have an immediate effect in expanding Canada, then limited to two provinces in the valley of the St. Lawrence; it would be of the greatest advantage to the Mother Country in opening up new channels for the enterprise of British merchants. The railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific when completed would bring nearer to England her Eastern Empire ; it would unite with a new bond the interests and affections of Britons in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and America ; it would secure in perpetuity British dominion upon the continent of America ; it would promote the occupation and civilization of half a continent, and go a long way to lay the foundation of what might be regarded as a Canadian Empire.' In his biography of Sandford Fleming, Lawrence Burpee records that during the engineer's visit to London, in 1876, he called at 24, Cheyne Row, with a letter of introduction to Thomas Carlyle. ' It had long been his desire to meet face to face the great prophet of the nineteenth century/ says Burpee. CRAIGELLACHIE 69 ' The conversation drifted to Canada, with many shrewd questions and comments as to the conditions of life in the new land. The recent death there of Carlyle's brother Alexander, lent a personal note to the subject. The vast possibilities and human significance of the Canadian Pacific Railway appealed to him, and the political and social experiments that were being worked out in this younger Britain beyond the seas. An aftermath of the interview is found in the " Descriptive Catalogue of the Carlyle's House Memorial Trust." Among the books listed in the Back Dining Room is : " Fleming, S., Report on the Canadian Pacific Railway, 1877. Presentation copy." ' The history of the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway is the history of a small band of men. Political, financial, and physical obstacles had to be fought and overcome in a manner which called forth efforts, as has been narrated, almost superhuman in their intensity. But these men continued in their chosen way. The path was steep, and at times they stumbled over the jagged rocks which lay as barriers in the course, but their indomitable spirit remained unbroken and they reached the summit of their aspirations on that eventful November day. It is a story of Romance in Action. The greatest achievement in the career of Lord Mount Stephen is his part in the building of Canada's first transcontinental highway. It was he who 70 CRAlGELLACHtE carried the biggest burden. As first President of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and the official head of the syndicate to which the Dominion Government transferred the Great National Enterprise in the stormy days of 1880, he took the leading part in the negotiations with the Government and with British capitalists, and his executive force, restless energy, and conquering perseverance, constituted him the dominating factor in the affairs of the Company. Despite the great strain resulting from his occupancy of the Presidency during the Company's early financial struggles, he maintained his active association with the Canadian Pacific for nigh three years after the completion of the line, and did not leave " the bridge " until the corporation had reached the smooth waters of prosperity. ' From the time I became a party to the contract with the Dominion Government for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and consented to accept the position of President of the Company,* he said in his farewell letter, dated 7th August, 1888, to the Shareholders, ' it has always been my intention to relinquish the active chief control of the affairs of the Company as soon as the task which I then undertook should be completed. This task was partially finished when the line was open for traffic through to the Pacific Ocean, over two years ago; but at that time so much remained to be done towards the firm establishment of the enterprise, and its future development and success, that in deference to the wishes of my colleagues, I consented to continue CRAIGELLACHIE 71 for a time in office. Warned now by the state of my health, finding that the severe and constant strain which I have had to bear for the past eight years has unfitted me for the continuous and arduous duties of an office in which vigour and activity are essential; feeling the increasing necessity for practical railway experience; and believing that the present satisfactory and assured position of the Company offers a favourable opportunity for taking the step I have had so long in contemplation, I have this day resigned the Presidency of the Company which I have had the honour to hold since its organization. ' In taking this step, it may not be out of place to say that my pecuniary interest in the enterprise remains undiminished, and that the welfare of the Company is, and always must be to me, a matter of the deepest possible interest; and that as a member of the Board of Directors, I will always be ready to aid and co-operate with my colleagues in everything calculated to protect and promote the interests of the shareholders. In resigning the position of the President of the Company, it is to me a matter of the greatest possible satisfaction to be able to say that in my successor, Mr. Van Home, the Company has a man of proved fitness for the office, in the prime of life, possessed of great energy and rare ability, having a long and thoroughly practical railway experience, and, above all, an entire devotion to the interests of the Company/ In the Canadian Pacific Railway station at Montreal 72 CRAIGELLACHIE there stands a statue of Lord Mount Stephen. It is the Company's tribute to one of their greatest men. All honour, too, to Donald Smith, who loyally supported George Stephen in the days of struggle. He took the same risks as his cousin took, and with him fought and overcame the obstacles in the path which led to Craigellachie. In the history of Lord Strathcona—the big Scotsman with the massive head and keen grey-blue eyes under the shaggy eyebrows, ' that somehow suggested snow-laden eaves,' who drove the last spike in Eagle Pass, and who lived to become one of the most honoured sons of Canada and of the British Empire, ending his activities in a blaze of glory, and leaving behind him a name which has been indelibly written in the Book of Immortality—his association with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company is a prominent phase, of which he was ever and rightly proud. Conceived in the dreams of statesmen, formed in the realms of finance, the travail of the birth of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a concrete reality was endured by William Van Home. His was the constructive genius the fruits of which was the spanning of a continent by lines of steel at a rate of speed never previously attempted anywhere and never surpassed since. ' No problem that ever arose—even that of conquering the Rockies and Selkirks—had any terrors for him.' Sir William Van Horne. CRAIGELLACHIE 73 He was a human dynamo. From him there radiated currents of activity, the galvanic effects of which were felt along the route from end to end. His capacity for work was prodigious. " Sleep," he said, " is just a habit; a habit to be indulged in only when absolutely imperative." 'He thought nothing of staying up all night, and making up the deficiency by snatching a few winks here and there during the day. He had the knack of commanding sleep whenever and wherever he willed it. He could doze off whenever he liked for five minutes, and wake up at the end of that time thoroughly refreshed. He had such an intense interest in fife that he felt he could not afford to sleep, except by way of indulging in brief intermezzos.' A story is still related in Canada that a stalwart Western miner, hearing the many tales of Van Home's almost superhuman habitual labours, undertook to do in one day and hour by hour exactly what the famous "railway man" was doing. At the end of the day the miner was carried to his bed, where he remained for several weeks afterwards in a state of collapse. William Van Home was in truth the Master Builder. An American of Dutch blood, he possessed the qualities peculiar to his race in a supreme degree. There was that in the old Dutch stock of the Van Homes, it has been said, which caused him to hammer away at the problem until he finally succeeded. His hammering was as rapid as it was forceful, and the result was an achievement unparalleled in the history of railways. THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company saved British Columbia for the British Empire. The driving of the last spike at Craigellachie automatically drove the last nail into the coffin of Separation, a policy which threatened the disruption of Confederation. How serious that danger had become and how it was averted only by the finking by rail of the Dominion from East to West is recorded by Sir Charles Tupper in his memoirs. It is a record fraught with interest. ' The motives that impelled Sir John A. Macdonald and his colleagues at Ottawa to " round off' " Confederation by adding the Province of British Columbia to the Union after the North West Territories had been acquired from the Hudson's Bay Company were based on national as well as Imperial considerations,' he says. ' What would have been the fate of British Columbia if it had remained isolated from Eastern Canada by an unexplored " sea of mountains " and vast, uninhabited prairies? ' There is no question that it would have inevitably resulted in the absorption of the Crown Colony on the Pacific Coast by the United States. Social and economic forces were working in that direction from the date of the discovery of gold in 1856. Thousands of adventurous American citizens flocked to British Columbia, and between the two countries there was a good deal of inter-communication by land and sea, 74 THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 70 Sir James Douglas, an ex-Governor, a prominent figure in the early days of the colony, was opposed to Confederation. ' Until his eleventh-hour conversion, ex-Governor Seymour entertained similar views. The appointment of Anthony Musgrave, a pro-Union man, in 1869, came at a psychological moment when the Imperial authorities in London were giving their ardent support to the cause dearest to the hearts of Canadian statesmen. ' The offer of the Dominion Government to build a railway from the head of the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast was the chief inducement that settled the political destiny of British Columbia. The story of the great difficulties encountered and the obstacles overcome in carrying out that gigantic and epoch- making project, forms an interesting chapter in Canadian history. As Minister of Railways at the time, I had something to do with the preliminary negotiations and the carrying out of the work. * The Government of Canada, having been successful in acquiring the North-West Territory, felt that the completion of Federation, both for national and Imperial consideration, involved the addition of British Columbia. Sir John A. Macdonald's views in regard to the wisdom of this step were shared just as strongly by every one of his colleagues. They realised that a federation, to be effective for a young nation, must represent a union extending from sea to sea G 76 THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA ' It would have been impossible to retain British Columbia as a Crown Colony if overtures in favour of the Union had not been made by the Dominion. How could it have been expected to remain British when it had no community of interest with the rest of Canada from which its people were separated by two ranges of mountains and the vast prairie ? Under the existing circumstances it had no means of advancement except by throwing in its lot with the great nation to the south, with which it had constant communication both by land and sea. ' We all felt that we were bound to make the hazard of incurring the large outlay for a transcontinental railway if Confederation from coast to coast was to be made a reality, and if the sovereignty of Britain was to be retained ' The most potent of all the arguments for Union was the promise it held of promoting overland communication with Eastern Canada.' In 1871 British Columbia entered Confederation. ' The main provisions upon which the Pacific coast province entered the Union ensured, in the first place, that the Dominion should assume all debts and liabilities of the colony, as well as undertake to build a railway from the head of the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast within ten years, and to commence actual railway construction within two years after the date of the Union. The idea of an all-rail route to Eastern Canada from British Columbia did not take shape until about 1880, as it was thought that the needs of THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 77 the situation could be met by providing steamboat communication between the head of the Great Lakes and the settled portions of Ontario/ 'At that time there did not exist any road worthy of the name of highway across Southern British Columbia to the vast and lonely prairies. It is true that the Hudson Bay Company had its own trails through the northern and central sections of the province, but only for the purpose of packing in supplies or shipping of the fur catch. Of commerce in the ordinary sense there was none. Ordinary communication between British Columbia and Eastern Canada in those days had to be conducted via San Francisco or the Isthmus of Panama.' Thus, in the words of one of the "Fathers of Confederation " himself, is shown the dominating part of the proposed railway to the Pacific in the negotiations for the entrance of British Columbia into the Dominion of Canada. The Canadian Government undertook to build the line, but a political upheaval and other causes prevented the fulfilment of the compact. In 1878, seven years after the agreement had been made, not one yard of railway had been built in British Columbia. Feeling in the Pacific province became bitter in the extreme and threats of secession were openly made. The Attorney General was instructed, in 1874, to proceed to England to present a petition from the Executive Council of British Columbia to the Imperial Government complaining of the breach by the THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Dominion Government. He interviewed Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who ultimately forwarded a despatch to the Governor General, Lord Dufferin, containing his recommendations, which became known as the " Carvarvon Terms." The embittered state of public opinion in British Columbia was exemplified during the visit of Lord Dufferin to Victoria, in 1876. On one of the arches erected on the Governor General's line of route the words : " Carnarvon Terms or Separation " had been inscribed. Lord Dufferin declined to pass under this arch -unless the letter ' S ' in the last word was altered to ' R '—a witty and diplomatic suggestion which was not adopted. Six days later a deputation waited on the Governor General, with an address, in which reference was made to the unsatisfactory relations which existed between British Columbia and the Dominion, owing to the non-fulfilment of the terms of union, and stating that it was the opinion of a large number of the people of the Province that separation from the Dominion would be the inevitable result. Lord Dufferin, who was placed in a delicate position, declined to receive the address and suggested that it should be presented by memorial or petition to the Crown in the usual manner. The return of Macdonald to power and the appointment of Sir Charles Tupper, who was known to be a strenuous advocate of the building of a railway to the Pacific, to the position of Minister of Railways, MP Vancouver Harbour. THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 79 resulted in a lull in the storm. But difficulties continued to arrive, and the conviction was forced upon the Dominion Government that the construction of the highway would have to be transferred to a private corporation. The wisdom of this decision has been amply demonstrated in this narrative. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company succeeded where Governments had failed. Five years after they undertook the great task, British Columbia was bound by a bond of steel to the Dominion of Canada and to the British Empire. Sir Charles Tupper's contention that without a railway connection with Eastern Canada British Columbia, by the compelling force of circumstances, would inevitably have been drawn into the United States as a component part of that nation, has a solid basis. The Americans themselves contemplated such a union : to them it was to be " annexation " ; and annexation, not only of British Columbia, but of the whole of Western Canada. Their aspirations and anticipations were openly and officially expressed. In the year 1869 the United States Senate Committee on Pacific Railroads issued a report of a nature as highly interesting to the people of the Dominion of Canada and of the British Empire as it was to those of their own country. ' The line of the North Pacific road runs for 1,500 miles near the 8o THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA British possessions/ this historic document read, 'and when built, will drain the agricultural products of the rich Saskatchewan and Red River districts east of the mountains, and the gold country on the Fraser, Thompson, and Kootenay rivers west of the mountains. From China (Canton) to Liverpool, it is 1,500 miles nearer by the 49th parallel of latitude, than by the way of San Francisco and New York. This advantage in securing the overland trade from Asia will not be thrown away by the English, unless it is taken away by our first building the North Pacific road, establishing mercantile agencies at Puget Sound, fixing mercantile capital there, and getting possession on land, and on the ocean, of all machinery of the new commerce between Asia and Europe. The opening by us first of a North Pacific Railroad seals the destiny of the British possessions west of the 91st meridian. They will become so Americanized in interests and feelings that they will be in effect severed from the New Dominion and the question of their annexation will be but a question of time.' Six years before the publication of the United States Government Report, the small pioneer settlement in the Red River Valley had pointed out this danger to Imperial interests in a memorial presented to the British Government, praying for the establishment of a highway between the eastern provinces and British Columbia, by way of Lake Superior to the Red River and the Saskatchewan River. Their plea was then unavailing, but, in the light of the THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 81 United States document, their memorial is of permanent interest. ' The people of Red River have long earnestly desired to see the Lake Superior route opened up for commerce and emigration, and they rejoice to hear of the proposal to open up a road and establish a fine of telegraphic communication through the interior to British Columbia, entirely within British territory, believing that such works would greatly benefit this country, while subserving at the same time both Canadian and Imperial interests,' said the petitioners. ' The whole country through which the proposed road would run, almost from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, is remarkably level. The surface of this vast region is, generally speaking, like the ocean surface in a calm, and besides being so remarkably level, it is, for the most part, free from the heavy forests which, in Canada, and elsewhere, cause such delay and expense in road-making. ' Having thus cursorily alluded to the practicability of the road, on which point our local knowledge and experience ought to give our views some weight, and while admitting the intense interest and satisfaction with which we view the prospect, of a work fraught with so much good to us politically, socially, and commercially, we might be allowed to point out very briefly the views we entertain regarding its importance to England and Canada alike. ' Canada would derive great benefit from the Overland carrying trade, which would spring up immediately _T" 82 THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA on the estabhshment of this route, and the constantly growing traffic of this district and British Columbia would thereafter be an ever increasing source of profit. ' Besides this, it may reasonably be presumed that the people of Central British America, present and prospective, would prove permanent and liberal customers in the markets of England and Canada. Be it remembered, moreover, that a vast fur business is carried on in this country, and that, towards the Rocky Mountains, gold has been discovered in many quarters. Besides gold there are iron, lead, coal, petroleum, and other minerals which, together with the rich fur trade, would prove a source of great wealth, not only to this country but to Canada ; and although the colonization and settlement of the vast area of cultivatable land would somewhat curtail the territorial limits of the fur business, still, the millions of acres north of the fertile tract will, in all probability, remain a rich fur country for centuries to come. ' This is the most natural highway by which commerce and general business with the East could be carried on. It would be also the most expeditious. And as a result of such commerce and traffic along this route, Central British America would rapidly fill up with an industrious loyal people; and thus, from Vancouver's Island to Nova Scotia, Great Britain would have an unbroken series of colonies, a grand confederation of loyal and flourishing provinces, skirting the whole United States frontier, and com- THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 83 manding at once the Atlantic and the Pacific. In this connection we feel bound to observe that American influence is rapidly gaining ground here; and, if action is long delayed, very unpleasant complications may arise. Thus both politically and commercially the opening up of this country, and the making through it of a national highway, would immensely subserve Imperial interests, and contribute to the stability and glorious prestige of the British Empire.' The road from Lake Superior to Red River was wanted as part of a bigger project—a road from Lake Superior to British Columbia. And even this was to be but a preliminary undertaking to the establishment of a railway, or a combined rail and water route, that would ultimately traverse British North America from ocean to ocean. They were men of vision, these Scotch pioneers of the Red River country. " The British possessions west of the 91st meridian," remained true to British allegiance, and to-day the only " annexation" desired by Americans is the annexation of the friendship and good will of Canada. What was the price—the price of Empire ? ' To learn the price Canada was ready to pay for Confederation and for a pathway from ocean to ocean,' a historian of the period writes, ' the traveller must climb by rail from the prairies at Calgary through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains to the summit of .r— 84 THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA the Kicking Horse Pass, and then sweep down through the defiles and valleys of the opposite slope, across the Selkirk and Gold ranges, and past the canyons of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, till he has reached the Pacific. He must study the line of railway in winter, when, as he looks up, at a hundred points, avalanches of snow are seen ready to descend upon it from lofty peaks ; he must visit it in spring, when, looking down, he sees the tremendous torrents that roar beneath, swollen from the melting snows; he must observe with what elaborate care these dangers have been successfully overcome ; he must feel the sensation of gliding by day and night over bridges which stretch like immense slender spiders far over the top of lofty pines; he must look down almost from the carriage windows into the depths of the Albert canyon ; he must be whirled, ascending and descending, around the curves of the Great Loop ; he must look out for two days continuously on the marvellous succession of mountain peaks and range and gorge and embattled cliff guarding the long narrow valleys, all of which go to make up the impressive and magnificent scenery of the greater part of British Columbia. When he has wondered at the courage of the engineers who faced such a task of railway construction, and the energy of the contractors who transported the material and fed the armies of labourers by whom the work was done, he has yet even more striking conditions connected with its construction to consider. ! Ontario, the base from which the task was THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 85 approached on the side of Eastern Canada, is sixteen hundred miles away. The first four hundred miles of road round the north side of Lake Superior had to be cut through a wilderness of rough granite country, uninhabited, and well nigh uninhabitable. Then followed twelve hundred miles of prairie, all of which was also uninhabited, or very thinly inhabited, until the railway opened the way for settlers. All this had to be traversed before the foot of the mountains was reached, where the really serious work began. 'And for what purpose was this mighty barrier of the Rockies and Selkirks, six hundred miles wide, to be crossed ? ' Not to unite two great communities, as was the case when the forty million people of the Eastern and Western States, already advanced far beyond the Mississippi, made the first American line across a narrower range of mountains to get in touch with San Francisco and the large population of the Pacific States, which was also pressing up to the base of the Rockies. In Eastern Canada there were only four million people ; in British Columbia there were less than fifty thousand white people—the population of a small English manufacturing town—and few of these on the mainland, when the railroad was undertaken* ' It was to complete and round off a national conception ; to prepare the way for commercial and political advantages as yet far remote, and by many deemed imaginary, that the work was faced. British Columbia, insignificant in population, was significant enough in 86 THE SAVING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA position and in its resources. It fronted on the Pacific ; it had splendid harbours and abundant coal; it suggested a new and short pathway to the Orient and Australasia. The statesmen in Ottawa who, in 1867, began to look over the Rockies to continents beyond the Pacific were not wanting in imagination ; many claimed that their imagination outran their reason; but in the rapid course of events their dreams have already been more than justified/ The cost of saving British Columbia for Canada and the British Empire was heavy, but the results were magnificently worthy of the price. A Governor General of the Dominion, the Marquess of Dufferin, regarded the association of the province with the Dominion as the crowning triumph of Federation. It is a country rich with promise. ' British Columbia is on the threshold of a destiny unparalleled in its magnificence,' a great statesman has said. ' With its salubrious climate, and enormous resources, embracing soil, minerals, coal, water-powers, fisheries, and forest wealth, no limit can be set to its possibilities/ Greatest of all in its value as a national and Empire factor is its position as a Gateway to the Pacific, a Gateway without which the Imperial pathway to Asia would have remained an unrealisable dream. pS _ THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA. The establishment of a transcontinental railway, supplemented by a telegraph line over the whole route and a steamship service on the Great Lakes, resulted in the linking up of Canada from ocean to ocean and in the binding of the far-spread communities of the Dominion into one indissoluble national family. But they were Empire Builders in the biggest sense of the term, these men of the Canadian Pacific Railway. They had made a pathway across a continent. They now planned to bridge the oceans. True to their traditions, they carried their plans into effect. Two years after the completion of the railway the mighty Pacific was spanned. A steamship service was inaugurated between Vancouver and Japan, China, and Hong-Kong, and the new world Dominion was linked with the ancient and mystic Orient, with its teeming millions of human beings. Sixteen years later the Company acquired the Elder Dempster (Beaver) Line and the Atlantic was spanned. The Canadian Pacific Railway then came into existence as a bridge connecting Europe with Asia, and the greatest of all Highways of Empire. Forty years before the Canadian Pacific was finally established as the long-dreamed of bridge between 87 88 THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA Great Britain and Asia—a bridge spanning the Atlantic Ocean, the continent of North America, and the Pacific Ocean and under British control—an eminent English publicist, Sir Edward Watkin, made an eloquent plea for 'A British Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific' in words which, in the light of later events, were of a nature prophetic. He commenced his plea by quoting from the Queen's speech to Parliament, in 1858 : " I hope that the new Colony on the Pacific (British Columbia) may be but one step in the career of steady progress, by which my dominions in North America may be ultimately peopled in an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population." ' This aspiration, so strikingly expressed,' Watkin said, ' found a fervent echo in the national heart, and it continues to engage the earnest attention of England, for it speaks of a great outspread of solid prosperity and rational liberty, of the diffusion of our civilization, and of the extension of our moral empire. Since the Royal Speech, Governments have done something and events have done more to ripen public opinion into action, The Government at home and in Canada have organised and explored. The more perfect discoveries of our new gold fields on the Pacific, the Indian Mutiny, the completion of great works in Canada, the treaties with Japan and with China, the visit of the Prince of Wales to the American continent, and, at the moment, the sad dissensions in the United States, combine to interest us in the question, and to "I THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA 89 make us ask, " How is this hope to be realized; not a century hence, but in our time ? ** ' Our augmenting interests in the East demand for reasons both of Empire and of trade, access to Asia less dangerous than by Cape Horn, less circuitous even than by Panama, less dependent than by Suez and the Red Sea. Our emigration, imperilled by the dissensions in the United States, must fall back upon colonization. And, commercially, the countries of the East must supply the raw materials and provide the markets which probable contests between the free man and the slave may diminish, or may close, elsewhere. Again, a great nation like ours cannot stand still. It must either march on triumphantly in the van, or fall hopelessly in the rear. The measure of its accomplishment must, century by century, rise higher and higher in the competition of nations. Its great works in this generation can alone perpetuate its greatness in the next. ' Let us look at the map! There we see, coloured as British America, a tract washed by the great Atlantic on the east, and by the Pacific Ocean on the west, and containing four million square miles, or one-ninth of the whole terrestrial surface of the globe. Part of this vast domain, upon the east, is Upper and Lower Canada; part, upon the west, is the new colony of British Columbia, with Vancouver's Island (the Madeira of the Pacific) ; while the largest portion is held, as one great preserve, by the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company, which, in right of a charter given by ■0 90 THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA Charles II. in 1670, kills vermin for skins, and monopolises the trade with the native Indians over a surface many times as big again as Great Britain and Ireland. Still, all this land is ours, for it owes allegiance to the sceptre of Victoria. ' Between the magnificent harbour of Halifax on the Atlantic, open throughout the year for ships of the largest class, to the Straits of Fuca, opposite Vancouver's Island, with its noble Esquimault inlet, intervene some 3,200 miles of road line. For fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred miles of this distance the Nova Scotian, the Habitant and the Upper Canadian have spread, more or less in fines and patches over the ground, until the population of 60,000 in 1759 amounts to 2,500,000 in 1860. The remainder is peopled only by the Indian and the hunter, save that at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg there still exists the hardy and struggling Red River Settlement, now called Fort Garry ; and dotted all over the continent, as lights of progress, are trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. ' The combination of recent discoveries places it at least beyond all doubt that the best, though perhaps not the only, thoroughly efficient route for a great highway for peoples and for commerce, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, is to be found through this British territory. Beyond that, it is alleged that while few, if any, practicable passages for a wagon road, still less for a railway, can be found through the Rocky Mountains across the United States terri- THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA 91 tory (north-west of the Missouri), there have been discovered already no less than three eligible openings in the British ranges of these mountains, once considered as inaccessible to man. While Captain Palliser prefers the " Kananaskakis," Captain Blackiston and Governor Douglas the " Kootanie," and Dr. Hector the " Vermilion *' Pass, all agree that each is perfectly practicable, if not easy, and that even better openings may probably yet be found as exploration progresses... 'Although the lakes and the St. Lawrence give an unbroken navigation of two thousand miles, right to the sea, for ships of three hundred tons burden, yet if there is to be a continuous line, along which, and all the year round, the travel and traffic of the western and eastern worlds can pass without interruption, railway communication with Halifax must be perfected, and a new line of iron road, passing through Ottawa, the Red River Settlement, and this continuous belt, must be constructed. This new line is a work of above 2,300 miles, and would cost probably £20,000,000, if not £25,000,000 sterling. The sum, though so large, is still little more than we voluntarily paid to extinguish slavery in our West Indian dominions ; it does not much exceed the amount which a Royal Commission, some little time ago, proposed to expend in erecting fortifications and sea-works to defend our shores. It is but six per cent, of the amount we have laid out in completing our own railway system in this little country at home. It is equal to but two and a half per cent, of our National Debt, and the annual H 92 THE HIGHWAY TO ASIA interest upon it is much less than the British Pension List. ' We say, then, " Establish an unbroken line of road and railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific." ' Such a great highway would give shorter distances by both sea and land, with an immense saving of time. As regards the great bugbear of the general traveller— sea distance, it would (to and from Liverpool), save, as compared with the Panama route, a tossing, wearying navigation of six thousand miles to Japan, of five thousand miles to Canton, and of three thousand miles to Sydney. For Japan, for China, for the whole Asiatic Archipelago, and for Australia, such a route must become the great highway to and from Europe ; and whatever nation possesses that highway must wield of necessity the commercial sceptre of the world.' The Canadian Pacific Railway Company made what was a vision to Sir Edward Watkins a reality to the Mother of Nations. And the reality was greater than the vision. From the western shore of Britain to the eastern shore of Asia, by way of Canada, the Imperial route of Empire is traversed by the ships and trains, not of several separate corporations, but of one individual corporation. In that lies the Canadian Pacific Company's greatest strength. SUPERSTRUCTURE. The economic history of Canada since 1885 is fundamentally the history of'the Canadian Pacific. As the railway and its many auxiliaries develop so developes the Dominion. The record of growth is unsurpassed in the annals of industrial enterprise. The railway mileage controlled by the Company has expanded to over eighteen thousand miles. The single track of early years is rapidly being converted into a double track from ocean to ocean ; branch lines and connections have been extended north, south, east and west, spreading settlement and civilization with the rails; mountain grades have been halved; long lines of snowsheds have been supplanted by tunnels which pierce the giant buttresses of the Selkirks; trestle bridges have given way to steel; " ocean " liners have been placed on the Great Lakes; gigantic additions have been made to the storage capacity of the grain elevators; a hundred thousand miles of telegraph lines are now in operation ; palatial new hotels have been erected and additions and improvements made to the older; new railway stations have been built in the big centres of population which, along with the Company's hotels, are among the leading architectural features of the cities and a source of pride to the citizens; 93 94 SUPERSTRUCTU RE immense railway workshops have been developed— the Angus workshops in Montreal, employing six thousand men, rank first in magnitude on the American continent; a million and a half acres of arid land in Southern Alberta have been irrigated and made suitable for intensive farming; and huge modern liners have been added to the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, constituting these the pre-eminent factors in the Canadian-Atlantic and Canadian-Pacific maritime traffic. One hundred and twenty thousand men are to-day on the pay roll of the Canadian Pacific. ' It might be said that over five hundred thousand persons are directly interested in, and look forward to, the monthly pay day, while, if we consider the allied interests, the indirect relations sustained one way or another, the commercial and industrial affiliations of the Company outside the regular list of employees, we get over one million people more or less directly concerned, in the issuance, once a month of those seemingly innumerable bits of paper which are so eagerly transmuted into bread and butter. If, however, we get beyond all those who are more or less directly interested in the Company, and reach out to the various activities which depend on the Company—each industrial organism with its own army of employees; if we consider every allied or affected interest, we find that the entire population of Canada are affected in their lives and outlook by the operations of the C.P.R/ SUPERSTRUCTURE 95 In this work of expansion—a work which has resulted in the creation of a superstructure of world-wide fame and significance—the same indomitable energy has been shown as in the building of the line. In the closing sentences of Lord Mount Stephen's farewell letter, written, readers will remember, scarcely three years after the completion of the transcontinental line, the retiring President said:—' I cannot refrain from congratulating the Shareholders upon the arrangements recently completed by Sir Donald A. Smith and myself which will have the effect of securing to the Canadian Pacific Railway the permanent friendship of the new and important American lines, extending from Sault Ste. Marie to Minneapolis and St. Paul on the one hand, and to Duluth on the other, and reaching a traffic the importance of which would be difficult to over-estimate. It is also a matter for congratulation that arrangements have been practically settled with the Wabash Railway for the permanent connection between the Detroit River and Chicago and the South-West; and, further, that the long pending negotiations with the Imperial Government for the establishment of a first-class steamship line between Vancouver and Japan and China have at last been concluded.' The establishment of ' the first-class steamship line between Vancouver and Japan and China,' fore- 96 SUPERSTRUCTURE ; shadowed in Lord Mount Stephen's letter, marked a new era in development. As early as 1887, the Company had inaugurated a trans-Pacific service, with three chartered vessels; four years afterwards they joined the ranks of ocean steamship owners, possessors of the three finest and fastest liners on the Pacific— the " Empress of India," the " Empress of Japan," and the " Empress of China." The fame of these vessels, which at that time set a new standard of efficiency unsurpassed in the annals of ocean travel, spread far, and the North Pacific route assumed at one bound a position of great Imperial value. And the Company gained added prestige. ' The Canadian Pacific Railway Company,' chronicles a historian of the period, ' when taken in connection with the various branches and extensions of the railway and Lake Superior navigation, together with the Pacific " Empresses," may be classed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest commercial company in the world/ Had this chronicler lived to see the " Empress of Russia " and " Empress of Asia," which were placed on the Pacific service in 1914, his approbation would have been even more enthusiastic. These truly magnificent vessels, which may well be described as " the Swallows of the Pacific," represent the highest skill of Scottish shipbuilders—and that means the highest skill procurable. In speed and luxurious accommodation they have set a new standard in Pacific Ocean travel, as their predecessors did on inauguration. SUPERSTRUCTURE 97 Five years after the establishment of the " Empresses " on the Pacific ocean, by which a fast mail route from Great Britain to the East was secured, and a new link in the chain of Empire was forged, the Company augmented their steamship interests by the acquisition of an existing fleet of steamers on the Columbia Lake arid River and Kootenay Lake. The Crow's Nest branch of the line was then approaching completion and this, with the steamship service, added the important mining districts of Southern British Columbia to the Company's sphere, with beneficial results to the Canadian Pacific and British Columbia alike. New steamers were also placed on the Arrow, Slocan and Okanagan Lakes, and the life-giving touch of the Canadian Pacific Railway was soon manifested in the stimulation of the industrial and social life of the territory involved in the Company's operations. The following year, 1897, is famed in the history of the American continent as the year of the Klondyke rush. The lure of gold was on man—a lure stronger even than love. The fame of the new El Dorado acted as an irresistible magnet to prospectors and adventurers the world o'er. ' How many of those early pioneers fell by the way; how many perished by flood, by cold and exposure on that lonely and dangerous trail, will never be known ; for to the call of gold there came a world-wide response; and many 98 SLTPEftSTRUCTUi.__ whom the summons attracted were ill-fitted to stand the hardships of getting there.' More fortunate were those who came under the benign sway of the Canadian Pacific Railway. To them the terrors and horrors of the overland trail with Death in hideous garb ever stalking at their heels, were comparatively unknown. The attitude of the Company was as humane as it was business-like. They had brought the men to the shores of the Pacific. To carry them to their destination as far as practicable was accepted as a duty. They could not transport the men to the golden Mecca itself, but they would take them to far-off Skagway. A coastal service from Vancouver and Victoria was organised, the inauguration of which not only relieved the congestion at the Pacific Coast ports but it prevented the stranded prospectors from wasting their time and substance in tedious and demoralising waiting for transportation. ■ Thousands who flocked Dawson City-wards bear witness to the great and Imperial part played by the Canadian Pacific Railway in meeting the emergency created by the gold discoveries in the Yukon Valley/ ' The Imperial part'; it is an oft recurring phrase in a story of the Company's work. Four years after the inauguration of the Klondyke service the Company purchased the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company's fleet, thus laying the foundation of the British Columbia Coast Service, the fast vessels of which accomplish a triangular journey unique in coastal navigation. Between Vancouver and SUPERSTRUCTURfe 99 Victoria, in British Columbia, and Seattle, in the American state of Washington, they steam a distance of three hundred and thirty nine miles, making three stops.of approximately two hours each ; at each stop passengers are landed and embarked, the ship is cleaned, coaled, watered and provisioned—and all this is done during twenty-four hours of time. The appearance of the Canadian Pacific Railway flag on the Atlantic Ocean in 1903 marked a new era in the history of the Canadian Pacific. The Company had acted quickly after deciding to enter the Atlantic trade. They did not wait for a fleet to be built. They bought' a fleet in being,' and the Elder Dempster Beaver Line, comprising fifteen vessels, by a few strokes of the pen became the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. It was an episode as dramatic as it was far-reaching in effect. Developments proceeded apace. The service from Liverpool, Bristol (Avonmouth), and London was extended the following year to Antwerp. Three years afterwards the " Empress of Ireland " and the " Empress of Britain " were added to the Canadian- Atlantic service between Liverpool and Quebec, and a big spurt was given to the popularity of the St. Lawrence route among maritime travellers. Subsequently, the | Metagama " and the " Missanabie " were placed in commission, and the " Melita " and the "Minnedosa," of a similar type, will assist materially in coping with the ever-growing Trans-Atlantic traffic. 100 SUPERSTRUCTURE In January, 1916, the Canadian Pacific Ocean Services, Limited, were appointed the Managers and Agents of the Canadian Pacific fleets on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the old-established Allan Line. The Allan Line possesses a number of fine vessels, including such well-known steamers as the "Alsatian," " Calgarian," " Scandinavian," " Corsican," " Victorian," and " Virginian," also an ocean navigation history going back to the year 1822, when Captain Alexander Allan sailed from Greenock to Quebec in the little brig "Jean," in search of cargo for his vessel. How well the intrepid Scottish sailor succeeded in his mission is exemplified in the Allan Line of to-day. In the close connection early established between the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian-Australasian Line, the Company created an additional factor in their trans-Pacific ramifications, a factor which assists materially in the closer linking up, not only of the Mother of Nations with her Over-seas Dominions, but of the Dominions themselves. Under the arrangement the Canadian Pacific Railway connects at Vancouver with this branch of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, which, starting forty years ago with three small coasting vessels, now own a fleet embracing in its operations traffic with Australasia, the Islands of the Southern Seas, India and Canada. Canadian- Australasian steamers leave Vancouver at regular B!U_k 1 jj5j||j^s& • i* ijgp $■ i_S IK ___» H^, ,-;__»_■ w it**'. ____fr -f •■'.,'::-. .' *"^_1_1 ~Txa*>f, H «jS5_l»_ _W_^> H O K IP *^^^r ~~^llt__ OT ____-*_~ff il__r a ___n_HP 3___§ ifife 2 K jfe***' GO '-.-■;'."": N_f_^_MB__9fl ^^l^^^^s^SpPHMiPl^j^H ti 1 '*"'"'%;' :|g\\ O w ___k ^It, dft. .j|i ■;p3«-~" i^_S Q **• • ' V*Vr }k^*' »j $M&. H o ^/^jjj^tgm- ^-_~_ ^B^J^'^A ______ \\3& tmf~ SUPERSTRUCTURE 101 intervals for New Zealand and Australia, calling en route at Honolulu and Suva, Fiji Islands. From Sydney there are services to Manila and Hong Kong, where connection is made with the Canadian Pacific " Empresses." The establishment of a chain of hotels across Canada is not the least important of the Company's developments. From the Atlantic to the Pacific these hostelries are of much utility to travellers, who otherwise would frequently have to endure the discomforts of the " second-rate " and often unwholesome accommodation which only is available in communities still in the early process of evolution. The Chateau Frontenac, in Quebec, the dominating architectural feature of Canada's most historic city, and the Hotel Vancouver—" The World's Half-Way House "—in Vancouver are meeting-places of wayfarers from all corners of the earth. The Place Viger, in Montreal, the Royal Alexandra, in Winnipeg, the Hotel Palliser, in Calgary, the Banff Springs Hotel, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and the Empress Hotel, in Victoria—" that little bit of England on the Pacific "—are establishments of the highest national and continental repute, and in many other centres of Canadian travel the Canadian Pacific Railway hotel is a radiator of social activities, or a haven of rest according to the tastes and desires of the visitors. 102 SUPERSTRUCTURE A story—a true story—is told of an American woman who, after gazing at one of the world's wonders, the great Illecillewaet Glacier, a mighty mass of crystal ice towering thousands of feet from the level of the Canadian Pacific railway tiack, asked in all earnestness : " Is it a real glacier, or only one that the Company have put there for an advertisement ? " That was a task beyond the powers of even the men of the C.P.R. But to them belongs the credit of opening to the nations of the earth the portals of a mountain region which, for immensity and scenic grandeur, is unparalleled elsewhere in the world. " Sixty Switzerlands rolled into one," is Edward Whymper, the conqueror of the Matterhorn's description of this land of peaks and eternal snow. " It is a glut of glory," said another traveller, wearily, her mind overwhelmed by the sheer riot of splendour. The Canadian Government quickly realised the priceless treasure which the railway had brought to the nation. An Act was passed, ' after a memorable debate in the Dominion House of Commons,' setting apart for the use and enjoyment of the people a national park, to be named the Rocky Mountains Park, with the C.P.R. station of Banff as the radial centre. Subsequently this park was extended to embrace an enormous area, and Yoho Park and Glacier Park were also added later to the national reservation—a Mountaineering in The Rockies. SUPERSTRUCTURE 103 reservation comprising a territory nearly six thousand square miles in extent. ' Let us think of the future,' Lord Bryce has said. ' We are the trustees of the future. We are not here for ourselves alone. All these gifts were not given to us to be used by one generation or with the thought of one generation only before our minds. We are the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with the duty of what we owe to those who come after, and there is no duty which seems to be higher than that of handing on to them undiminished facilities for the enjoyment of some of the best gifts the Creator has seen fit to bestow upon His people/ The Dominion Government, to their honour, have given practical effect to Lord Bryce's dictum and their national park policy rests on a broad and generous basis. To preserve intact for the benefit not only of Canadians but for visitors from all parts of the globe the resplendent and majestic beauties of the mountain zone of Alberta and British Columbia is a work worthy of the Government of a great Dominion. And in that work the Canadian Pacific Railway Company are helping nobly. ' It is the people's right to have primitive access to the remote places of safest retreat from the fever and the fret of the market place and the beaten tracts of life. We are devoutly grateful, as we ought to be, that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company have shown themselves wise in a national sense, by refusing to follow in the wake of the cog- 104 SUPERSTRUCTURE railways of the Rigi and Pike's Peak ': it is a Canadian mountaineer's tribute. While assisting in the work of conservation, the Company are active in the work of development on aesthetic lines. At the great scenic centres, Banff, Lake Louise, Field, Emerald Lake, and Glacier— "they established mountain hotels and these have become the headquarters of mountaineers. They instituted a service of Swiss guides, and the model Swiss village of " Edelweiss " for the homes of these sturdy sons of the mountains. They built a number of specially equipped observation cars for travellers whose only opportunities for seeing the region in all its native glory are from the railway train. They employed world-famed mountaineers to explore and map the country ; they cut mountain trails ; and, in general, have encouraged and assisted every scheme for the creation and improvement of facilities for a full appreciation of this dazzling Land of Enchantment. In the big work of building a motor road through the mountains from Calgary to Vancouver they are associated with the Dominion Government and the Provincial Governments of Alberta and British Columbia. The route of this road which, when completed, will be the most beautiful and alluring of all the pathways of Canada, follows the old coach road from Calgary to Banff and on to Lake Louise as far as Castle Mountain, turns thence to Vermilion Pass, the boundary of Rocky Mountains Park on this side. From Vermilion Pass the road crosses the Briscoe SUPERSTRUCTURE 105 Range by Sinclair Pass, and ascends the valley of the Columbia to Windermere Lake and the source of the Columbia. Crossing the spit of land that separates the Columbia from its mighty tributary to Kootenay, the mountain highway follows the latter stream to Wardner, then verges west to Kootenay Lake and Nelson, crosses the Columbia again after its huge bend to the north, and swings down to the international boundary at Grand Forks. From there the road follows a general westerly direction, crossing Okanagan River, ascending the Similkameen, traversing the Hope Range and coming down the Coquihalla to Hope on the Fraser River, and descending the Fraser to Vancouver. An alternative route runs west from Windermere, over the Wells Pass, crosses the Lardo country to the head of Lower Arrow Lake, thence up Fire Valley to the old wagon road to Vernon and Grand Prairie, thence by way of Douglas Lake to Merritt and a junction with the main route. The main road from Calgary to Vancouver will have a total length of about six hundred miles, constituting a panorama of scenic glory. Another alternative route swings east from Wardner and traverses the Crow's Nest Pass to the Alberta side of the Rockies, then follows the foothills to Calgary. Yet another branch of the main highway runs from Castle Mountain through Rocky Mountains Parks to Field and Golden. The route of this branch and that portion of the main road from Castle Mountain to the Columbia Valley traverses several wildly io6 SUPERSTRUCTURE beautiful valleys and mountain passes, encircling a region of heaven-towering peaks, snowfields, glaciers, ice-cascades, lakes and waterfalls—a peerless region which rouses nature lovers to the highest heights of ecstasy. The nomenclature of the Rocky Mountains and Selkirk Mountains exemplifies and commemorates the stupendous achievement of the explorers and builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway of making a great national heritage available to the people. Mount Stephen, a giant among the giants of the Rockies, is named after the first President of the Company, who later took bis title as a British peer of the realm—Lord Mount Stephen—from this cloud- splitting crag. Van Home range in the Rockies and Van Home Glacier in the Selkirks commemorate the Master Builder. Mount Hector is named after the adventurous discoverer of the Kicking Horse Pass—a pass so named from an incident in the explorer's travels. In the Selkirks, the majestic Mount Sir Donald and Sir Donald Glacier are everlasting tributes to the driver of the last spike at Craigellachie, and Mount Shaughnessy stands as a stately statue to Lord Shaughnessy. Rogers Pass, Rogers Peak, and Rogers Glacier honour the intrepid pathfinder, and Albert Canyon and Albert Peaks, his nephew who accompanied him in his exploratory expeditions; Moberly Peal- towers in testimony to the work of the dauntless discoverer of Eagle Pass, Mount Sir Sandford, king of SUPERSTRUCTURE I07 the Selkirks, and Fleming Peak are named after the great engineer, and Grant Peak commemorates his friend, Dr. Grant, who shared the hardships of his travels in the mountains. It is a galaxy of noble names. When Sir William Van Home retired from the Presidency in 1898—he succeeded Lord Mount Stephen in that position—his mantle of office was placed on the shoulders of a man who was well able to bear it, and who had been his most brilliant lieutenant: Thomas Shaughnessy. To the far-seeing and courageous vision, organising genius, administrative and executive ability, and forceful personality of Lord Shaughnessy (as he afterwards became) is mainly due the great modem developments which have made the Canadian Pacific Railway famed throughout the world, and have earned for him the appellation: " King of Railway Presidents." ' Under the present regime a colonial railway company has grown into a tremendous world-circling web of commerce of Imperial significance, with radiations in every quarter of the globe. Such developments do not take place by themselves ; they require imagination, foresight, and a broad, open outlook, which together spell genius. These qualities Thomas Shaughnessy has brought to his fife work—these, and an untiring energy and a knowledge of his business I08 SUPERSTRUCTURE that can only be won by those who have climbed upward through every grade.' The words are those of a Canadian writer. ' A strong, clear thinking man, wise in counsel, with good purpose, his advice and guidance are valued in connection with every kind of business and public activity. He has done great things on sure and safe lines to promote the development of Canada, has been earnest and active when the country needed the services of its most capable and public spirited men, and has seen with the larger vision where the true interests of the Dominion and of the Empire lay/ THE MAKING OF A NATION. An American senator, in a moment of irritable admiration, described the Canadian Pacific Railway as " The Dominion of Canada On Wheels *'—a definition which, although of an exaggerated nature, suggests the dominating position which the " C.P.R." has acquired in the affairs of a nation. From the beginning of their existence the Canadian Pacific Railway Company have been the leading factors in the national development of the Dominion. ' Never were the fortunes of a great country and a great commercial corporation so closely intertwined as in the case of the Canadian Dominion and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company/ Dr. Parkin wrote only nine years after the historic happening at Craigellachie. ' From Halifax to Vancouver the " C.P.R.," as it is familiarly called, is a factor, and often a large factor, in the affairs alike of the country village and of the great city—in the politics of the municipality, the province, and the Dominion.' Since those days of which Parkin writes, the Canadian Pacific have gone far, very far, and have become an even more dominating factor in the economic and social fife of the Dominion. And the position they have acquired is the natural sequence of their activities, for the Company are doing much of the work which in other countries is done by the 109 110 THE MAKING OF A NATION Government. The Dominion and Provincial Governments of Canada are accomplishing their splendid part in the task of securing settlers from the British Isles, the United States of America, and other parts of the world, and assisting them to become worthy citizens of the Dominion, but the settlement of the great agricultural plains of the West, which has brought Britain's great over-sea Dominion before the eyes of the world, is primarily the result of the building, development, and operation of the transcontinental line through a region which before the advent of the iron horse of civilization was the domain of savages and buffaloes. The railway galvanised a sleeping country into activity. The West was awakened by the touch of steel. !#!#■ The Goddess of Agriculture had in her goodness endowed the land with the power to produce grain in abundance. But she needed the aid of man in making the land exercise its wonderful power and assume its heritage as the Granary of an Empire. The Canadian Pacific, it might be fancied, made a compact with Ceres. " Do your part in the giving of crops," they said, " and we will do ours. We will bring the men, from all the ends of the earth, if need be, to plough and cultivate the land into productivity." Ceres replied : " I agree.'* The Canadian Pacific Railway Company are carrying out their part of the "compact with Ceres" vigorously. THE MAKING OF A NATION They have become the biggest homemakers in Canada. By the establishment of C.P.R. " colonies," where the interests and happiness of the settlers are promoted and jealously guarded by the Company; by their activities in Great Britain, Northern Europe and the United States in securing settlers, not only for their own lands, but for the Dominion as a whole; and by their co-operation with the Dominion and Provincial Governments and civic municipalities in every scheme which has for its object the progress of Canada and Canadians, they are worthily fulfilling their pledge. Lord Shaughnessy has outlined the nature of the Company's work on behalf of Western Canada and the settlers therein. ' The ultimate source of wealth/ he said, 'is the employment of human activity upon natural resources, such as tilling the soil, clearing the forest, developing the mine. The Canadian Pacific have, therefore, devoted much of their energy to facilitating the access of the worker to the raw material from which he can produce wealth. ' In our modern state of civilization the city, town, or village is just as necessary to the land as the land is to the community as a whole. The problem is to keep the growth of these to their due proportion. The abnormal growth of city life is a social disease, which can be cured, but, better still, prevented. Every state from the dawn of history has grappled with the problem—Rome, England, France, have passed and re-passed laws innumerable—in the 112 THE MAKING OF A NATION endeavour to cure the disease of cities. What the Canadian Pacific Railway Company are endeavouring to do in Canada is to prevent the evil, so far as possible, by providing conditions of settlement which shall induce the settler to stay upon the land instead of drifting into the town or city. There are cases where they have prevailed on the town dweller to go back to the land, but human nature is such that these cases are comparatively rare. Pronounced success, however, has followed the policy of settling practical farmers from Great Britain, Europe, and the United States under favourable conditions on Canadian land. In each of these cases there must have been some feeling of dissatisfaction with his lot, which resulted in the emigration from the old home to the new home in Canada. That dissatisfaction might easily have ended into emigration from the land to the city. The history of every civilised nation is full of such cases. The saving of the farmer for the land, whatever that land may be, is a service to the human race for which too little credit has been given to colonizing railways, such as that which I have the honour to direct. c It is the Company's belief that the successful and permanent settlement of western Canada land depends on the adoption of mixed farming by the settler on the prairie, and with the object of encouraging mixed farming the Canadian Pacific have not only carried on an active educational propaganda, but have established a loan farm policy, under which stock to the value of $1,000 is loaded on easy terms to settlers THE MAKING OF A NATION 113 experienced in handling stock. In this respect the Canadian Pacific is ahead of any railway in history ; indeed, it may be questioned whether any government has done so much for its agricultural population. 'It is thirty years since the Canadian West was opened up to settlement by railway construction, and since then an ever increasing stream of population has poured in, from eastern Canada, from Europe, and particularly of recent years, from the United States. The proximity of the more developed states south of the line has had considerable effect on the standard of civilization, and the youngest western Canadian municipality considers itself behind the times if its streets are not paved and lighted with cluster lamps. Banks, schools, churches, and moving picture theatres are strongly in evidence, and the automobile garage is as busy as the livery stable. The transcontinental train service makes rapid connection with the larger cities, and the settler of to-day on the Canadian prairie is within almost too easy reach of the allurements of city life. Indeed, it is the opinion of the competent judges that the urban growth in western Canada has been too fast in comparison with the actual settlement, and that there are more small towns and cities than the extent of the present agricultural population justifies. At the same time, it is erroneous to consider that the desire for a high standard of living and the high cost of living in the cities is altogether bad for the farmer. The high standard of living in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Calgary, for instance, may not interest mtmml 114 THE MAKING OF A NATION the Canadian wheat farmer, but it has meant substantial profits for the Canadian intensive farmer. 'Paris, in France, is the most notable instance of the value of a rich, luxurious city to the surrounding agricultural community, and in the same way the demands of London for the product of the hotbed has revivified many a deserted English acre. But the small town in the Canadian west consists, for the most part, of middlemen, as the country is as yet too young and undeveloped to support any industries. These middlemen depend for their existence principally on the intensity of agricultural settlement in the neighbourhood, as the farmers are their chief customers for the goods which they sell. If that neighbouring agricultural land is but sparsely populated, the cluster lamps will but light up the deserted store and the departure ot the bankrupt. ' In order to secure closer settlement on the Canadian prairies the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, who are the largest land owners in that region, have recently made notable conditions attaching to the sale of their land. In the first place they have entirely eliminated the speculative holder of land, and absolutely decline to sell their agricultural lands except to genuine settlers. ' On the other hand, in the case of genuine settlers they offer substantial inducements. Land may be purchased on the instalment system spread over twenty years. Then there is a loan farm policy, under which buildings and farm improvements to the THE MAKING OF A NATION 115 value of $2,000 are advanced to the settler, also repayable over twenty years. In order to encourage mixed farming live stock to the value of $1,000 is supplied to those experienced in the handling of live stock, payment for which is also arranged on easy terms. ' This policy may seem startling at first sight, but its benefit to the farming population is obvious. No longer is it possible for a real estate speculator to hold up large areas, growing rich on the unearned increment which accrues to the value of his lands through the enterprise of genuine settlers alongside. The settlement now is a close settlement of actual farmers. Schools are more accessible, churches are frequented, neighbours are closer. In a word, the settler on the prairie is no longer subject to isolation, and the capital which enables him to develop his farm is supplied to him on easy terms by the Company. I In addition to the assistance given to new settlers, the Company, in special cases, each of which is carefully investigated by a committee of railway officials, help old settlers on the Company's land who have the elements of ultimate success but have met with temporary misfortune. Thus the Company have on their books a number of notes and chattel mortgages taken over from banks and implement-makers, which would otherwise have foreclosed on the settler owing to delay in payments. ' " Better Farming " special trains, with competent lecturers, are run by the Canadian Pacific Railway -____*_ Il6 THE MAKING OF A NATION in co-operation with the Provincial Governments, and a model farm at Strathmore, Alberta, serves as a demonstration farm at which the principles of good farming on irrigated land are taught to settlers on the large irrigation block east of Calgary. During the year 1913 eleven additional demonstration farms were established in the three prairie provinces, duly equipped with buildings, and under the care of experienced farmers. ' When we consider that these operations are spread over three provinces and are scattered over an area, roughly, seven hundred miles wide by two hundred miles deep, the magnitude of the work can, perhaps, be realized.' In this work of nation-building the conversion of an area of three million acres of ranching land into a crop- yielding territory, supporting a prosperous community, is a noteworthy achievement. Southern Alberta has veritably been irrigated into prosperity. Before the wizard wand of the C.P.R. was waved over the land the rancher and his cattle reigned supreme. Now the iarmer is king, paying homage only to the Company who supply him with the water of agricultural life—the homage, not of subjection, but of gratitude. The work has not yet reached its finality. But that already accomplished constitutes the system the largest of its kind on the American continent and second in the world, From the great Bassano Dam, -I THE MAKING OF A NATION 117 connecting with the Bow River, there radiates a network of canals and ditches, which are as the arteries of the body corporate, and through which flows the life-giving fluid from the mountains beyond. In the establishment of " Ready Made Farms " in Western Canada for British settlers the Company have laid the foundations of what will ultimately develope into an immense colonization project. Indeed, as a prominent economist has said, the far-seeing statesmanship of the Canadian Pacific is nowhere more clearly exemplified than in their efforts to stimulate immigration. ' The direct aim of the Company in prosecuting this work is to benefit their stockholders. But in looking after the interests of their proprietors they are promoting the welfare of the Dominion and of the British Empire. They are assisting to provide Canada with what she stands most in need of— population. They have irrigated a desert into land that is bearing the richest crops. They are ministering to the Dominion's political stability through helping to maintain an equilibrium between the races, and the constant manifestation of the railway's executive of a public spirit has done much to earn for the Company the good will of the people.' In war, as in peace, the Canadian Pacific Company have helped valiantly in the cause of Empire. Even before the railway was completed the Company were i*nvQ_vecl hi matters military, an4 the story of their Il8 THE MAKING OF A NATION achievement during the Riel Rebellion, when the Indian and half-breed population of the Western plains were in arms against the Dominion Government, and the scattered white settlements were in dire peril, is memorable in Canadian history. The new railway had one hundred and thirty miles to be completed. William Van Home, recognising that if the rebellion was to be crushed without disastrous consequences to Canada the soldiers would have to be conveyed to the scene of insurrection without delay, offered to the Premier, Sir John A. MacDonald, to undertake the task of transporting the troops. " How can you carry men without a railway ? It is impossible,** answered the Premier. " Raise the men, and give me a week's notice of their arrival, and I pledge myself to do it." " What do you pledge ? " asked Sir John. " I pledge my word, and, if necessary, my life," was the answer. " Can you do it in a month's time ? " was the next question. " I will do it in- eleven days to Fort Qu'Appelle," said Van Home. " Send up the men and I only make one stipulation : I shall carry them up in my own way, and they are under my direction for transport and supplies." (" I was not going to have Quartermasters and such-like fussy folks bothering about red tape and supplies," said Van Home, in describing the episode.) ' The railway was being built in sections and there THE MAKING OF A NATION 119 were many gaps in it. But the sleds which had brought four thousand men up to work on the railway fine were available. Into these Van Home packed the soldiers like sardines in a barrel. He directed his own transport, and he took them across the snow whenever there was a gap in the railway line, and he reached Qu*Appelle in six days, thus leaving five days to spare over and above the contract which he had made,' And the rebellion was crushed. In the greatest of world wars the Canadian Pacific Railway Company have proved of immense service to Canada and to the Mother Land. ' Imperial in character, international in influence, transcontinental in size, the Canadian Pacific Railway occupies a premier position in the activities of this growing country. Therefore, in the first business of Canada, the successful prosecution of the war, it is not surprising that the Canadian Pacific Railway is taking a prominent part. Canadian Pacific ships are transporting men, munitions, and food supplies across the Atlantic. In their primary business of railroading the Company have handled with despatch their share of the record crop of wheat and grain from the western prairies, much of which is being sent to the Allies in Europe. The executive officials and employees are lending their assistance to the Empire and to Canada, both on active service and in the acquisition, manufacture, or transportation of the various " bullets " that are so necessary to bring to r^~ 120 THE MAKING OF A NATION a successful issue the operations carried on by British forces/ On the declaration of hostilities, Lord Shaughnessy was able to offer for the service of the Government perhaps the most perfect organization of its kind in the world, an organization controlling fast ships capable of being converted into armed cruisers and transport on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, nineteen thousand miles of railway track for the transportation of men and supplies across and from Canada, and a telegraph system of over one hundred thousand miles of wires. Three of the Pacific " Empresses " were made into armed cruisers, and did good work in helping to round up the elusive German " Emden." Before being released by the British Admiralty the " Empress of Russia" steamed eighty thousand miles in seven months over the Pacific and Indian Oceans and several of the Company's Atlantic vessels formed part of the great modern Armadas which brought the Canadian Expeditionary Forces to England under the watchful care of the all-powerful British navy. At the request of the Canadian Government the Canadian Pacific formed a Railway Construction Corps for service in Flanders; this corps was described by the King as one of the finest bodies of men he had ever seen, and their work at the front has exemplified their capacity as experts. For the securing of general war supplies in the Dominion, the Imperial Munitions Board commissioned the Purchasing Department of the Company to act on their behalf. THE MAKING OF A NATION 121 In these and other ways the Canadian Pacific have worked, and worked strenuously, in the service of the British Empire. In the annals of the Company, the record of their work during Armageddon will stand high in a record of great national and Imperial achievements. In that mightiest of all the world's structures, the British Empire, Canada occupies an imposing position, and the progress of the Dominion automatically adds to the progress of the Empire. As a leading factor in the development of British North America, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company are taking an important part in the development of the Imperial fabric. They are primarily a commercial corporation, with profit-yielding transportation by land and sea as their chief function. But in the very nature of their work they are Empire builders. From the moment of the driving of the last spike in the transcontinental railway the Canadian Pacific assumed a status of Imperial significance. The saving of British Columbia, the opening of the vast agricultural plains of Western Canada to settlement, the linking of Canada and Canada's people from ocean to ocean, the establishment of an all-British highway from Great Britain to Asia and Australasia, the stimulus to the industrial activities of Eastern Canada, the widening of the 122 THE MAKING OF A NATION national horizon—these were the immediate results of the Company's work. The development of trade between Canada and the Mother Country and between the Dominion and her sister Dominions, the peopling of the prairies with British citizens, the establishment of the wheat zone— Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta—as the Granary of Empire, the securing of a higher place for Canada among the nations of the world, and the strengthening of the Imperial family ties—these are among the later fruits of the Company's activities. In truth, the history of the Canadian Pacific is a history of work from which have sprung results of far-reaching value to Canada and to the Empire of which it is a part. The Canadian Pacific Railway, like a rolling snowball, gathers size with impetus. As the Dominion expands the Canadian Pacific as an integral and vitally essential part must grow with it, just as Canada will grow with the Canadian Pacific ; the country and the corporation are interdependent. To that growth no man or woman can state a limit. The enormous and incalculably rich natural resources of Canada, only a meagre portion of which has yet been tapped ; the immensity of her national territory, comprising in area nearly four million square miles—j forty per cent, of the area of the British Empire; her brain, body, and character-buuding climate; her THE MAKING OF A NATION 123 geographical position, midway between Europe and Asia, and contiguous to the United States of America, with the Atlantic fronting her shores on the east and the Pacific on the west; the virility and enterprise of her people, now numbering only eight million, in a country with room and scope for two hundred million, all assure the Dominion in the future a proud position among the great nations of the world. In the fulfiling of Canada's national destiny, the Canadian Pacific will continue, as in the past, to take a strenuous part. Already the Company are preparing to render titanic assistance in the solution of the problems which will come to all nations after the cessation of strife and a war-scarred world lays down its death-dealing arms, and the accomplishment of tasks made bigger by strife. Canada's share in the work of re-organization and rejuvenation will be big and the country is fortunate in possessing a constructive statesman of the calibre of Lord Shaughnessy, who, in a message which echoed through the Empire, indicated his recognition ot the supreme importance of anchoring settlers to the land —the basis of Canada's prosperity and greatness. ' The future of Canada,' he said, ' depends largely on the ability with which we handle the incoming population, the preparedness we make for absorbing the heterogeneous elements whom we may be called upon to assimilate after this terrible racial eruption in Europe. We should be busy now thinking out and formulating an organization which should place upon 124 THE MAKING OF A NATION the land, or in the industries for which they are fitted, with the least possible friction or loss of time, those individuals or families which come to make a new home in Canada. In the past we have been too apt to let the immigrant shift for himself and find his place by himself. As a result, many a good farm labourer has been lost to the land, and has helped, in times of economic stress, to overcrowd our cities. We have said to the mechanic : " Take the first job that is offered to you," instead of having a carefully organized labour bureau which would tell him of the place where his skill was needed. This war has accelerated many manufacturing activities in Canada, and there is possibility of a greater demand for highly skilled labour than was the case when Canada depended more completely on her agriculture. Even in the case of the immigrant farmer from Europe, we have not always been ready with the expert advice which would enable him to adapt himself without loss of time to his new conditions. We have let men with invaluable knowledge of intensive farming go to waste on homesteads remote from the markets and have not sufficiently posted our settlers on climatic and soil conditions, the knowledge of which is essential to their success as Canadian farmers. We have, as it were, brought seeds and bulbs and plants from Europe by the ton, and planted them indiscriminately in a garden which had not been prepared for them—a method of culture which could only result in a heavy percentage of waste. There is so much to be done to develop this Canada of ours, Canada at Play. THE MAKING OF A NATION 125 that any waste of energy should be avoided. We must conserve that energy just as much as we must conserve our credit, if our future is to be as great as all true Canadians hope to see/ ' These views,' said a distinguished Canadian publicist, in comment, ' expressed by one so well situated as he is to put them into practice, are of the highest importance. They indicate that the President of the Canadian Pacific is prepared to sweep out of the path of settlers—especially of those of the West—all obstacles, political or economic, that stand in the way of rapid settlement. Lord Shaughnessy, as head of the Canadian Pacific Railway, can do more even than the Parliament of Canada to make the settler happy and prosperous and to insure the growth of Canada after the war/ With characteristic thoroughness Lord Shaughnessy has already set to work in solving one of the great after-war problems—that of the ex-soldier. The scheme he has formulated in connection therewith is worthy of the man and worthy of the great corporation over which he presides. ' We have been giving this question the most careful consideration and have decided on a comprehensive plan of colonization which will be the largest of its kind in the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway/ said Lord Shaughnessy, in making the official announcement. ' The details of the colonization plan are being worked out now, and when I say that it involves the preparation of perhaps as many as a thousand farms in Western 126 THE MAKING OF A NATION Canada for occupation in the spring of 1917 alone the size of our undertaking may be realized. ' Our duty, however, demands that this great problem be met with the energy that it deserves. One of the most serious problems facing Canada to-day is the matter of handling the hundreds of thousands of returned soldiers after the close of the war. Their military service will have unsettled and unfitted many of them for a return to ordinary clerical and sedentary life and something will have to be done to enable them to obtain.outside employment. The problem is further complicated by the fact that without doubt a very large number of men who will be mustered out from the British army will want to emigrate to overseas dominions, and provision must be made to properly take care of them and colonize them in suitable employment. ' The problem is one of such magnitude that it must be faced and solved by the British Government, but the Provincial Governments and the large Canadian corporations must also do their part. Realizing that the crisis must be met and desiring to take their share of the burden of trying to solve this problem and assist the men who have fought the battles of the Empire, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company have decided to establish in Western Canada colonies which, for the moment, we are calling Returned Veterans Colonies, where men who wish to go in for farming can obtain improved farms on terms which will in time enable them to become land owners and create The Land of Promise. THE MAKING OF A NATION 127 homes for themselves and families. These colonies will be given distinctive names, probably with military associations, and will contain a sufficient number of families in each to insure social, school, and church facilities and in each case will include a central instructive farm under a competent agriculturist so that advice and instruction may be available for the colonists. ' Our experience in connection with the ready-made farms has been invaluable and will enable us to avoid mistakes which are inevitable to new undertakings. The burden which we propose to carry will be no light one, as human nature is such that there are always fault-finders—always square pegs which will not fit into round holes. We have had such cases in connection with our ready-made farms, but on the whole the colonies established under the ready-made farm scheme have been highly successful; for instance, Sedgewick, which has a group of settlers of which Western Canada may well be proud. But we are prepared to face all the trouble, all the petty annoyances which may occur in connection with this still greater scheme, realizing that it is our duty towards the Empire to which we are proud to belong.' Aided by the European organization of the Company, which is under the management of Mr. George McLaren Brown, an ardent Imperialist and enthusiastic advocate and supporter of all causes which have for their object the binding of the United Kingdom and the over-seas Dominions in closer relationship, the wm -—I 128 THE MAKING OF A NATION Canadian Pacific will thus be a leading factor in the movement to Canada and settlement therein of British men, women, and children, when the nations of the world are again living in harmony. It is a noble work that lies ahead of the Canadian Pacific Company—a work fraught with significance to Canada and to the British Empire. APPENDIX APPENDIX. CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE. A STORY IN FIGURES. The Canadian Pacific Railway is an international barometer. By the prosperity of the Company is judged the prosperity of the Dominion. On the stock exchanges of Europe and America every passing or permanent phase of Canadian economics and world politics is depicted in " the latest price of Can. Pacs.," in the nomenclature of the market. The growth of Canada is represented in the growth of the C.P.R. ' Our railways are prosperous only when the people at large are prosperous. The prosperity must begin with the people, and the share of the railways is a toll upon popular profits. This toll is earned, because the prosperity of the people is made possible only by the service of the railways.' To say that the prosperity of the Canadian people has been made possible by the Canadian Pacific— ' the chief artery of trade, of commerce and of civilization throughout the Dominion'—is merely to state an axiom. 130 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE I3I In reviewing the financial development of the Canadian Pacific Railway since its inception, in a speech made in Montreal at the close of the year 1912, Lord Shaughnessy (then Sir Thomas Shaughnessy) said :—' My mind goes back to the early days of the Company thirty years ago, when the men who constituted what was known as " the Syndicate" undertook to finish what the Government had commenced, that is, the construction of a line across the continent in Canada. When I first joined the Company I became general purchasing agent and afterwards assistant to the general manager and had, consequently, a somewhat intimate knowledge of the affairs of the Company, not only the general works of the Company, but the finances as well, and no one remembers better than I do the enormous risks which the Syndicate took in the construction of the transcontinental line. Mr. George Stephen and his associates staked their entire personal fortunes. At that time it looked as if their personal fortunes did not have much chance, and the enterprise had the appearance that it might not succeed. When the successful time came there were those who spoke of the Government subsidies in a not very enthusiastic manner, and pronounced them unduly liberal, but in 1881 to 1885 the investing world did not view them in the same light. In those early days it was almost impossible to secure money for the prosecution of the work. It was only through the indomitable will and devotion of the General Manager and Vice-President —«_-_! 132 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE of that day, Mr. Van Home, that the work was carried forward to completion. There were times when they did not know just where the money was to come from to carry on the work, but it was the practice of Mr. Van Home, as he was then, to order five thousand more men to be sent West and to trust to Providence to find means of paying the wages. 'In the year 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway made a mark in the progress of the Company. Early that year the line was sufficiently advanced north of Lake Superior to prove of great assistance in suppressing the Indian Rebellion. When the war broke out the Canadian Pacific were able to move troops from the East to the West on Canadian soil, thus saving what would otherwise have been a long drawn-out, troublesome, and expensive warfare. That circumstance impressed the people of Great Britain with the importance of the route, and the attention of the entire financial world was called to the great possibilities of the railway which up to that time had not appealed to their investing instincts. ' For several years the Company had a struggle in the North-West owing to dissatisfaction, resulting from what was known as the " monopoly clause " of the contract, which provided that for a period of twenty years no other railway could be built between the Canadian Pacific Railway and the United States boundary. After much discussion and a good deal of friction, this monopoly clause was finally cancelled by the Dominion Parliament, the Government giving as CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 133 a consideration for it a guarantee of 3J per cent, on the land grant bonds of the Company to the extent of $15,000,000, secured by their entire land grant, and that land grant that is to-day quoted as such a rich asset was not then considered worth $ 15,000,000, because the bonds, even with the Government guarantee, only yielded the Company about ninety cents on the dollar. 'After the completion of the railway some progress was made year after year until the serious business and industrial difficulties of the American continent in 1893 and 1894 commenced, when a large number of the most important railways in the United States were compelled to default on their securities and went into the hands of the receivers. The Canadian Pacific Railway did not default, but as a precaution, and with a view to mamtaining a reasonable reserve, the dividends were passed for one or two half-years, and after that, things commenced to look up again. I It was not until 1902 that the Company began to receive any important return for the stupendous efforts and enormous outlay of money made by the Canadian Government and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to attract the attention of the world to Canada's advantages and to encourage settlers to come to the Dominion to cultivate the unoccupied lands. It was in the year 1902 that the Company started the great forward movement which has been in continuance ever since/ In reviewing, the progress made during the decade, 134 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE the President said that in 1902 the Company had no Atlantic steamships, but since then they had not only secured a steamship line on the Atlantic, but had supplemented the line previously inaugurated on the Pacific. ' To-day the Company may be considered as a pre-eminent factor in the North Atlantic Ocean trade. Our Pacific Coast line is also becoming a very important feature of the Company's affairs. I recollect the time when the Company decided upon a service between Vancouver and Victoria in lieu of the service provided by what was then known as the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company. The steamship "Prince Rupert" was built, but the merchants of Victoria raised such trouble that the Company abandoned the project. Later the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company were acquired and rehabilitated, and every year since the Company have spent more money in providing new ships than the entire amount paid for the original fleet. ' With regard to the increased business of the Company during the past ten years, I have had some statements prepared that give interesting figures. During the last year over ten million meals have been served on the ocean, lake and river steamers, the dining cars, and in the hotels operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway, representing an average of about thirty thousand meals per day, with an annual expenditure of upwards of four million dollars for provisions and supplies. The orders placed through the purchasing department in 1912, for equipment and CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 135 supplies required in connection with the business of the Company will approximate about eighty-five million dollars, and the pay rolls during the past year have averaged five million dollars per month. ' Now these figures may be spoken of very glibly. Indeed, few people who have not got to deal with them from day to day realize what they mean. To spend eighty-five million dollars on equipment and supplies in one year is a big undertaking, and when you have to hand your paymaster five million dollars every month to pay your employees you have got to be pretty prosperous, or you will occasionally be short of funds. The Canadian Pacific have a great many men to pay, ninety thousand of them, regularly, and at times quite twenty thousand more. To pay ninety thousand men every month naturally requires a very large sum of money, but fortunately, the revenue of the Canadian Pacific Railway is such as to warrant it, and, in addition, to give the Company's credit such a position in the financial markets of the world that the vast sums required for capital expenditures are secured with a comparative degree of ease. * While on the subject of the Company's finances I should like to say, and truthfully say, that, notwithstanding the vast risk that was taken by the men who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and who were responsible for its construction, not one large fortune was made out of the affairs of the Company. Lord Mount Stephen, who, of course, was in the front rank, was the man of resourcefulness, who was willing 136 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE to risk everything; yet his connection with the Company was a source of distinct financial loss. Lord Strathcona kept five thousand shares of his stock, and, of course, he is participating in the advantages resulting from new issues from time to time. With that exception, not one single man connected with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has made what might be considered even a reasonable amount of money from his financial connection with the Company. It has been an understood thing from the beginning that no director should either speculate in stock or should take advantage of any information secured by reason of his membership on the Board, and in all my experience there has never been an occasion to find fault with any member of the Board of Directors for either speculating in stock or for utilising to his own advantage inside information that he possessed. 'While I am exceedingly proud, naturally, as we all are, of the progress the Canadian Pacific Railway has made as a great transportation company, as a great developer of territory, and as a great factor of assistance to the Canadian Government in bringing Canada to the present important position it occupies in the world, I am still more proud of being able to say that there has been no taint of graft of any nature or description. Further, I may say that I have never found it necessary to ask an officer of the Company to tender his resignation because he was engaged in affairs that were not consistent with his duty to the Company.' CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 137 In the official financial statement issued by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, on June 30th, 1915, the Company's Total Assets were valued at $931,853,369. Of these the Assets in Property Investment were valued at $527,793,320, composed as follows :— Railway: $349,989,662; Rolling Stock Equipment : $153,595,063; Ocean, Lake and River Steamers : $24,208,595 ; Total Property Investment: $527,793,320. The Assets in Acquired Securities, under Schedule "A," valued at cost, amounted to $111,652,627. Of this sum all but $7,265,625 represented securities of leased and controlled fines. The Assets in Securities of Electric Power and Light Companies, Collieries, Mining and Smelting Companies, etc., (" Active "), and in unsold Agricultural Lands, Timber Lands, Coal-rights, Town sites, Town plots, etc., (" Inactive "), under Schedule " B," amounted in value to $131,241,869. These assets, which exemplify the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's extensive ramifications, as apart from transportation, were composed as follows :— Active Assets : 26,190 shares Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company Stock, cost, $712,273; 11,000 shares West Kootenay Power and Light Company* Common Stock, and 550 shares West Kootenay Power and Light Company, Preferred 138 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE Stock, cost, $517,493; Hull Electric Railway Company, cost to date of statement, $1,067,602; Company's Collieries in Alberta and British Columbia and Company's interest in other producing Coal Mines, $2,500,000. Total value of Active Assets, $4,797,368. Inactive Assets, consisting of Unsold Lands and Other Properties: Surplus Lands and Bufidings, available for sale in the Provinces of New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, " representing mainly those purchased in excess of the requirements when securing right of way, station grounds and shop sites, as being more economical than a resort to condemnation proceedings," $2,390,360; Agricultural Lands in Manitoba : 214,339 acres at $10 per acre, $2,143,390. Agricultural Lands in Saskatchewan: 2,122,131 acres, at $13 per acre, $27,587,703; Agricultural Lands in Alberta : 3,326,358 acres at $13 per acre, $43,242,654, also Alberta Railway and Irrigation Lands (500,000 acres tract, under agreement with Government), 49,421 acres at $5 per acre, $247,105; Irrigated Lands in Alberta: Western Section, 43,399 acres at $25 per acre, $1,084,975, Eastern Section, 419,159 acres at $40 per acre, $16,766,360, A.R. & I. Section, 31,902 acres at $40 per acre, $1,276,080, and Land Reserved in Irrigation Blocks for right of way and operating purposes, 57,357 acres at $13 per acre, $745,641 ; Demonstration Farms, sixteen, $218,000 ; Timber Lands and Mills ; CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE J39 Timber and Tie Reserve in British Columbia, 552,360 acres at $4 per acre, $2,209,440 ; A.R. & I. Timber Limit in Alberta, 45,000 acres at $1.50 per acre, $67,500; Bull River Mill and improvements, $100,000; British Columbia: Columbia and Kootenay Lands, 21,412 acres at $2 per acre, $42,824 ; Unsold portions of Esquimalt and Nanaimo Land Grant, 1,097,480 acres, $5,000,000; Unsold Lands in Townsites : Subdivided Sites in Manitoba. Saskatchewan, and Alberta, $7,500,000; Unsub- divided Land adjoining Town Plots in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, 137,868 acres, $5,000,000; Unsold Plots in British Columbia, including Vancouver, $4,500,000; Unsubdivided Land adjoining Townsites in British Columbia, including Vancouver, $5,000,000 ; Northern Colonization Railway Land Grant in Quebec, 96,000 acres, $96,000 ; Coal Lands : 3,000,000 acres of coal-rights, reserved under land sold and unsold in Alberta, to be developed on a royalty basis, nominal, $1 ; 46,933 acres of Coal Land in British Columbia, at $10 per acre, $469,330; Iron Property in British Columbia, $25,000 ; Natural Gas : Rights Reserved in 100,000 acres of Land sold and unsold in Alberta (Revenue from area under lease to June 30, 1915, $46,002), nominal, $1 ; Petroleum Rights : Rights Reserved in 50,000 acres of Land sold and unsold in Alberta, to be developed on a royalty basis, nominal, $ 1 ; Improved Farms: Buildings and improvements on Improved (Ready Made) Farms I40 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. investment being repaid with land instalments with interest at 6 per cent., $551,109; Live Stock, advanced to farmers having land contracts with Company, on security lien notes, $181,027. Total value of Inactive Assets: $131,241,869. The statement of Assets in the Company's balance sheet, June 30, 1915, also includes, in addition, the following:— Advances to Lines and Steamships under Construction : $42,472,295; Advances and Investments, $10,457,985; Deferred Payments on Lands and Townsites Sales, $7,431,543; Special Investment Fund, being security for issue of Note Certificates, $52,000,000,—$55,870,069, made up thus : Deferred Payments on Lands and Townsites, $41,328,917, Government Securities, $10,088,735, Deposited with Trustees, $4,452,417 ; Working Assets, $44,933,661, made up thus : Material and Supplies on Hand, $15,729,605, Cash in Hand, $17,055,270, other working assets as specified, $12,148,786. The Total of all Assets, as already stated, amounted to $931,853,369. The statement of Liabilities at June 30, 1915, was as follows:— Capital Stock: $340,681,921, made up thus, Ordinary Stock, $260,000,000, and four Per Cent. Preference Stock, $80,681,921; Four Per Cent. Consoli- CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 141 dated Debenture Stock, $176,284,882; Mortgage Bonds, $6,399,180, as follows: Canadian Pacific Railway First Mortgage 5 percent., $2,749,180, and Algoma Branch First Mortgage 5 per cent., $3,650,000; Note Certificates 6 per cent., $52,000,000; Premium on Ordinary Capital Stock Sold, $45,000,000 ; Current Liabilities, as specified, $12,552,310; Accrued Liabilities, as specified, $830,614; Equipment Obligations, $12,780,000; Reserves and Appropriations, $10,852,465; Net Proceeds Lands and Townsites, $65,979,356. Surplus Revenue from Operation, $83,019,483; Surplus in Other Assets, $125,473,158. The railway mileage owned, leased, and controlled by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company at the end of the fiscal year 1886, amounted to 4,651 miles; in 1896, 7,251 miles; in 1906, 12,884 miles; in 1915, 18,090 miles. The railway equipment owned by the Company at the end of each of the fiscal years, 1886, 1896, 1906, and 1915 respectively, was:—Locomotives : 372 ; 584 1,109; 2,255. Passenger Cars: 378; 709; 1,207 2,781. Freight and Cattle Cars: 8,253; 15,162 34,152; 87,504. Conductors'Vans: 178; 297; 658 1,424. Boarding, Tool, and Auxiliary Cars and Steam- Shovels : 71; 554; 1,745; 6,467. The total amount of freight (including live stock), carried during each of the fiscal years, 1886, 1896, 142 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 1906, and 1915, respectively, was, in tonnage:— 2,046,195; 4,442,055; 13,933,798; 21,490,596. The number of passengers carried during each of the fiscal years, 1886, 1896, 1906, and 1915, respectively was:—1,899,319; 3,029,887; 7,753,323; 13,202,603. For the fiscal and calendar year, 1886, the gross receipts amounted in value to $10,081,803 ; the working expenses amounted to $6,378,317 ; the net earnings amounted to $3,703,486, and the surplus for the year, after deducting working expenses and fixed charges, totalled $635,445. The ratio of working expenses, compared with gross earnings, was 63.26 per cent., and the ratio of net earnings was 36.74 per cent. For the fiscal and calendar year 1896, the gross receipts amounted in value to $20,681,597, the working expenses amounted to $12,574,016 ; the net earnings amounted to $8,107,581, and the surplus for the year, after deducting working expenses and fixed charges, totalled $1,706,773. The ratio of working expenses, compared with gross earnings, was 60.80 per cent., and the ratio of net earnings was 39.20 per cent. For the fiscal year, 1906 (ending June 30), the gross receipts amounted in value to $61,669,758; the working expenses amounted to $38,696,446; the net earnings amounted to $22,973,312, and the surplus for the year, after deducting working expenses and fixed charges, totalled $16,012,215. The ratio of working expenses compared with gross earnings was 62.75 per CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 143 cent., and the ratio of net earnings was 37.25 per cent- For the fiscal year 1914 (ending June 30), the gross receipts amounted in value to $129,814,823; the working expenses amounted to $87,388,896; the net earnings amounted to $42,425,927, and the surplus for the year, after deducting working expenses and fixed charges, totalled $29,957,774. The ratio of working expenses, compared with gross earnings, was 67.32 per cent., and the ratio of net earnings was 32.68 per cent. For the fiscal year 1915 (ending June 30), during which Canada, as a Dominion in the British Empire, was involved in the war, the gross receipts amounted in value to $98,865,209; the working expenses amounted to $65,290,582 ; the net earnings amounted to $33,574,627, and the surplus for the year, after deducting working expenses and fixed charges, totalled $21,508,965. The ratio of working expenses, compared with gross earnings, was 66.04 per cent., and the ratio of net earnings was 33.96 per cent. For the fiscal half-year 1916 (July 1st to December 31st, 1915), the gross receipts amounted to $66,470,000, an increase over those of the fiscal half-year, 1915, of $10,532,000. The net earnings for the fiscal half year, 1916, amounted to $29,623,000, an increase of $9,949,000 over those of the corresponding period of the preceding fiscal year. The percentage of working expenses was 55.43, which is 9.40 per cent, below that of the corresponding period of the preceding fiscal year. 144 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE The following resume of the Company's physical and financial development is extracted, by courtesy of Sir Thomas Skinner, Bart., from " The Stock . Exchange Year Book, 1916." :— The Canadian Pacific Railway Company incorporated in February, 1881, for the purpose of constructing a line of railway to connect the seaboard of British Columbia on the Pacific Ocean with the railway system of Canada, and of operating the same for ever. The Dominion Government gave a subsidy of $25,000,000 in cash, 25,000,000 acres of land, and sections of railways, some built and others to be built, to the extent of 713 miles. To compensate the Company for the extra expense incurred in anticipating by as much as five years the contract time for the completion of the road, further assistance was subsequently given by the Government, the most important being the purchase back, in 1886, of 4,528,676 acres of the land grant at $1.50 per acre. The Company now own and lease 13,361 miles and control in all 18,090 miles. The Company's accounts are made up annually to June 30th and submitted in Montreal the first Wednesday in October. For 1900-1 and 1901-2 the dividend was 5% each year ; for 1902-3, 5J% ; for each of the six years to 1908-9, 6%; and for 1909-10, 6£%; while additional distributions of 1 % per annum were made in 1907, 1908, 1909, and 1910, out of the proceeds < CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 145 of land sales. For 1910-11 the total dividends paid to the shareholders aggregated 9|% (7% from railway and steamship earnings, and 2J% from interest on land sales and from other extraneous assets), and, as foreshadowed at the Annual Meeting in 1910, and promulgated in a circular issued to the shareholders in March, 1911, a plan was formulated by which the shareholders might in future receive greater advantage from the extraneous assets of the Company than they had in the past. The plan involved the separation in the accounts of the income from the extraneous assets (consisting of interest on investments, dividends, rentals and like income) from that from the railway and steamship fines, the former income being placed with the interest on the proceeds of land sales, already kept separate, and together forming a special income account. For 1911-12, 1912-13, 1913-14 and 1914-15, the total dividends paid each year were 10%, 7% being, as regards the first two periods, from railway and steamship earnings, and, as regards the last two, from the earnings of the railway alone, and 3% from such special income (the 10% dividend being paid in equal instalments about the end of March, June, September and December). For the year 1914-15 there was a surplus of $89,914 on the earnings of the railway, and $3,169,332 on special income account, the total accumulated surplus on both accounts (after deducting the balance dividends for 1914-15, paid in October, 1915) being $74,905,845, besides which there was at June 30, 1915, a " surplus in other assets of 146 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE $ 125,473,157," and at the same date there were reserves for steamship and equipment replacement and for contingencies aggregating $10,852,465. In 1902, 1904, 1906, 1908, 1909, 1912 and 1913, the shareholders had allotted to them at par, as regards the first four issues, 125% for the 1909 issue, 150% for the 1912 issue and 175% for the 1913 issue, new shares to the amount respectively, of 3 shares, 2 shares, 2 shares, 2 shares, 2 shares, 1 share and 3 shares, to each 10 old shares held at the time of issue; the market values of these rights were equivalent respectively to 3f, 5}, 12, 9, 9J, 8 and 19 per cent, on the holdings in respect of which the rights were allotted, and the rights of subscription to the special investment fund note certificates were valued at $4-5/16 per cent, thereon. At the Annual Meeting, October, 1913, the President indicated that the Directors had had under consideration the desirability of conveying the Company's land, town sites and other interests to a Company in exchange for all its capital stock to be held in the Company's treasury and taken into the Balance Sheet with the other assets, but that there were disadvantages attaching to a conveyance of that description, particularly with reference to land, and that probably the same end might be accomplished by the creation of an Investment Fund to be administered by trustees, and he stated that in any event the Directors would endeavour before the publication of the next annual report to devise some plan for re-constructing the CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE I47 Special Income account, and showing the extraneous assets in more definite and tangible form. In redemption of that promise the earnings from ocean steamships now appear in the Annual Report in Special Income account, as also do the proceeds from town-site sales and the net earnings of Pacific Coast steamships, the commercial telegraph, the news department and the hotels; and the extraneous assets, consisting of collieries, shares in mining, smelting, light and power companies, unsold agricultural, irrigated timber and town site lands, coal, natural gas and petroleum rights, and demonstration and improved farms, etc., appear in the Balance Sheet under the head " Other Assets : Schedule B." (at June 30th, 1915, $131,241,869). The report for 1913-14 stated, with regard to the issue of Special Investment Note Certificates, that $35,571,960 had been advanced from current funds to meet the cost of additional mileage and ocean steamers, against which no securities had been issued or sold; that, in the ordinary course, 4% debenture stock would have been issued to meet the expenditure, but that, market conditions having been unfavourable for selling that security in large amounts, the Directors decided to create a Special Investment Fund composed of the deferred payments on land already sold, and securities in which land funds had been invested aggregating $55,000,000, and to issue against that fund and the Company's credit, ten-year Note Certificates to the amount of $52,000,000, carrying *+m+\\ 148 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE interest at 6 per cent, per annum, to be offered to the shareholders at 80%. In December, 1913, a circular was issued to shareholders of record on December 23, containing the terms of the issue (see below), accompanied by subscription warrant entitling them to subscribe for $100 Note Certificates in respect of each five shares held. The Note Certificates with interest, are to be paid off in instalments without any encroachment on the revenue from traffic, and the 4% Consolidated Debenture Stock can be marketed when most advantageous. All the outstanding 5 per cent. First Mortgage Bonds were retired in 1915, and the capital is as under, all the issues, except the Special Investment Fund Note Certificates and the equipment obligations being quoted in the official list:— $260,000,000 Shares of $100 in certificates of various amounts. Included in this total are the above-mentioned allotments, offered for subscription at par for the issues of 1902-8 inclusive, at 125 per cent, for the 1909 issue, 150 per cent, for the 1912 issue, and 175 per cent, for the 1913 issue, and all were made payable in five equal instalments, the amounts of the issues being as follows : $19,500,000 in 1902 ; $16,900,000 in 1904; $20,280,000 in 1906; $24,336,000 in 1908; $30,000,000 in 1909; $18,000,000 in 1912, and $60,000,000 in 1913. The authorised CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 149 share capital is $335,000,000, the amount having been increased in October, 1914, from $260,000,000; no portion of the additional capital is to be issued until after the sanction of the shareholders has been obtained at a special meeting called for the purpose. The dividend dates are January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1. Share Registers are kept in London, New York and Montreal, that in New York being in charge of the branch there of the Bank of Montreal. Shares on any one register may be transferred to any other register. For obtaining New York or Montreal certificates in exchange for discharge warrants the London office charges 2d. a share; and for effecting transfers on the New York or Montreal register and obtaining new certificates the charge is 2d a share, with the addition, in the case of the New York register, of ld. a share, New York State transfer tax, and ld. a share Federal transfer tax; and in the case of the Montreal register ld. a share Province of Quebec Transfer tax. Shares on the London register are transferable on common forms, which require the J per cent, stamp on the consideration paid; fee 2s. 6d. per deed, Holders of shares on i5o CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE the London register receive cheques on London for dividends at the rate of 4s. ljd. per dollar. Voting power, one vote for every share. £16,578,477 Preference Stock 4 per cent. Non-cumulative. The dividend is payable April 1 and October 1 in respect of the periods to December 31 and June 30, by warrant from the Company's London office, where stock is transferable in multiples of £1 ; transfer form, common, fee 2s. 6d. per deed ; separate deed required for each class of security. Voting power, one vote for every £20. The amount of this stock may not exceed one-half the ordinary stock outstanding. £750,000 Algoma Branch 5 per cent. First Mortgage Bonds of £1,000, £500 and £100 each, issued by Messrs. Baring Brothers & Co. (now Baring Brothers & Co., Limited), 8, Bishopsgate, E.C, in January, 1888, at 98J per cent. Coupons are payable January 1 and July 1, and the bonds mature July 1, 1937, all payments being made by Baring Bros. & Co., Ltd., at the above address. The bonds may be deposited with Baring Brothers, who give a receipt therefor and remit the half-yearly interest by cheque, a charge CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 151 of J per cent, being made on depositing the bonds. Such deposited bonds are given up on the surrender of the receipt properly discharged. £36,222,921 Perpetual 4 per cent. Consolidated Debenture Stock. Interest is payable January 1 and July 1 by warrant from the Company's London office, where stock is transferable in multiples of £1 ; transfer form, common; fee 2s. 6d. per deed; separate deed required for each class of security. $52,000,000 Special Investment Fund Note Certificates of $20, $100, $500 and $1,000 each, issued in February, 1914, to the shareholders in the proportion of $100 of certificates for each $500 of share capital. These notes carry interest at 6 per cent, and are specially secured on the " Canadian Pacific Railway Company's Special Investment Fund" which at June 30, 1915, amounted to $55,870,068. The certificates are guaranteed both as to principal and interest by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Interest is payable March 2 and September 2 by warrants sent to the registered owners and the certificates are to be redeemed at their face value not later than March 2, 1924, but the Trustee (The Royal Trust 152 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE Company, Montreal), and the Company may at their discretion from time to time redeem by drawings whenever there is sufficient money in hand for the purpose. Notice of the Note-Certificates drawn will be given by advertisement in London, Montreal and New York twice , a week for four weeks and they will be paid with interest accrued thereon on presentation at the Company's bankers at these places within sixty days of the first publication of the notice. The whole of the issue was in the first instance placed on the New York register, but purchasers were given the option of having their allotments registered in Montreal or London. The New York and Montreal register certificates have a transfer and power of attorney endorsement which when signed in blank by the registered proprietor renders them transferable by delivery. The London register certificates are transferable by deed only, stamped with duty at the rate of 10s. per cent. Transfer form, common; fee 2s. 6d. per deed. The charge made by the London office, for transmitting Note-Certificates to New York or Montreal for transfer is 2d. per 100 dollars or fraction thereof, and a CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE 153 further payment of ls. New York Power of Attorney tax has to be paid in respect of each transfer endorsement, dated between December 1, 1914, and December 31, 1915, inclusive. Interest warrants are mailed from New York to holders on the London register in time to reach them on or about the due dates ; and to those in Europe registered on the New York and Montreal registers about the same dates. European holders can negotiate their warrants at the Bank of Montreal, 47, Threadneedle Street, London, E.C. ; 12,780,000 Equipment Obligations. The Land Grant—In addition to the original grant of 25,000,000 acres, the Company have received through their branch and subsidiary lines grants to the amount of 9,816,202 acres: in January, 1911, 102,174 acres in the irrigation belt were acquired from the Hudson's Bay Company at $13J per acre; and in 1912, 209,559 acres were acquired from the Alberta Railway and Irrigation Company. In the accounts for the year 1913-14 the land accounts appear in new form, the unsold lands now valued, as stated above, being included in the Balance Sheet among " other assets '* schedule B, together amounting at June 30, 1915, to $131,241,869 and in the Balance Sheet under the heading " Special In- 154 CANADIAN PACIFIC FINANCE vestment Fund/' appear as assets the deferred payments on land and town sites, Government securities, etc., which have been set apart to meet the interest on the Special Investment Fund Note-Certificates and the principal of the issue at maturity. The deferred payments on land and town sites not so hypothecated are shown separately. The unsold acreage, amounting at June 30,1915, to 8,214,186 acres, is valued at prices ranging from $40 to $1 per acre ; the directors and the officers of the land department are satisfied that these lands will eventually command much higher prices on the average than those given. The sales of agricultural land in the year to June 30, 1915, were 231,297 acres for $3,742,115, being an average of $ 16.17 per acre. Included in this area were 6,550 acres of irrigated land, which fetched $55.22 per acre, so that the average price of the balance was $15.04 per acre. (In 1886, the average price paid to the Company for purchased land was $3.28 per acre ; in 1896, $3.51 per acre ; in 1906, $5.84). Companies forming part of the Canadian Pacific System, but retaining their original titles in the London Stock Exchange:—Alberta Railway and Irrigation, Atlantic and North West, Calgary and Edmonton, Dominion Atlantic, Manitoba Southwestern, Nakusp and Slocan, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, Quebec Central, St. Lawrence and Ottawa, and Toronto, Grey and Bruce. Other Companies controlled but not leased:— Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic, and Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie. Ill rfr?£$/C> c I """@en, "Illustrated\"

Originally published: 1916"@en ; edm:hasType "Books"@en ; dcterms:identifier "HE2810_C2_M6_1920"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0056059"@en ; dcterms:language "English"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "London : W. Stevens"@en ; edm:currentLocation "Rare Books and Special Collections"@en ; dcterms:rights "These images are provided for research and reference use only. Written permission to publish, copy or otherwise use these images must be obtained from Rare Books & Special Collections http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/"@en ; dcterms:source "University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. HE2810.C2 M6 1920"@en ; dcterms:subject "Canadian Pacific Railway Company"@en, "Railroads--Canada--History"@en, "Canada--Description and travel"@en ; dcterms:title "The story of the Canadian Pacific Railway"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; dcterms:description ""@en .