Chapter VII: The New Company

When the contract with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was submitted to the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Edward Blake, then leader of the Opposition, and his party, met it with a chorus of indignant and derisive protest. They declared that the Dominion would be ruined by such a contract and that they intended to fight the matter out before the House and the country. There is no need now to cast any personal discredit on Mr. Blake and his following for their action at that time. He was a man of unblemished name and of intense conviction, as evidenced by many facts in his distinguished career. And, besides, he and the leading men in his following then in Ottawa had already committed themselves at former sessions of Parliament by taking the position that the Canadian Pacific would have to be built by slow stages if built at all. Mr. Blake had not then visited the West, and seriously doubted its future. He and Sir Charles Tupper, who introduced the bill, were the combatant officers of their respective parties over this railway problem. So when Mr. Blake declared an itinerating attack on the Canadian Pacific amongst the people of Ontario, where the Grand Trunk, the rival road, had been long in undisputed possession, Sir Charles wrote asking for an opportunity to reply on the same platform. Mr. Blake answered that he would require all the time each evening, as the subject was a big one. This was true, and Blake’s exact legal mind led him generally into more exhaustive detail on any subject than an ordinary public audience could appreciate. But Sir Charles had girded on his armour for the fray, and found a plan of action by having his friends announce at each of Blake’s meetings that Sir Charles would appear in the same hall the following night to give reply to Mr. Blake. Sir Charles thus had the advantage of having Mr. Blake’s speech in hand a few hours after its delivery, and next night was able to assault Mr. Blake’s position effectively by a characteristic fighting answer.

To complicate matters for the Government, a rival syndicate was suddenly formed of Ontario capitalists, headed by Sir William Howland, who offered to build the railway for three millions less in money and three millions less in land acreage, and at the same time give up practically all the privileges which the Government had agreed to allow the Stephen group. The Government denounced the Howland syndicate as trying to draw a herring across the trail by making a transparently impossible offer in an effort to break the contract already signed with the other company. There is no reason to think that the Howland syndicate, which was composed of well-known citizens of high standing, would not have tackled the building of the railway if they had got the contract. But the Government had already signed with the other organization and, denouncing the offer of the Howland syndicate as utterly impracticable, and intended only to hamper the construction of the road, Sir Charles Tupper rallied the Government forces and put the original contract through Parliament on a straight vote, in February, 1881.

We do not dispute the good intentions of the Howland syndicate; but if the gentlemen of that syndicate really could have seen into the future they would have breathed a sigh of relief when their offer was rejected. They had asked for the contract, but it was a mercy for them that their request was declined without thanks. For if the Stephen men, who knew the country better and had already some extraordinary allies, came up later against so many unexpected obstacles that they were more than once within a hair-breadth of failure, it is safe to say that the Howland men, with their hurried and unconsidered offer, would have ridden for a fall, disastrous alike to themselves and to Canada.

By the action of the Dominion Parliament, in adopting the contract and giving it the force of law, in February, 1881, the field was clear for Mr. George Stephen (who was elected President of the new Company) and his colleagues. They lost no time in unlimbering their artillery and going into action with the bearing of men who knew they were going to have a hard battle, but were moving steadily forward as gentlemen unafraid.

Concerning Mr. George Stephen (who chose his peerage title from the mountain that was called after him in British Columbia, and so became Lord Mount Stephen) much might be written, but he was so unobtrusive that, as compared with others, hardly anything has been put in print about the first President. Mr. Smith, his cousin (later Lord Strathcona), was much better known and more in the public eye, and no one would think of minimizing Mr. Smith’s great achievements and his services to Canada and the Empire. But so far as the Canadian Pacific Railway is concerned, Mr. Smith’s greatest contribution was made when, after getting in contact with Hill, he persuaded Stephen to branch out from business in Montreal and become a railroad builder. Once again in this connection let me emphasize, though it anticipates the narrative somewhat, the peculiar sequence in the chain of Canadian Pacific men and events in the following way: Smith secured Stephen, Stephen secured Van Horne, and Van Horne secured Shaughnessy. It was an extraordinary succession, and every link in a chain that holds is worthy of equal honour. These men were different in many ways, but the truth is that, historically considered, no man ever really takes the place of another, even though he succeeds him. Each man must do his own work in his own way and bear his own burden, and in each man’s assertion of his own individuality we find the true law of human progress. We can standardize inanimate things such as motor cars, but we are essaying interference with the Divine order when we try to standardize men.

George Stephen was the son of a carpenter and was born, in 1829, in Dufftown, Banffshire, Scotland. His youth was not rose-coloured. He was educated in the parish school (the world owes much to many an unknown school-teacher), served for a season as herd-laddie on the glebe at Mortlach, and then was sent to Aberdeen to learn the drapery business. One day a customer from Montreal noticed that the clerk signed his name “George Stephen,” and it turned out that the customer and clerk were cousins. As a result the young clerk was taken out to Montreal and showed such devotion to business and such capacity, that he became President of the great Bank of Montreal when he was a little over forty years of age. He was a man of a high sense of honour and of intense powers of concentration. He had public gifts and could speak well on political and other topics, but all through life he applied himself principally to business and the development of the country. Years afterwards, when the one-time “herd laddie” at Mortlach and draper’s apprentice had become a man of wealth and a peer of the realm, recognized amongst the foremost as a builder of the Empire, he was presented with the freedom of the city of Aberdeen. In his reply to the address of presentation, he shattered some modern theories as to the making of men by saying: “Any success I may have had in life is due in a great measure to the somewhat Spartan training I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, in which I entered as a boy of fifteen. I had but few wants and no distractions to draw me away from the work I had in hand. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and, fortunately, I knew it.” All of which would be a good motto for every young lad to paste in his hat, so that he would see it frequently. It is well also to remember that Sir George made good use of the wealth he gained in later years by laborious effort. His benefactions were wide-spread, amongst them being the contribution of half-a-million, to go with a like amount from Lord Strathcona, into the establishment of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. And when Dr. Barclay retired from St. Paul’s Church in the same city, it was Lord Mount Stephen who supplemented the donations of others by a princely gift in bonds to the minister of his Montreal days.

It was this great man, George Stephen, then, who became President of the new Canadian Pacific Railway Company in 1880, and continued in that responsible office for the eight most critical years of the company’s struggle to live and conquer. On him, in the grim days ahead, was to rest most heavily the burden of financing, although his cousin, Mr. D. A. Smith, was forward in securing the help of financial magnates at every opportunity. The time was to come when these two were to pledge all their private possessions to keep the Canadian Pacific going on to completion. I think it worth while to say here that none of these men seemed to care about money as an end, although they appreciated its value as a means to achievement. They had no reason to go into the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking to make money, for when they began it they all had enough. In fact it is well known that some of them demurred strongly at first for fear they would be left penniless in their old age. But they were all amenable to the appeal for the building of Canada, and that was sufficient. In this connection it is interesting to recall that on May 26th, 1887, Mr. Smith (Strathcona) said in the House of Commons, “The First Minister will bear me out when I say that Sir George Stephen and the other members of the syndicate did not approach the Government with regard to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway until the Government had tried in Europe and elsewhere to get others to take it up, capable of carrying it through, but had not succeeded in this. I say distinctly that the gentlemen who undertook the charter, although at first unwilling to assume the responsibility, ultimately consented, more with a view of assisting to open up the country than from any expectation of gain to be derived from it.” It is equally interesting to note, in this same connection, the attitude of Mr. James J. Hill, who once wrote to an old Canadian friend saying, “I think you know that I am not anxious about the money part of it. I am sure I have all and more than all I will ever want and all that will be good for those who come after me.”

It was in this spirit, then—that of Empire-builders, rather than money-makers—that President Stephen and his associates took up, in 1881, the tremendous task of building the Canadian Pacific Railway across the Dominion of Canada. It was the wide West-land that had called the transcontinental into the orbit of public vision, and though, when Eastern connections would be made, it was inevitable that the headquarters of the road would be in Montreal, where the leading directors lived, offices were first of all opened in Winnipeg. Canada, as already noted, was young in the railway business. Later on she would find her own men for leaders in every department, as we know by this time she has done. But in those days Canada had to go to her big cousin, the American Republic, for railway experts. And so Mr. A. B. Stickney, who was later President of the Chicago and Great Western, was installed as General Superintendent in Winnipeg. With him came, as Chief Engineer, General Rosser, who had been a dashing Confederate cavalry officer in the Civil War. Those were my school days in Winnipeg, and I recall seeing Rosser once—a man of very distinguished bearing. But, for various reasons, neither he nor Stickney remained long, though I confess I never pass the little station of Rosser just west of Winnipeg, but I visualize again the tall, handsome Southerner after whom it was called in those early days.

When these men were going, Stephen turned again to his old friend Hill, who knew all about railroad men, and Hill recommended William Cornelius Van Horne, then General Superintendent of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. This was another of Hill’s great contributions to his native Canada. Though these two strong men, Hill and Van Horne, eventually became rivals and heads of practically opposing systems, they doubtless, to the end, recognized the consummate ability of each other. If they had to contend at times they could at least realize

“That stern joy which warriors feel
In foeman worthy of their steel.”

In any case, Hill’s commendation of Van Horne to Stephen in 1881 was whole hearted and emphatic. Hill said that of all the men he knew Mr. Van Horne was altogether the best equipped, both mentally and every other way. A pioneer was needed, and the more of a pioneer the better. And to this Mr. Hill added, in his message to Stephen, “You need a man of great physical and mental power to carry the line through. Van Horne can do it. But he will take all the authority he gets and more; so define how much you want him to have.” This last was a well-meant—and somewhat necessary admonition. Mr. Stephen then offered Van Horne a bigger salary than any one in a similar position had ever received in this country. I do not think that the salary was the main thing with Van Horne. Neither would I say that he did not take it into consideration. He was such a many-sided man that he seemed like several men. He could be lavish in entertaining or spending for things that he specially fancied. But he could be close in other ways. No doubt the unprecedented salary was, in his mind, worthy of thought. And one cannot wonder at that, because he was asked to give up a high position in the railway work of the States, with a presidency certain there in a few years at most. He was, in fact, staking the prospects of a career on his decision in favour of moving. But he did not decide to move without some idea of the prospects of the country to which he was invited. So he made a sort of incognito visit to Winnipeg, and took some survey of the vast plains. He saw the possibilities of unlimited grain and root production, and noted the practically inexhaustible soil along the Red River, where the Selkirk settlers had been sowing and reaping for three-quarters of a century. It is interesting to find here, as noted by writers on Van Horne’s life, special allusion to the Selkirk settlers. These settlers were stated in an early chapter of the book to be a factor in leading to the inception of the Canadian Pacific Railway undertaking, as they had demonstrated the agricultural possibilities of the West. And they are mentioned by Van Horne’s biographer, Mr. Vaughan, as one of the elements whose demonstration of the country’s suitability for the world’s foundation industry helped to draw to Canada the extraordinary man who, in the face of apparently insuperable obstacles, threw a railway line across her wide-flung spaces.

LORD SHAUGHNESSY _Early Financier and Third President_

SIR WILLIAM VAN HORNE _First General Manager and Second President_

_Early Builders_]

One wonders yet at the fact that Van Horne left an assured career in his own land, the richest country in the world, to come to the Canadian West, which was then, and for some years afterwards, as I recall it, a sort of illimitable and sparsely inhabited wilderness. He came to undertake a railway building project such as neither his own country or any other in the world had ever planned in similar circumstances. No doubt he, with the keen mentality which flashed out in many varied gifts, foresaw the country’s future. But no doubt also, as his biographer above-mentioned affirms, and as men, like Sir George Bury, who were intimately yoked up with him in practical work on the road declare, it was the difficulty of the work that successfully appealed to him. The fighting spirit of his imperturbable and determined Netherlands ancestors rose to the challenge of the opportunity, to satisfy what Mr. Vaughan calls his master passion “to make things grow and put new places on the map.” So, after visiting Winnipeg and the plains, Van Horne accepted Stephen’s offer and came from the States to become a great Canadian who, without forgetting his lineage, grew into a deep devotion to his adopted country.

Reference has been made already to the many-sidedness of this colossus amongst railway builders. Once, many years after his coming, I recall meeting Mr. Van Horne at a dinner in Lord Strathcona’s house in Montreal, when nearly all the leading business men of their group were present. I happened to be in the city at the time, and as Lord Strathcona and my father had been close friends in the old Fort Garry days, he asked me up to that dinner. Gentleman of the old school that he was, with the courteous manner and considerateness of the perfect host, he asked Mr. Van Horne to show me through the picture gallery. I had known Mr. Van Horne in a general way as a forceful railroader who had begun in railway work at the age of fourteen, and knew it from the ground upwards in practically all departments, and I also knew something of his taste in art. But I was hardly prepared for the wealth of the acquaintance with painting and literature which his conversation, in easy, flowing language, revealed that evening. And yet this was the same Van Horne who could make men quake with the strength of his invective against incompetency or carelessness in work, and who was apparently at times a mere impersonal dynamo for the purpose of driving seemingly impossible enterprises to completion. There was something more than Napoleonic in the way in which he abolished the word “fail” from the dictionary as he drove his undertakings onward. And yet again he was an inveterate player of practical jokes, and was, on occasion, a sort of big boy with a sufficient spice of fun about him to keep things from becoming dull. If he knew how to work he also knew how to relax, and that is a great thing.

It was this composite man, then, who, at President Stephen’s call, threw up golden prospects in his own country and came up to Winnipeg on New Year’s eve in 1881, to take practical command of a vast new problematical enterprise. His powers may have been defined by Stephen and his associates, but the definition must have been very much tantamount to a free hand, as the sequel will show.