The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 (54 page)

The upward journey was a slow and difficult operation. At least four 154-ton engines were required to pull a train of 710 tons to the summit. Under such conditions it took an hour to move eight miles. Such a train could not be long – fourteen to twenty freight cars or eleven passenger coaches. When the Prince of Wales visited Canada, it took five engines to pull his entourage back over the summit of the Rockies.

All of this was expensive and time consuming; the use of four locomotives meant that there were four times as many chances for delay through engine failure. And in the winter, when the winds shrieked off the Yoho ice-fields in forty-below weather, smothering the mountain slopes in immense drifts of cement-hard snow, the difficulties were compounded. But it was not until 1909 that the
CPR
decided to return to the original location and drill the remarkable spiral tunnels, which make a figure eight deep within the bowels of Cathedral Mountain and Mount Ogden. It took ten thousand men two years to do the job, but there was not an employee in the operating division of the
CPR
who did not believe that it was worth it.

Nonetheless, the steeper line allowed Van Horne to push the railroad down the Kicking Horse to its junction with the Columbia (the site of Golden) by September. By January it had moved on down the Columbia for seventeen miles to the point where the line would cross over to the mouth of the Beaver at the foot of the Selkirks.

Here, at a spot known simply as First Crossing (it would later be named Donald, after Donald A. Smith), the work came to an end for the season and another garish little community sprang into being on the frozen river bank, a “gambling, drinking, fighting little mountain town,” mainly shacks and saloons with ambitious names like the Cosmopolitan, the Queen of the West, the Sweet Hotel, the Italian Restaurant and the French Quarter. Here, on November 15, Jack Little, the telegraph operator, set down on paper the events of one single moonlit night:

“…  the Italian saloon … [is] a little hut, 12 × 16, and it dispenses beer, cigars, and something more fiery, in unlimited quantities. The barkeeper is a woman … there is an accordion squeaking in the corner, and it and the loud coarse laugh of the barmaid make an angelic harmony.… On all sides we hear the music of the dice box and the chips … the merry music of the frequent and iniquitous drunk; the music of the dance and the
staccato
accompaniment of pistol shots; and the eternal music, from the myriad saloons and bars along the street, of the scraping fiddle. In the French Quarter a dance is going on. The women present are Kootenai Squaw, ‘the first white lady that ever struck Cypress’ and two or three of the usual type of fallen angels. A gang of men and boys line the walls and a couple of lads dance with the damsels in the centre. There is a lamentable want of a sense of shame at Columbia Crossing.…

“During our walk we met plenty of ‘drunks.’ The contractor is as drunk as his employees, and the deadbeats are as drunk as usual. There is a good deal of card-playing … all through the night.…

“Below the high bank, on the dry land left by the receding river, several teamsters have camped for the night preparatory to crossing in the morning. The ferry boat with its one light is making its last trip for the night across the narrow space of water, becoming narrower day by day as the ice encroaches from the banks. On the opposite side of the river lights
shine out from rafts and shacks, while above them the dark pine forest stretches its gloomy line. The scene behind is growing livelier as the hours grow shorter. There is a row at one of the card tables. A pistol shot follows. A man is seen standing back a rough crowd with drawn revolver while another man is lying in a pool of his own blood. Well, it is all very interesting, no doubt, and has the great charm of being “western,” which makes up for a multitude of sins.…”

4
“The ablest railway general in the world”

All during the spring of 1884, Van Horne, who had moved his headquarters to Montreal, was trying his best to get out to British Columbia to settle on the Pacific terminus of the railroad. A variety of problems kept forcing him to postpone the journey, not the least of which was the continual need to stave off creditors, cut costs, reduce staff and cheapen the immediate construction of the line. None of this particularly perturbed the general manager. As Charles Tupper once said: “No problem that ever rose had any terrors for him.”

One of Van Horne’s many strengths was a singular ability to concentrate on business at hand to the exclusion of all interruptions. This led occasionally to some amusing contretemps. Once, in St. Paul, he left in a hurry to catch a train with only a twenty-dollar bill on his person. He leapt into a cab and began to concentrate on railway business, unconsciously twisting the bank note in his fingers until, forgetting what it was, he threw it away into the street. When he reached the station he discovered to his astonishment that he had no money to pay for the cab and only time to board the train. “Ever since that,” he said, “I like to
feel money
in my pocket.”

He was faced daily, in Montreal, with a mixed bag of executive decisions, many of them niggling but all, apparently, requiring his personal intervention. No detail was too small for Van Horne to handle. To a Brockville man who wrote to him personally asking for a job as a clerk he sent a swift rejection accompanied by a piece of personal advice: “Perhaps you will permit me to say, that in seeking employment in the shape of office work, I think you will find that your hand writing will militate against you.” The bill of fare on the newly acquired lake boats offended his trencherman’s palate: “…  altogether too many dishes offered,” he told Henry Beatty. “Fewer varieties, but plenty of each, I have always found to be better appreciated than a host of small, made-up dishes.
Poultry of any sort when it can be had is very desirable. Two entrees will be plenty. Deep apple, peach and etc., pie should be the standard in the pastry line; and several of the minor sweets should be left out. Plenty of fresh fish … is what people expect to find on the lakes and it is, as a rule, the scarcest article in the steamers’ larders.…” From that moment, Lake Superior trout and whitefish became standard Canadian Pacific fare.

He could be very blunt and hard when the situation demanded it. “If Murray doesn’t come up to the requirements of his office,” he instructed Egan, “do not hesitate a minute in providing for his successor. We cannot afford to waste our strength in carrying weak men.… Any charity for weakness is out of place on a Railroad and I trust that whenever an opportunity offers to improve on any man you may have in any position that you will not hesitate to do it.…” Yet he also gave orders that the railway was to carry all clothing from the Ladies’ Aid Society of the Central Presbyterian Church of Hamilton without any charge to Winnipeg.

He looked continually to the future. Many of his actions in 1884 were designed to further the interests of the railway in the years to come. He worried about grain buyers swindling prairie farmers and told Egan that “we must neglect nothing that will have the effect of securing proper prices.” If the buyers would not pay a fair price the market must be stimulated by dropping in outside buyers with private assistance to shake it up: “Some vigorous action on our part in this direction will help very much to allay the present ill-feeling in the northwest.” He told George Purvis, the secretary of the Manitoba and Northwest Farmers’ Union, that “it is the earnest desire of this Company to do everything within its power to contribute to the success of farming in the North West … it would be suicidal on the part of the Company to do anything that would damage the farming interests to the extent of one dollar.” He was distressed by the erection of flat warehouses that produced dirty wheat “badly mixed and generally disgraceful.” His experiences in Minnesota had convinced him that much more modern elevators would be needed to clean and grade the grain, otherwise the reputation of Manitoba as a wheat producer would be ruined. The first elevator built by the company at Fort William had a capacity of one million bushels and seemed so huge that some believed (wrongly) that there was not grain enough in the North West to fill it. Van Horne also did his best to persuade the farmers to forget soft wheat and concentrate on harder varieties. The best of these was Red Fife and, as an inducement, Van Horne offered to carry the seed free to any farmer who ordered it.

The general manager was equally solicitous of the immigrants pouring
into Winnipeg. Like the farmers, they were the railway’s future customers. He wrote to William Whyte in April urging that they be lodged and treated as comfortably as possible. “It is exceedingly important,” he said, “that no bad reports go back from these first parties.” For the same reason he was unwilling to carry newcomers on the Ontario and Quebec line, which was completed on May 5, 1884; he did not believe it was good policy to open the line to the scrutiny of new arrivals until it was in perfect condition, preferring to make an arrangement with the rival Grand Trunk and even going down to Ottawa to discuss the matter with a reluctant cabinet minister. In order that incoming settlers could get immediate access to supplies on the prairies, he had sidings built at intervals along the line on which he placed railroad cars fitted up as stores. As soon as anyone came along who seemed to be a good storekeeper, the business was transferred to him and the store car moved elsewhere.

He was at some pains, for obvious political reasons, to ensure that Alexander Mackenzie’s trip to the North West should be made as smooth and comfortable as possible: “Find out if you can, what Mr. Mackenzie’s mode of living is – what he eats and what his drink is as we wish to make him feel perfectly at home.” “Get my car put in good shape and ready for his arrival at Port Arthur, victualled for the entire trip.… Mr. MacKenzie is in delicate health, and it will be necessary that a good man be put in charge of the car, and one who will fall in readily with the habits and ways of the ex Premier: let him understand that the circumstances of the case being special the rules which have governed the conduct of the car are suspended. Mr. Mackenzie may want to travel in easy stages; and he may wish to make stops to see friends at various points, in all of which cases his wishes should be met.”

In spite of the need to cut costs – and Van Horne had already been forced to cheapen the line – he had no intention of pinching pennies where the railway’s public image was concerned. To the president of the Michigan Central, who asked that he use a certain type of economical sleeping car exclusively, he replied that he would not: “It should be understood that we cannot consent to the use of inferior cars in this line. If the business is to be successfully worked up, the very best cars will be needed.” When he discovered that some antiquated cars had been put in service on a newly opened line between Chicago and Toronto via St. Thomas, he insisted they be pulled off: “It would be better not to attempt the line unless it can be established and maintained in first class shape.” He was determined that the interior woodwork of the passenger cars be hand carved, going so far as to import experts from Europe to do the job. “We can’t
have a veneer, it’s too expensive,” he told the board of directors. “Every foot of imitation carving will affect the opinion and attitude towards us of the Company’s employees. We want them to have confidence in us – we want every clerk, conductor and brakeman to regard this Company as above all mean pretence. So everything must be of the best material, and be exactly what it pretends to be. Otherwise, their attitude and their service to us will not be what it ought to be.”

Van Horne took special delight in personally designing sleeping cars and parlour cars, which he believed should furnish a maximum of comfort as well as aesthetic appeal. To this end he engaged noted artists to handle the interior decoration. As for comfort, he once, as an object lesson to his own people, made a comic illustration showing a tall, fat man attempting to squeeze into one of the short berths provided by United States railroads. He made sure that
CPR
cars were constructed of larger dimensions with longer and wider berths. Van Horne himself thought in terms of bigness. He liked big houses, “fat and bulgy like myself,” with big doors, big roofs, big windows, big desks, and vast spaces.

In matters of the
CPR’S
future, his whole philosophy was based on permanence. He wanted everyone in the company’s employ to work for the continuance of the enterprise. The railway, as he saw it, was to become a kind of religion among the men who worked on it and also among the people who travelled on it. Conductors, telegraph clerks, freight and expressmen, senior executives – all these were to be missionaries spreading the gospel of the omnipotent, generous company. “You are not to consider your own personal feelings when you are dealing with these people,” he told a trainman who had engaged in a dispute with an irritable passenger. “You are the road’s while you are on duty; your reply is the road’s; and the road’s first law is courtesy.”

Van Horne was one of the first railroad executives to realize the value of retaining such auxiliary utilities as the telegraph, express, and sleeping car departments. These, he used to say, were not the big tent but the sideshows, and “I expect the sideshows to pay the dividend.” It was the custom of other railways to franchise these departments to independent firms which took the cream, as Van Horne put it, off the business and left the skim milk to the railway.

This forthright attitude led him into a head-on collision with Western Union, in the person of Erastus Wiman, the president of one of its subsidiaries, the Great North Western Telegraph Company. Wiman met with Van Horne and some of the executive committee to try to buy the
CPR’S
telegraph system “for next to nothing,” in Van Horne’s words. When Van
Horne demurred, Wiman approached Stephen, charging that the general manager was prompted by personal motives and was acting out of spite. Wiman went on to charge that Van Horne intended to “run out all other telegraph companies” and that his whole career indicated his desire in the direction of “disregarding all vested rights or interests of those unable to defend themselves.”