The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 (66 page)

At eleven, Colonel William Dillon Otter, in charge of the permanent force’s infantry school and a veteran of the Fenian skirmishes, spoke to the men, issuing the customary admonition to the younger ones to abjure strong drink and advising them to throw away any bottles that might have been secreted in the kits. “The gallant colonel’s speech was received with
vociferous cheers, coupled with the pounding of five hundred rifle butts on the wooden floor.” The troops were ready to march.

Outside, the scenes were chaotic and extravagant. “Never in the history of Toronto was there such a jam of people on King St.,” the
Globe
reported. It seemed as if every single citizen who could walk or crawl had come from miles around to line the route of march from Jarvis along King and down York to the Union Station. King Street was “one living, moving mass of humanity. The extensions from the walls were alive with people, while thousands took up most dangerous positions from the cornices of the roofs.…” The crowd had stood for hours waiting to see the troops, but “the time passed as if it had been but a few minutes, so high ran the excitement created by the occasion.” Hundreds offered to pay for positions in the flag-decked windows overlooking King Street, but these could no longer be purchased. Women with children fainted continually and had to be removed by the police. “Their nerves had become unstrung at the thought of their husbands, fathers and brothers leaving home for the frontier.” Many women were weeping.

About 11.30, the cheering of the troops was heard from the drill shed, and the entire mob of more than ten thousand broke into an answering cry. The cheering moved like a wave along King Street (scraped clean of mud, ice, and manure for the occasion). It was so loud that the band of the Tenth Royal Grenadiers could not be heard from half a block away. The crush made it impossible to move. Somebody spotted the first uniform – that of a member of the Governor-General’s Body Guard on horseback, followed by Colonel Otter, marching on foot at the head of his men. Now the sound of martial music came through at last, and this had a quieting effect on the crowd. A group of about five hundred civilians rushed ahead of the marching men, clearing the way through the dense mass of spectators. Then came the ultimate spectacle: the glittering brass of the band’s instruments, the straight rows of fur caps, and the sharp outlines of rifles, drifting above the craning heads “like a float in the water.”

Down the streets the young men came, as the crowd around them and above them, before them and behind them, shouted themselves hoarse. Bouquets of flowers drifted down from the windows above. Handkerchiefs fluttered. A thousand flags flapped in the breeze. Those who could not move along beside the troops began to cry “Good-bye, Good-bye!” as the musicians struck up the song that became a kind of theme all over Canada that month, “The Girl I Left behind Me.”

To the foot of York Street, by the station, the crowd had been pouring in an unending stream – all kinds and conditions of people, in carriages,
hacks, and express vans, on foot and pushing perambulators – the women often white-faced and tearful, the elderly men grim – all hoping to catch one last glimpse of brother, son, or sweetheart. The immense crowd filled the Esplanade from one end of the station to the other, swarming over the roofs of freight cars and perching in every window. The morning had started warm and pleasant; then, as if to mirror the crowd’s changing mood, it began to rain. The rain increased and changed to a heavy sleet, but the people did not move. The
Mail
reported that of some ten thousand gathered at the station, most of them without umbrellas, fewer than a dozen sought shelter. “The excitement shared was too great to permit of vulgar sensations.”

Jammed into the cars, the men leaned out of windows and waved at the throng pressed up against the train. The cars began to crawl forward. Arms appeared above the crowd, waving final greetings, and these were answered from the windows by an assortment of fluttering handkerchiefs, toques, forage caps, sidearms, socks, and even underwear. Above the continual roaring, individual good-byes could be heard: “Keep your heart up, Harry!” “Be good to yourself, old boy.” “Give us a shake, old man.” Then the band of the Queen’s Own struck up “Auld Lang Syne” and, as the engine bell began to ring, the men joined in. The people were now so thickly clustered along the Esplanade between York and Simcoe that “had a man got on the heads of the crowd he could not have got down to the ground again.” Slowly the train drew away, passing Simcoe, where the crowds were thinner but wildly enthusiastic, through the yards, where the top of every freight and passenger car was black with waving, cheering well-wishers, and then through the driving sleet, past Strachan and Brock, where hundreds tried vainly to board the cars and ride a little way with the soldiers, out along Queen to Parkdale Station, where more hundreds poured from their houses to cheer and cry their good-byes, and then off through the rising little village of West Toronto through the whirling snow towards the dark forests and the unballasted track of the new Canada.

These scenes were repeated over and over again during the days that followed. Vast crowds thronged down to the stations at Bowmanville, Port Hope, Kingston, Cobourg, and other mid-Ontario points where the composite Midland Regiment was forming. Belleville was “afire with excitement.” In Kingston, on March 30, hundreds, “flushed and fervent,” crammed the town square to greet the incoming troops. In Montreal, when the French-speaking 65th Battalion paraded to the station, the crush of onlookers was so great that a vast double window burst out from a three-storey
building, injuring twelve persons. In Ottawa, the station platform where the Governor-General’s Foot Guards were entraining was “a dense mass of enthusiastic, patriotic, jostling, laughing, shouting and war-fever-stricken individuals of all ages, sizes, sexes and complexions.” In Quebec, “the scene presented beggars description.” The Ninth Voltigeurs, having attended Mass at the basilica on April 2, marched through a wild crowd, escorted by the city’s snowshoe clubs in uniform, carrying torches and singing “La Marseillaise” and “The British Grenadiers.” “Never before in the history of Quebec has there been such intense excitement,” the Ottawa
Citizen
reported. The same phrase was used by the
Globe
in describing the scenes in London, “the Forest City,” on April 7: “Never before in its history has this city witnessed demonstrations equal to that which this afternoon signallized the departure of the 7th Fuseliers to the North West.” The regiment rolled through Ingersoll, Woodstock, Paris, and Hamilton, with crowds at every station platform. At Carleton Place, the Member for the London area, Sir John Carling, who was also Postmaster General, made a spirited address in which he praised everybody and everything from the Queen to Canadian nationalism, to the Conservative Party, to George Stephen, to the patriotism of the London troops, to the enormous potential possessed by the North West.

Only the Governor-General’s Body Guard, the oldest cavalry regiment in Canada, departed in comparative quiet and secrecy, the authorities fearing for the safety of the seventy horses among the press of the crowds. The Guard was kept on the
qui vive
for several days with very little sleep while final arrangements were made to get the horses over the gaps in the line. When the regiment left shortly after midnight on April 7, their colonel, George T. Denison, and his officers had not slept for three nights, having remained booted and spurred and ready to move on the instant for all of that time.

The last troops to leave, on April 12, were those of the composite Halifax Battalion. They were called out after almost two weeks of controversy, some bitter attacks by Nova Scotian civilians and merchants, and a great many defections in the ranks. The threads that tied the Maritime Provinces to the rest of confederated Canada were tenuous. The following year a Liberal government would sweep back into power in Nova Scotia with an increased majority on a platform that included secession from Confederation. Few Maritimers thought that the North West had anything to do with them. Until this moment it had not occurred to them that they might have to commit their young men to the defence of the interior of the continent. They had always looked seaward, and their attitude was conditioned
by the need to defend the coast of British North America. To a large degree they saw the North West as a kind of suburb of Upper Canada, which, in a way, it was – at least in an economic sense. A similar attitude existed in regard to the Canadian Pacific. It was significant that the one cabinet minister prepared to resign over the railway loan was a Nova Scotian.

“Why should our volunteers, and especially our garrison artillery, be sent out of the province to put down troubles in the North West?” one man wrote to the
Morning Chronicle
. “Nova Scotia has nothing to do with their affairs; let Canada West look after their own matters.”

Many believed that volunteers from Manitoba and the territories were sufficient to handle the job: “The employment of troops from all parts of the Dominion to put down a few half-starved barbarians may have a tendency to build up the military spirit of Canadians, but when the very men who know best how to ‘wipe Riel out,’ and have the will to do so, are on the ground in more than sufficient numbers there remains the question, why the taxpayers should be burdened unnecessarily with many millions of dollars.”

These were not isolated opinions. On April 2, after the government had ordered the 66th Battalion to stand ready to move, a representative delegation of businessmen from dry-goods stores, boot and shoe shops, and grocery and drug firms demanded that a composite battalion be formed and only a certain number of men from the 66th be taken. It was from that unit that most of their employees came. Many Halifax merchants bluntly announced that if their men turned out for duty, they would be fired.

The situation caused a flurry in central Canada. In Montreal, the Mayor was moved to wire his opposite number in Halifax:

“A bulletin posted in Montreal to-day is as follows: ‘Extraordinary refusal of Halifax volunteers to go to the front. Two-thirds of the men refuse to parade. The authorities threaten to arrest them as deserters.’ This would indicate a want of patriotism in the people of Halifax and lower provinces and should be met and contradicted promptly if false, as it surely must be.”

The Mayor of Halifax replied that such bulletins were grossly exaggerated, that there were plenty of volunteers to replace those who faced the loss of their jobs, and that the men of Halifax were “ready and willing to go. Otherwise Nova Scotia would fail in her duty to Queen and country.”

The government, however, was forced to bow to the merchants’ petition
and settle for a composite battalion. Following that decision, much of the opposition died down, and when the troops marched off down Barrington Street, the farewell scenes were wilder, if anything, than those in Central Canada:

“At North Street [near the depot] was one of the most remarkable scenes ever witnessed in this city. The actual withdrawal of our militia for active duty, an event without parallel in provincial annals, had so deeply impressed itself upon the people that everyone who could possibly go determined to see them off.”

They left beneath an ocean of handkerchiefs with a medley of songs on their lips: “Far Away,” “We’re Off on the Morning Train,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and, as always, “The Girl I Left behind Me.”

All the familiar hyperbole of war was used to describe the troops who set off for the North West. “Every one of them looked and demeaned himself like a true bred British soldier,” the
Globe
wrote of the Toronto brigade. A Kingston major, asked about the quality of his men, described them as “the very best.… They are fearless, strong and will endure hardships bravely.… You can bet they will not show the white feather.” Of the Governor-General’s Foot Guards, the
Citizen
wrote: “In the opinion of experienced military men who saw the Capt. Todd’s company, it is one of the finest bodies of men for rough and ready service ever brought together in the Dominion.”

It was substantially true. The men from the farms and cities were hard-muscled, keen, and young enough to laugh at the kind of ordeal they would shortly face along the uncompleted route of the
CPR
. They were also woefully under-trained and under-equipped. The York Rangers, huddled in the Toronto drill shed, looked more like sheep than soldiers. In Kingston, the most military of cities, it was noticed that the members of the composite Midland regiment were badly drilled. Among the 65th, in Montreal, there were men who had never fired so much as a blank cartridge.

Few battalions left for the North West properly equipped. The belts and knapsacks of the Queen’s Own had done duty in the Crimean War. Their rifles – one of three different makes issued for the Saskatchewan campaign – were old Snider Enfields, most of them totally unreliable because of years of wear and tear on the rifle range. Any man who wanted to be a sharpshooter brought along his own weapon. The clothing of the York Rangers was old and rotten, the knapsacks ill-fitting and so badly packed that a day’s marching would break men down. Several of the Midland companies had no knapsacks at all and were forced to wrap their
belongings in heavy paper. Others had no helmets. One battalion had suffered a fire, so that the entire force set out without uniforms. Many of the 65th lacked trousers, tunics, and rifles; indeed, there was not a company in that battalion properly equipped for service – ammunition was so scarce that each man could be allotted only three rounds. Even the crack Governor-General’s Body Guard had not been issued satchels for their mounts and so the men were forced to submit to the ignominy of wrapping their personal belongings in blankets. Until this moment, membership in a militia unit had been a social asset. Nobody, it appeared – certainly not those in command – had ever considered the possibility that one day his unit would march off to war.

To a great extent, the soldiers had to depend on the bounty of a grateful civilian populace. All the government was obliged to issue was a greatcoat, a tunic, trousers, and a rifle. Other necessities were the individual’s own responsibility. Nor was there any provision made for wives and children left behind. It was the habit, in many cases, for the civilian population to raise a fund for dependants; this was done in Montreal, for example, where the subscription list was headed by the names of George Stephen and Donald A. Smith, each of whom subscribed five thousand dollars. In London, the town council voted to supply all volunteers with socks and underwear and to support the wives and children of married men. A Montreal clothing firm gave the men of the 65th twenty-five dozen pairs of warm mittens. Other gifts, while no doubt comforting, were less practical. In Parkdale, every member of the York Rangers was presented with a New Testament. In Halifax, when the Mayor appealed for literature for the troops, he was deluged with “a ton of every conceivable ‘literary harangue in cold type’ from a bundle of Presbyterian missionary tracts to a hundredweight of dime novels.” At Almonte, a local storekeeper boarded the troop train with a more welcome gift – fifty packs of playing cards.