*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63059 ***

  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
  placed at the end of the book.

  The spacing between initial letters of railway names has been removed,
  for example any instances of C. P. R. have been changed to C.P.R. for
  consistency.

  Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.




  Trains of Recollection


  [Illustration: D. B. HANNA]




  Trains of Recollection

  Drawn from

  Fifty Years of Railway Service
  in Scotland and Canada, and told to Arthur Hawkes


  BY
  D. B. HANNA
  First President of the Canadian National Railways


  TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF
  CANADA LTD., AT ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE
  MCMXXIV




  COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1924.
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED.


  PRINTED IN CANADA


_To the multitude of Fellow-Workers who, during twenty-six years,
loyally served the Canadian Northern and Canadian National Railways,
this book is appreciatively inscribed._




                      THE CHAPTERS


                                                  Page

  Introduction                                      ix

  I. Suggesting a typically Presbyterian
  background of Scottish migration
  to Canada                                          1

  II. Sketching early years of service at
  country and city stations near the
  Clyde                                             17

  III. Recalling Van Horne and the Canadian
  Pacific challenge to the
  Grand Trunk                                       35

  IV. Reviewing vanishing practices, including
  ticket scalping and fast
  freight lines                                     48

  V. Portraying scantily the lives of a
  poor prairie line and a beloved
  prairie town                                      61

  VI. Remembering when farming in the
  West was misunderstood, and land
  could not be sold                                 80

  VII. Telling how Manitoba struggled
  through an era of expansion and
  the war of Fort Whyte                             97

  VIII. Recording the first encounter of Mackenzie
  and Mann, with mules for a
  stake                                            115

  IX. Beginning the story of the Canadian
  Northern as a pioneer line with a
  staff of thirteen                                132

  X. Describing meetings of a traffic manager
  with Sioux Indians and sudden
  millionaires                                     148

  XI. Indicating several considerations
  which made Toronto the centre of
  a Transcontinental system                        168

  XII. Offering explanations why luxurious
  ease does not distinguish living on
  a private car                                    190

  XIII. Recounting midwinter episodes of
  location and operation in empty
  country                                          207

  XIV. Reciting events, the Great War being
  chief, which destroyed the Canadian
  Northern                                         227

  XV. Speaking some truth about the difficulty
  of operating a railway for
  the nation                                       250

  XVI. Narrating several occurrences which
  made huge Canadian National deficits
  inevitable                                       269

  XVII. Shedding sidelights on unities of
  Canadian railway management
  during the War                                   296

  Appendix A                                       315

  Appendix B                                       332


                     THE PORTRAITS

  D. B. Hanna                             Frontispiece

                                           Facing Page
  Sir Donald Mann                                   68

  Sir William Mackenzie                             68

  Sir William Van Horne                            164

  E. W. Beatty                                     164

  A. J. Mitchell                                   244

  R. M. Horne-Payne                                244




                           INTRODUCTION


This book is published because readers have said they obtained from
the chapters that were written for The Toronto Star Weekly sufficient
knowledge about railway conditions in Canada, during forty years, to
cause them to ask for the material in permanent form.

The third era of Canadian railway expansion, beginning with the
unnoticed construction of a hundred and twenty-five miles of line in
Manitoba, and issuing in the largest national system in the world,
will sometime have its due place in the historical literature of the
period. Though this was always apparent, it never seemed that one’s
contact with the changes of a quarter of a century would ever reach
the public except through the inarticulate narrative that is interned
in annual reports and arid statistics.

What appears here is due to the ability of my old friend and
colleague to take scanty and seemingly disconnected material,
and fashion it into a story such as one scarcely supposed to be
discoverable.

This book could only have been written by an author with an inside
experience of railway administration; and an intimate knowledge of
Western Canada. Mr. Hawkes was for several years the Superintendent
of Publicity for the Canadian Northern Railway System. From the
railway point of view, therefore, he was familiar with most phases
of what I had to tell. His knowledge of the West is extensive and
peculiar. He was going through the mill of homestead farming in the
North West Territories before I ever saw Manitoba. His intimacy with
pioneer conditions, is repeatedly reflected here, in a manner which
it is a pleasure to acknowledge.

This much of explanation was necessary, to make it clear that an old
railwayman is merely offering, through the only available channel,
what little material a hardworking life affords for, perhaps, a
friendlier appreciation of the railways’ part in developing Canada
than is easily obtainable from official publications.

“Trains of Recollection” may be my story; but it is my friend’s book.

                                                 D. B. HANNA.

Toronto, May, 1924.




                      Trains of Recollection




                             CHAPTER I.

  _Suggesting a typically Presbyterian background of Scottish migration
                             to Canada._


It seemed that one’s ability to identify a joke was being tested
when one was asked to set down something of what one had seen of the
development of Canada during forty years of railway experience. The
work I have been doing since coming to Canada in 1882 is the same
kind of service that has been well rendered by thousands of men.
How could there be anything of public interest in a career that has
had only an average share of incident and romance, and more than an
average of exacting toil?

But it has been said that the commonplace is the greatest romance of
all; and that it often requires the lapse of years for an apparently
ordinary event to acquire its true perspective in the things which
impart the liveliest interest to life. After all, one was very
closely associated with the growth of a great railway system from a
feeble and unpromising beginning; and one saw the most extraordinary
change from private enterprise to Government ownership that has
taken place in the history of transportation. Nine millions of
Canadian people are financially interested in the effects of that
transformation, and it may help some of them to appreciate the
significance of their unexpected proprietorship if one tries to throw
a little light upon the evolution of Canada, as it has been affected
by four decades of rapidly changing transportation conditions--forty
years in which every sensation of success and disappointment has been
known to the most fascinating country in the world.

One must find the romance of the commonplace in harking back--it
cannot be done by looking forward. There is no joy in the
anticipation of a certainty. No surer way of discounting pleasures
has ever been invented than to describe them in advance. Everybody
knows the bore who ruins any good story he proffers by his assurance
that it is very funny indeed. Turnings in our personal roads which
have no special interest when they are taken, years afterwards
disclose themselves as the most fateful passages in our lives.
Sometimes when we have wanted to turn aside from a beaten path,
and have been foiled, we have not known how much was bound up with
keeping awhile longer the even tenor of what was then a commonplace
way indeed.

Perhaps I am alone in viewing, without regret, a turn which was
missed in my teens, and which would have taken me to Asia, far
indeed from the rigours of Manitoba winters, and from politicians
who would assist railway management on lines that have grown hoary
with age, and disgraceful in their inefficiency. While working at
Stobcross station in Glasgow I answered an advertisement for a clerk
on a plantation in Ceylon. No reply to the application reached me,
though I anxiously watched for it. Years afterwards, just before
coming to Canada, it was told me that an answer to the application
did arrive from the Glasgow firm who had the business in hand. The
family knew of the matter, and one of them intercepted a letter which
was addressed to me, and asked me to come to Glasgow, as it was
thought I might be the most suitable applicant for the situation. The
letter was concealed, I believe, with the connivance of my excellent
mother; otherwise, I might now be curing tea for Sir Thomas Lipton.
About that time, by the way, the first of the Lipton shops was opened
in Glasgow, and the astounding sight was witnessed of a provision
retailer advertising his bacon by weekly cartoons of Irish pigs on
the hoardings--for bacon, and not tea, was the early Lipton specialty.

One often envies the Canadian-born--even one’s own children--their
fortune in being natives of this land. But occasionally one meets
Canadians whose envies are of the reverse order. They say that it
must be fine to have spent a youth amidst the historical treasures of
the Old Lands; and fine also to have had the experience of finding
in Canada an entirely New Land--to have chosen it for oneself, and
to have had so much direct control over one’s own destiny; and the
destinies of one’s offspring, to remote generations. Immigration is a
romance of the commonplace, perhaps; though there isn’t much glamour
in the outlook of a poor wight who has left all his kindred, is
facing an unknown country, and is finding the ocean a bottomless woe,
on which nothing stays where it is put.

“What made you come to Canada?” is a frequent question, to which the
answer usually is, “To better my condition.” It is my own story,
though oddly enough, I came to Montreal to work for the Grand Trunk
at a smaller salary than I was getting in Glasgow as a clerk on the
Caledonian. Was that Scottish-like--was it wise or otherwise? If
an answer be desired, it can perhaps be found in a sketch of the
Scotland I came from--the Scotland of an average industrious family
that owed everything to labour and nothing to fortune--the sort
of family that has been supplying Canada with people ever since
immigration hither ceased to be a purely French process.

One speaks about one’s early years primarily because it affords an
opportunity to say a word for upbuilders of Canada who never saw
Canada, but who gave to Canada what she has most needed and still
needs--people, sound of body and of mind, and grounded in a faith
that may be stern, but has at least been steadfast, and has given its
followers the vitalities of character and success.

A friend has a habit of saying that his mother is one of the greatest
Canadians, though she has never lived for a single month ten miles
from her birthplace in the south of England. On the day this is
written he tells me she is keeping her ninety-eighth birthday, and
that, to date, she has given sixty-five children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren to Canada. For fifty-five years she has been
writing letters to, and getting letters from, Canada. Her stake
in the country has been infinitely more precious than that of the
millionaire who dies without seed.

Most theatre-goers have seen “Bunty Pulls the Strings”, Moffatt’s
verra Scotch play. The piece is developed around Bunty, the managing
daughter of a typically Presbyterian house. It is really a depiction
of life near Glasgow--some people think, of an extinct species of
existence. Its religious aspects are incomprehensible to a generation
that knows not its Shorter Catechism, as they are serious to the
participants, and homelike to many people in Canada scarcely past
middle life.

One of the characters speaks of going to Thornliebank. The father of
the playwright was William Moffatt, well known as an elocutionist
in Scotland fifty years ago, who used to give readings from the
“Reciter” of his own compilation. He was a frequent visitor to
Thornliebank. For nearly twenty-four years I never lived anywhere
else.

“Bunty” is a transcript from southern Scottish life, as I knew it,
within an hour’s walk of Glasgow. The church scenes, including the
presence of the collie among the worshippers and the deposits of
copper on the collection plate outside the door, before the spiritual
food has been dispensed, are as true to fact as a Canadian winter is
true to Jack Frost.

The Thornliebank folk as I knew them, and as I was one of them, are
reproduced in “Bunty” with a fidelity that shows how dramatic the
commonplace can be. Thornliebank was and is a village almost entirely
of one industry. The Crum Print Works employed several hundred
people. The Crums were among the first manufacturers to recognize
that they owed to their employes more than the smallest wages that
they would consent to work for. The influence of Robert Owen, the
socialistic employer of New Lanark, had spread to our locality. The
Crums furnished certain institutional services for the village. They
were circumscribed enough, in comparison with what has been done by
the Cadburys at Bournville and the Levers at Port Sunlight, but were
considerable advances on the average standard of industrial amenities
in the mid-nineteenth century. They were the heralds and examples
which, in due time, produced the Bournvilles and Port Sunlights, the
Garden Cities and the town planners.

Roundabout, Thornliebank was known as the model village, because
of the Crums’ commonsense philanthropies. There was a commodious
village club, the facilities of which, and especially the library,
were greater than the membership fees. Sport was not the feature of
country life that it has since become everywhere--perhaps because
that was still the era when Shanks’s pony was the steed on which
people put their odds. It was also the era of mutual improvement
expressed in musical and literary endeavour. In the Literary Society
my sphere was humble enough, though I recall the labour with which I
set forth the fruit of researches on such subjects as the history of
railways.

The Thornliebank Choral Union was nothing extraordinary, of course,
except perhaps that its daring members constituted me their
treasurer, and managed to renew their courage when the annual meeting
recurred. But Thornliebank’s chief musical fame was derived from its
brass band, into the glories of which I was never initiated. It had
(speaking from memory) twenty-four pieces; and was in much demand for
excursions and celebrations over a pretty wide territory. The pay for
a long day’s activity wouldn’t be more than twenty-five or thirty
dollars--think of that, ye who inhibit musicians from playing with a
Pageant Chorus, because of a union punctilio.

A long day’s activity? Many a Saturday morning have I been wakened at
five o’clock by the band playing itself through the village on the
way to Glasgow, there, at seven, to lead its employing multitude to a
boat for a journey down the Clyde. The band walked the five miles to
Glasgow, and played most of the way. Practice in daylight maybe saved
the cost of candle-light.

Some little time before I left Scotland there came to Thornliebank
a designer for the Crum Mills, who had a very fine tenor voice. He
was a little unlike some of our native singers, such as John Semple,
whose bass was one of the most sonorous I have ever heard; who gave
to his solo work a genius of interpretation I have never known
excelled, but who couldn’t read a note, and relied entirely on his
unfailing, memorial ear.

Our tenor was a technician, with a passion for the science of melody,
and a determination to excel in the professional world--which he has
since done in two continents. He is George Neil, conductor of the
Toronto Scottish Chorus, one of the sweetest lyric tenors you could
wish to hear, and a relentless worker in the cause of perpetuating
Scottish songs.

Discussing, the other evening, the musical associations of the region
we both knew so well, George and I agreed that the Pageant Chorus,
which has opened a new chapter in the great story of the Canadian
National Exhibition, is a measurable, modernized, Canadianized
expansion of the Tannahill concerts on Gleniffer Braes, to which,
with myriads more, Thornliebank used to flock on a summer Saturday
afternoon, to hear anywhere up to a thousand voices, drawn from city
and country choirs, commemorate a Scottish poet who thus received
a tribute unequalled, I think, by anything that has annually been
dedicated to his master Burns.

Tannahill was the son of a Paisley handloom weaver. He was put to
the shuttle as a boy, but studied the poetry of Burns, Fergusson
and Ramsay till he developed an intense ambition to emulate them.
He fused his muse with the music of his loom, and tuned his metres
with his shuttle. At thirty-three he took the advice of those who
noted the local popularity of his poetry and published a volume of
175 songs and lyrics that enabled him to bank twenty pounds. But at
thirty-six, when Constable refused to publish a corrected edition,
his heart broke and he was found drowned.

One of his best pieces is “The Braes of Gleniffer”; and it was in
a natural amphitheatre, on the braes of Gleniffer, visible from
Thornliebank, that the yearly commemorative concert was held. The
braes were five miles from home; but nothing was thought of walking
the distance. The Tannahill concerts were known all over the south of
Scotland; and for several decades it was a distinction to be a singer
in them.

My father was a foreman in the Crum mills, and did his bit
in religious and social service. He was a highly Calvinistic
Presbyterian, of a sect which has no perpetuation in Canada. My
mother, a Blair of Barrhead, was also of his kirk--the kirk of
Original Seceders it was formally called, after a certain process of
union had been consummated.

There was no church of the Original Seceders at Thornliebank, so we
worshipped at Pollokshaws, the town that lay between Thornliebank
and Glasgow, and is now incorporated with the great city. My father
was the precentor for the Original Seceders, who would as soon think
of having a box of whistles to lead the praise in God’s house as
they would of praying to the accompaniment of fife and drum. Old
associates of his son in Portage la Prairie might not have been
astonished at the accountant of the Manitoba and North Western
Railway venturing on the perilous seas of choir-leading at the
Presbyterian church, had they seen Precentor Hanna at the Original
Seceders in Pollokshaws, standing up when the psalm was called,
striking his tuning fork, bending his ear to it, sounding the note in
harmony, and then leading off with “Duke Street” or “Martyrdom”.

The Original Seceders are a survival and a combination of several
schisms in the Presbyterian church in Scotland. The rigid qualities
of the Covenanters caused some of them to resist all innovations,
and to keep themselves separate from such as yielded to new-fangled
fashions in worship and belief. The settlement of William and Mary,
as sovereigns of Scotland as well as of the rest of the British
Isles, imposed an oath on ministers which some refused to take, so
that there was a secession of Burghers, as they were called. These,
in their turn, had a split of their own, resulting in churches of
Anti-Burghers. In opposition to the advancing tide of more liberal
ideas and less severe practices, the Auld Lichts also set up a new
identity among the folds of Christ’s Presbyterian flock.

To any of these divisions of the church militant may be ascribed the
overworked story of the good soul who, lamenting the decay of faith,
as indicated by the true kirk of the truly faithful having dwindled
to the minister and herself, said: “And I’m no’ so sure of the
meenister.”

At all events, the Anti-Burghers, the Auld Lichts and the Covenanters
gathered themselves together in the Original Seceders, of whom there
were not more than a baker’s dozen of churches in all Scotland. Our
family belonged to the church at Pollokshaws, where we walked every
Sunday, rain, snow or shine, and where father led the psalmody. We
were never taught, in so many words, that it was impossible to praise
God in any other metres or melodies, than the versions of the psalms
that belong to the period of the Westminster Confession, and the
tunes which were venerably associated with various of them. The idea
of a predestinated psalmody which was of the essence of our Sabbath
meat and drink was as much a part of our religious make-up as the day
of judgment itself. Hymns were taboo. Somehow, they didn’t fit in
with the true doctrine of the survival of the fittest; not even such
dournesses as

      “Great God! what do I see and hear?
        The end of things created,
      The judge of all men doth appear
        On clouds of glory seated.”

At Pollokshaws certain tunes were so associated with certain psalms
that when my father attempted the innovation of singing “I waited
for the Lord my God” to some other tune than “Balerma”[1] there was
almost a godly riot, and his religious experience was critically
sounded for the graver symptoms of heresy. The sentiment engendered
by my father’s endeavour to vary a tune has had no parallel in my
experience, I think, except in the astonishment with which some
politicians in the maritime provinces regarded the amazing doctrine
that the job of a section man should not be dependent upon his vote
at the last general election.

The outward form of much of the Presbyterianism of Scotland in
the sixties and seventies was hard, bare, unlovely to the modern
eye. It grates upon our present sense of spiritual contentment.
But it developed a fibre in the people who revelled in theological
exactitude, for which we, their descendants, are seldom sufficiently
grateful. It will be true of multitudes of other Canadians besides
myself, who were brought up in the moral rigours of a most positive
Puritanism, that their retrospect combines a little resentment
against the overclouding of their youth by unnecessary prohibitions,
with much thanksgiving for the immovable foundations on which
character was built. We are none too worthy citizens of the state,
as things are. Heaven alone knows what we might have been if we
had not been told, with stern, but kindly repetition, “This is the
way, walk ye in it.” Our grudge to our Presbyterian upbringing is
infinitesimal. Our debt is infinite.

Sometimes one hears what sounds like ungrateful criticism of the
thoroughness with which a theology that was sometimes confounded
with religion was drilled into the children of the nineteenth
century. A better attitude, surely, even for those who would not hold
their children’s noses closely to the Calvinistic grindstone, is to
appreciate the excellences which were so relentlessly pressed upon
us. It may be well that, for us, the old days have gone for ever. But
for family discipline, and the homage that was paid to the unseen,
could anything be better than the attendance at church of the whole
family every Sunday, at Pollokshaws, for services that lasted from
eleven till a quarter to four, with an hour’s intermission for lunch;
then Sunday school at five o’clock?

After a quiet evening there was the second family worship of
the day, beginning at ten o’clock, when whoever happened to be
in the house was not allowed to depart without sharing in the
exercises--expounding of the Word and a somewhat lengthy prayer by
father, and psalmody by all present. Religious duty was imperious
duty--in private as well as in public. Except the precentor, in
church we sat to sing, and we stood while the preacher prayed. The
long prayer of an ordained Original Seceder would often continue for
half an hour.

It is not of an Original Seceder, but of another branch of the
Presbyterian church, that the story is told of a young probationer
who was being heard with a view to an overture, and who, having been
told that his prospective congregation very much liked very long
supplications, thought to help himself out, when he was gravelled
for matter, by saying to Deity: “And now, Lord, we will tell thee a
little anecdote.”

Last summer I had the pleasure of taking a Toronto friend, Mr. A. J.
Mitchell, a manager of Old St. Andrew’s, to the Original Seceders’
Church at Pollokshaws. We deemed it inadvisable to bring the taxi to
the church door. As far as possible, we conformed ourselves to the
prevailing spirit of the congregation and the service. To each of us
the associations of the worship were different, indeed.

The interior, with its uncushioned pews, the precentor’s box and the
pulpit, was what it had been fifty years ago. When the precentor
pitched high the opening note of psalm or paraphrase, I was thinking
of my father, long since gone. While the preacher was discoursing
with all the old certainty, on the wrath to come, to me it was a
voice remote, but oh, so near. Outside one met warm-hearted people
who knew one’s name, and the family’s connection with the church,
but were personal strangers. One could only establish contact with
the living by recalling the dead. There is a sadness about returning
to an old home after decades of absence that in some ways is more
poignant than the feeling with which a youth leaves the roof that has
sheltered him all his days, for a land across the sea.

But for a pillar of a Toronto Presbyterian church to find himself for
the first time in the rarefied atmosphere of the Original Seceders;
to join in praise that is entirely vocal; to see the solemn devotion
that pervades a service singularly void of what to him hitherto
has been appealing in worship, is something new; and, if one is not
mistaken, something awful.

My friend comes of a family where the rigid practices of a fading
Puritanism were rigidly honoured--no such desecrations, for instance,
as cleaning shoes, or reading newspapers on the Sabbath day. He
adorns a church where the music is fine, and the congregational
singing notably hearty, where, indeed, the organist, Mr. Tattersall,
is the son of a Thornliebank girl. He is of those who invited a
Congregationalist to Presbyterian Old St. Andrew’s. He has delighted
in the magnificence of the cathedral and the grandeur of the ritual
at St. Giles’. He would not choose the severe and unornamented
concentration of the old Seceders before the catholicity that he sees
in the pending union. But--and this is what one would fain impress
upon the kindly mind--my friend came from Pollokshaws with a deepened
reverence for the wealth of character with which the old Puritanism
has endowed the world. A sorry day, indeed, will it be, whereon we
forget from whom and whence we came, even when we are most conscious
of the liberalizing changes which time and fortune have wrought.




                            CHAPTER II.

  _Sketching early years of service at country and city stations near
                            the Clyde._


The proportion of our immigrated people who visit their native lands
is growing, despite the rise in steamer rates. There are multitudes
to whom the Old Land still appears as it did when it was the only
country they knew. For what it is worth, then, one who has several
times trodden the old familiar ground, may say that you have to go
back to the Old Land really to see it; and to appreciate what Canada
has done for you.

I am sure that is unanimously so with all who have had the
experience. The fields you think of as big; the village street you
remember as wide; the kirk you recall as imposing--they are all
there; but they have diminished in extent, or you have grown in
stature. The people, noble as they are, abide where they always
abode. Somehow, in the old segment of the world, they have not
imbibed the air of the newer, more optimistic world that is on this
side the sea. And distances have been transformed, and the way you
look at distances.

Those who have always been accustomed to the magnificent distances
of Canada frequently marvel at the small acquaintance many British
people have with their native country. What may seem a phenomenal
ignorance is oftener only a proof of an ancient fiscal limitation.
In Thornliebank we knew about Loch Lomond, the Trossachs, and the
glories of the more northern hills and glens. But to go to Loch
Lomond, for instance, was a financial adventure, as well as a serious
railway journey, to be followed by costly coaching along the shore.
Ben Lomond, the three-thousand-feet mountain which stands like a
sentinel over the twenty-two miles of islanded water, is forty miles
from Glasgow--the distance of Hamilton from Toronto. Last summer we
motored from Glasgow to the hotel at the foot of the mountain, and
back again, in four hours. Besides the scenery so often mentioned
but so seldom described, we saw the proofs of the disappearance of
the former age, which, admirable as it is from the point of view of
the popularization of what used to be the joy of a few, still seems
rather flippantly to challenge the majesty of the prospect--I mean
the abundance of travel by motor char-a-banc.

Gasoline has indeed done wonders for travel; but a big bus, rolling
along at twenty miles an hour, with as many passengers as the first
steamer that plied on the Clyde--the “Comet” in 1812--is not the
picturesque sight that a tally-ho, with horses four, and an echoing
horn used to be. Naturally, an old railroader is all for better
transportation, and the multiplication of fares; but, the old ways
had their good features, and, somehow, one has a lingering feeling
that it were better for the older-fashioned picturesqueness, which
the multitude could not see, to remain than that everything in life
should be subdued to gas--and perhaps, in time, to jazz.

On the whole, the men who gave most of their time to the kirk also
served the community most consistently in other spheres. Fifty and
sixty years ago the larger duties of citizenship were not commonly
open to men who worked for wages. My father was past fifty before the
ten-pound householder had a Parliamentary vote. The teaching of men
like Robert Owen, and the rise of trade unionism, synchronized with
intellectual, social and economic advances among working people who
didn’t cease to read when they left school. Mechanics’ Institutes
abounded. Co-operative societies sprang up in almost every industrial
community in the Lowlands of Scotland and the north of England. There
was one in Thornliebank, of which William Hanna was the treasurer.

The organization of a local co-operative business was very
simple--its methods also. A society was formed, goods bought for
the co-operative store, and the members paid cash for them. At each
buying they were given metal tokens representing the amount of their
purchases--it was a coinage which obviated the necessity for the
intricate labors of bookkeeping. At the end of three months the
committee took stock of the store, compared the value of the goods
with the standing at the last quarter day, counted the cash in hand,
figured up the expenses, and were ready to declare a dividend. The
shareholder brought his tokens--his chips, if you like--to the
counter, and on the dividendial basis was given cash, or credit for
more goods.

With ten children, eight of whom lived to maturity, the voluntary
treasurership of a village co-operative store, with the quarterly
dividends added to the weekly wages at the Crum works, didn’t furnish
many luxuries to the Hanna family, beyond the unsearchable riches
that came to us from the Sabbath journeys to Pollokshaws. As the next
to the youngest, I did not know personally of the harder struggle
which beset the heads of artisan families when all their children
were small. But, even in the sixties, life was a constant experiment
in frugality. At the Thornliebank school we were all average
scholars, I think, and in my thirteenth year my father obtained
for me the job of office boy at the headquarters of the Scottish
Co-operative Wholesale Society, in Madeira Court, Glasgow.

Call it the coincidence of the commonplace, the accident of
association, if you like; but several years ago, while certain
negotiations were proceeding for the purchase of land and the
erection of grain elevators in the West by the Scottish Co-operative
Wholesale Society, one could not help contrasting the change in
that commercial enterprise, since his first acquaintance with it;
and noticing also the difference there was between running messages
from Madeira Court, and looking after the interests of a railway
that connected tidewater on the St. Lawrence with tidewater on the
Pacific, and had fifty thousand shareholders in the British Isles.

In those far-off days finance was a simple art, though it involved
some fine adjustments. The pay in Madeira Court was four shillings a
week. Out of that, return railway fare over four miles, and a midday
meal, had to be provided. Transportation took about a third of the
income--a trifle more, when one remembers that there was a mile walk
to and from the Kennishead station, Thornliebank not being on any
railway. Shanks’s pony cost something for shoes. At midday there was
resort to Jenkins’s Cooking Depot, on Jamaica Street--a place where a
bowl of soup, a slice of bread and a halfpenny cup of coffee offered
some justification for the unchallenged boasting about free trade and
cheap living which was a part of British electioneering for nearly
sixty years.

The Scottish Wholesale is an enormous business in these days, with
a turnover of a hundred million dollars a year. When I was on its
payroll, and very proud of my job, the office force, I think,
was ten. Of course, there were no telephones or typewriters. The
treasurer was a machinist at Thompson’s, on Finneston street. It was
part of my duty to carry the check book to him, to get batches of
checks signed.

My first responsibility for observing a time-table schedule
was impressed upon me rather interestingly by the Wholesale
Co-operative’s first manager, Mr. James Borrowman.

“Noo, laddie,” he said, as I was off to the treasurer with cheques to
be signed, “Hoo soon d’ye think ye can be back wi’ the signatures?”

I gave a close estimate, kept within it--and later discerned that my
astute chief had made me set my own speed, below which it was quite
inexpedient to fall.

The office work was light enough to permit of a few observations on
the methods of what was then very high commerce indeed. Tea-tasting,
I remember, was a subject of absorbing interest--perhaps it had
something to do with the application for a clerkship on a Ceylon
plantation.

There was almost sacramental gravity about old George’s preparations
for testing the tasting and blending qualities of Oolong and
Souchong. No home brew of these fantastic days is elaborated more
carefully than the liquid bouquets in Madeira Court were compounded.
With great respect to competent housewives, one may be allowed to
remark that heating the pot before infusing the tea is not enough to
bring to the human senses all the aromatic marvels of an artistic
cup of tea. There is a delicate science of perfumery in the perfect
production of the most cheering beverage. To induce a truly exquisite
bouquet the cup must be heated before the tea is poured into it--and
then, indeed, you have a liquid meet for the gods.

Less than a dollar a week, with railway and restaurant expenses to
be paid out of it, though the hours were only from nine to six,
could not long satisfy the son of the Thornliebank co-operative
treasurer. After about nine months at Madeira Court the post of
junior assistant to the Kennishead stationmaster fell vacant, and
I was the successful applicant for the position. “Junior assistant
to the stationmaster” is as big-sounding a title as one can think of
for that post, after many years’ diplomatic strain in trying to find
titles for railway officials whose deserts, occasionally, were in
inverse ratio to their appraisals of them.

There may be more magnificent sensations than those of an Original
Seceder five months short of his fourteenth birthday, selling tickets
to Glasgow through a little wicket door; but if so, I know them not.
The danger of giving too much change was not serious. We were only a
short line, without through connections. As with other small systems,
we made the most of our name. Something over thirty miles of route
were called the Glasgow, Barrhead and Kilmarnock Railway. Most of
the passenger traffic was to Glasgow, third-class fare, fourpence.
Saturday was the busy day. The operatives used to leave the mills at
five on Saturday afternoons, instead of the customary six o’clock.
Jock and his wife, and sometimes a bairn or two, would go to the city
for an evening’s shopping, and free gazes at the places they did not
enter. To go to Glasgow and not get a drink of whiskey, fifty years
ago, was like going to Niagara and shunning the Falls.

Business hours at Kennishead station were from before the first train
in the morning till after the last train had come in from Glasgow at
night, for which six shillings a week was the reward. Saturday nights
one sometimes overtook groups walking home from their evening’s
outing. Often one could hear Jock trying to walk straight, and Mary
chiding him, sometimes under, and sometimes very much over, her
breath. But, however uncertain the gait on Saturday night, there were
dignity and poise in the approach to church next day--proof indeed of
the difference between spirituous and spiritual walk and conversation.

The standard story which illustrates the commingling of the spiritual
and the spirituous belongs to a locality near ours. The Scotsman
who drank scientifically exhibited three stages of spirituous
possession. The first was when, having first exalted his horn, he
was in a meditative mood. The second stage saw him determined to
discuss politics. When the saturation point was reached nothing but a
religious argument would content his soaring mind.

When the United Presbyterian Church and the Free Church were fused,
those who rejected the union were called the Wee Frees. In a town
further up the line the controversy between the Wee Frees and the
U.P.’s painfully persisted. One night a believer in the union, who
had been to Glasgow, was wiggling a waggly way homeward when he saw
the manse. He rang the bell, and insisted that the maid take him to
the minister, to whom he said he wanted to discuss the trouble with
the Wee Frees, and to propound a settlement. The minister, seeing his
condition, urged that as the hour was getting late, and his caller
had to be up early in the morning, he had better come next evening,
when they would fully discuss the great question.

“To-morra’ nicht--to-morra’?” quoth the spirituous caller. “To-morra’
nicht I shan’t care a d----n aboot it.”

Eighteen months at Kennishead brought promotion to the ticket office
at Pollokshaws, a mile and a half nearer Glasgow. Ten shillings a
week, and a twice-a-day walk across the long side of the triangle of
which Thornliebank, Kennishead and Pollokshaws were the vertices,
were the main changes involved in this advance; although Pollokshaws,
being a town of about eight thousand people, the ticket sales were
larger than at Kennishead. Another change was not so pleasant. The
walk home perforce was alongside the churchyard wall, which afforded
too many inducements to contemplate humanity’s latter end, to be
pleasant to an undeveloped youth who liked company, but had no
curiosity about epitaphs when the midnight stroke was nigh.

From Pollokshaws I was transferred to Barrhead, the station farther
out from Glasgow than Kennishead. One of its leading productions
nowadays is the Shanks bath and toilet equipments, which are famous
the world over. The business was then in its struggling infancy. Many
a ticket have I sold to the original Shanks on his way to Glasgow,
carrying with him samples of his wares.

Barrhead was interesting to me because it was the birthplace of my
mother, as I was reminded soon after beginning duty there. As a sweet
faced old lady asked for a ticket to Glasgie, I noticed she was
eyeing me closely. Receiving the cardboard, she said:

“They tell me ye’re Janet Blair’s son?”

I said that was so.

“Ay,” she went on, “I knew your mither weel, lang before ye were
born. She was a grand girl, and a fine-looking woman. My, but ye’re
no’ a bit like her.”

Barrhead saw the end of my service of the G.B. and K., for in
1875 I obtained a clerkship at the Caledonian freight station at
Buchanan Street, Glasgow. The first thing I learned there was that
Presbyterian strictness was nothing compared to one brand of railway
rigidity. The office was six miles from home, and a few minutes’
walk from the South Side passenger station. The first morning train
arrived there at nine o’clock. Wishing still to live at home, I asked
my immediate superior to excuse me from beginning work until shortly
after nine, if I made up the time at noon, or in the evening. He
refused: and so, for a year I walked the six miles from Thornliebank
six mornings a week.[2]

Discipline can be fearfully and wonderfully enforced. Probably no
chief of a big organization ever entirely escaped criticism from
his subordinates for being at times more exacting than they thought
circumstances warranted. But it is likely that subordinates receive
more consideration than they are aware of because their chief has
not forgotten that his own early subordinations were not all lavender.

From Buchanan Street occurred my last move in Scottish railway
service, in 1877. With one of the best men I have ever known for my
chief, Mr. R. M. F. Watson, I helped to open Stobcross station, which
the Caledonian established through an arrangement for using the North
British right of way. I was Mr. Watson’s only clerk. In a week or
two after the opening we needed more help; and so for the first time
I ranked a little ahead of a colleague. Here I stayed five years,
advancing in pay from twenty-two to forty shillings a week--and two
pounds was quite a salary on a Scottish railway forty-five years ago.
Stobcross to-day does an enormous business. One can wish for the
younger men that they have as fine a superior officer as we had in
Mr. Watson.

The Caledonian was a large railway, as railways ranked in a country
the extremest length of which is only as far as Sudbury is from
Toronto, which could be tucked into Lake Superior, and no spot in
which is fifty miles from salt water. There were, of course many
promotions in the Caledonian service; but it didn’t take very long
for a young fellow who was looking a little farther ahead than
Saturday night to learn that a clerk outside the head office stood
mighty little chance of developing from a weekly wage-earner into a
salaried official. Perhaps, if I had remained in Glasgow I might
have become station master at Stobcross, and been regarded as quite a
fortunate officer.

Because a country youth working in the city went home every night
and was, in the main, devoted to his native heath, it must not be
supposed that he gave no heed to city affairs. Democracy had a mighty
hold on Scottish young manhood in the seventies and eighties. The
ten-pound householder was a Liberal, and though I wasn’t a ten-pound
householder, I was a Liberal too, and took enough interest in
statesmanship to help the party in the 1880 election, and to help
myself to as much of the first-class oratory as was available before
the polling.

The Reform Act of 1867 gave Glasgow three members, all representing
the same constituency. But, by one of the machinations devised by
old-fashioned politicians, who loved not democracy, the elector
could only vote for two. In a way, I suppose, this was a device for
obtaining proportional representation; by very good luck it might
win the minority something more. The party which believed itself to
be the stronger--in those days anything more than two parties would
have seemed an absurdity, if not a crime--would run three candidates,
hoping to elect all. The weaker would run only two, hoping to elect
at least one.

In 1880 the Glasgow Liberals were in a great majority, and put up
three candidates: Dr. Charles Cameron, proprietor of the “Glasgow
Daily Mail”; Mr. Charles Middleton, of Caldwell & Middleton, and
Mr. George Anderson. All three were big men physically, and were
collectively dubbed “Eighteen feet of Liberalism”. The Conservatives
nominated two candidates. It was the Liberals’ business to distribute
their votes scientifically. This could only be done by an efficient
ward organization, which would know all the Liberal voters, and
instruct them to vote in the right proportions for Cameron and
Middleton, for Cameron and Anderson, and for Middleton and Anderson.

There was no rule against Caledonian Railway employees working
according to their political consciences, in their own time; so
that evenings found me, as the election approached, helping to work
out the tally. The Liberal three were elected with very few votes
separating each of them, and did their bit in enabling Lord Rosebery
to win his bets--that he could count the Tory members among the
Scottish sixty on one hand, and that they would all be able to drive
into Palace Yard in the same cab.

Lord Rosebery, then a young, but rapidly rising peer, was on the
platform at the meeting which Gladstone addressed in the old City
Hall as an accompaniment to his most wonderful Midlothian campaign.
I cannot add anything to the stock of public knowledge about a very
great man, but may perhaps furnish an illustration of the proverbial
attention of Mrs. Gladstone to her husband, and of a forgetfulness
which kept him on the level of other spectacle-using persons.

Mrs. Gladstone who almost invariably accompanied her husband to
his political meetings, sat next him while he was speaking with
magnificent eloquence and vigour to a delighted audience, who
were all standing, and were prevented from swaying dangerously by
being roped off in squares, on the iniquitous support given by the
Beaconsfield Government to the unspeakable Turk who had slaughtered
offenseless Bulgarians, and should be cleared out of Europe, bag
and baggage. The old gentleman--he was already seventy years of
age--wished to read a quotation, and felt in an upper vest pocket
for his spectacles. They weren’t there. He patted each vest pocket
vigorously--no spectacles. Then he hunted for them, until Mrs.
Gladstone quietly arose, and pulled them down from his forehead to
his nose--and all was joy.

To how great an extent one may seem to belong, in the eyes of a
generation which is losing the use of its legs on the King’s highway,
to a period almost as remote as the Flood, may be judged from the
fact that, as a matter of course, after the meeting, I walked the six
miles to Thornliebank, the last train having gone before the meeting
was over.

Ambition being neither extinguished nor satisfied in the agreeable
associations of Stobcross, and Asia, as far as I knew, having yielded
a blank, it was natural that one’s outlook should turn to the Western
continent, where railways were then being built, we often heard, at a
tremendous rate.

I wasn’t reckless enough to throw away a certainty for a chance of
having my railroading confined to hitting the ties, and I never felt
the imperious call to get back to the land. So, in the late summer
of 1882, I answered an advertisement for clerks on the Grand Trunk
Railway of Canada. The Grand Trunk, it became known to us later,
was in one of those difficult situations from which it was scarcely
ever free. Circumstances had compelled it to extend its territory by
taking over other lines; but it scarcely appreciated the significance
of the advent of a tremendous child among the giants--the Canadian
Pacific Railway.

This strange circumscription of outlook seemed to be inherent in the
management of the railway from London, which proceeded as though the
railway business could support a Downing Street of its own, which
gave to “colonial” enterprises, by a species of absent treatment,
the superior direction of men who never saw what they fancied they
were managing; and who imagined that the appearance in their chosen
field of young, ambitious and capable rivals was an impertinent
incompetence.

The C.P.R. in 1882 had reached Winnipeg, though the road round the
north shore of Lake Superior did not connect with Port Arthur till
1885. Steel was laid beyond Regina. The general manager, Van Horne,
had a unique genius for railway pioneering, and a driving power to
which his employers had the sagacity to give a free hand. Somewhat
similarly to what happened when the construction of the Canadian
Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific were in full swing, there was a
great demand for all kinds of men who knew something of the railway
business.

Van Horne immediately drew heavily on the Grand Trunk--in fact
he drained it of a great deal of material that was in line for
promotion. In those days an increase of five dollars a month was
a powerful temptation to an aspiring subordinate in a freight
or passenger department. The offer of an additional ten was an
irresistible bait. The Grand Trunk general manager was Mr. Hickson;
his assistant was William Wainwright. The general auditor was T.
B. Hawson. The era of vice-presidents in charge of departments had
not yet arrived. The Grand Trunk was not only directed from London,
but its chief officers were sent direct from English railways. The
three just named were from the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire
Railway.

As its name indicated, this was a purely provincial line. It has
since developed into the Great Central, with its own fine terminal in
London--Marylebone Station. Fifty years ago an officer on, say, the
London and North Western, or the Great Northern, would have felt it
beneath his dignity to accept a post on a “colonial” railway.

In England, at that time, the solemn importance that was attached by
railway operators to their work could be gauged by the interminable
extracts from Acts of Parliament about tolls, printed in big type,
which adorned the walls of country stations, but which even those
who had missed one train and were waiting for another never had the
courage to read. Manifestations like this were possibly due to the
necessity for fighting for recognition as an entirely respectable
section of the business world which distinguished the earlier years
of steam locomotion. Landowners regarded it as beneath their duty
to their ancestry and posterity to ride in a vehicle which anybody
might use for a financial consideration. When they deigned to use
the railway they had their own coaches strapped to flat cars, and
believed they were riding in state.

One alludes to the non-Canadian management of the old Grand
Trunk, not as a criticism, but as a fact, which has had agreeable
results for oneself. If, when the C.P.R. had carried its policy of
abstracting men from the senior road, replacers had been sought from
the bright Canadian youths who were then flocking to the United
States, this tale might never have been told. But the old country
management looked to the old countries for clerks, as they did for
directors.

The Great Western, serving a considerable portion of Ontario beyond
Hamilton, was taken over by the Grand Trunk in August, 1882. The
acquisition extended the demand for clerical assistance, for the
accounts of the two elements in the amalgamation were kept separately
for longer than now seems to have been necessary. The audit
department therefore required considerable augmentation.

Perhaps because my father was a treasurer, accounts had never been
uncongenial to me. I could enjoy straightening out the mess that
some unlucky book-keeper had made. I gravitated to the auditors’
brigade, and, on November 2, 1882, after a voyage on the Phoenician,
which convinced me that marine transportation was not my long suit,
I reported at the Grand Trunk head office, at Point St. Charles,
Montreal, and began forty years of railroading such as can never be
repeated in Canada. Then there was much land to be possessed. Now,
there are certain deficits to be dissipated.




                             CHAPTER III.

  _Recalling Van Horne and the Canadian Pacific challenge to the Grand
                               Trunk._


At sixty, one cannot realize how long he has lived until he sits down
and counts up the revolutions he has seen since he arrived at man’s
estate.

Of course, one does not mean political revolutions, merely; although
they are becoming too numerous to mention. I left Scotland before the
man who produced the crops from which the rent rolls of the House of
Lords were paid could vote for a member of the Parliament which might
send his sons to the wars. When I came to Canada in 1882, the St.
Lawrence, below Montreal, flowed through a country that was about as
clear of forests as it is to-day. But Ontario forty years ago, was
half bush. Toronto was warmed with more wood than coal in winter.
My friend Noel Marshall was called the wood king of this city. His
trainloads of cordwood arrived almost daily from the territory around
and beyond Lake Simcoe.

The locomotive with the big funnel-top out of which came wood sparks
and smoke was still common on the railways. There wasn’t an air
brake on a train. The electric light was just beginning to take its
place among the marvels of the age; but the electric street car was
only the dream of foolish persons who imagined that harness could be
put upon the lightning. The telegraph was everywhere with the steam
locomotive. But, though men had talked to each other from almost
incredible distances, and prophecies were made by daring spirits
about what would some day be accomplished by the human voice over
an electrified wire; if you wanted to speak to a man in his office
across the street, you crossed the street.

One of the surest things in human existence, to most shrewd people’s
way of thinking, was the impossibility that men should ever fly.
Anybody who would have predicted that in his lifetime it would be
possible to send his voice out into the atmosphere in the form of
a silent wave of ether, have it picked up by a piece of wire a
thousand miles away and turned again into his voice so that one or
one thousand people standing in a park could hear it as plainly as if
the living person shouted into their ears--why, for such a prophet
the only appropriate abiding place would have been where brains had
ceased from troubling, and wisdom was at rest. As for the motor car,
although the horseless vehicle was a subject of prophecy, the wildest
visionary never proposed anything like the present speeds and dangers
of the streets.

The advances that have been made in moral and social standards are,
in their spheres, as remarkable as those just suggested are in the
mechanical helps of life. But before we come to them, and their
relation to one or two of the more remarkable variations from the
way of conducting railways forty years ago, suppose we take a look at
the railway situation from the constructional point of view, as it
was in Canada when my service began with the Grand Trunk.

Towards the C.P.R. the high and mighty Grand Trunk directors in
London had a disdain not unlike what their successors felt for the
Canadian Northern when it first stretched its hand towards the London
money market. The year that began my service produced two most
remarkable developments in the general scheme and the administration
of the C.P.R. The first day of 1882 saw the first day’s work of Van
Horne as general manager of the C.P.R. The first year’s work of Van
Horne saw also the abandonment of the plan of first reaching Winnipeg
by rail from Eastern Canada via Sault Ste. Marie, instead of by Port
Arthur. To give an idea of the atmosphere that it was sought to
develop in the London money market at that time, it is interesting
to see a pamphlet that was issued under Grand Trunk auspices, in
opposition to the proposal to build the C.P.R. around the north shore
of Lake Superior.

The territory now traversed by three transcontinental lines was
described as “a perfect blank, even on the maps of Canada. All that
is known of the region is that it would be impossible to construct
this one section for the whole cash subsidy provided by the Canadian
Government for the entire scheme.”

This view was not a purely Grand Trunk bogey. It coloured the Liberal
party’s opposition to the C.P.R. Thomas Robertson, founder of the
Toronto candy-making firm, used to tell with much glee how his old
friend who became Senator Jaffray, president of “The Globe”, and of
the Imperial Bank, was in the habit of declaring that he would not
risk his life on a train north of Lake Superior in winter.

Grand Trunk understrappers, of whom I was one, had no direct
contact with the big fighting that was going on between the old
Canadian railway and the new, looking to the future control of
transcontinental business. But we could feel temperatures; and we
picked up information about the forces that were playing against each
other, which, perhaps, the ordinary reader of the newspapers did not
gather from what came out of the West. As a matter of fact, not much
did come out of the West, where the most extraordinary phase of a
most extraordinary phase of modern railway construction was being
accomplished. There was no telegraph connection over all-Canadian
territory between Montreal and Winnipeg, and the newspaper services
were meagre indeed, compared with what they are now.

Of all the departments of railway construction and operation, only
one of the C.P.R. was located in Montreal in 1882--the purchasing
department. Its chief was a young fellow named Shaughnessy. Except
in age, there wasn’t much difference between the purchasing agent
of 1882 and the peer who resigned the C.P.R. presidency thirty-six
years later. Mr. Shaughnessy had arrived early in the year, from the
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, whose general manager, Van Horne,
had been given charge of the completion of the C.P.R. The financial
chiefs of the young railway, notably George Stephen, had their
headquarters in Montreal. But they were generally regarded as having
other major interests.

Among the Grand Trunk wise men, the enterprise that was poking its
nose into the barbarian wilderness was looked upon with an almost
amused toleration. In their own estimation, the Grand Trunk offices
at Point St. Charles were a sort of Imperial hub. The C.P.R. was very
much of a colonial affair, don’t you know--indeed, with a general
manager from Milwaukee, rather too Yankee an affair, if the truth
must bluntly be uttered.

But, even then, there were the symptoms of a somewhat chastened
mood in the Grand Trunk. For the year 1882 had produced results
which, when they were predictions during the previous winter, were
laughed at; but when they were achievements at the end of the year
were ominous indeed. The Van Horne regime on the C.P.R. was the most
remarkable innovation that had happened to the business life of the
Dominion. Its first year had seen the construction of about five
times as many miles of railway as the C.P.R. had laid during any
previous year; and most of that on the remote prairies. The promise
to begin, in 1883, building around the north shore of Lake Superior
looked like business--and business it was.

I think Van Horne had never been in Montreal when he took over the
job of general manager of the Canadian Pacific on January 1, 1882,
at Winnipeg. He came east shortly afterwards, and gave Ottawa and
Montreal a few tastes of his quality. He did not settle in Montreal
until after his first astounding Western season was ended. In
midwinter, with little preparation made for the spring opening, Van
Horne announced that he would lay five hundred miles of track on the
prairies in the season of 1882. His advent at the head of affairs
was not welcomed by a staff of Canadians and old countrymen. He
was a Yankee. He was astonishingly aggressive. His vocabulary had
all the certainty that belongs to the Presbyterian conception of
everlasting retribution, without its restraint. He laughed at other
men’s impossibilities, and ordered them to be done--a dynamo run by
dynamite.

The only way to get construction material to Winnipeg and the West
in time for the spring opening was from the south. Van Horne bought
rails in England and Germany, had them shipped to New Orleans, and
hauled in trainloads up the Mississippi Valley. He made a contract
with a St. Paul firm for the grading, up to the point of actually
laying ties and steel, from Oak Lake, west of Brandon, to Calgary.
The day after the contract was signed they advertised for three
thousand men and four thousand horses.

Van Horne organized his own gangs of tracklayers and kept them
right on the heels of the graders. There was delay in starting
work, because the Red River Valley above Winnipeg was abnormally
flooded. Then the contractors didn’t work fast enough. On threat of
cancelling the whole thing Van Horne speeded up the construction.
Working furiously into the freeze-up, finished only 417 miles on the
prairie section. But the work done elsewhere did complete over five
hundred miles of construction that year; and it was plain that the
new driving force would get even greater results another season.

The next year saw steel laid right to Calgary and immense progress
made between Lake Nipissing and Thunder Bay. This piece of work
caused J. J. Hill to drop out of the C.P.R., and to become a business
enemy of Van Horne’s. Hill, an Ontario farm boy, had induced Donald
Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona) and his cousin George Stephen
(Lord Mountstephen) to join him in getting hold of a Minnesota
railroad that had been financed by Dutch bondholders. This road
developed into the Great Northern, out of which Smith and Stephen
made, it has been stated, more money than they did out of the C.P.R.
These associates created the syndicate which obtained the C.P.R.
charter, and began construction. Things were dragging, and it
seemed likely that the ten years stipulated for with the Canadian
Government would be needed to complete the road to the Coast, when
Hill recommended that Van Horne be made general manager, with large
powers. The appointment was made, but before long, Hill and Van Horne
clashed, as strong men often do.

When Van Horne took hold, a railway was under construction from
Callender (just east of North Bay) to Sault Ste. Marie, where it
was to tie in with the Hill road and its Winnipeg connections. The
line from Port Arthur to Winnipeg was well advanced; and the utmost
use was to be made of the possibilities of lakes navigation for
communications with Eastern Canada under all-Canadian auspices. But
it was figured that the line around Superior would be too costly and
too unremunerative an undertaking for many years. All the traffic
during non-navigation months would go over the Hill line--and that
was one of several reasons for Hill’s going into the C.P.R.

Van Horne wasn’t afraid of the emptiness between Lake Nipissing
and Thunder Bay. He figured the through traffic would be enough to
offset the disadvantage of practically no local business through
the wilderness. He saw that, with Hill in the strategical position
he had marked out for himself, the C.P.R. couldn’t well be its own
master--rather, perhaps, that Van Horne couldn’t be its master. Sir
John Macdonald and the Government had always wanted to reach the
West over all-Canadian rails. And so it came about that Van Horne’s
arrival at Montreal, after the 1882 construction season, for his
permanent headquarters, synchronized with the beginning of the
Superior Division construction or, rather, with the sending in of
supplies during the winter, for the 1883 work. It turned out that
three seasons’ construction completed the Lake Superior Division, and
the first trains from Montreal to Winnipeg ran in the fall of 1885.

The new atmosphere which had begun to affect railway business in
Canada can be partially appreciated by those who were not within its
influence. A tremendous, and at times terrifying, power had come on
to the job of Canadian development. The Grand Trunk bucked it openly
in London, and quietly derided it in Canada. In Montreal, though,
we were so far from the West--always bear in mind that it wasn’t
till late in 1885 that you could travel in the same train across
the Province of Ontario--that the tales which came through of what
was happening in the North West seemed about as far-fetched as Mark
Twain’s yarn of the jumping frog.

For instance, it was a matter of knowledge that the C.P.R. charter
provided for the line to be built through the Yellowhead Pass, since
taken by the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern, and to
end about where Prince Rupert now is. The route had been changed; and
instead of going through Battleford, the newly-established capital
of the North West Territories, and up the North Saskatchewan Valley,
the C.P.R., we were informed, was going to Fort Calgary up the Bow
river (which becomes the South Saskatchewan where it is joined by the
Red Deer), and was then to get through the mountains, and reach the
Pacific ocean--somehow. And, in very truth, it was some somehow.

First of all there were doubts as to whether a railway could be put
through the Kicking Horse Pass. Then, once over the Great Divide, the
Fraser Valley must be reached either by crossing the mighty Selkirk
range, or by going hundreds of miles round the big bend of the
Columbia. No pass through the Selkirks was known. Few men believed
one could be found. But Van Horne headed his road for the foothills,
taking chances on making a fairly economical approach to the Pacific
ocean, to obtain which he sent explorers into the appalling waste of
mountains. At last, after incredible hardships, Major Rogers and a
companion named Carrol found the Pass that is forever associated with
the major’s name; and the C.P.R. went through, as all the world knows.

I shall come to a very pleasant duty presently, when something is
to be said about railway location, and some of the locators I have
known and worked with. It will be seen that they are all of the
Rogers spirit, though, happily for themselves, they are not all of
the Rogers attitude towards their own financial interests. Rogers
was a Yale graduate of high standing, but a lover and liver of the
wild, if ever there was such a creature. His discovery of the Pass,
made during days of semi-starvation, and dreadful peril to man and
beast, was acknowledged by the C.P.R. with a check for five thousand
dollars. Van Horne, meeting Rogers in Winnipeg a year later, reminded
the major that he hadn’t cashed the check.

“What!” roared Rogers. “Cash that check? I wouldn’t take a hundred
thousand dollars for it. It is framed and hangs in my brother’s house
in Waterville, Minnesota, where my nephews and nieces can see it. I’m
not in this game for money.”

To indicate the general temper of those early construction days
in the prairie country one can take room for only two sidelights
on the Van Horne regime, which became traditional with all the
surviving old-timers who were lucky enough to behold it. Van Horne
wasn’t an engineer, but he had all the natural aptitudes of one,
and a Napoleonic hatred of “can’t”. One day he sent for a locating
engineer, threw a profile to him and said:

“Look at that. Some infernal idiot has put a tunnel in there. I want
you to go up and take it out.”

“But this is on the Bow River--a troublesome section. There may be no
other way.”

“Make another way.”

The engineer stood, irresolute. Then, Van Horne:

“This is a mud tunnel, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“How long would it take to build it?”

“A year or eighteen months.”

Van Horne thumped his desk and shouted: “What are they thinking
about? Are we going to hold up this railway for a year and a half
while they build their damned tunnel? Take it out.”

The engineer started off with the plan; but turned at the door.

“Mr. Van Horne,” he said, “these mountains are in the way, and the
rivers don’t run right for us. While we’re at it we might fix them
up, too.”

Whereat the big chief exploded with laughter. But there’s no tunnel
on the Bow, and the line wasn’t held up eighteen months.

Those who knew Van Horne in his later years are familiar with his
habit of keeping a cigar in his mouth, often unlit. He was, though, a
great smoker; and when, during his last illness but one, the doctor
reduced him to three cigars a day, he had some made over a foot
long. Just before he finished his first whirlwind year at Winnipeg,
he threw an unextinguished cigar stub into the waste basket, and
the building--the Bank of Montreal, in the upper storey of which
the C.P.R. had its headquarters--was burnt to the ground. Bank and
railway moved to Knox Church, and Van Horne had his office in the
pastor’s vestry; and Ogden, the auditor, presided in the Sunday
school room.

In view of Van Horne’s vocabularian range, it seemed an incongruous
association; but it may have had something to do with a remark made
thirty years afterwards by Van Horne to one of his astonished friends:

“All my religion,” he said, “is summed up in the golden rule; and I
practise it; and I think I am the only man in business who does. What
are you laughing at?”

Perhaps the best picture of the Van Horne who put zip into the C.P.R.
was written in the Winnipeg Sun:

“Van Horne is calm and harmless-looking. So is a she-mule; and so
is a buzz-saw. You don’t know their true inwardness until you go up
and feel them. To see Van Horne get out of the car and go softly up
the platform you would think he was an evangelist on his way West to
preach temperance to the Mounted Police. But you are soon undeceived.
If you are within hearing distance you will have more fun than you
have ever had in your life.”

So much for the temper that was in the Canadian railway situation
forty years ago. West of old Ontario there wasn’t much else but land,
water and temper. When Van Horne went to Winnipeg between the Lake of
the Woods and the Great Divide, and from the United States boundary
to the Arctic ocean, red and white people combined were only sixty
thousand. British Columbia, which had come into Confederation on
promise of railway connection with the East, contained fifty thousand
people, of whom half were Indians.

Allowing for the low traffic value of the Indians, it is a liberal
computation that from the American boundary to the Arctic Circle
there weren’t forty people per mile to create the business between
the Ontario frontier and the Pacific Ocean. Van Horne’s faith was
force and his force was faith. Never was there a greater combination
for a greater adventure. Literally, according to its faith, it has
been to the C.P.R.




                             CHAPTER IV.

  _Reviewing vanished practices, including ticket scalping and fast
                           freight lines._


When the Canadian Pacific Railway was built across the prairies there
was no railway for a hundred miles south of parallel forty-nine. Red
River carts, canoes and dog-sleds furnished all the transportation
between it and the North Pole. Van Horne earned his first freight
revenue from the Saskatchewan plains by shipping buffalo bones to
Eastern fertilizer manufacturers. When he stopped at construction
camps he would draw pictures on buffalo skulls for the men’s
amusement in the evening. To build a railway across empty plains and
over mountain ranges was regarded as unmitigable folly by many people
who believed themselves to be far-seeing.

While it was being done the state of Eastern Canada was not very
encouraging. Half of the settled farm land of Ontario was uncleared
bush. Farmers received little or nothing for their produce. The
cities were small. Manufacturing was in a sickly, uncertain infancy.
In average years the country was importing something more than a
hundred million dollars’ worth of goods and exporting something less.
The interest on borrowed money, therefore, was being paid with more
borrowed money. The revenue of the Dominion was about thirty million
dollars. You could get good board in Montreal or Toronto for four
dollars a week, and very good for six. Everybody was poor.

There isn’t the same sort of plenty in Canada that there was forty
years ago--I mean as to eats and drinks, the cost of fuel, and the
simplicities of fun. But, on the whole, things are vastly better than
they were. Those who discover a moral declension in the people are
sorely mistaken.

But I am concerned with railway affairs, and am not delivering
lectures on the history of Canadian morals. The railroad ethics of
to-day are very much ahead of the railway ethics of forty years ago.
That is true whether you compare railway standards with railway
standards, or look cursorily over the field of commercial and social
relationships. One wouldn’t say that saintliness distinguishes the
railway business more than it does any other. Indeed, it is commonly
supposed that there is more freedom of speech, running into license,
among knights of the rail than there is in any other walk of life.

It is still supposed by many otherwise excellent people that, of
all corporations, a railway corporation most assuredly has neither
body to be kicked, nor soul to be damned. Railwaymen are not a
perfectionist crowd. They never set themselves up for paragons. But
take them by and large, railwaymen are as worthy a segment of society
as any other. In the last forty years there has been at least as
notable a progression in the standards of railway behaviour as in
other fields of human activity, including the Christian ministry.

Heaven knows there was room for improvement--not in the men, but in
the standards which were considered appropriate to a business that
was always weirdly competitive, was sometimes wonderfully prosperous,
and at other times was woefully depressed. There is a changing
orthodoxy in commerce as there is in religion and politics. The
railway business is no exception to this rule. The change has been
steadily for the better. Of this it will be easy to convince the
elder, as I hope it will not be impossible to inform, the younger
readers of these remarks.

How far we have travelled, how large have been the revolutions in
commercial morality within the memory of people now living, can be
indicated by a few facts. I have mentioned a lady now in England who
has given sixty-five descendants to Canada. She was eight years old
when slavery became illegal in the British dominions. She was sixteen
years old when, under the Ashburton treaty which gave to the United
States territory that ought to have been part of Canada, the United
States and Britain agreed to maintain squadrons off the coast of
Africa to prevent further shipment of slaves to the New World. Scores
of thousands of the present citizens of the United States were born
as slaves. When I came to Montreal the American Civil War which freed
the slaves wasn’t as far back as the Boer War is now.

The old lady of whom I have spoken was six years old when the Reform
Bill put an end to the system of rotten boroughs in the British
Isles, which we still regard as having in all past centuries been
in the forefront of moral and political progress. The political
corruption of those times, so nauseating when we read about it, was
regarded as a matter of course by men and women who were godliest
among the good. Nowadays, when we are shocked by stories of buying
votes in elections, we sometimes forget the recency of the society
from which that form of bribery descends. Financial customs which are
reprehensible to-day were respectable not so long ago--in all walks
of life.

One mentions these things in a railway retrospect, so that when a
few facts as to old-time methods have been given it will not be
supposed that in their practices of several decades ago some railway
administrations were sinners above all other sinners. They practised
the orthodoxies of their times, and were neither better nor worse
than the practitioners of orthodoxy in a hundred ranges of human
activity.

It may seem a queer question to young people--What would you think,
supposing you wanted to go to Chicago on the Canadian National
Railways--and, instead of going into the railway office at King and
Yonge, and paying, say, sixteen dollars for the ticket, you slipped
into a private ticket office up street, and bought your ticket for
ten dollars? Or, supposing you were going to San Francisco, instead
of buying a through ticket to your destination at the Canadian
National or Canadian Pacific office downtown, or at the Union
Station, you bought a ticket only for Chicago, at the little office
up the street, and then, at Chicago, bought another for the rest
of the journey from another privately-conducted office, and saved
perhaps twenty-five dollars by doing that, instead of buying your
ticket at the railway office in Chicago?

In 1924 it sounds very odd to mention such possibilities to men and
women of thirty years of age, who suppose they really know something
of the world’s ways. But to older people the suggestion has all
the familiarity of reminiscence--it recalls the age of scalping in
passenger travel, and of the so-called fast freight lines in the
other branch of railway business, which were in full blast when I
began to audit accounts in the Grand Trunk head office at Point St.
Charles.

What is now told about our railways is not to their discredit,
except so far as it would be to the discredit, for instance, of the
Christian churches of to-day to remind them that it was not they
who directly raised the tone of political morality, or abolished
slavery. Canadian railway practice was like the railway practice of
other countries--mainly the United States. The Grand Trunk, with
its English management and English ideas, had some peculiarities
of its own; but, in the main, its relation to scalping and fast
freight lines was forced upon it by the prevailing conditions on
this continent. Those conditions could only be finally improved by
the intervention of public authority, such as the Dominion Board
of Railway Commissioners, or the Inter-State Commerce Commission,
both of which bodies may be only stages in the evolution towards
the public ownership of all railways, which, theoretically at least
(though practically it is not so easy of accomplishment), is as sound
as the public ownership of the postoffice, the navy, or the geodetic
survey.

In the old days, railways competed fiercely against one another,
and were virtually a law unto themselves. Tariffs were filed with
Governments; but they were as often honoured in the breach as in
the observance. The principle of the member of Parliament franking
letters for himself, his family, and his friends, which has been a
hoary accompaniment of the honesties of parliamentary government,
was in full operation in the railway field. Because you were
next a railway, you could get special privileges as naturally as
you could get special privileges in the mails if you were of a
Parliamentarian’s family. In politics you got a place with much
pay and little work if you were closely related to a minister. In
business you got better rates than your competitor if you were more
happily related to the management than he.

It would be too devious a chase just now to ascertain exactly how the
practice of scalping railway tickets came into vogue. At all events
it was in vogue in Montreal and Toronto in the early eighties--as
it was in the United States, its natural home. It was customary for
railways to sell to scalpers quantities of tickets over their own
systems at a reduced rate. There was always a bargain-counter for
the scalper. The scalpers sold tickets to customers at a profit,
which often depended on how the scalper sized up the customer when he
came to buy.

The scalper also bought tickets from individuals--mostly the unused
portions of return tickets. Return tickets were not as long-dated as
they now are. You came to Toronto from Chicago with a return ticket;
and found you could not go back within the time limit. You sold that
half of the ticket to the scalper for, say, two or three dollars,
and he took his chance of selling it, for, say, ten, to somebody who
wanted a single.

Telling this to an astonished friend the other day, he at once
asked how so singular a method of doing business affected the audit
offices. Well, as I wasn’t in a very responsible position at the
Grand Trunk, during the two and a half years I remained in Montreal;
(whence I moved to New York, in the spring of 1885) I do not profess
to speak of how things were straightened out in Montreal; but, from
knowledge gained, it can be said that there was a practice in many
railways on this continent of putting aside earnings reserves when
business was good, and using them when business was not so good. In a
way, it was as if a storekeeper neglected to count the accumulations
in his till, and then reckoned his count for the day when it was made.

The scalping practice made this manner of reporting receipts
inevitable. For example, a big block of tickets was sold outright to
a scalper--it might be at fifty, sixty or seventy per cent. of the
rate charged at the railway’s own counter. He paid for them. When
they came back to head office there was nothing to differentiate the
tickets sold to the scalpers and the tickets sold to the public. The
conductor couldn’t tell when he lifted a ticket that had been bought
from a scalper. He had to turn it in as part of his report.

Say there were a thousand tickets from Montreal to Chicago, and
the regular rate was thirty dollars, a total of thirty thousand
dollars. But the railway’s cash receipts were only twenty thousand
dollars, because of the scalping. The proportion of scalped revenue,
obviously, would vary from month to month. Adjustment was necessary;
and in making adjustments it is equally obvious that it would be a
convenience to even up from a reserve in hand, or to put part of an
exceptionally good run of receipts into the reserve.

For the benefit of the juvenile generation it may be added that
scalping became so large and pervasive an adjunct to transportation
that its interests developed an organization of their own. If you
wanted a through ticket to San Francisco, instead of taking chances
of making a good bargain at a scalper’s, between trains at Chicago,
the scalper in Toronto would do all the needful business for you.
He regarded himself as a broker, and to some he was a very present
help in time of trouble. That he was not necessary--assuming proper
relations between the railways and the public--is proved by his
elimination as soon as public control of railways arrived.

The anomaly of the fast freight line was another and more wonderful
manifestation of the vicious principle which was behind the scalping.
It also had its relation to two other transportation services which
still exist, though they are not as liable to the same abuses that
were inseparable from the fast freight lines--I mean the express
service and the Pullman car. The express business to California
was being done by ponies, for instance, before there was railway
communication across the mountains. When railways were built the
express companies brought their business to them, using cars, and
paying the railways a percentage of receipts for the entire service.

The Pullman car service was entirely a product of the railways. When
trains did not afford the luxury of sleeping between sheets, Mr.
Pullman came along, offered to furnish cars, collect tolls, and pay
the railways for hauling them. This method is just about as old as
the Canadian Confederation. One of the most curious sidelights on
the origin of what is regarded as an entirely American innovation
is furnished by the story of the Prince of Wales’ tour in Canada in
1860. The first car to carry sleeping accommodation was built at
Brantford for the Prince of Wales. From it Pullman got the ideas
which he evolved into the Pullman system.

Pullman built his cars, charged the railways a rental for them,
and himself took the special revenue earned by the sleeping
accommodation. He obtained practically a monopoly on this continent,
and the Grand Trunk remained like other roads, after the Canadian
Pacific and the Canadian Northern owned and operated their own
sleeping cars.

The practice of farming out certain services was the fruit of
conditions. It is virtually the same as was followed by Lord
Northcliffe in many of his secondary publications in London. He
farmed their advertising out to advertising agents. The railways
farmed out to express companies the swifter-than-freight carriage of
goods; and to the Pullman Company the night comfort of passengers.
But the fast freight line game was in a different category from these
present-day services. It was regarded as legitimate business then; if
a revival of it were attempted now it would be given another name.

It grew from the hoary notion that it was all right to give private
favours at the public expense. If a concern brought a large amount
of traffic, it got a better rate than its smaller competitor. That
notion of the proprieties opened the door to the fast freight line,
which wasn’t a railway at all, but an inside track which had no
honest business to be there.

A group of men who happened to be high-up railway officials organized
a company called, say, the Minnehaha Fast Freight Line. The company
got preferential rates on all the freight it turned in. The company
labeled its cars and went out after business. It charged the shipper
the same rates as the railways did, but promised him more rapid
delivery. The railways gave preference to the so-called fast freight,
though they got less revenue from it, pound for pound, than they
received from the freight they pushed aside for it.

The complications that arose from this favouring of fast freight
companies were many and were often amusing. On the Grand Trunk I
was soon told off for special auditing, and in 1884 was sent to
Detroit, with W. B. Pollock, of the New York, West Shore and Buffalo
Railway, to audit the books of an agent of a fast freight line who
had received more money than he accounted for, because of the system
of collecting payment from shippers. Incidentally, straightening out
the tangle led to my going into railway service across the line, and
almost made me an American.

On this continent there was so much distrust of railways by railways
that when a great business corporation sent, say, a trainload of
sugar from New York by a fast freight line, to be distributed to
different points in what was still regarded as the west--Ohio, for
instance--the money for the whole service would be paid to some
central agent of the fast freight line, who, in due time, paid their
proportions to the railways which received parts of the traffic.
Unraveling bookkeeping tangles was always a revel to me. Pollock and
I discovered that the fast freight line agent at Detroit was a good
many thousand dollars astray in his reckoning.

That piece of work procured for me the offer of a clerkship on the
West Shore line, which runs down the western side of the Hudson
river, and this involved a removal to New York.

After a year and a half, the West Shore was taken over by the New
York Central group, and the office force was transferred from the
old Stewart Building near Cortland street to the head office of the
bigger system in the Grand Central Station at Forty-second Street,
to make the necessary accounting adjustments. When this was finished
salaries were reduced. I thought the offer to me was beneath my
merits; and, having a promise that in pending changes on the Jersey
Central I would be sure of a position, I returned to Montreal to
await developments. They were much delayed, and, not loving idleness,
I did some special work for Mr. Hawson.

At last the offer from the Jersey Central came. It was a good offer,
which would probably have led to rapid promotion, for the man who
was to have been my chief soon after died, and according to all
custom I should have succeeded him as assistant auditor of freight
receipts. Of my colleagues in New York a considerable proportion
won high promotion--my fellow auditor of the Detroit fast freight
agent’s accounts, W. B. Pollock, is now the head of the whole marine
department of the New York Central lines.

When the offer did come I had just arrived at Portage la Prairie,
and had not begun work. I might have gone East again, had not Horace
Greeley’s advice been earnestly repeated to me, with results one sees
no reason seriously to regret. Anyway, it is no use speculating
on what would have become of my family if, instead of finding them
through a Portage la Prairie merchant’s house--my father-in-law had
the leading retail and wholesale store in the town--I had turned
again east, before the wide streets of the Manitoba town had become
familiar.

My sister had kindly kept from me a letter which would probably have
resulted in a life spent in producing Ceylon tea. Mr. Baker, my first
chief in the West, induced me to answer unfavourably a telegram which
almost certainly had within it the makings of an American citizen.
So, it would seem, does Providence sometimes steer our barque.




                             CHAPTER V.

  _Portraying scantily the lives of a poor prairie line and a beloved
                           prairie town._


On the way to the office one morning I heard that Mr. Baker, general
manager of a railway in Manitoba, was looking for an accountant. A
first effort to meet Mr. Baker failed, and, hearing that he had gone
to Ottawa, I found him there. He offered me the post, at a salary
of $150 a month, which was little more than I had received in New
York. But the prospects in the newest section of a new country seemed
better than elsewhere; and so I became the accountant of the Manitoba
and North Western Railway, at the headquarters in Portage la Prairie.

The summer of 1886 was the first during which there was direct train
service between Montreal and Winnipeg. Leaving Montreal Monday
morning, the train reached Winnipeg on Thursday morning, and Portage
la Prairie in the afternoon. Through the wilderness around the lakes
the C.P.R. had innumerable wooden trestles, since filled in. Some of
the engines still burned wood. With a new and unsettled roadbed, it
was impossible to make very fast speed.

Port Arthur was still the C.P.R. port at the lakehead. The change
to Fort William, because Van Horne and the town couldn’t agree
about taxes, was one of those civic tragedies the effects of which
time only partially obliterates. Van Horne said he would make grass
grow in Port Arthur streets. The prophecy was fulfilled. For years
after the removal to Fort William, it was said, all Port Arthur’s
local debts were paid by the circulation of the only twenty-dollar
bill preserved to the town. Port Arthur began to amount to something
when the Canadian Northern came through from the West, and the
seven-million-bushel elevator arose, like a temple of prosperity,
on the waterfront, at the beginning of this century. Up to that
time the C.P.R. had been everything in the West, and, as a natural
process, had gobbled up everything in the way of feeders and rivals,
including the Manitoba and North Western. An end was to come to this
unchallenged supremacy, but nothing could deprive the C.P.R. of its
primacy in the West and East--a primacy which has been used, broadly,
for the advancement of the country. Every sane Canadian is proud of
the C.P.R.

Mr. Baker, my new chief, was originally a railway man. He was an
Englishman and had been private secretary to Lord Dufferin, the
governor-general. He was on Van Horne’s staff in Winnipeg when the
meteor was upsetting many precedents, four years before. The Manitoba
and North Western was projected in 1880, as the Portage, Westbourne
and North Western. The line was to start somewhere near Portage,
and was to reach the northwestern boundary of the province. The
town gave the railway a bonus, and so secured the terminals. The
line was the first feeder of the C.P.R. in the prairie country. Its
constructing engineer was Major Rogers, who discovered the Rogers
Pass through the Selkirks, and refused to cash his gift cheque for
$5,000.

Those were the days of the first western real estate boom--in some
respects the fiercest financial cyclone that ever struck Canada. In a
way, the accountant of the Manitoba North Western fell heir to a few
of its lugubrious legacies; so that some things about its course in
Portage la Prairie will be in order--it goes into the background of
the more solid development of the wheaten empire of the plains.

The C.P.R. enjoyed a monopoly in the West. The promoters of the North
Western wanted connection, in the future, with some American line
at the boundary. They located their terminus at the extreme east of
the town, and south of the C.P.R., and, they thought, pre-empted a
crossing of the C.P.R. They bought 340 acres for $70,000, nearly two
miles from where the terminals were finally established, and built a
roundhouse for two engines. It wasn’t then clear which way the town
would grow--there was for many years a rivalry between the west and
east ends. For an ambitious railway to buy 340 acres, and build a
home for two locomotives was regarded as a pretty good insurance of
the town developing eastward, and it was confidently expected lots of
money could be made out of the sale of the land.

The 340 acres were christened the Great Eastern Estate. Dr. Bain was
sent to England to put it on the market. His expenses for two months
totaled nearly $12,000--in which he was a true ante-type of some
modern foes of frugalism. He induced a syndicate to buy the property
for $1,250,000. Some of this was paid; and, owing to the course of
events, most of it wasn’t. About ten years afterwards a competent
valuator said the land was worth at the outside $20 per acre. The
roundhouse that cost $5,000 was blown down before it had been up a
year. Finally, the timber was bought by a farmer for $50. The land
reverted to its original owners, along with the cash payments that
had been made upon it. The North Western’s dream of riches through
the sale of lots was over.

The bubble was all out of the western boom long before I landed in
Portage la Prairie. Many of the town’s fifty real estate operators
had gladly worked on North Western construction. The effects of
inflation were all around. The morning after a real estate orgy is
apt to last till very late in the afternoon. For practically the
whole of my ten years’ connection with the Manitoba and North Western
it was very much financial afternoon for the good town of Portage la
Prairie.

We had about a hundred railway employees in Portage, including
machine shop men, train crews, and the office staff, of which I was
the head, and coincidentally with which a variety of other functions
seemed to gravitate my way. The railway, when I came to it, was
running to Birtle, 138 miles, and had a branch to Rapid City, of
less than 20 miles. In 1883 it had obtained a Dominion charter,
with authority to build to Prince Albert--an objective which was
not reached by a direct line passing through Portage, until 1905,
when the Canadian Northern arrived by way of Dauphin, Swan River and
Melfort. Of course, in 1886 the Canadian Northern was no more dreamed
of than the radio was. The famous partnership of Mackenzie and Mann
had not begun.

The Manitoba North Western also had come into the hands of Sir
Hugh Allan and associates--as to which it can be seen how strong
the passion for laying rails and ties is in the human breast where
once it has found a lodgment. Sir Hugh Allan’s syndicate, on which
Sir John Macdonald’s first Government had foundered, did not build
the C.P.R.; but the old steamship man did have a hand in a prairie
railway, after all. He did not long survive his advent to the
headship of the North Western, and in my time the president was Mr.
Andrew Allan, his brother.

Like other branch lines which later struggled into existence, only
to fall into the big fellow’s hands, our road had more anticipations
than way-bills. Indeed, in the West, it was a devout saying, “Faith,
Hope and Charity--and the greatest of these is Hope.” The season
before I joined the line it had carried a total of 362,952 bushels
of grain. In 1886-7 we brought 427,650 bushels to the terminal, and
handed them either to the C.P.R. or to the mill. The total grain
shipment from the whole line then, was only what became a very
common season’s business at station after station on the Canadian
Northern, not so many years later. The other exportable freight
were cattle. We couldn’t roll in wealth, when the carloads of stock
handled for the years 1885-9 averaged fifty for the whole system.

Even so we were a goodly portion of the financial backbone of
Portage la Prairie. We managed to pay the wages, without which the
merchants’ cash takings would have had a very low visibility. We were
identified with the life of the community in a way that is not so
easily recognized in large cities where railway employees are a small
percentage of the population. As the Portage was and is typical of
Western Canadian development, a sketch of it as a newcomer learned to
become assimilated with it, is probably worth while.

During the early history of the West the Portage was on the map;
for traders portaged the fifteen miles across the plain from the
Assiniboine River to Lake Manitoba. Its modern history began when,
in 1851, Archdeacon Cochrane, seeing that the Fort Garry settlement
was becoming saturated, as far as the then conditions of population
could be judged, founded a mission and settlement near the old post
on the Assiniboine, fifty-six miles west of Fort Garry. The land was
a little lighter than in the Valley of the Red, and was likely to
ripen crops a week or ten days earlier than on the lower level. The
supereminence of the Portage Plains as wheat growers was later to
justify the noble archdeacon’s foresight.

The population was mainly of Metis and Indians. The white farmers
who came in were few indeed. John McLean, the first, was a good deal
like Nehemiah, for, so to say, he cut his hay with one hand and held
his rifle with the other, on account of the somewhat summary quality
of Indian manners. In the seventies, after Riel’s rebellion had
ended, and the province of Manitoba was set up within the Canadian
Confederation, there was a fairly steady influx of farmers, largely
from Ontario. Until 1869 the whole country belonged to the Hudson’s
Bay Company which, under the charter of Charles the Second, exercised
sovereign rights over the people. “The Company” built its Portage
store at the extreme west of the settlement, and refused, as commerce
developed, to sell land any distance east to other traders. The east
and west rivalry that was long a feature of the town life thus began;
but the company was defeated by events, and later had to move east.

A prominent man in the town when I arrived there was an Englishman,
E. H. G. G. Hay, familiarly known as Alphabetical Hay. He ran a
machine shop at the east end of the town. He had been the leader of
the Opposition in the infant Legislature of Manitoba and had shared
in presenting to the world Portage la Prairie’s unique contribution
to the evolution of constitutional government under the British
crown. He was one of the participants in the loyal republic of
Manitoba, from which the province of Manitoba takes its name.

There had come to Fort Garry in 1866 a Mr. Spence, who called himself
a land surveyor, and said he had been an officer in the British army.
He was a born disturber of the political peace. In a little while
he called a meeting at the Court House to consider the future of
the settlement. With four others he held the meeting an hour before
the appointed time, and passed resolutions in favour of joining the
Canadian Confederation, then about to be consummated. An hour later
a very indignant meeting rescinded these proceedings, but they were,
after all, the real beginning of the annexation of Rupert’s Land to
Canada.

The next year--1867--Spence moved to Portage. Fort Garry was in
the district of Assiniboia, which was administered by a governor
and council, whose jurisdiction did not extend to the Portage. The
place and the very sparsely settled country round about had no
administration of the law locally, because there was no law to be
administered. Spence procured co-operators, who formally constituted
the Republic of Caledonia with very indefinite boundaries. Afterwards
the name was changed to Manitoba.

A council was set up with Spence as President. The first need was a
court house and jail. To get the money for a building the council
imposed a customs tariff; but the Hudson’s Bay Company factor refused
to pay taxes to the new republic-within-a-monarchy--for Spence and
his coadjutors avowed their loyalty to the British Empire, and denied
the common allegation that their ultimate object was incorporation
with the United States.

[Illustration: SIR DONALD MANN

“Whose capacities are in keeping with the solidity of his physical
frame”

  (P. 248)]

[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM MACKENZIE

“Faced a heavier task than anything that confronted Stephen, Smith or
Van Horne”

  (P. 241)]

At High Bluff was a shoemaker named McPherson. He started the story
that the customs collected for the temple of justice were being spent
on beer and whiskey. Refusing to recant his charges he was arrested
and tried, with President Spence as accuser and judge. Farmer John
McLean interfered, in his broad dialect, and turned the trial into
a farce. The republic died a natural death, Spence having vainly
appealed for recognition to the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of
Buckingham.

This republican episode is mentioned partly because it will be news
to many people, and partly because it indicates that more than a
mere spice of originality went into the infancy of communities like
Portage la Prairie, and coloured their maturer years.

Our public meetings were always well attended, and almost invariably
produced their own rows. They were our only movies and were strictly
home-made. The town nerve was on edge for many years, due, to a
considerable extent, to the financial embarrassments that were
legacies of the boom. In the year after I came whole blocks of land
were sold for a dollar. Anywhere else the lots I bought at tax sales
would have created a land baron. They merely impoverished me.

The town’s debentures were of so precarious a value that a Government
Commission was created to suggest how the civic liabilities should
be met. In the midst of these economic difficulties the place was
smitten by an epidemic of fires, beginning with the destruction of
the fire hall itself, and the disabling of the engine. In the end a
firebug was run down, when it turned out that he had been incited to
and paid for arson by a prominent hotelkeeper. The incendiary went to
jail for five years. The inciter was let off on the ground that he
only gave coal oil to the other man when he was drunk. He accepted an
invitation to depart.

Railroading may seem to have been a humdrum business in the
midst of excursions and alarms like these during a period when
provincial politics were furiously on the boil, with the one
time republican Portage the centre of many a blistering splash.
How could it be otherwise when our most prominent lawyer was the
redoubtable Joe Martin, who died last year, after having been in turn
attorney-general of Manitoba, M.P., at Ottawa, Premier of British
Columbia and member of the British House of Commons--the only man in
history, I believe, who sat in four British Legislatures.

The Martin firm, even after its head became attorney-general,
was very keen in fighting for its own hand in local affairs. The
east-and-west bitterness lasted right into the post-firebug period,
as I very well know. The civic government became demoralized.
Something like a fresh start was imperative. The Manitoba and North
Western accountant, auditor and man-of-all-work generally, was
persuaded to become one of the Town Council of six. A new fire hall
was needed. We proposed to put it in the centre of the town, where
it now stands. There was a demand that it be placed in the east end.
Smith Curtis of the Martin firm was active to that end. He called an
indignation meeting to protest against what the council was expected
to do. The council met early the same night.

The council used to meet where the fire engine was installed, and
sometimes the citizen spectators of our doings would be seated on the
engine. As the protest meeting was going on the council filed in,
and there were calls for the chairman of the finance committee, who
happened to be the accountant aforesaid. He rose and said only that
the contract for the new fire hall had been signed half an hour ago.
H u b b u b.

If municipal experts are looking for something novel in fire
protection they may find it, possibly, in a phase of Alphabetical
Hay’s civic patriotism. After we lost our first fire hall and
engine, he got an idea that the engine could be made to work again.
The town had lent him money. He was to be forgiven the debt if he
could restore the engine. He restored the engine, but owing, to
temperamental difficulties, didn’t hand it to the town for a year,
during which time several fire-bug conflagrations were extinguished
by the town’s engine, through courtesy of Mr. Hay.

Take two illustrations of how the force of a small railway
headquartered in a small town can be more of a community factor than
is possible in a large centre. Mr. Baker, the North Western manager,
was a public-spirited citizen, and, like many Englishmen, a strong
supporter of sports. He fostered cricket and other games. A summer
picnic to Lake Manitoba, originated by himself, became a very popular
institution. During the agonies of the incendiary period, the lack of
a suitable bell that would sufficiently alarm the neighbourhood was
keenly felt. Money was too scarce for a bell and belfry to be thought
of. The railway came to the public’s aid.

This was the period, young people may be reminded, when the towers in
the Toronto fire stations contained bells that were rung, two-four,
five-seven and other strokes, announcing the locality of the fire,
in accord with the chart that hung in every house. Mr. Baker had a
monster triangle made out of a steel rail. It was hung on a frame,
thirty feet high. When the alarm was given it was a noble duty for
the proper official to strike the leviathan lyre--and it could be
some lyre. It hadn’t been up very long before a mighty wind blew down
its unbraced frame. Afterwards a bell was bought and put into a tower
of its own. It also blew over, cracking the bell. Whereupon the bell
was hung in the town hall, where the only dangerous winds blew from
inside, and there it never failed to raise its cracked but effective
voice at the appropriate moment.

About the time I went to Portage la Prairie electric lighting was
coming into vogue in ambitious, progressive cities. The first joint
stock enterprise in which I was a shareholder was the Central
Electric Light Company, organized with eight shareholders and a
capital of forty thousand dollars, and of which I was a director
and secretary-treasurer. The president was Bob Watson, M.P. for
Marquette, the only Liberal member west of the Great Lakes, and now
senator. One of the directors was Joe Martin. The manner of his
ceasing to be a director is a diverting story of how a resignation
offered in haste can be accepted at leisure. The pranks which
the meters of those times played would enable another tale to be
unfolded--when the unfolding is good.

We rather fancied ourselves as the first electric lighting company
between Winnipeg and the Pacific ocean. Despite the dumps that had
followed the boom, many of our leading citizens still believed that
the Portage was destined to be a vast emporium of western commerce.
I doubt, though, whether these hopes were cherished by three such
typical men, all happily living, as Judge Ryan, Michael Blake and Bob
Watson. Of these probably the present senator was the most typical
of the steady-going qualities which, after all, have transformed the
empty Rupert’s Land into the three populous provinces of this period.

Bob Watson was a mechanic. He was sent in 1876 by the Goldie,
McCullough Company of Galt, to install the machinery in the first
mill erected at the Portage. He also put up a mill at Stonewall, and
started in business for himself. He was in the town, and of the town.
The fire brigade had no more vigorous member. His machine shop was a
place of popular resort. The farmers knew no more consistent, more
lenient friend. Largely because of his popularity he was sent to
Ottawa in 1882 as M.P. for Marquette. A partnership with his brother
was formed in 1886. After ten years at Ottawa he joined the Greenway
Government in 1892, as a conscientious, hard-working Minister of
Public Works; and stayed with it till its end in 1900, when the
Senate claimed him.

Everybody calls him Bob, and everybody will agree that though there
have been more brilliant Portage men--a former premier of British
Columbia and a former premier of Canada, Mr. Meighen, both graduated
into statesmanship from their modest offices on Saskatchewan
Avenue--there have been none more admirable than the senator.

Red Fife was not as popular a wheat as it afterwards became, thanks
largely to the experiments of a much-abused railway. The still
earlier Marquis had not been evolved by Dr. Saunders. On the Portage
Plains, where frozen wheat is now a rarity, it was then too common a
drug on the market--I could tell of a man bringing a load into town
that he could not sell at any price.

The danger of frost is when the milk is in the ear. In those days it
was thought that a smoke over the land would prevent the freezing
temperature reaching the ground, and that smoke and its accompanying
warmth would keep a current of air moving over the fields of grain
and thus save it from damage. The farmers cut weeds, and put them
and straw in windrows round their fields, ready to be fired at the
critical hour, which was usually about four or five o’clock on August
mornings. We installed a big light on a staff at the top of the
highest building, the Farmers’ Elevator. We kept in touch with the
meteorological office at Winnipeg, and if we were advised that frost
seemed to be imminent, about midnight the big arc lamp was set going,
and in the dark hours before the dawn the protective fires would be
seen flickering across the plains.

It cannot be told precisely whether this procedure really saved
anything to the farmers. But it is true that, not only was it to our
interest to do what we could to assure good crops to the farmers,
on which the town’s prosperity depended, but the element of public
service entered actively into this revival, for agriculture’s sake,
of the beacon method of warning against fleshlier invaders than Jack
Frost.

The rural telephone was not a possibility of those times. Life may
have been more meagre then than it is now; though, looking back, it
does not seem that it lacked any of the best elements of happiness.
The town of five thousand people has distinct advantages over the
city of five hundred thousand. Everybody may know more of everybody
else’s business than is always good for anybody; but there is a
greater neighbourliness in the smaller community. On the whole
despite poverty, firebugs and politics, the Portage of the late
eighties was a goodly place to dwell in.

The winters were severe--nobody ever succeeded in reducing forty
below zero to a poetic phantasy. But there was a snowshoeing
club; there was plenty of social intercourse; the choir would give
concerts at Burnside or High Bluff, under the leadership of one who
had heard his father’s pitch pipe in the Original Seceders’ kirk
at Pollokshaws. From that choir, by the way, there went out into a
great career on the concert platform Edith Miller, whose father was
postmaster, and whose husband is heir to a baronetcy.

In some of the churches the ultra-strictness of the Puritan faith and
practice rigidly obtained--or rather among some of the church people.
There was old Hugh Macdonald, for instance, who wouldna’ drive his
horses the twa miles to church on Sabbath. He warned me against being
entangled with “sae mony wimmins” who, to their shame, sang without
their hats on, alongside the idolatrous box of whustles that degraded
the pulpit in the hoose o’ God.

The Baptist minister was also a Macdonald. He was once announced
to preach on a week-night in Gaelic, and Hugh and his freen Grant
repaired to the church to consume choice spiritual fare. They walked
solemnly in, deposited their tam o’ shanters beneath the seats,
and awaited the meenister. But the harmoniumist appeared while yet
the preacher tarried in the vestry. There she sat, the bold thing,
trilling her fingers over the keys--a voluntary they called it. That
was no way to precede a sermon in Gaelic, and Hugh and his freen
forsook the place more solemnly than they had entered it.

By the way, the land for the Presbyterian church in which we
worshipped was given by Michael Blake, a Roman Catholic. Peace be to
him.

Perhaps the next misdemeanour to making too joyful a noise before
the Lord in the sanctuary was promoting appreciation of music in
secular circles. One’s reluctance to claim any sort of literary
credit is well-founded on experience. For years I contributed a
musical column to “The Portage la Prairie Review”, signed “Baton”.
The harmonious intent of these effusions was as sincere as the
occasional attempts to flavour the column with a little cheerful
humour were unappreciated, where they might have been heartily
welcomed. I remember giving a local application to the story of Sir
Michael Costa, who, annoyed by conversation in the audience while
his orchestra was in its most classical throes, suddenly commanded
silence, above which was heard a lady’s voice, “We fry ours in
butter.” As a literary fun-provider the sequel to this venture
indicated that accountancy and musical journalism were not a charming
combination.

A trifling outgrowth of the Minnesota massacres by Sioux Indians is
said to have led to one of those allusions to Canadian life in the
British Press which from time to time enrich “colonial” observations.
Billy Smith was a prosperous farmer and miller, in whose scrupulosity
about weights, those who sold him wheat had not unlimited confidence.
Billy lent out a great many grain sacks on which “W. M. Smith” was
printed. He lost track of several score of these sacks, and for some
time suspected that they had been taken by certain critical customers.

Among the Indians near Portage la Prairie was a band who had come in
from Minnesota after the frightful massacres of the early sixties.
They received no treaty money from the Dominion Government, and
were locally called Bungay Indians, for a reason of which we were
ignorant. Soon after Billy Smith missed his sacks, Indian bucks,
squaws and papooses began to appear in town, breeched in trunks
primitively adapted from what the miller intended to carry only two
bushels of wheat; with “W. M. SMITH” appearing where the easy-going
man, though a fool and poorly educated, could not fail to read.

The Indians got their clothes and the town got its fun, at Billy
Smith’s expense. The fun lasted longer than the breeches, for news
came that a writing tourist, seeing some of the Smith-tailored
Indians on the station platform, wrote in a widely circulated
English periodical that the most striking evidence he had seen of
the transformation of, and good order among the Indians of the
Far West, was at Portage la Prairie, where the aborigines had not
only assumed the good old English patronymic of Smith, but carried
it conspicuously on their attire, which was approximating, though
somewhat crudely, to European models.

But it will not do to become more garrulous about a Manitoba town of
nearly forty years ago. In 1893 the North Western was handed over
to a receiver, the present Sir Augustus Nanton. The accountant and
auditor was transferred to Winnipeg, whence the salvage operations
were more effectively directed by the future knight, whose railway
experience frequently made him certain that it is sometimes more
blessed to give than to receive.




                             CHAPTER VI.

  _Remembering when farming in the West was misunderstood, and land
                          could not be sold._


In some respects, the Winnipeg of thirty years ago was a truer
reflection of the conditions in the country from which it drew its
sustenance than it has been during the last two decades. The boom had
broken so disastrously that people asked whether the prairie region
could ever be a country. Immigration fell to almost nothing. Beyond
Manitoba, for several years, there were more abandoned than occupied
homesteads. We said: “The greatest of these is Hope,” but we didn’t
say “Hope” with capital letters during most of the ten years I was
with the Manitoba North Western, the last three of which were spent
in Winnipeg.

The census of 1891, in the midst of that period, gave only 152,000
people for all Manitoba, and 98,000 for the Northwest Territories.
This quarter of a million, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky
Mountains, and from the American boundary to the Arctic ocean,
included about forty-five thousand Indians and Eskimos. From 1881 to
1891, the natural increase among the whites, and immigration to the
present provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta--leaving out of this
the present North West Territories--increased the population by only
forty-two thousand.

Winnipeg, then, was the only city for about three-quarters of a
million habitable square miles. When the first locomotive entered the
city on Christmas Eve, in 1879, on rails laid over double-length ties
across the Red River ice, under the supervision of Mr. D. D. Mann,
about six thousand people were within it. At the height of the boom,
in 1882, the population was estimated at 33,000. When I first saw
it in 1886 the people were said to number 20,000, of whom probably
2,000 were creditable to Hope. By 1891 the total had crept to 25,000.
The growth was puny until later than the twentieth century came in,
for in 1901, five years after the Canadian Northern was begun, the
enumerators found only 42,000 people in Winnipeg.

The explanation, of course, is that prairie agriculture had not
developed as rapidly as the prophets of Hope had foretold. The
abandoned homestead told an eloquent story, but not the whole
story. The conditions governing crop production on the plains
were imperfectly understood. The conditions underlying permanent
settlement were not appreciated by the Governments or by the business
people who were largely interested in colonization.

The prairie farmer’s two prime foes are frost and drought. To
defeat frost, early-ripening varieties of wheat are necessary; for,
if possible, the entire process from seeder to binder should be
completed within 110 days. The evolution of Red Fife and later of
Marquis wheat largely solved the frost problem, though it is still
true, despite the issuance of much literature, that the nearer you
approach the North Pole the chillier the nights are prone to be.

There is no denying that over a considerable proportion of the
treeless prairies the climate tends to scarcity rather than abundance
of rain. Through the late eighties it was commonly said that while
wheat might possibly be grown around Regina, the ultima thule of
wheat farming was Moose Jaw, forty miles west. The Government’s
maps of the pre-railroad era showed Battleford, the capital of the
North West Territories, at the junction of the Battle and North
Saskatchewan rivers, 300 miles north of the international boundary,
as the northern apex of the great American desert. The flora of the
country was of drought-resisting species, like that of the middle
northwestern states.

Conservation of moisture in cultivated soil was thought to be
entirely a matter for unassisted Divine Providence. It was found to
be good to let a third of the broken ground lie fallow each year--to
give it a rest, and to clean it of weeds. The farmer saw last year’s
stubble swiftly hidden by weeds in May and early June. Towards the
end of June he plowed the weeds in, using a logging or other chain
from his off-horse’s whippletree to the coulter, with a dragging loop
to pull the long plants straight into the furrow, and entirely bury
them. The heavier the green crop plowed in, the more, when rotted,
it enriched the soil. But the heavier the weeds, the stronger their
roots and the easier for the sun to dry out the loose covering soil.
When the summer-fallow had been plowed, the farmer left it untouched.
The sun thoroughly dried the land. Rains in the fall, and the melting
snows of spring did the less soaking because of the more drying of
the torrid summer time.

Experience has changed all that, thanks mainly to the experiments
of a wheat-grower below the line, who became famous as “Dry-Farming
Campbell”. The wise farmer, with his gang plow, turning two or more
furrows at a time, harrows as he plows, and makes a mulch of finely
powdered soil, through which the sun cannot suck up the moisture
as he did through unmulched soil. By frequent harrowing during the
summer the mulch is kept efficient, and the moisture wonderfully
conserved. Next year, if there is drought all around, the sower will
confidently expect twenty bushels from each acre of his dry-farmed
land.

This simple device for the conquest of aridity had not been
discovered when I became a Westerner. But there was no reason why
immigration should not have been fostered on wiser lines than those
that were followed. The immigration policy of the then Dominion
Government, viewed in the light of 1924, is something wonderful
to behold; and its literature something terrible to read. It was
represented that a British family arriving with seven hundred and
twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents could carry their farm until
their farm carried them.

It was an alluring prospect that the Queen’s Government held out to
the Queen’s subjects. The spirit of it was “You tickle the soil with
a plowshare, and it giggles you back a fortune.” There wasn’t a word
of cautionary advice. The newcomer was to discover his homestead,
build a house, buy a yoke of oxen, a wagon and a plow, and watch
himself grow rich with his growing grain. It used to be said, with
some sediment of truth, no doubt, that Government agents told the
confiding Englishman, who had never seen a milkpail, that his oxen
would plow the land all day and furnish cream at sunset.

There was great need for people in the illimitable, empty country;
but there was greater need for very uncommon common sense among
those who procured the people. The politician and his henchmen who
were thinking of votes risked none of their own money on immigration
promotions. But there were other interests, who sincerely desired to
settle the prairies with good people, and who obligated their own
and others’ finances to that end--the owners of the Manitoba North
Western, for example.

Over and above their means for raising capital for building the
railway, they established companies for furnishing the railway’s
territory with the settlers who alone could furnish the railway
with the traffic, which alone could keep it alive. The Commercial
Colonization Company was chiefly concerned with catching the
immigrant. The Canadian Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company financed
him, when, at his own charges, he arrived on the scene of his
predicted triumph.

Legislation was procured under which a lien could be placed on the
homestead--the 160 acres of land--while it was still the property of
the Canadian Government, and the homesteader was performing the work
which, after three years, would secure him a patent. In those days no
intending farmer in his senses thought of buying land, when he could
get 160 acres free, and could pre-empt another quarter section, with
the right to buy it at $2.50 an acre.

The emigrant was told a farm would be selected for him, and that the
Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company would build a house, dig a well,
furnish a yoke of stout and trusty oxen, a wagon, a plow, and other
items of a farmer’s outfit, and would ask no payments for two years,
by which time, all being fairly well, his crops would at least enable
him to live and meet the fixed charges of his debt.

The improvements, gear, and interest due for two years would absorb
$600, and the homestead would be obligated to that extent. That was
a very good scheme, on paper, as most financial schemes are. But it
lacked two essentials of success--the right selection of people, and
the right initiation of them into the mysteries of wresting a living
from an unknown soil, and a capricious, misunderstood climate.

The rock upon which so many immigration schemes have split has been
the belief that the most essential requirement of all was people
with money of their own. A Scot is the last man in the world to
depreciate the value of money; but nobody is better aware that money
is not the principal thing, when a family is invited to emigrate
to a strange land. Distant fields look green. Distant farm work is
very apt to look romantic. It is a beautiful contemplation for a
man, tired of an old-world city and its grinding occupation, to gaze
across half the world, and see himself the centre of an exquisitely
balanced estate--the lowing herd winding slowly o’er the lea; the
rustling fields of golden grain in the still more golden, evening
sunglow; and the occasional sallying forth to shoot the game which
chiefly retards the plough.

This vision of a new life, in a new world, has got seed-catalogue
gardening beaten to a hum-drummery. It may go into a man’s history
as a charming idyll of the mind, but it is likely to meet sudden
death at a pair of calloused hands, a yoke of cattle who insist on
running the wagon into the middle of a miry slough, and a plow which,
striking a stone concealed in virgin soil, lifts its handle against
an unoffending jaw. The West always needed people with the will to
work, and an inherent attachment to the land, and not too proud to
take guidance from those who had been through the mill. When money
has gone and profitable experience hasn’t come; the will to work
on the farm is likely to succumb to a desire to return to urban
occupations, which, though they are good enough in themselves, are
not Canada-builders, as farming is.

The Manitoba North Western subsidiaries and allies settled a
great many people on the plains about Birtle, on the incomplete
co-operative plan. But many of the selections were not wisely
determined, and inadequate measures were taken to see that they made
the best of their chances when once they were installed. Nobody can
tell the story of the ineffectual attempts of a green old country
townie to make a prairie farmer of himself as well as the man himself
can, when his sense of humour is sharpened by, and has survived the
discipline, cruel as it has often been. I am rather proud of having
been a good potato harvester as a boy in Scotland, but that isn’t
training enough to qualify one to depict the romantic difference
between the prophecy of a Government folder a generation ago, and the
alternately perspiring and freezing job of trying to make it come
true.

Scarcely more than ten per cent. of the six hundred brigade made good
on their homesteads. I spent many weeks one summer, after the railway
had received a receiver, among the farmers around Saltcoats, trying
to find customers for the lands which had fallen in to us, since the
patents were granted, and the homesteads forsaken. In some cases we
were glad to get a hundred and sixty dollars for land, improvements
and all. If I confessed all the truth it might be not so very far
removed from a story of the land-poor epoch in Minnesota, which
assuredly is an opulent state of the Union to-day.

A farmer drove into a prairie town down there--Marshall, I
think--with a calf for which he was seeking milk. Asked how he
reached such a fix he said:

“Well, a stranger came to my place with this calf and wanted milk for
it. We had none; so he asked me if I would trade something for the
calf. I said ‘No’, but he was so cussed persistent that at last I
told him the only thing I could trade for the calf was a section of
land. He wouldn’t have it; but was willing to take half a section.
Finally I accepted his terms. But I got ahead of him, after all; for
when we came to make out the papers I found the sucker couldn’t read!
and I’ve landed the whole durn section on him.”

One farmer whom I visited was an old naval man. He was literally a
sailor on horseback. He was just starting out on his horse to round
up his solitary cow. He would buy no more land; and, indeed, declared
he would leave the country if only he could get out. “This is no
country for a reasonable man,” he complained, “when you have to go
eight hundred miles for cordwood.”

“That can’t be so,” I retorted, looking eastward towards the
Porcupine Hills clothed with timber and abounding with game.

“I’ll prove it to you,” was the answer. “I have to go twenty miles
for firewood, don’t I? That’s forty miles, there and back, for a
load. It takes twenty loads to keep us warm one winter. Twenty times
forty miles is eight hundred. Now, am I right?”

Lest it be thought that these depleting conditions applied only
to the territory of feeble branch railways like ours, look at a
few other conditions which afflicted the infancy of the country
immediately tributary to the main line of the C.P.R.

E. A. James, who became the operating manager of the Canadian
Northern lines after my removal to Toronto, used to tell how in
1886 he was one of the C.P.R. men who received no salary for four
months. The C.P.R., though it had connected with the Pacific ocean,
was like a poor man with a large and growing family, who finds his
boys pushing their legs through their breeches faster than he can
conveniently cover them. The original outbound traffic from the
Territories had been buffalo bones, but the supply was limited.
Though a line had been built through the mountains, snowslides
compelled the erection of long and costly sheds to protect the track
from the avalanches which were destroying life and property--nine men
were carried to death as they were working on a bridge in 1885.

The C.P.R. was on the Pacific shore; but there was no traffic with
the Orient. Steamers had to be provided which could not possibly pay
at the start. The first C.P.R. steamer from Vancouver to Asia carried
two carloads of shingles and the bodies of several Chinamen piously
being returned to their ancestral sepulchres.

The capital of the North West Territories had been moved from
Battleford to Regina with the building of the railway across the
plains. Regina had about fifteen hundred people. When it had for ten
years been the seat of government for a territory several times as
large as the whole German Empire, if a new-comer wanted a house, the
owner, instead of naming the rent, asked what he would pay. Calgary
was the cowboy’s haunt, and the remittance man’s refuge. Edmonton was
still at the back of beyond; several days’ journey from a railway.

In Manitoba, Brandon was bravely telling itself that some day it
would beat Portage la Prairie, and furtively dreaming of keeping up
with Winnipeg, when once it had reached its stride. About twenty-five
hundred people were on the southern slope of the Assiniboine; and a
great deal of wheat was sold by farmers on Pacific Avenue, beside
which stood several elevators. The grain came from far south, and far
north--because there was no other railway to receive it. Brandon now
stretches across the Assiniboine valley, right to the border of the
Dominion Government’s experimental farm.

The history of the acquisition of that farm for public purposes
illustrates, as well as any episode I know of, what the position of
land and agriculture was in a favoured section of Manitoba about the
time I became a Manitoban. The original homesteader and pre-emptor
of the Experimental Farm was a bachelor named Charlie Stewart, whose
brother Jack took the land immediately west of him. Charlie had 320
acres, running down to the river, covering the northern slope, and
taking in some of the upland. It had all the diversities which
should distinguish an experimental station.

The harvest of 1887 was the best Manitoba had ever known--the most
abundant, indeed, until the phenomenal crop of 1915. The C.P.R. had
twelve million bushels of grain to haul to Port Arthur, and the task
staggered the equipment resources of what was even then regarded
as an enormous railway system. Fields that were estimated to yield
twenty-five bushels to the acre, threshed out forty and more. Ideal
weather had come just at the time the heads were filling; and instead
of some rows not amounting to anything, as often happens when milk
in the ear is scarce and development is hindered by hot sun and dry
winds, every husk contained its berry.

This 1887 crop, of magnificent quality, sold in Brandon at from
forty-eight to fifty-one cents a bushel. It was a common saying among
the farmers that a good European war was needed to make Manitoba
wheat worth something--perhaps two dollars a bushel might be obtained
at some impossible time. The big European war did come, and wheat did
go to two dollars a bushel--far higher, in fact. But there was not
so much rejoicing as seemed possible in the eighties; for the other
unthinkable thing had happened, and Manitoba farm boys were being
slain in the European war that made Canadian wheat so dear.

During the summer and harvest of 1887 the Dominion Government agents
had tried to buy Charlie Stewart’s farm. He didn’t want to sell;
for the place was handy to town; his old mother was well settled
with him; and there were advantages in being so near Brandon. On the
other side, the Government wanted so ideal a place, and the situation
was something of Ahab and Naboth’s vineyard over again, but with no
Jezebel intervening.

One day in the early winter Charlie Stewart was horse-power threshing
at Dan MacMillan’s, up the valley, close to where the Little
Saskatchewan enters the Assiniboine--perfectly level fields, good
soil, and flanked by what was left of the original bush, in which
were scores and scores of stumps the trunks of which had been cut
down and taken away by the beaver, remains of whose houses were still
among the brush. To the outfit a Government agent drove. Charlie
Stewart left the stack, and after about ten minutes returned, the
agent driving away. When he was a couple of hundred yards off,
Stewart began to blaspheme as mildly as he knew how, with regret that
he had sold his farm.

Impetuosity was nothing new to Charlie Stewart, as one of his mares,
circling with the horse-power gear below him, silently testified. She
was a big, dark-grey Percheron, foaled on the present Experimental
Farm. When she was a few weeks old, and while Charlie was plowing
with her mother, she got out of the yard, and came over to impede the
breaking, as fillies desiring nourishment will. Failing to drive her
off, Charlie pulled her back to the stable by the ears--and her ears
never pricked again.

Next time you travel westward through Brandon, watch the Assiniboine
valley as the train begins to climb away from the spacious station.
You will see the Experimental Farm in and across the valley, west
of the main road to the north, which crosses the river by the steel
bridge. It is a lovely sight, of perfectly developing crops, trees
flourishing with luxuriant foliage, and buildings which belong to
yourself as much as they belong to anybody. As you reflect that the
Dominion Government, in the year of Manitoba’s record crop, bought
that three hundred and twenty acres of land and buildings on it for
twelve hundred dollars, you will know that, in terms of money at
least, the West was cheap--to those who had the money.

It must not be supposed that because the crop of 1887 was
extraordinarily good, farm returns were not fluctuous. Eighty-seven
was perfectly fine. Eight-eight was also fine--up to the second week
in August. Then came a frost, a killing frost, and thousands of acres
of splendidly-grown straw and half-filled heads were plowed in. To
those whose grain was far enough advanced not to be utterly spoiled
by one awful night, the fall brought a marvellous comfort.

It was the time of Old Hutch’s corner of wheat at Chicago; and
Western farmers with a pretty fair sample could sell for up to a
dollar and twelve cents a bushel. The high prices did not last long,
but they were a godsend to those who received them.

The fluctuation had its influence on the tendency towards farmers’
organizations which quickly became discernible in the West, and
which had already found expression in the Farmers’ Union, the
inspiring spirit of which was a Mr. Purvis, a true forerunner of the
Motherwells, Crerars, Woods and Morrisons.

The Union men objected that, as to grades and prices, the wheat
buyer, was a dictator to the man who had driven into town with his
load, and must take what was offered, or haul his stuff home on the
chance that next week prices would still further be down. The C.P.R.,
under its monopoly charter, was in a very strong position, and was
also under persistent imputation of being in collusion with the
grain buyers. Perhaps nothing is more remarkable in modern Canadian
life than the suspicion that the railways are at the bottom of every
sharp practice which the public believes it has seen, or knows it has
endured. In the eighties it was notoriously undeniable that Manitoba
farmers, near the boundary, received several cents a bushel less
for their wheat than was paid across the line, for exactly the same
grade, the price of which was understood to be finally determined
by exactly the same final condition--the European market. With the
Canadian Pacific enjoying a virtual monopoly, it was easy to assume
that the whole trouble was with the magnates of Montreal. But it
wasn’t.

After his advent in 1882, it did not take Van Horne long to establish
his supremacy. The president of the C.P.R. was George Stephen, who
became Lord Mountstephen. But he had removed to England, and Van
Horne had a free hand in Canada. He had his faults, of course; but he
was a big man, who saw railway policies in a big way. His attitude
to the farmers was like his attitude to poor little lines like the
Manitoba North Western. He knew that the more the farmers received
for their crops, after paying freight charges, the more they could
buy, and the more west-bound freight the C.P.R. would carry. He knew
that the small railway was acting as a feeder to the C.P.R. for both
outbound and inbound traffic. He gave the weak line a square deal
every time until it became apparent that it was intended to compete
with the C.P.R. in the long-haul business. Then there was a fight,
in which his antagonist needed all his wits if he wished to admire
himself when peace was restored.

Well, the Farmers’ Union busied itself with the scandal, as the Union
called it, of Manitoba farmers having to sell their wheat for many
cents a bushel less than their brethren did a few miles away. Just
as the Canada Colonization Company is not the pioneer in financing
land settlement, so the grain growers’ organizations of this century
were not the first farmers’ bodies to jump into the business of grain
buying, in self-defense of the farmers’ interests.

The Farmers’ Union began to buy wheat along our side of the border
at higher prices than were paid by the Manitoba elevator and milling
people. For some time there was a great deal of puzzlement as to how
in the world Purvis and his men managed to buy grain, and pay for it.
The truth was that the C.P.R. and the Bank of Montreal, its very good
friend, had a hand in the revolution--not purely as a sort of joint
Santa Claus for the farmer, but because it was not good business
to allow the farmer to be ground beneath the upper and the nether
millstone.

I do not suggest, of course, that any railways have been operated in
Western Canada purely as philanthropic enterprises. The farmer hardly
claims that distinction for himself. But I do assert that the element
of public service and public fairplay has entered more largely into
railway administration than the public has often been informed;
and that, often and often, compared with his fellows, in purely
private undertakings, the lot of the railway president, manager, and
financier has not been a happy one.




                            CHAPTER VII.

  _Telling how Manitoba struggled through an era of expansion and the
                         war of Fort Whyte._


Winnipeg was at a peculiar stage of its growth at the time of my
transfer there from Portage la Prairie when, in 1893, the Manitoba
North Western went into a receivership, because it couldn’t pay its
fixed charges and the Allan interests became tired of finding them
from private sources. Probably not many of the well-known men of the
city appreciated that they were participants in a phase of North
American history which would soon become almost as extinct as the
dodo, and would be clothed, for those who had eyes to see, with a
certain glamour of the age of chivalry.

The knighthood that flowered among the Indians, fur traders, and
original farmers of the Great Lone Land, has not yet been accorded
the idealism of the Crusades, or the picturesqueness of Robin Hood.
The country had few ladyes fayre. The dusky maidens who became the
queens of many mixed unions were attractive enough in their way,
though they were never protected by moats and drawbridges; nor were
their favours courted with armour and lance. But there were other
elements in a unique style of living to which, one day, the touch
of some wizard of romance will be applied. The buffalo was to be
replaced by the plowman, the Indian to be superseded by a more
industrious relative, and the ironless Red River cart to be run off
the trail by the iron horse.

Some of our daily friends in the early nineties, who still remain,
dwindling to a small, reclusive band, had known the sovereignty of
“The Company”, had seen the Queen’s uncamouflaged Government assume
sway over the immeasurable territory. They had passed through the
first Riel rebellion of 1869, with its execution of Scott, and the
administration of affairs during the subsequent winter with Riel as
President of the Provisional Government of Rupert’s Land. Lawful
authority was beleaguered, a thousand miles from the nearest centre
of British power, and could only be restored by a military expedition
which must travel over inland seas, through uncleared forests, and
upon streams unfamiliar to military men--a wilderness unpopulated
save for a few barbarians and isolated traders.

Caesar in Gaul, and the Crusaders bound for Jerusalem had no such
resistance of primeval nature to overcome as was involved in the
Wolseley relief of 1870, in which the Duke of Connaught shared, and
which gave his name to Prince Arthur’s Landing, later to be changed
by Van Horne to Port Arthur.

In the Red River Expedition of 1870 was Charlie Bell, a drummer boy
of sixteen, son of the registrar of South Lanark. When the artillery
was brought up against Fort Garry, the gate was open, Riel had fled
from the breakfast table; and the crusade’s object was accomplished
without an angry shot being fired. Charlie Bell did not return to
Ontario, but became as much a Westerner as if he had been so born.

Sometimes he was in the public service, officially. He was always
in the public service, temperamentally. For a generation he was the
annually-elected secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, and saw
it grow from almost nothing to the biggest wheat mart in the world.
He kept the Board of Trade straight while it was located in the City
Hall, which was built in sure and certain hope that the boom would
become a normalcy, and which still houses the civic administration.
Western literature has had in him a faithful practitioner, and
Masonry a pillar, even to the thirty-third degree. During more recent
years he developed a strain of feeling of which Ontario folk may take
notice. He came to believe that the average Ontario man going West
carries a disposition similar to that of the thoughtless Englishman,
who said of Canadians generally, “We howns ’em.”

It is a curious and somewhat delusive phenomenon in community life
that men seem vaster in a large city than they do in a little town.
Somehow, a Winnipeg leader is supposed to be a bigger man in that
city of over two hundred thousand than the same man was when the
population was about as big as Brantford’s is to-day. That could not
really be. Lord Strathcona, among the exaltation of Imperial London,
was not truly greater than Donald Smith was, buying pelts and wheat
at Fort Garry, keeping Riel quiet, and, later, parleying with bishops
over the school question.

Heavy railroad building, during the periodic flow of capital from a
rich and loaning country, is an easier task than starting a small
railway in a small community with very small resources. In this
connection one thinks of a man who had an extraordinarily vivid
career during the strenuous decades of his Western life. I mean Hugh
Sutherland, who in 1874, was sent to Winnipeg as a superintendent of
the Dominion Public Works Department.

He built the quarters for Governor Laird, and the mounted police
barracks at Battleford, when the capital of the North West
Territories was moved from Fort Pelly, near the headwaters of the
Assiniboine, north of Kamsack, the first Canadian Northern divisional
point west of Dauphin. Charlie Bell watched Hugh Sutherland’s
midwinter arrival at Fort Garry with his dogs, and always describes
him as the handsomest man he ever saw.

It is like going back to prehistoric times to hear Hugh Sutherland
tell of how he found it desirable to soothe the Indian mind by
representing that the smokestack of an engine that he had brought
into the country to saw lumber for the public works, was a cannon.
It is amusing to hear him describe how, when treaty was being made
with the Cree chief at the place where Battleford was to be built,
he invited the Paleface to sit with him on a log; and how the chief,
not being too clean, nudged nearer and nearer, until the retreating
Sutherland, finding himself at the log’s end, was told that that was
what was happening to the Red Man in his own country, and was asked
how much further this sort of thing was intended to go?

When we have read of wars and rumours of wars because some country
like Bulgaria or Serbia wanted access to tidewater, it has seemed a
strange perversion of the proprieties of commerce that there should
be so much anxiety to control the anchorage of shipping. But the
urge to the sea has been a feature of Western Canadian life ever
since the difference of five cents on a bushel of wheat has meant
the difference between a Windsor chair and a Morris to a Manitoba
landowner. Only, instead of longing for the glistening blue of the
Aegean or the Adriatic, the prairie country has hungered for the
leaden mists of the Bay, which Lord Grey, with a poetic licence not
habitual with him, once called the Canadian Mediterranean--thinking,
no doubt, of Fort Churchill and York Factory as the Cannes and
Mentone of a too quiescent Riviera.

To make a grain route of Hudson Bay was an early and a latter
ambition of the Winnipeg business man, to whom ice floes are not
the same obstacle to business as they are to those who never knew
what it is to trade while the thermometer is fluttering between
forty and fifty below. When Hugh Sutherland had passed from the
unexciting functions of a Government job, and was up to the eyes
in developing the country, he became the chief propagandist for a
Hudson Bay Railway. While I was pursuing the even tenor of my way
at the Portage, he, with an apostolic fervor, was holding meetings
and painting pictures in the capital, to the end that the road
towards the Bay, through the flat country between Lakes Winnipeg and
Manitoba, might begin.

Infinite labour, infinite patience, because of infinite delays, and,
in the constructive sense, infinite imagination, went into that
launch of an enterprise which has halted men with larger resources
and Governments with vaster powers than ever came Hugh Sutherland’s
way. But the labour and the patience and the romance that went into
a truly heroic adventure did result in forty miles of railway being
built, from Winnipeg to Oak Point--and there the money was exhausted,
though the desire to spend it on reaching the Bay wasn’t. Since then,
as part of the Canadian Northern, the branch was extended practically
the whole length of the peninsula, to Gypsumville--a name which tells
why.

The lieutenant-governor of Manitoba was Sir John Schultz. What a
career, Western of Western, he had had, to be sure. He was a medical
student of Queen’s University, Kingston, and came West in 1857,
the year in which gold was reported on the Saskatchewan river,
and the first party of explorers was sent to the prairies by a
Canadian Government. At Fort Garry he practised medicine, and in
the early sixties bought a share in the first Western newspaper,
“The Nor’Wester”. The sovereign Company exercised its powers rather
arbitrarily, particularly against anything that looked like an
infringement of its monopoly of the Indian trade. Schultz was an
ardent free trader, and fought The Company in his paper, and through
a trading firm he established. He found himself in jail and bound
with ropes as a sidekick to a dispute with his former business
partner turned sheriff, and therefore a creature of The Company.

Schultz was later imprisoned by Riel. Convinced by what he overheard
his guards say, that he was marked for execution, he escaped,
after eight hours’ work on a hole in the wall, made by a gimlet
and penknife smuggled to him by his wife. This happened while
Donald Smith was arranging with a convention for a Bill of Rights
constituting the Provisional Government of Rupert’s Land--all in
anticipation of the arrival, during the coming summer, of troops, and
also, as the purchase of Rupert’s Land from The Company for £300,000
had been arranged, of its entry into the Canadian Confederation.
Dr. Schultz became the first member of Parliament from the new
province which was established in 1870; then senator, and finally
lieutenant-governor and a knight.

Perhaps there was no more compact embodiment of the emergence of
Winnipeg from a frontier post to a Metropolitan capital than an old
friend of all who were ever associated with him, J. H. Ashdown, who
died while these pages were in the press. It is difficult for any
of this generation who talked with a man whom a veracious writer
called the merchant hardware prince of Canada, who was an alert,
on-the-minute modernist, and whose appearance long belied his years,
and discern in him the tinsmith of Fort Garry, who served against
Riel in ’69, was put in jail with Scott, Schultz and Charles Mair,
and was lucky to escape the fate of the murdered Scott.

Mr. Ashdown was literally one of the city fathers. Before he was
Mayor in 1905--and he was called the best Mayor Winnipeg ever had--he
was an alderman. Before he was alderman he was a leader in the
movement to incorporate the city. Indeed, ever since his arrival, in
1868 he was a forefronter in every sort of civic advance, because he
was built that way.

Natively, Mr. Ashdown was a Londoner. He came to Canada in 1853, at
nine years of age. He learned tinsmithing at Hespeler, in Ontario,
under the old apprenticeship system, which inculcated obedience and
frugality, until its subject was long past the period at which,
in these times, young hopefuls are post-graduates of the School
of Bringing Up Father. The Ashdown apprenticeship was decided on
after finding a sixpence on the road he walked over from Guelph to
Hespeler. That lucky sixpence brought these payments: board, lodge
and laundry, twenty-five dollars the first year, thirty dollars the
second year, and thirty-five dollars the concluding year.

The apprenticeship over, he ventured to Chicago and Kansas before
sallying north. To reach Fort Garry he walked nineteen days from St.
Cloud. Fort Garry, in 1868 furnished a fair livelihood to an expert
metal worker, and illimitable outlook to a seer. Ashdown was both,
and would go a long way to advance his business or broaden his grasp
of the future. For a pioneering story this is as good as any that
even the apocryphers have produced:--

A neighbouring hardware merchant becoming tired of his prospects
offered to sell his stock, store and goodwill to Ashdown for a
thousand dollars. Ashdown said he hadn’t the money, but asked for a
little time to turn the proposition over in his mind. It was Friday
afternoon.

Monday morning the hardwareman met Ashdown, who said he couldn’t buy
the business. He had walked to Portage la Prairie, hoping to raise
the thousand dollars, and had been turned down. The return trip,
Winnipeg to Portage la Prairie, meant a tramp of 112 miles.

Against the background which the personalities of these typical men
faithfully represent, one always thinks of modern Winnipeg in terms
of historical glamour. Its business was always substantial and always
anxious, the future being very tantalizing. There was an almost
continuous procession through the papers of plans for great Western
development. Railway schemes were the most intriguing and impressive.
They were divisible into two main streams of endeavour--to defeat the
monopolistic entrenchments of the C.P.R., and to build and magnify
branches from the main artery of traffic, under independent control.

First, something about the anti-monopoly fight, in which the battle
of Fort Whyte has a place all its own in economic and political
warfare; and then a few recalls from the long and wearisome trail of
lateral development, up to the point where an insignificant line was
built, which was not destined to fall into the capacious hands of the
Canadian Pacific, but was the beginning of the longest, though not
yet the most prosperous, system in the world--the Canadian National
Railways.

The battle of Fort Whyte arose from the monopoly clause in the C.P.R.
charter, and the wide and deep feeling that the C.P.R. was more an
enemy than a friend of Manitoba; plus, of course, the prospective
advantages which politicians saw in fomenting trouble. The monopoly
clause prevented the building, by any other company, of branch lines
south of the main line of the C.P.R. and within fifteen miles of the
American boundary. The prohibition was held to be in the interests of
Canadian solidarity. If the American lines which were pushing through
Minnesota and North Dakota had free access to Canadian territory
the Canadian road would be starved, and the basis of Dominion-wide
prosperity, on which the Confederation was established, would be
destroyed.

C.P.R. rates for hauling grain to Lake Superior were higher than they
became later; but, in fairness, it should never have been forgotten
that they were lower than rates on the Northern Pacific and Great
Northern, in similar territory across the line. With crops uncertain
and prices low--I have already told how the finest grade wheat of the
1887 crop sold for forty-eight and fifty cents a bushel in the heart
of Manitoba--the proportion of the farmers’ total receipts that went
for haulage to the head of the Lakes seemed high.

In the spring of 1887 the Norquay Government proposed to authorize
a line from Winnipeg to the boundary to connect with the Northern
Pacific. The C.P.R. denounced this as a breach of faith, and
threatened to move its shops to Fort William if, as it said, it were
treated as a public enemy. An Act was passed in June, by the Manitoba
Legislature and was forthwith disallowed at Ottawa. Another Act was
promptly passed, and the company chartered by the province began
construction.

The Dominion Minister of Justice obtained a temporary injunction
restraining both Government and company, the C.P.R. having already
laid a spur across the path of the new line. Public temper became
very hot, and Premier Norquay declared that the line would be built,
“at the point of the bayonet if necessary”.

In November the injunction was made permanent, but by that time there
was no more money for construction, and the Norquay Government had
gone the way of all its kind. An extremely brief life was the portion
of a Government formed by Dr. Harrison, and the Greenway Government
succeeded it early in 1888, with the vociferous lion of Portage la
Prairie, the unique Joe Martin, as attorney-general.

All winter the racket about the anti-monopoly line continued.
Greenway and Martin besieged Ottawa, and, undoubtedly, had a united
province behind them. They raised vigorously the issue of provincial
rights. Sir John Macdonald, not wanting to make a bad matter worse,
induced the C.P.R. to waive its monopoly clause in consideration
of certain financial guarantees, and promised to disallow no more
Manitoba railway legislation.

All seemed set fair for railway expansion, especially from the point
of view of Portage la Prairie, which had never ceased to cherish
the hopes on which the Manitoba North Western had been built. At
the beginning, you remember, an estate had been bought south of the
C.P.R. and nearly two miles from where the North Western terminals
were finally located, in expectation of an extension of the line some
day to the boundary.

With our own member as attorney-general, and, as it was said,
the strongest man in the Government, the swift clean-up of the
crossing trouble that had been left by the Norquay Government, and
the imminence of a general election which, it was expected, would
cinch power for Greenway, made the time opportune for starting the
long-desired railway from Portage to Winnipeg, to connect with the
new line that was reaching the boundary from there.

The Portage line was to cross the C.P.R. track to Emerson at
Headingly, a few miles out of Winnipeg. The consent of the Railway
Committee of the Privy Council was necessary to any crossing of a
Dominion railway. Permission to cross the C.P.R. was slow in coming.
It was alleged that C.P.R. influence caused the delay. Grading began
on both sides of the C.P.R.; and, when permission did not arrive from
Ottawa, the indignant Winnipeggers teamed rails, ties, and a diamond
out to Headingly; and laid them during the night, eventualities being
provided against, as it was thought, under the attorney-general’s
inspiration.

Two years before this, a former brakeman and superintendent of the
Credit Valley Railway had been sent to Winnipeg as superintendent of
the western lines of the C.P.R.--he became Sir William Whyte. In the
morning, on discovery of the doings at Headingly, and on instructions
from Van Horne, Mr. Whyte took a gang of men to tear up the diamond.
The attorney-general had sworn in twenty special constables who were
guarding the “jewel”, as the diamond was called.

The defenders were in charge of ex-poundkeeper Cox. Whyte told him
he would remove the diamond at any cost, though he was unwilling to
use violence. Cox prepared to resist, but a punch in the eye from a
warmly loyal C.P.R. navvy changed his mind.

The diamond was removed and hauled in triumph to the C.P.R. yards,
and the battle of Fort Whyte was on, with General Whyte commanding
his forces from his private car. An engine was ditched at the
crossing, and Whyte stayed by, with two hundred and fifty men
from the C.P.R. shops to see that the supporters of the Manitoba
Government didn’t move it. In his car were about twenty special
constables.

Joe Martin and several high provincial officers were on the ground.
He caused the provincial chief of police to inform Whyte that the
appointments of his special police had been canceled. A handy
magistrate swore them in again. More men were brought up by the
provincial powers, and it seemed as if they would attempt to make the
crossing afresh. Whyte attached a hose to his locomotive, which stood
close to the ditched engine, and said he would turn live steam on
any gang which tried to work against him. It was impossible for the
provincialists to get up steam against such steam; and so closed a
perfectly Martinesque day.

The double dare continued for five days of venomous but harmless
hostility. Then Martin swore in a hundred and twenty constables and
called out the military, under Colonel Villiers, who pitched their
tents on the battlefield. A threat was made to lay the diamond
further down the line, and Whyte built a fence, and kept his watchful
forces waiting behind it.

A battalion of farmers appeared carrying sundry woodware. They talked
of lynching “Smooth William”, but retired, discerning that valour may
be compounded with discretion. Whyte vowed that he would stay there
as long as the crossing was unauthorized even if he had to tie up the
C.P.R. from East to West to preserve its rights.

For a fortnight the armies faced each other, and then the C.P.R.
tired of waiting on Ottawa, sought an injunction restraining the
provincial road from trespass. The courts refused the injunction,
Superintendent Whyte called off his engines, his cars and his men,
and Fort Whyte went into the history of bloodless campaigns.

In the Van Horne biography the episode is called “as merry a
game of bluff as he had ever known.” That there wasn’t a serious
casualty list was due to the inherent good temper of men on both
sides--perhaps most of all to the imperturbability of Mr. Whyte, who
was on the whole, the West’s most outstanding citizen for more than
a quarter of a century, and who wasn’t called “Smooth William” for
nothing.

One could not count the ambitious railway schemes that were conceived
or cradled in Winnipeg during the eighties and nineties; some born to
blush unseen, some to waste their prospects on the prairie air, and
some to suffer a dolorous existence till they were gathered to the
boundless bosom of the C.P.R. Often enough, the poorer the outlook of
an enterprise, the more grandiose was its name.

What is now a part of the Souris branch of the C.P.R., began as the
Oregon and Transcontinental, and ended at the then forlorn station of
Starbuck. The Great Northwest Central had a charter from Brandon to
Battleford. It crawled for fifty miles northwestward and then stalled
till the inevitable happened.

We heard repeatedly of projected lines in what, from the meridian of
Winnipeg and the Portage, seemed the Never-Never Country, bounded
by Prince Albert and Edmonton, four hundred miles apart on the
North Saskatchewan. At last they were built. Of the granting of
one charter by the Dominion Parliament so far as one can recall, no
definite information filtered through to the accounting department
of the Manitoba North Western, though it was freighted with more of
Canadian destiny than all the others put together. It was obtained
by the Davis firm of contractors, and carried a land grant and
authority to reach Hudson Bay--the charter of the Lake Manitoba
Railway and Canal Company. It lay like a derelict upon a tideless
shore, and appeared to have no chance of activity for years after the
Never-Never country had been traversed by two sets of rails.

The Regina and Long Lake line was built from Regina to Prince Albert
in 1889 and 1890 for a company whose moving power was the firm of
Osler, Hammond and Nanton of Toronto and Winnipeg. The construction
was across a virtually uninhabited stretch of two hundred and twenty
miles between the Qu’Appelle River at Lumsden and the town of Prince
Albert. Most of the track was put down during a summer at the end of
which according to Joe Work who had charge of laying the rails, and
later became chief track layer for the Canadian Northern, it was not
safe to ride or drive a horse at night, because the cracks in the
ground made by the drought were so wide that hoofs could be caught in
them, legs broken and steeds destroyed.

Saskatoon, at the crossing of the South Saskatchewan river, was in
the midst of what was often called “The Desert”. Its main business
came from its being the station for Battleford, eighty miles away.
Ten years after the line was laid there was only one homesteader
between Saskatoon and the Qu’Appelle. The land grant was considered
worthless--I believe it was written down optimistically by one
presumed authority as being worth fifty cents an acre.

About the same time the Calgary and Edmonton was built, the steel
reaching Red Deer the first season, and Strathcona, across the river
from Edmonton, the next fall. The country passed through had more
rainfall than the Regina-Prince Albert territory; but there were
practically no settlers in it. Following this, track from Calgary to
Fort MacLeod was laid, to procure Lethbridge coal, and later to the
Kootenay where Dawson and Tyrrell in 1883 had proved that there were
almost illimitable deposits of fuel.

That is where railway development in the West stood when I was
removed to Winnipeg in 1893. Prices were lower than ever on the
prairie. Wheat sold for 35 cents a bushel. Milch cows could be bought
for less than thirty dollars. Eggs at eight cents a dozen, bought the
farmer’s wife no silks or satins.

For three years, while the North Western was hoping against hope that
it would be able to stand ultimately on its own feet, and Mr. Nanton,
the Sir Augustus of these more expansive years, was keeping an
extremely watchful eye on all expenditures, I was doing my best for a
small family. At night I was the first auditor of the Canadian Fire
Insurance Company, the creation of R. T. Riley, who doesn’t live as
many anxious days now as he did then, and who was later to become
a highly valued colleague on the National Railways’ directorate.
At night also, I was the first auditor of the Manitoba Gas and
Electric Company, and the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company, which
was controlled by the contractors who had built the lines to Prince
Albert and Edmonton.

It was that auditorship and the neglected charter of the Lake
Manitoba Railway and Canal Company which brought me to Toronto, ten
years later, as third vice-president of the Canadian Northern, a
railway which, though its name appears to be dead, will be alive, as
railways live, I think, for evermore.




                            CHAPTER VIII.

  _Recording the first encounter of Mackenzie and Mann, with mules for
                              a stake._


It seems scarcely possible that the electric railway is only thirty
years old. The marvel of Chicago, to a visitor less than thirty years
ago, was the system of street cars moved by cables running between
and beneath the rails. Winnipeg had a single track horse-car system,
with passing sidings. It was the enterprise of Albert Austin, in
these days president of the Consumers’ Gas Company of Toronto. The
city gave a franchise to the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company, the
creation of Mr. James Ross, of Montreal, Mr. William Mackenzie, who
had recently come into control of the Toronto railway situation, and
Mr. D. D. Mann.

There was some confusion as to the Austin franchise’s priority of
right. Indeed, Mr. Austin contended that the electric franchise
was erroneously given. At all events, the electric cars started to
run on the streets before the horse cars were run off the streets.
We enjoyed the spectacle of Dobbin competing against the harnessed
lightning, and the experience of a cut-rate business in fares, the
like of which was never before, and has never since been seen. Rides
were three cents each, and fifty tickets were sold for a dollar.
Business institutions laid in stores of tickets, against the day
when rates would rise. In the end, of course, the more modern
method won out. The Winnipeg Electric Railway, which had its own
difficulties, due to comparative scarcity of population, has come to
earn a yearly revenue of over $3,500,000.

Becoming the first auditor of the company brought me into contact
with the president, Mr. Mackenzie, of Toronto, and led to a
connection of twenty-six years with the phenomenal expansion
of a railway system, which is now the main hope of prosperity
for a national property. I had met Mr. Mann almost immediately
after arriving at Portage la Prairie, in 1886. As there are some
misapprehensions in the public mind about the earlier association of
these remarkable men, perhaps it is as well to tell the authentic
story.

As a western worker, Sir Donald Mann preceded Sir William Mackenzie
by several years. He brought the first locomotive into Winnipeg
on Christmas Eve, 1879, having come down the Red River during the
previous summer. Sir William Mackenzie’s first essay in Western
development was in 1884, when he took contracts on the mountain
section of the C.P.R.

It is a mistake to suppose that that was Mackenzie’s first experience
in railway construction. He had had a contract on the Victoria
Railway, between Port Hope and Orillia, via Blackwater, now called
the Midland section of the Canadian National System. That was one of
the first great enterprises, outside his beloved insurance, in which
the late Senator Cox was heavily concerned as a financier. Mackenzie
had taught school, and had done some building. He had also worked in
the Lake Simcoe and Muskoka territory when it was furnishing Toronto
with most of its lumber and fuel.

When the Mackenzie men, teams, and equipment began work in the region
of Banff, where James Ross, the chief engineer of the Canadian
Pacific, had charge of a construction then unexampled in Canada, they
became known as “The Farmer Outfit”, because their harness and get-up
generally were more like the appurtenances of Ontario than the gear
of truly Western operators.

Over twenty years afterwards, when a distinguished party was
travelling to Edmonton for the inauguration of the province of
Alberta, they drove from the end of Canadian Northern steel, several
miles east of Vermilion, to the new capital. One of the guides
over the unfamiliar trails was bridge builder Weller, who told the
stranger he was driving that he was with Mackenzie on his first
contract in the mountains. He was still the same Mackenzie, Weller
said, though bigger business left him little time to fraternize with
his old associates.

“There is no Sunday time to be killed in tents,” he said, “by sitting
around the stove on chilly nights and singing Sankey’s hymns. Mr.
Mackenzie was quite a singer in those days, but only on Sunday
nights.”

Far ahead of “The Farmer Outfit”, in the vanguard of the graders, was
another contractor--the same who had brought the engine across the
Red River ice, and had been on the job as the C.P.R. was laid through
Brandon, Regina and Calgary. Sir Donald Mann’s reminiscences of a
hard season’s work include his first seeing of the governor-general,
the Marquis of Lansdowne, and his first meeting with Sir William
Mackenzie.

The viceroy was coming east from Victoria over the route to be taken
by the C.P.R. The contractor met him on the trail that did duty
for a road, and recognized him by his photograph. Since the war,
dining with the marquis in London, Sir Donald was interested by
his recalling that at the time of his trip across the Selkirks and
Rockies, there were only 126,000 people between the Lake of the Woods
and the Pacific Ocean.

Of the first contact between Mackenzie and Mann, Sir Donald’s
recollection is vivid:

“In the summer of 1884,” he says, “we were having some trouble with
our supplies at the head of construction. This was partly caused by
the wish of those who had such matters in hand to compel us to buy
from them. We wanted the advantage of buying direct from wholesalers
and manufacturers, and hauling our own stuff from the end of steel to
the front of grading. To do this teaming I had my agents farther east
buy and ship a carload of mules. When we received word that they had
arrived as far as the cars could bring them, I took a foreman named
Dan Mahoney and two or three other men, and started out to fetch
them. They were at the Summit--close to where the Great Divide is
marked now. The mules had been unloaded and were with another carload
in a corral.

“Dan Mahoney and I were picking out what we believed to be our
animals when a man with a long black beard turned up, and asked us
what we were doing with the mules. I said we were getting ours from
the lot. He said the mules were his, and we’d better not interfere
with them. The argument livened up a good deal, and was getting warm,
when Ross came along, and asked what the trouble was. We told him.
He laughed and said we were both wrong and both right. A carload had
come for each of us, but owing to some misunderstanding, it had been
supposed that they belonged to the same party, and they had been
turned into the corral together.

“Ross was never at a loss for a way out of a difficulty; and he
undertook to settle this one. ‘You’ll pick teams, turn and turn
about, and you,’ he said, pointing to Mackenzie, ‘will have first
choice, and he,’ pointing to me, ‘will have the next two, and then
one each.’ That was perfectly fair, and the first difference of
opinion between Mackenzie and me was over.

“While Mackenzie was choosing his first team Dan Mahoney took me
aside and said: ‘You let me pick them mules. I know them all, for I
worked at the place they have come from. The best in the lot are them
roans. This man won’t guess that; but I know it. Don’t take them in
your first pick; and he won’t take them for his second. Then we’ll
take them; and you’ll see they’ll turn out to be the best of the
bunch.’

“Sure enough, Mackenzie didn’t pick the roans for his second choice,
so that at least he didn’t figure them as better than the fifth pair.
We took them as our third choice; and they proved to be the best team
of all, as Mahoney had said. Mackenzie and I have been in a good
many arrangements together since then; but I don’t think any of them
gave me more genuine satisfaction than the one in which I took Dan
Mahoney’s advice.”

Sometimes books of reference err. “Canadian Men and Women of the
Time” is nodding when it states that the Mackenzie-Mann partnership
began in 1886. The slip is similar to another in connection with Sir
Joseph Flavelle, of whom it is said mistakenly, that he was “long in
the dry goods business in Lindsay, Ontario, with his brother, John D.
Flavelle.” In 1886 Mackenzie was building snow sheds in the Selkirks;
and Mann was fulfilling a twenty-five-mile grading contract on the
Manitoba North Western. It was while he was busy with this that I
first saw him, in the office of my chief, W. A. Baker, at Portage la
Prairie. At that time D. D. Mann was thirty-three years old, very
big, and a bachelor; and I wondered who the heavy, slow-moving man
was.

The Mackenzie-Mann partnership began in 1888, but it was part of a
quartet, and not a duet. The other partners were the late James Ross
and the present Sir Herbert Holt of Montreal. The firm took contracts
on the Coboconk and Credit Valley lines, and undertook the whole of
the C.P.R. short line through Maine to St. John. The Regina and Long
Lake, the Calgary and Edmonton, and the line from Calgary to Fort
MacLeod followed, between 1889 and 1891. Then constructive energy in
the West seemed exhausted. The railway contracting of Mackenzie and
Mann entered a state of suspended animation.

There is a tradition among his friends that when Mackenzie saw the
finish of these contracts in the West he made up his mind to retire
on his competence, and devote himself to farming at his native
Kirkfield, and to public service in Victoria county. Sir Sam Hughes
used to tell, with as much relish as Sir Donald tells of the contest
over the mules, how he beat Mackenzie for the Conservative nomination
for Victoria and Haliburton in 1891.

But life’s strenuous endeavour was not over for Sir William Mackenzie
in his early forties. Unexpectedly he became connected with the
modernization of the street railway in Toronto--the beginning of
nearly thirty years of achievement such as has not been approached in
Canada by any native son. From a commitment to an electric railway in
Toronto to a similar enterprise in Winnipeg was a natural development
of a genius for courageous initiation, the range of which I do not
think he himself recognized at that time.

The ambition to construct and control a transcontinental railway was
the result of an evolution in two mentalities, working in a single
partnership. Just when it was first consciously entertained perhaps
neither Sir William nor Sir Donald was aware. Certainly, nothing of
the kind was contemplated when their first venture as railway owners
and operators, as distinct from contractors, was undertaken, and I
came into it as the first operating officer.

The conditions affecting the nativity of the Canadian Northern were
extensive and peculiar. The Sutherland project of a railway from
Winnipeg to Hudson Bay had halted at Oak Point, forty miles from
Winnipeg, on the east shore of Lake Manitoba. But the idea of laying
steel to the Bay was never abandoned; and the Dominion charter of
the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company gave the right to build
to tidewater, via northwestern Manitoba, in 1889. The Manitoba
Government was friendly to the scheme from the very practical point
of view of providing facilities for farmers who, though they were
in fine country, could not profitably market their excellent crops,
some for reasons for which they had no responsibility, and some for
reasons which, perhaps, they might have avoided. They could not
flourish without railway transportation.

The main line of the Canadian Pacific came into Winnipeg from almost
due north for twenty miles. Originally, it was to have passed through
Selkirk, leaving ambitious Winnipeg as an important station on a
branch to the American boundary. The line was built almost to the
river, opposite Selkirk, and a round house was erected at Selkirk.
Instead of going west through Portage la Prairie, it was projected
straight northwestward between Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, crossed
Lake Manitoba at The Narrows, and continued northwesterly to the Swan
River, where it turned southwesterly, till it was a few miles north
of Fort Pelly.

Thence it took a due west route to the Elbow of the North
Saskatchewan, near to where that river is now crossed by the Canadian
Northern main line. Then, instead of crossing the river, the C.P.R.
was to skirt the southern bank to Battleford, and strike the
Saskatchewan again on its long northwesterly stretch, about twenty
miles above Fort Edmonton, which is the Edmonton of to-day. A new
Edmonton was to arise on the C.P.R. main line, about seventeen miles
south of the present capital of Alberta.

This route was across sections of the prairie country marked on
the Government map, printed in Sandford Fleming’s great report
of 1880, as having “soil of rich quality and pasture land more
or less fertile.” The map is the first in which, to quote from
its superscription, “An attempt has been made to distinguish the
general physical character of the country, on the routes followed
by different explorers and scientific travelers.” The map is one of
the most interesting proofs of the wisdom with which the Canadian
Northern lines in the West were planned; taking in, as they do, the
territory first pre-empted by the Canadian Pacific main line, which
was also commonly known as “The Fertile Belt”.

There was a second location of the C.P.R. main line, which was to
leave Portage la Prairie eight miles to the south, and was to swing
round the Riding Mountains, virtually on the route afterwards taken
by the Manitoba North Western, and was to cross the Assiniboine a
little below where Kamsack now is, and pick up the original location
at Nut Hill, about twelve miles straight north of the present little
station of Rama on the Canadian Northern main line, two hundred and
forty miles from Winnipeg.

The Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company was chartered to enter
this originally selected territory of the Canadian Pacific main
line. Nervy farmers, knowing good country when they saw it, went
into the district around Lake Dauphin, through which the C.P.R. was
to come. Some stuck to their places, even after it seemed that hope
of a railway in their time was vain. There were others, known as the
judgment-proof settlers. They had fled from conditions which made it
impossible for them to profit by their experience, and had come from
hard times to harder.

The wonderful fertility of the Dauphin and Gilbert Plains country,
and the abundance of wood within reach of everywhere made it an ideal
farming territory. One is able to report that J. B. Tyrrell, whose
Western surveys for the Dominion Government began in 1883, and have
covered the country between the Kootenays and Dawson city, between
Edmonton and Chesterfield Inlet, and from Fort Churchill to Winnipeg
and included two summers in northwestern Manitoba, says that if he
were choosing a farm location he would go to the Dauphin country.
Apropos that preference, consider an illustration of how the sober
truth of a scientific bluebook can be regarded as the fiction of a
romancing propagandist.

Tyrrell’s reports to the Geological Survey of his work in 1889 and
1890 make it clear that Lake Manitoba is the remainder of a much
vaster inland sea, which was pretty deep--its shores were high in
the present Riding and Duck Mountains. On the high water line are
deposits of phosphatic shale, the product of immense accumulations
of fish bones, Tyrrell believes. The leaching from these deposits
to the plains below has made the farms in the Dauphin and Gilbert
Plains districts so remarkably fertile that it was found undesirable
to permit the land to lie fallow every third year as in most of the
prairie country. Allow a Dauphin field an idle, clean summer and
the following years the wheat crops will most likely be hopelessly
lodged. It is therefore customary, in order to keep the land clean,
to allow the weeds to get a good start in the spring, plow them in
at the beginning of June, and take off a crop of barley so as to
prevent the following season’s wheat crop from choking itself into
unprofitability.

One summer the Canadian Northern superintendent of publicity was
taking a party of journalists from Winnipeg to Edmonton, and, as his
custom was, he brought aboard the train, at different points, local
men who could tell about their district.

The National Editorial Association of the United States after leaving
Dauphin were bidden to a testimony meeting in the forward coach of
the special train. The publicity superintendent offered a few remarks
on the quality of the landscape the party was viewing, and told of
the phosphatic shale derived from fishbones deposited in the hills,
perhaps five million years ago. He received some attenuated applause
for this narration; but was not flattered later to learn that it was
bestowed for the most colossal, most imaginative fish story that so
seasoned a bunch of newspapermen had ever heard.

The connoisseurs of descriptive narrative were in the mood, though
not the condition, of a distinguished visitor at the Quebec Garrison
Club several years ago, who, having assiduously sampled the visions
that come gaily through the rye, saw, as he was leaving, an enormous
stuffed Lake St. John salmon on the wall, at the stair’s foot. He
gazed at it for a full minute and remarked:

“That’s a d----d lie!”

Parliaments may authorize, but financiers may refuse to finance.
Though the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal charter, land grant and
all, had been obtained by the Davis firm of contractors, they could
induce nobody to furnish the money to build the line and possess
the land. They tried to sell the charter, and in 1892 or 1893 D. D.
Mann began negotiations to buy it. He took an option for a thousand
dollars, and allowed it to expire. He renewed the option for two
thousand dollars, and that also ran out. He figured that, in the end,
the rights could be acquired more advantageously by that form of
attrition of attractiveness.

After nearly three years’ negotiation, the charter at thirty-eight
thousand dollars seemed a good buy, and the prospect of financing
construction pretty fair, largely because two factors in the
situation were in a different case from what they had been when the
idea of laying track into the Dauphin country began to be agreeable.
The Manitoba Government was increasingly eager for better settlement
in the Dauphin district, and the Northern Pacific had gone into a
receivership.

I am not sure that we don’t indirectly owe the National Railways to
the incurable impetuosity of Joe Martin. As we have seen, he was
attorney-general in the Greenway Government when it inherited the
battle against the C.P.R. monopoly in 1888, and was the popular
general of the battle of Fort Whyte. But he was not popular with his
colleagues--very impetuous men seldom are. He resigned from the board
of the Portage Electric Light and Power Company, at the height of
an argument, and was surprised when he came to the next directors’
meeting to hear from President Watson that the resignation had been
accepted.

One evening he returned from Winnipeg to the Portage after telling
Premier Greenway that he was through with his job. When he appeared
at the office later to take up the broken threads of business, he
found Mr. Attorney-General Sifton working coolly at his desk.

Premier Greenway was a farmer, and not given to verbal rapiering.
Otherwise, instead of allowing the fiery Joe to collide with a fait
accompli, he might have emulated Lord North, who, when King George
had at his request dismissed Charles James Fox not long before the
signing of the American declaration of independence, wrote to Fox:
“Sir,--His Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission of
the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name.”

Clifford Sifton was the subject of political prophecy from his first
appearance in public life. He had come West from Middlesex as a boy
of fourteen. His father had been Speaker of the Assembly. He chose
Brandon as the first field for his legal talents, and quickly became
solicitor of the town. As such he appeared at the private car of the
Deputy Minister of the Interior, who was waited upon by the Town
Council with a request for some improvement in their relationships
with the great Department. The discussion fell naturally into the
hands of the youngest man in the party, whom the deputy felt it his
duty to snub somewhat obviously.

Some years later the deputy saw this young man hang up his hat in
the Minister of the Interior’s room in the Langevin Block. Unwritten
history has it that the deputy found it expedient to become a
full-fledged minister of the exterior after a reasonable period of
meditation had elapsed. On memory’s tablets one does not read his
name.

Twenty-seven years old, Clifford Sifton had come to Winnipeg as
member for Brandon after the general election of 1888, which followed
the Greenway Government’s accession during the preceding winter. Even
if he had had to be pushed into the attorney-generalship, he would
have been the logical, indeed, the only, successor of the excessively
mercurial Martin. It is not critical of the merits of his colleagues
to remark that he was by far the ablest man in the Cabinet. As he was
the first member of a Dominion Government who made an outstanding
success of immigration--it is not difficult to recognize his hand in
the Manitoba administration’s efforts to secure immigration for the
Dauphin country, out of which the Canadian Northern was evolved.

The retirement of the C.P.R. from Fort Whyte, and the abandonment
of its monopolistic privilege, had brought the Northern Pacific
into Manitoba, and promised, for a while, to give the province the
railway expansion it was believed to need. The Northern Pacific, or
its subsidiaries, obtained a charter that allowed it to go almost
anywhere. It was understood that it would enter the country west
of Lake Manitoba and north of Gladstone, thirty-six miles out from
Portage. But the depression culminating in the panic of 1893--which
caused six hundred banks in the United States to suspend, and of
which a sequel was the march of Coxey’s army of unemployed on
Washington from Masillon, Ohio, in April, 1894--threw the Northern
Pacific into a receivership; and there was no prospect of it building
more lines in Manitoba, even with the Government’s guarantee to
pay the interest on its bonds for twenty years. It has always been
understood that the inducement of interest guarantees originated
within the Government. Some day, the story of its inception may be
intimately told.

That, as far as I know, was the introduction to Canada of the
practice of Governments guaranteeing bonds of railway enterprises,
as distinct from cash and land subsidies and the cession of railways
already built, but all-but financially derelict, as had happened in
the case of the C.P.R. The arrangement with the Northern Pacific
had broken down, but it pointed the way of advance to one shrewd
man; and the former contractor of the North Western, the Regina and
Long Lake, and the Calgary and Edmonton, saw in the situation enough
encouragement to take the stalled Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal
Company off the Davises’ hands.

Mr. Mann went to his bankers for assistance. They told him the job
was too big for a lone hand, and counselled that he secure the
co-operation of his old associates. It was that advice which brought
a new orientation to the relationship between Mackenzie and Mann.
There was an idea of asking the Manitoba Government for guarantees of
principal and interest up to sixteen thousand dollars a mile; but
the bankers preferred that the contractors should obligate themselves.

They said, unanswerably, that Governments change in party and
personnel; that the construction of a line in the Dauphin country
was not an assuredly profitable undertaking; and that it was better,
instead of relying too much on political fortune, that the builders
of the line should be vitally concerned in its prosperity.

So, in the end, the guarantee was fixed at eight thousand dollars per
mile, for a hundred and twenty-five miles, with freedom from interest
liability for the company during two years after the completion of
construction.

Under these terms with the Manitoba Government, in the spring of
1896, the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company began construction
from Gladstone, on the Manitoba North Western, thirty-six-miles from
Portage, to Lake Winnipegosis. I was made the first superintendent
of the infant, and on the fifteenth of December, 1896, we began
operation, and issued our first time-table on January 1, 1897, a copy
of which hangs in my office in the Dominion Bank Building, Toronto.
It began for me, indeed, a long avoidance of calm repose.




                            CHAPTER IX.

  _Beginning the story of the Canadian Northern as a pioneer line with
                       a staff of thirteen._


A merciful Providence, which keeps us from seeing far ahead, gave to
none of the men concerned in operating the first commercial train
that ran upon what was to become the Canadian Northern System, the
faintest idea of what was ahead. We should have invited the Tempter
to take a back seat, no doubt, if we had heard, on the fifteenth of
December, 1896, when one of our two engines pulled out of Gladstone
for Dauphin on the rails of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal
Company, that, ten years from that night we should be celebrating
publicly the opening of a railway from Toronto to Parry Sound, and
privately the taking over, while the speeches at the Board of Trade
banquet in the King Edward, were being made, of two hundred and fifty
miles of the Regina-Prince Albert line from the Canadian Pacific;
that our total mileage would then be over thirty-five hundred; and
that, after another ten years, there would be in operation under our
control nine thousand five hundred miles of railway.

But all that was in store; and, as I happened to be the only
operating officer who was concerned in every phase of that
extraordinary expansion, perhaps my feeling should be rather
like that of the oldest inhabitant, who imagines that the former
times were better than these. But, as a matter of fact, though I
am the senior of all the general officers who served the Canadian
Northern Railways, I am not the real patriarch of the service. To
three friends of mine, who were on the line before me, I want to
pay high and sincere tribute--to Billy Walker, Philip Price James,
(affectionately known as “Joe Beef”) and Dad Risteen. “Joe Beef” is
still on the job in Manitoba, as a locomotive engineer. Dad Risteen
was our first conductor, and is still taking up tickets between
Winnipeg and Somerset. But Billy Walker died when these recollections
were being printed.

I joined the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company only a few days
before unofficial operation began; so that I had nothing more to do
with the construction than to oversee the accounts receivable by the
North Western for hauling material to the new base of activity.

Construction opened in the preceding April. It is part of the railway
game that during construction trains must be run, and a certain
transportation business be done by the contractors, as soon as some
track has been laid and ballasted into a fairly safe condition.
Settlers who have suffered hardships because there was no railway,
and who see rails, ties and camp supplies brought in, are like the
newly rich lady showing the magnificent bathroom of her latest
mansion to visitors, with whose admiration she agreed, saying, “Yes,
isn’t it lovely? Do you know, sometimes when I come in here to look
at it I can hardly wait till Saturday night.”

So, during the building season Billy Walker was engineer and Dad
Risteen the conductor of construction trains. Both had come from the
C.P.R., where they were known as absolutely competent men. A proper
appreciation of the values of the trade unions which have wrought
certain revolutions in railway practice does not make one forget that
there was a certain advantage in running a pioneer road with helpers
who were blessed with the pioneer spirit, as Billy, and Joe, and Dad
most excellently were.

The time table over my desk shows we operated one mixed train each
way twice a week. We had running rights over the Manitoba North
Western from Portage to Gladstone. The first winter, though the road
was graded and rails were laid from Gladstone to Sifton, sixteen
miles beyond Dauphin, we only operated beyond Dauphin once a week. To
Dauphin we ran 100 miles, over our own track, and 36 miles over the
North Western.

Sifton, by the way, was not named after Sir Clifford Sifton, but his
uncle, who derived salt from the springs near Lake Winnipegosis,
which had partially supplied the population long before a steam
whistle disturbed the prairies’ peace.

“Service” was our motto. We had more stopping places to the ten
miles, I think, than any railway in the world. Only a few of them
were on the time table. Over most of the route, where settlement was
beginning, we put down and took up passengers and way freight to
suit our patrons’ pleasure. For seventy-two miles, between Plumas and
Dauphin, we hadn’t a telegraph station.

It wasn’t of us, but it might have been, that this story was told:
Certain passengers of a railway through ill-settled bush country
observed the train stop at Nowhere, and saw a woman come from a cabin
in a clearing and speak to the conductor. She returned to the cabin,
and the train stood so long that an explanation was sought from the
conductor.

“Oh,” he said, “that’s all right. This lady goes to market every
Saturday with us, to sell her eggs. This morning she’s one short of
two dozen. We’re waiting because one of the hens is on.”

Our time for the one hundred and twenty miles from Portage to Dauphin
with a mixed train, was six and a half hours. Though punctuality was
occasionally more of an ambition than an achievement, we kept good
time on the whole; thanks to the driving of Billy Walker and the
whole-souled devotion to business of Dad Risteen. We didn’t have an
express service of our own, except so far as everything was express.
But each train had a couple of brakemen, and Dad made it his business
to know all about all the way freight that had to be unloaded at each
stop; and he would hang in and help his brakemen unload.

The two nights a week on which the train came into Dauphin saw a big
crowd in waiting at the station. Sometimes immigrants received a too
flattering impression of the importance attached to their arrival.

The superintendent almost lived on the line in those days, and
sometimes he helped in handling traffic. Dad Risteen, after he had
taken up his tickets, and pored over the way bills, would come into
the second of our complete passenger equipment of two second-hand
coaches, and say, his face beaming like a rising sun, “Mr. Hanna,
we’re having a good day to-day. She’s carrying five hundred and
forty-three dollars.”

Across more than a quarter of a century I take off my hat to Dad
Risteen, for as whole-hearted, diligent, able and enthusiastic a
fellow-worker as ever railway chief had.

The same is true of the engineers. Billy Walker drove the engine, and
“Joe Beef” hostlered it in the little frame roundhouse across the
Vermilion river at Dauphin, until there was work for him also on the
road.

In those far-off days the system of running engines in chain gangs
had not come in--treating throbbing ironhorses as if they were mere
electric cars, to be driven by any man who comes next on a list.
During waits on the road Billy fussed with his engine as if she were
a child, and in the roundhouse Joe was blithe as a lark, cleaning
up and banking the fires on Monday and Friday nights, ready for the
return trip to the Portage next day.

The Canadian Northern era of expansion required us to find names
for about six hundred towns, and about as many shipping points.
Dauphin has always ranked as premier among the first-born of these
communities. The name, of course, comes from the lake near by, which
was so called by the earliest French explorers. The first trading
post was built near the lake, it is believed by one of Verendrye’s
sons.

The present town was started in a wheat field. It has always
had a fine class of citizens. The relations between the railway
superintendent and the townsfolk were more intimate than was possible
when the terminus of a new enterprise had become a division point for
a multiplying east-and-west traffic, and had grown from a few dozen
to several thousand inhabitants.

The feeling on both sides was of the friendliest goodwill. One
recalls, with unaffected pleasure, a kindly and too appreciative
article in the Dauphin press, I think in the second year of our
service, which said of the superintendent, “Who knows that some day
he won’t be rushing through Dauphin in a private car.”

The Dauphineers were of that blest portion in the nation which lives
and learns. One recollection of their capacity in that way is a
bright and shining example of how deputations to railway officers may
discover that all the wisdom doesn’t invariably reside with those who
feel bound to make complaints.

Fundamentally the Lake Manitoba was a colonization road. During the
first summer of its construction the general election brought the
Laurier Government to power. A month before we began regular service
Attorney-General Sifton of Manitoba became Minister of the Interior,
and responsible for immigration. In 1897 the work was done which
resulted in the first considerable settlement of Galicians in the
prairie country--they came into the territory northwesterly of Lake
Manitoba.

Except the settlements of Mennonites between Winnipeg and the
boundary, Manitoba had been almost entirely settled by Ontario and
Old Country people, with the French-speaking Canadians numerous
around St. Boniface, and in the Provencher district, east of
Winnipeg. The advent of large numbers of people from southeast Europe
was viewed with alarm by many excellent citizens; and there was much
grumbling among the elect as the Galicians hove in sight.

I accompanied the first party which was destinated for Dauphin. They
camped outside the town--not a very fashionable looking crowd, it is
true. The women with handkerchiefs over their heads, their footwear
made entirely for enduring ease, and their waistlines uncontrolled,
deceived some onlookers as to their suitability for rearing Canadian
citizens.

Pretty soon a deputation of townsmen waited upon Superintendent
Hanna, with strong, straight intimation that by this unsolicited
invasion a grave error in judgment had been committed, and a menace
to the peace, order and good government of the realm introduced among
a people who deserved a better fate. This threatened tide must be
rolled back. And so on and so forth.

Superintendent Hanna reasoned with the deputation as well as he
could, pointing out that these people had been attached to the soil
for centuries; that they were accustomed to work, and not afraid of
it; that their poverty was the best incentive to them to make good in
a land where they would be free from some of the afflictions of their
former country--compulsory military service, for instance.

The deputation went away as little satisfied with the prospects of
this intrusion as they were when they came. The superintendent turned
to more customary duties.

A couple of hours later the chiefs of the deputation returned to
retract their objections to the Galicians. From shirts, and from
stockings above the unfeminine-looking footgear, there had been
brought forth enough cash to buy two thousand dollars’ worth of
supplies from Dauphin merchants; and faith and charity had begun
to work up to lively hope among the stores that this was a mere
shadow of things to come. The might of economics in social life
never received a more vivid vindication than was furnished the
superintendent on that day.

In case it should not be convenient to recur to this question of
the settlement of non-English-speaking farmers in the West, let me
go back upon and ahead of my story. In the Saltcoats region of the
Manitoba North Western a farm instructor for British newcomers was
appointed in the person of Tom MacNutt, an old Ontarion who has
been Speaker of the Legislature at Regina, and M.P. and chairman of
the Liberal caucus at Ottawa. During the Sifton immigration regime
Galicians were planted in MacNutt’s constituency of Saltcoats,
where, in 1911, ten thousand non-English-speaking natives of Europe
were living, of whom about half were from Austria-Hungary. He tells
how a Scotchman became a leading champion in the press of the
exclusion of these “undesirable” foreigners.

Among the MacNutt civic functions was that of coroner. He was obliged
to hold an inquest on a Galician boy, accidentally killed. Driving
to the farm with a doctor he asked what arrangements had been made
for an interpreter, and was told that Mrs. Wilson would translate the
evidence.

Mrs. Wilson proved to be a perfect interpreter, and as pretty as
she was efficient. The coroner, seeing the ease with which she took
in all that was said by the witnesses, remarked to himself that she
must have been a school teacher, and wonderfully quick to pick up so
much Galician, while she was teaching a little English. Afterwards
Mrs. Wilson told the coroner that she was herself a Galician, and
introduced him to her husband--the Scotchman who had tried to dam the
Galician tide.

The Canadianization of these people is a question into which one
must not be tempted to stray. Having so largely entered into their
labours we owe it to ourselves, at least, to understand something of
what their contribution to the West, and therefore to the East, has
been. They arrived with very little but the will to work, and the
ability in handi-craftsmanship which is shown in their buildings,
and the excellence of their gardens and farms. The women remained on
the homesteads, tending the cows and hens and doing what they could
in heavier work, while the men earned money in railway construction
gangs, with which to buy cattle and gear. We had them for year after
year, beginning with the line between Dauphin and Swan river. Without
them the settlement of many of the best sections of the West would
have been retarded.

Their names were no doubt written accurately in the payrolls; but
pronunciation of them was not easy to engineers who had received
only a Toronto University education. To save time and prevent
complications each man was given a number. When the Galician
constructionist presented himself at the paymaster’s tent, he was
required to say, besides his number, the name of the boss he worked
under--not always an easy thing, for even our names are not all as
simple as our characters. For all the Canadian Northern life, our
chief tracklayer was Joe Work--truly a prince at his job. His only
blemish was an absent eye. It often happened that when a Galician
came for his pay and was asked for whom he worked he would shut an
eye, and smile.

While we were doing our best to develop the Dauphin country,
during the first year of operation, the line was extended to
Winnipegosis. We had no access to Winnipeg; but this did not prevent
our proprietors from buying the charter for a railway east of
Winnipeg--the Manitoba and South Eastern. Once more, I think, there
was no clear conception of the extensions that were to follow. But
there was the urge to the place whence they go down to the sea in
ships. At the end of our second season--1898--we opened the first
section of the line to Lake Superior--forty-five miles from St.
Boniface to Marchand, in the bush, west of the Lake of the Woods, the
first time table of which, typewritten for economy’s sake, also hangs
in my Toronto office.

At the beginning of my connection with the line, I continued on duty
for a time with the North Western, and made my headquarters once
more at the Portage, though my family remained in Winnipeg. But, at
the end of 1898, with one line west of Lake Manitoba, and another
going east to the Lake of the Woods, I became more or less of a
shuttle--and have been shuttling ever since across a loom of steel,
which never seems to have decided how wide a fabric it would evolve.

As the nineteenth century was dying, cordwood was still a
considerable aid to Winnipeg comfort; and the rather swampy Marchand
region its most convenient source of supply. Our eastern line was
started as a cordwood carrier--and more. We set up a woodyard and
sold scores of trainloads of tamarac, poplar and jack pine--ninety
per cent. of our traffic. Our terminal was at St. Boniface; so that,
literally we were at the gate of good things--this institution that
looked so feeble, and was indeed feeble in body, whatever its daring
was in mind. We were able to place our cars in the Winnipeg C.P.R.
yards. The C.P.R. was kind to us, as the mighty knows how to be to
the meagre.

We had begun with two engines, fifty new freight cars, made by the
Crossens, of Coburg, two second-hand passenger cars, bought from
the Rathbuns, of Deseronto, and an uncertain number of flat cars,
which had been used on construction. We had to buy more second-hand
equipment for the eastward adventure, but, as to flat cars for the
cordwood, our conductor, Percival, had a brave habit of borrowing
such as he could collect, in the C.P.R. yards, without asking
anybody’s leave.

The late Sir William Whyte frequently laughed with us over this
manifestation of Percival’s trust in the C.P.R., which Sir William
used to observe from his window in the old station overlooking the
yards. The Muskeg Limited, as our train became known, had its own
place in Winnipeg transportation, and its name ought not to be
forgotten.

On the whole, then, it can be said that as a company of railway
adventurers, we were the lineal successors of The Farmer Outfit,
which Mackenzie took into the Rockies in 1884. But we had avoided
some mistakes, which others, later, failed to avoid; and we had some
results to show, of which it is pertinent, now to speak.

The mistake avoided was the common one of acting as if fine shows
made fine roads. Mackenzie and Mann had been through a mill which was
addicted to grinding exceeding small. They both came from pioneer
farms. Their railroading experience began with the rough and tumble
of construction camps, and frequent reliance on bannock and sowbelly.
They never supposed that office furniture could offset a lack of
revenue. They started pioneer roads like pioneer roads.

Though their first superintendent had tasted of the London
administration of the Grand Trunk, and had filled a chair in the
head office of the New York Central, he had also seen the prolonged
effects of too much optimism at Portage la Prairie, had lived through
three years of a branch line’s receivership, and had never forgotten
the early days in Scotland, when the office equipment of a frugal
management included chairs made out of barrels, and a couple of
doorknobs functioning as very efficient inkwells.

From time to time one has heard the scoffer in the land and on the
train--sometimes when using a pass--comparing Canadian Northern
infancy with Canadian Pacific maturity and Grand Trunk Pacific
magnificence. It was met silently by the reflection that cutting
your coat according to your cloth is often a financially hygienic
science--it was with us twenty-five years ago.

The result? I have said that the bargain with the Manitoba Government
provided that we need not pay interest on the guaranteed bonds for
three years. But by hewing to the pioneering line, and with men
like Billy Walker, “Joe Beef” and Dad Risteen, we paid our fixed
charges out of revenue from the start. The first year’s earnings were
sixty thousand dollars. The staff, superintendent and all, totalled
thirteen, until it was deemed expedient to touch a less ominous
figure by engaging a boy.

The original office force, the father of the accounting staff of
the Canadian Northern, was Cecil Friend, taken from his post as
secretary to Robert Kerr, western passenger traffic manager of the
C.P.R. He is a man to whom all who have ever worked with him, are
devoted. When we became a transcontinental system he was moved from
Winnipeg to Toronto, and is now at the Montreal headquarters. While
we were colleagues he saw his jurisdiction extend from himself as
sole accountant, to a staff of over four hundred people exclusively
engaged in his department, and receipts grow from sixty thousand to
sixty-seven million dollars a year.

If an example of the constancy with which all hands kept at the job
of keeping down expenses and putting up revenues be appropriate, I
may be forgiven for repeating what happened one summer day. There
was an unavoidable accident, a little north of Plumas--a heifer was
caught by the cow catcher, and her legs broken. The superintendent
happened to be on the train, also a brakeman who had been a butcher.
The heifer was useless to the farmer, except as beef, for which
his claim on the company would make a low allowance. The train was
halted while the brakeman-butcher killed and dressed the heifer, the
passengers surrounding the operation. The carcass and hide were put
in the baggage car; the carcass was sold to the contractor, whose
construction camp was west of Dauphin, the hide was turned into the
ordinary channels of trade; the farmer’s claim was paid in full from
the receipts for meat and hide, and four dollars were carried into
the treasury.

In a way, the turn of the century was the most fateful pass in
Canadian Northern history, for it brought into the obvious the fact
that a new system of railways was coming into existence, as distinct
from several apparently disconnected, and almost aimless branches,
headed for nowhere in particular.

The last year of the nineteenth century carried us to Erwood, seven
miles beyond the Manitoba boundary, into what was still the North
West Territories, and a few miles east of where the line to the Pas
and Hudson Bay branches off. The name, by the way, gives a modified
immortality to E. R. Wood, the Toronto financial and Y.M.C.A. leader.
Theretofore the intention had been to make the road to Prince Albert,
through the Swan River and Carrot River valleys, the main line to
Edmonton. As a concomitant to this expansion it is worth noting that
the implement manufacturers moved their credit frontiers a hundred
miles north about this time.

In 1900, then, the main line turned west from Dauphin through Gilbert
Plains, a marvellously attractive locality for the farmer; and
twenty-six miles, to Grandview, were built. The eastbound line from
Winnipeg had sixty-five miles added to it. In April the eighty-seven
miles that had ventured out of Port Arthur towards Duluth as far
as Gunflint, were bought. The Port Arthur, Duluth and Western, of
official documents, had become known to the public as The Poverty,
Agony, Distress and Want Railway. Its acquisition immediately changed
the character of our eastern section, for it became part of a main
line, which was being extended to meet the original Manitoba and
South Eastern and the Muskeg Limited. A month previously the Canadian
Northern Company came into existence, to control and develop what had
thus far been accomplished.

The C.P.R. monopoly had been broken by the Northern Pacific, but the
new development had halted when the Northern Pacific fell on evil
days, and was still awaiting the rejuvenating advent of J. J. Hill.
Still, lines running to Winnipeg from the boundary, to Portage from
Winnipeg, to Brandon from Morris, in southern Manitoba, a fifty-mile
stretch to Hartney, and a couple of offshoots from Portage, had been
built; altogether 350 miles.

There were rumours that the Northern Pacific would get out of Western
Canada, and the busy tongue of speculation began to predict that
these two fellows, Mackenzie and Mann, who knew how to catch on,
but did not know how to let go, would soon have some new stunt to
show the West. The guess was justified; for the first year of the
twentieth century saw the Northern Pacific retire in favour of the
Canadian Northern, which was fully launched on the high road to an
expansion without parallel in the history of transportation.

The C.P.R. was not alarmed, but it was very observant. There was a
world of difference between being kind to a few branch lines that
were as much feeders of the C.P.R. as if they belonged to it, and
welcoming a challenge to its supremacy of transportation to and from
the head of the Great Lakes.




                            CHAPTER X.

  _Describing meetings of a traffic manager with Sioux Indians and
                       sudden millionaires._


It is a curious truth that the only considerable railway retreat from
Canada by United States interests was made by J. J. Hill, one of the
syndicate which brought the C.P.R. to fruition. He was a pioneer in
Red River navigation which Eastern Canadians, bound for Fort Garry,
used in summer. His association with Donald Smith and George Stephen,
future members of the House of Lords, transformed a little Minnesota
line from the derelict property of Dutch bondholders into the Great
Northern and opened the way to a Canadian farm boy’s control of
American railways without parallel before his time.

Hill retired from the C.P.R. when it was determined to build the
Superior section from Sudbury to Port Arthur, nominally because
he feared the ability of the C.P.R. to support itself through so
much wilderness, but really because it would prevent his own roads
carrying the through traffic between Eastern and Western Canada, from
Sault Ste. Marie to Winnipeg, for which connection the C.P.R. line to
the Soo, through Sudbury, had been built.

The Northern Pacific receivership finally threw that system into
Hill’s control. Grain rates to Duluth from Minnesota and North Dakota
were still higher than they were from Manitoba to Fort William. The
extension of traffic in Canada therefore, would tempt the American
farmer to demand, in his own territory, as favourable a treatment as
his Canadian competitor received on his own soil.

The possibility of the Northern Pacific lines in Manitoba becoming
part of a Canadian system was enlarged by a change of Government in
Winnipeg. With its best brain, and chief driving force transferred to
the Interior Department at Ottawa, the Greenway administration fell
into a slough of complacent reliance for continuing power upon what
it had done to deprive the C.P.R. of its detested monopoly, and to
facilitate settlement of the empty, fertile northwestern quarter of
the province.

The general election at the end of 1899 destroyed the Greenway
Government. On the morning after the polling I happened to meet the
Premier on the train. He was frank enough to attribute the defeat
to excessive cocksureness. Later, he was sent to Ottawa, where he
was a useful, though not a brilliant, commoner alongside his former
attorney-general, Mr. Sifton, who was the federal general for the
Liberal party all through the West, for the elections of 1896, 1900,
1904 and 1908.

Sir John Macdonald’s son, Hugh John, who had joined the Tupper
Government in 1896 as Minister of the Interior, and was practising
law in Winnipeg, became Premier in January, 1900; passed a
prohibition bill, which was disallowed at Ottawa, resigned the
premiership to oppose Sifton in Brandon later in the year, and was
succeeded by R. P. Roblin, who had left Prince Edward county twenty
years before, and was farming near Carman.

In 1900 Mr. Mann, as Sir Donald Mann recalls the episode, while
passing through St. Paul on the way to Toronto, called upon his old
friend Mr. Hill, and incidentally enquired whether the Northern
Pacific would sell its Manitoba lines to the Canadian Northern.
Incidentally, also, Mr. Hill replied with an axiom of railway
practice: “No railway ever sells branch lines to another railway.”
But, he remarked, in further incidental conversation, a railway might
sell branch lines to a Government.

Nothing more was said upon the subject at that time. But next
morning, instead of being in Chicago, Mr. Mann was in Winnipeg,
enquiring of Premier Roblin whether his Government would consider
buying the Northern Pacific lines in Manitoba, and turning them over,
later, to the Canadian Northern.

There was nothing disagreeable to the successors of the victors at
Fort Whyte in the idea of a transaction which promised that the
C.P.R. would at last meet real competition from southern, central and
northern Manitoba to Lake Superior. But the Roblin Government was
young, and required time to think. It was finally decided that if the
lines were procured it must be without an undertaking to deliver
them to any third party.

So it came about that, in the session of 1901 the Manitoba
Legislature passed an Act which transmogrified the Northern Pacific
Manitoba feeders into Canadian Northern lines. In less than five
years from Billy Walker getting his first highball (no connection
with whiskey) from Dad Risteen, chief and sole conductor of the Lake
Manitoba Railway and Canal Company, we were hauling wheat from Swan
River and Grand View, and from Brandon and Hartney, over our own
lines into our own terminals at Winnipeg, and to Emerson, whence the
Northern Pacific carried it to Duluth.

We could not deliver wheat to Port Arthur in 1901, but we did take
part of that year’s crop over our own lines to that port, for on
January 1st, 1902, connection was completed at Bear Pass, a few miles
east of Rainy Lake, and Manitoba had a juncture with Eastern Canada
independent of the C.P.R. If the C.P.R. could have prevented it, Port
Arthur never would have renewed its youth through the advent of the
Canadian Northern. A fight was on, which never sacrificed official
and personal courtesies, and never relaxed the vigilance of the
senior, or restricted the pertinacity of the junior road.

The Canadian Northern, with a thousand miles of track through the
best sections of Manitoba, and with immigration beginning to reach
the West in a volume not approached since the feverish period of the
foolish land boom, had passed almost unobserved by the public, from
a local to an interprovincial proposition as to territory; and to an
international factor as to finance.

Lloyd George, when he was merely the little Welsh attorney and had
been the pro-Boer of the irresistible tongue, and was certain of an
unwelcome inclusion in the next Liberal Cabinet, became accustomed
to hearing his friends discuss the probabilities of his party
leadership, some time. He comes from the Snowdon country, and knows
the ascents to that highest peak in England and Wales, particularly
the ridge near the summit which over there is called the Saddleback,
but on this continent would be named the Razorback. He was not blind
to the possibility of eminence which fascinated his friends, but used
to say to them, “Oh, I don’t know; I haven’t crossed the Saddleback
yet.”

The Canadian Northern Saddleback was the old Dawson route between
Rainy River and the Kaministiquia. To cross it was a feat which was
all the more dramatic for its having to be performed in the London
money market against extraordinary endeavours to make of the feat a
fatality.

What the C.P.R. regarded as a too daring invasion of its fiscal
domain synchronized with an abstraction from its western force of
our first general traffic officer, with duties entirely in the
dual revenue department. Additions to mileage were coming like
triplets and twins, and there was plenty to keep the superintendent
busy in enlarging staff and equipment, and in general management.
Somebody with thorough knowledge of traffic conditions and intimate
experience of the West was required. We found him in George H. Shaw,
assistant general freight agent of the C.P.R. Mr. Shaw and I remained
colleagues for seventeen years, when he took his ease on a retiring
allowance, the just criticism of which is that it might have been
more commensurate with the extreme value of his service.

It has been suggested before in these drafts on memory that things
regarded as being entirely matter-of-course appear in their true
perspective only when the mellowing hand of age rests upon them. You
see men working at their appointed job, and the job seems all there
is about them. But in the West, until yesterday, when you met a man
up to the ears in prosaic detail, you never knew with what romantic
aspect of the pre-historic age he was a living link. My old colleague
is one of these; as any, who are lucky enough to go round the
Mississauga course with him--for he has played himself into a second
coltage--and can start him on a trail of reminiscence, will discover.

George Shaw comes of a political family established in the county
of Lanark during the building of the Rideau Canal, as a military
expedient against possible unpleasant sequelæ to the war of 1812. His
grandfather sat in the Parliament of the province of Upper Canada,
twenty years before Confederation. His father was a keen politician
at Smith’s Falls; and would have had his boys maintain the family
tradition. He tells a political and a railway story about a farmer
at Merrickville, whom we will call McWhilt. Young Shaw was made a
scrutineer for an election. In Lanark every vote was as identifiable
as its caster, and the scrutineer checked off the lists furnished him
as the electors declared their preference--the ballot had not yet
been adopted. Shaw senior came in late in the afternoon, looked over
the polling record, and found that McWhilt had not voted.

“Send for him,” was the order: “He’s promised to vote for Haggart.”

McWhilt was sent for and voted for Gould, the Liberal.

When Shaw, senior, heard the news he was too astounded to say more
than “I’ll make him pay that note to-morrow.”

One snowy night the engineer of a train between Merrickville and
Smith’s Falls thought he bumped something at a crossing; but saw
nothing to make him stop the train. Arrived at Smith’s Falls he
looked around for signs of an accident, and found them. On the
cowcatcher was the box of a bobsleigh, with McWhilt fast asleep in
it, so much repose may conviviality induce.

At eighteen years of age, with the profession of civil engineer
as his objective, George Shaw was appointed to a party that was
to survey Indian reserves in Rupert’s Land. Chicago and St. Paul
furnished the way in; and the steamer International down the Red,
from several miles north of Grand Forks, completed the last stage to
Winnipeg.

Shaw was one of a small proportion of first-class passengers. The
berth was of child-like dimensions. For washroom in the morning he
was directed to the bow, where stood a bowl, stool, with a bucket and
rope alongside. The passenger let down his bucket into the river,
drew all the turbid water his fastidiousness could use, and made the
best of a towel which had once been laundered.

It was a fitting prelude to a Western career which was to have
a great traffic-bearing intimacy with the whole of the empty
sub-continent which the boy surveyor was to see--an era of
transformation unexampled in Britannic history.

The time was eight years after Riel was the President of the
Provisional Government of Rupert’s Land, with a Council and Cabinet,
and the future Lord Strathcona had helped a Convention to draw up a
Bill of Rights for a Government which was heralded by the Fort Garry
paper, the New Nation, with an editorial as redolent of revolution
as anything that these latter times have produced. As a curiosity in
Western political literature it is worth giving:

“The confirmation of Louis Riel as President of the Provisional
Government of Rupert’s Land by the Convention was announced mid
salvos of artillery from the Fort and cheers from the delegates.
The town welcomed the announcement by a grand display of fireworks,
and the general and continued discharge of small arms. The firing
and cheering were prolonged into the night, every one joining in
the general enthusiasm, as the result of the amicable union of all
parties on one common platform. A general amnesty to political
prisoners will shortly be proclaimed, and the soldiers remanded to
their homes to await orders, and everything will be placed on a peace
footing. Vive la Republique!”

This phase of the second republic set up in Manitoba within two years
was not as remote in men’s memories when Shaw reached Winnipeg as
the opening of the Great War is in ours. It was part of a situation
in which the Indian was still an uncertain, indeed a threatening
ingredient. The surveying of the Indian reserves, hundreds of miles
northwest of the Red River, where the posts of a few fur traders
had afforded the only semblance of modern law and government, until
the arrival of Governor Laird at Battleford, in 1876 to inhabit the
quarters built by Hugh Sutherland, was the first long step toward
the agriculture which has made Saskatchewan the greatest wheat
growing province of the British empire. One of the Saskatchewan
farmer organizations owns and operates about three hundred and fifty
elevators at as many shipping points, and has increased the capacity
of its own elevator at Port Arthur--eight hundred miles from the
centre of the province--to seven and a half million bushels, and has
acquired the old Canadian Northern elevator, with a capacity of seven
million bushels more.

Shaw went to Battleford, the infant capital of the North West
Territories, with the party that was in charge of George Simpson.
It travelled by Red River train of tireless carts. The surveyors
and their camping entourage walked beside their vehicles the whole
of the six hundred and fifty miles to Battleford. The route was via
Portage la Prairie, Fort Ellice, where the Qu’Appelle joins the
Assiniboine; the Touchwood Hills, Humboldt (where a Canadian Northern
division point was established within twenty-five years), and
Batoche, where the South Saskatchewan was passed at Gabriel Dumont’s
Crossing.

Every white man in the country could tell of fights and murders
laid to barbarian account. Sixteen years previously fifteen hundred
settlers had been butchered in Minnesota by the Sioux. During the
spring of 1876--two years before--Custer’s force of eleven hundred
men had been wiped out by the Sioux, in Montana. Bands of Sioux had
come into the Canadian territory, and had always said they had no
quarrel with the children of the Great White Mother. Some had settled
near Portage la Prairie, and had behaved very well, on the whole.

When exterminations were so recent, and relatively so near,
travellers into the Great Lone Land didn’t feel as safe as if they
were in Montreal. There had been one rebellion of Metis at Fort
Garry; and Riel and Gabriel Dumont, who ferried the Simpson party
across the river a few miles from the present Rosthern, were yet to
head a second revolt.

A prophet would have been called a fool if, as the surveyors trailed
across the site of the present Rosthern, and the land where the
world’s champion wheat has been grown by Segar Wheeler, he had said
the elevators there would supply the youngest member of the party
with waybills representing over a million bushels of wheat exported
in a single season.

During the surveying of Red Pheasant’s reserve, south of Battleford,
which is now crossed by the Grand Trunk Pacific branch from Naseby
to the old town of Battleford, Shaw was out alone when he saw an
Indian on a hill, and flashes of sunlight proceeding from his hand.
After a while the Indian was joined by thirteen others, mounted,
who brought his horse with them. They were the advance guard of a
remarkable company of Sioux, who were visiting as far north from
their own Montana, to estimate the prospects of continued happiness
in the ancient, unfrontiered hunting grounds. They were not looking
for buffalo, for not many were then left on the Canadian prairies,
partly because of the reckless slaughter that had gone on everywhere,
and partly because Sitting Bull was herding survivors below parallel
forty-nine.

The touring Sioux were of the ten thousand who had destroyed Custer’s
army two years before, and were using their share of the plunder. The
scout’s flash was from a heliograph, and was no doubt informing those
who later came up that a lone Paleface was on the rolling plain. The
couple of hundred Sioux--who presently camped near Red Pheasant--had
United States army wagons, tents, rifles, ammunition--everything that
civilization could usefully furnish for such a country. They were
a much finer race, physically, than the Crees who were about to be
allocated to reserves.

The Sioux visitation had some influence on a situation which carried
much anxiety to Governor Laird, as well as a very real danger to all
the whites in that part of the country, and also to the whole future
of Western Canada.

The half dozen reserves around Battleford having been delimited,
the Simpson party started for Edmonton, by way of Frog Lake and
Fort Pitt--Frog Lake where nine people were massacred during the
second Riel rebellion, still seven years in the future; and Fort
Pitt, which, at that perilous time, was precipitately evacuated by
Inspector Dickens, son of the novelist. At Fort Pitt the party was
ordered back to Battleford. On September 17th a general election had
put Sir John Macdonald again in power, and some wise person in Ottawa
assumed that favour depended on halting a company of chainmen two
thousand miles from the nearest Canadian railway station.

With the rest of the party Shaw spent the winter of 1878-9 at
Battleford. It was a winter free from dull care--cold but gay; simple
in its furnishings, but abounding in social diversions. Reports came
in, though, that it was a winter of want for the Indians, and that
trouble might be looked for in the spring, unless a miracle happened
to their food supply.

From time immemorial the Indian had been accustomed to an abundance
of buffalo meat, limited only by his ability to slaughter it. Sitting
Bull’s herding of the buffalo in Montana brought great privation to
the Crees and Blackfeet. In the spring of 1879 they assembled at
Battleford, demanding assistance from the Canadian Government.

Shaw saw five thousand of these tented seekers after charity
camped around the tiny capital. The barracks were on the narrow
tongue of land just above where the Battle empties into the mighty
Saskatchewan. The town was on the south side of the smaller river--a
poor little collection of buildings which the Indians could have
destroyed with no more trouble than is involved in firing dry wooden
structures anywhere.

Governor Laird, the tall thin Prince Edward Islander, who had come
from Charlottetown journalism into politics, was a negotiator for
the entry of the island into Confederation, became the Minister of
the Interior in the Mackenzie Government, and had received the first
governorship of the North West Territories in the same year that
Laurier was first appointed a Minister of the Crown, was very well
fitted for a post requiring many diplomatic qualities.

Next to his extreme height his most memorable physical characteristic
was his long hair; the fashion of which he had abbreviated long
before his last special tour of the West, when he was a venerable and
honoured sharer in the celebration of the creation of the provinces
of Alberta and Saskatchewan at the beginning of September, 1905.

The feeding of five thousand Indians was an imperative duty of
Governor Laird as long as there was anything to feed them with. He
had no authority to commandeer provisions from the Hudson’s Bay
Company, on Indian account. But the Company had heavy stores of
pemmican in their warehouse, and Laird drew upon them, while he
was trying to secure the necessary powers from Ottawa. The Indians
demanded treaty guarantees against their extinction by starvation.

Their attitude was discomforting. They knew what had been done to
Custer only three years before. They had seen, and knew the source of
the rich equipment of the Sioux, who had visited them the previous
summer. For many years there had been an obviously increasing threat
of the submergence of their own autonomy and self-respect by white
men whose far-distant friends, they had been told, drove iron horses
that breathed out fire and smoke. The reserves recently staked out
were too suggestive of imprisonment. Now, it was mooted, the time
had come to put an end to this threat. If the young braves had been
uncontrolled there might easily have been a repetition of the Custer
massacre, with little chance of serious resistance from the handful
of whites planted upon the Battle and the Saskatchewan.

As part of the inauguration of government in the Territories a
telegraph wire had been strung from Fort Garry to Prince Albert, via
Qu’Appelle and Humboldt, and to Edmonton, via Battleford. Part of the
line the passengers on the Canadian Northern west of Humboldt can
still see from the train for many miles. The service was liable to
interruption without notice. On the fringe of the wooded country a
moose might rub down a slender poplar pole, and ground the wire. The
wind in a naked country might do a similar disfavour to civilization.
Repair gangs were neither numerous nor swift of movement. It was
truly a Canadian National Telegraph, but its appropriate name was the
Canadian Now and Then.

Laird wired to Ottawa for special authority to deal with the whole
situation as he deemed best. For many days, no answer came to
repeated requests to the Department. At last he appealed direct to
Sir John Macdonald, the Prime Minister. Sir John’s conviviality was
for long a feature of the political landscape. Governor Laird, it was
believed, caught a glimpse of it in the telegram that eventually did
arrive from Ottawa: It said. “Get your hair cut.” Not another word
was received from the outside world for three weeks, thanks to one of
the interruptions of transmission already mentioned.

Before the end of the 1879 season Shaw found that sleeping on the
ground filled him with rheumatism; and he returned home convinced
that civil engineering was not his mission in life. But he had seen
the West in what has since become its most glamorous guise; and,
having imbibed the waters of the Saskatchewan, he was to fulfil the
saying that those who have once so tasted are fated to return to
the scene of so much fortune. You would never think that the dapper
foremaster who skips around his eighteen holes on the Mississauga
course had been through the peril of annihilation by scalping knife
and tomahawk with Governor Laird forty-five years ago; but it is the
truth--and one of the truths that very often indeed, are stranger
than fiction.

Once more in Montreal, Shaw studied law; but law was ever a
dry-as-dust affair; and by 1880 he accepted advice to seek a
railway career, via the unfailing portal of Pitman’s shorthand. The
practitioner who so advised him moved to Milwaukee, and in 1881 sent
word that a job was open in the offices of the Chicago, Milwaukee and
St. Paul Railway, that city. Shaw got his job and its inducement to
become an American citizen.

In the following summer--1882--not liking Milwaukee too well, he saw
the former general manager of the road in the office--Van Horne, who
had gone to Winnipeg the previous winter to build and run the C.P.R.
He asked Van Horne about prospects of a job in the Winnipeg office.

“Sure,” said Van Horne; “here’s a pass from the border into
Winnipeg”--and he wrote one in pencil.

Once more Shaw was headed for the Canadian prairies, and did not
leave them for Toronto and Mississauga until the Canadian Northern
had become a transcontinental system. He was with us from the taking
over of the Manitoba Northern Pacific by the Canadian Northern, till
the taking over of the Canadian Northern by the Canadian Government.
The changes he shared in are those which should furnish the real
substance of this story. Others which he closely observed were
peculiar to his personal association with the C.P.R. One of two
which must be set down, whatever else is left out, relegates the
ballad of the Miller of the Dee to the dreary commonplaces.

Thirty years ago the Ogilvie Milling Company was the big business in
grain buying and flour making in the West. Its many elevators along
the C.P.R. and the Manitoba North Western, were as prominent as the
Saskatchewan farmers’ own grain houses are to-day. The Company’s
accountant was Fred Thompson who came from Montreal to Winnipeg in
the same year that Shaw returned from Montreal to Winnipeg. He had
been in the Exchange Bank, and in six years rose to the Ogilvie’s
managership.

The ten years that followed saw various mutations in the milling
business that have a romance of their own. As a whole, the country
was poor enough, but where so many natural resources are being
developed over so much of a continent, great enterprises will grow,
here and there, men will become rich, and financiers will evolve from
clerks and lumberjacks. Within the C.P.R. sphere of influence, its
superintendent of telegraphs, Charles Hosmer, developed from a key
tapper to a capitalist, first on the side, and then all the way. His
responsibilities have included the Presidency of the Ogilvie Flour
Mills Co., millers to the King.

In 1898, the president, William Ogilvie, died. One very cold day,
during the winter ensuing, George Shaw was in Montreal on C.P.R.
business. Returning to the Windsor he was spoken to by Fred Thompson,
who was more obviously agitated than managing millers of eminent
sobriety and unimpeachable Anglican integrity are wont to be.

[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM VAN HORNE

“A dynamo, run by dynamite”

  (P. 40)]

[Illustration: E. W. BEATTY

“Whom his countrymen will have abundant cause to honour”

  (P. 306)]

“Come up to my room,” said Thompson, “I want to tell you something.”

Shaw pleaded a dinner engagement, but his old friend would not be
denied. “Come up, anyway,” he pleaded, “I won’t keep you long.”

Arrived in the room, Thompson put off his coat, threw himself on the
bed and lay there in much distress.

“Don’t talk for a little while,” he begged. Shaw read the paper for a
quarter of an hour, and then rose. Thompson begged for more time, and
again Shaw tried to read the news, and to divine Thompson’s malady.

At last Thompson said:

“Shaw, I’ve made a million dollars to-day, and I can’t get over it.”

Shaw thought the malady needed an alienist, and expressed his
disbelief.

“Oh, yes, I have,” Thompson persisted. “I’ve bought the Ogilvie
Milling Company, and the deal’s worth a million dollars to me.” He
explained how Hosmer and the Allans had found the money; and the
direction of the Merchants’ Bank was involved in the transaction.
The agitation superinduced by an avalanche of wealth subsided
in due course; and Fred Thompson developed a remarkably cool
imperturbability in presence of oodles of cash.

Next evening Shaw was again in the Windsor rotunda when whom should
he see but George Lane, the famous rancher of Calgary. George Lane
is a character in candour as well as a Croesus in cattle. The
embodiment of geniality, he doesn’t expect the milk of human kindness
to flow through or about a business transaction. He says:

“If after chewing the rag for a day or two I make a deal, and the
other fellow says ‘Come and have a drink,’ I say to myself ‘George,
you’re beat.’ If he offers me a second drink, I say, ‘George, you’re
beat to death’.”

Shaw was surprised to see George Lane at Montreal in midwinter.

“What are you doing so far from home?” he asked the great cattle man.
“I thought you’d be preventing your steers from freezing to death on
the ranges.”

“I’ve been down to Quebec,” Lane replied.

“Quebec? But there are no cattle shipments at this time of year to
take you to Quebec.”

“It’s been about cattle all the same,” said Lane. “Come up to my
room. I’ve got to tell somebody something or bust, and it won’t do to
tell it here, with so many people around. Come on up, quick.”

George Lane, cattleman, didn’t throw himself on the bed, but quickly
announced,

“I’ve made half a million dollars to-day.”

Remembering the previous evening Shaw did not suppose this was a case
for an alienist, and opened his ears for the facts.

“I’ve bought the Allans’ ranch in the Foothills,” said Lane. “They
were in such a hurry to sell that they don’t know to a few thousand
how many head are on the property, but I do. The outfit’s worth half
a million more than they asked me for it. I only just found out why
they were so darned anxious to sell. They’ve gone into the Merchants’
Bank and the Ogilvie Milling Company, and want ready money. I don’t
carry half a million in my jeans, but I know where to get it. I had
to tell somebody the d---- news, and you’re the first friend I saw in
the hotel.”

One all-in-the-day episode from Shaw, and we must leave him to his
golf. In the spring of 1883 he was sent to Port Arthur to receive
the first steamer load of passengers that was to enter Winnipeg
direct from an Ontario port. The boat was the City of Owen Sound,
from Owen Sound, which the C.P.R. had made its Lake Huron terminus,
failing to arrange for Collingwood. There was practically no landing
accommodation--the hour for porters on Thunder Bay had not yet
struck. Three hundred and fifty passengers disembarked and their
baggage was handled by the C.P.R. officers, of whom Shaw was one.
Among them was a young engineer who, from having been a chainman
on the Credit Valley line was on the way to a job on the Superior
section of the C.P.R. His name was MacLeod. He was to become chief
engineer and general manager of the Canadian Northern Railway, and
build more miles of railway in the prairie country than any other
man.




                            CHAPTER XI.

  _Indicating several considerations which made Toronto the centre of
                     a Transcontinental system._


A rather cynical friend used to say his title to respectability was
that he was permitted to live in Toronto. For twenty-one years I
have been enabled to read that title clear. In truth, Toronto is
a goodly city, which doesn’t think of itself more highly than it
ought to think, although it has a contrariwise repute. Occasionally
one is inclined to observe that it might have thought a little more
generously of some who have served it better than has always been
recognized--Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, for examples.

When the movement of Canadian National officials to Montreal began,
early in 1923, there were about twenty-five hundred employees of the
system in Toronto. At say, an average of two dependents, that means
a population of seven thousand five hundred; and with their support
of butchers, and bakers, grocers and tailors, candlestick makers,
and show-ticket takers, say fifteen hundred more. Half of Toronto’s
manufacturing output goes to the West. In the prairie country, at
least, it can fairly be said that one-fourth of the development of
this century has been directly due to the building of the Canadian
Northern. There was no particular reason why a series of railways
west of Port Arthur should have their head office in Toronto--I mean
from the point of view of efficient administration--except that
Mr. Mackenzie lived here, and, as President of the Toronto Railway
Company, had spent much of his business activity with the city as his
personal headquarters.

Mr. Mann lived in Montreal. His partnership, with the late James
Ross, the present Sir Herbert Holt, and Mr. Mackenzie, entailed the
carrying of an office in Montreal. The head office of Mackenzie and
Mann was opened in Toronto in 1899--three years after the railway
to Dauphin, (and to two oceans) was begun. When the Mackenzie-Mann
partnership was incorporated, later, it became possible for the two
principals to become officers of the railway companies, because they
were no longer construction contractors personally--one of those
legal situations upon which, according to temperament, it may be
declared that the law is an ass, or a Solomon.

At that time the Toronto Railway Company’s building at the corner
of King and Church streets was not all required for street railway
purposes; and the railway contractors rented three back rooms on the
top floor, the architectural firm of Pearson and Darling having the
front offices.

Construction was going on in the West, where the accountant, P. C.
Andrews, was on the ground all summer. His winter quarters were
in Toronto, where he produced his balance sheets from the field
records. In 1899, with the move to Toronto, and with work proceeding
rapidly east and west of Winnipeg, a young fellow was brought in to
take charge of the Mackenzie and Mann accounts. He so continued,
with increasing responsibilities during all the strenuous period of
Canadian Northern expansion. For a combination of natural capacity in
accounting, and experience in the finance of modern Canadian railway
construction, I do not think his equal exists. When the Canadian
National name superseded the Canadian Northern, A. J. Mitchell was
appointed vice-president in charge of finance and accounts, and
remained as such until he retired with the president.

After a year the whole top floor of the Toronto Railway Building was
occupied by the railway constructors. To desk room here I came at
the end of 1902, when it was decided that the Canadian Northern head
office must be in Toronto and that somebody familiar with all the
details of the operation of completed lines should carry a general
responsibility. The title of superintendent was changed to that of
third vice-president; and so continued for nearly sixteen years.

In this reference to an office convenience some hyper-critic may
discover solid confirmation of the suspicion which has occasionally
been formed and fanned in sections of the press which often impugn
motives, and seldom examine aspersions. The Canadian Northern, it has
been professed, was created as the milch cow for a couple of railway
contractors, was forced into an excessive flow of nourishment, and
was turned over to the people of Canada after having been drained
into an almost fatal exhaustion. When we come to discuss some
financial aspects of the railway situation in Canada, this matter may
be recurred to. Meantime, it is enough to say that there’s only a
mare’s nest in it.

The Canadian Northern did not long remain with desk accommodation
on a friendly floor. Negotiations were concluding for the purchase
of the building at the corner of King and Toronto streets. Early
in 1903, as renters from the Rice Lewis estate, we began to take
possession--a process that continued without cessation for all but
twenty years. Always somebody was moving. Half the time it was a
shift for a whole department, because another department as well as
itself required more room.

At the beginning, for instance, the legal department--but there was
no legal department of the railway in the generally accepted sense.
There was, of course, a great deal of legal business, much of it
local in scope, and an increasing amount that was fundamental to
the railway’s growth. Such questions as the acquisition of right of
way in the West and the adjustment of damage claims were handled
by our solicitors in Winnipeg. But important matters like the
agreements covering acquisition of charter rights and the physical
assets of existing companies, and the creation of new joint stock
entities--when we came to require an express company of our own, for
example--were dealt with in Toronto, first by Mr. Z. A. Lash alone,
and later by a department of which he was the head.

Mr. Lash was a great general counsel. He had no Canadian superior,
perhaps no equal, in drafting legal documents. So exquisite was his
appreciation of word values that, though others might embody an
intention in a series of paragraphs apparently beyond criticism, his
mastery of precision and shade was such that he could clothe it in
language which had the exactitude of a multiplication table and the
clarity of a mirror. His knowledge of the law--especially company
law--was wide and profound, as became Edward Blake’s Deputy Minister
of Justice in the eighteen-seventies. To rare professional acumen was
allied a high individual sense of honour, and a capacity for finance
which very fittingly made him vice-president of the Canadian Bank of
Commerce.

When the Canadian Northern legal work became altogether beyond the
physical capacity of one general counsel, in 1904, there was brought
to Toronto from the Department of Railways and Canals at Ottawa, as
general solicitor, Mr. Gerard N. Ruel, now vice-president and general
counsel of the Canadian National Railways. To work with Mr. Ruel is
to enjoy an uncommon experience. Everything that is meant by the
phrase “counsel learned in the law” applies to him, as it does to
many another practitioner of the baffling science. But no gentleman
of the robe of my acquaintance is Mr. Ruel’s peer in an uncanny
capacity for absorbing multitudes of facts about territory he has
never seen, and in a weird facility as a reader of blue prints. He
absorbs topography from maps and plans as a sponge absorbs water. A
blue print upside down is instantly as plain to him as it is to other
skilled observers who have carefully studied it right side up.

For several years Mr. Lash and Mr. Ruel had rooms near to the
President and Vice-president. About 1908 they required more space
and had to move to the corner of Toronto and Court Streets, where,
indeed, several departments were located. They occupied about half a
floor, and gradually encroached on the space of smaller departments
which had to find lodgment elsewhere.

Few people have any idea of the magnitude and complication of the
legal business of a railway, even when it has settled down into a
staid, unexpanding enterprise, from the territorial side of things.
But where, almost in a night, an enterprise develops the faculties
of a steel magnet operated by an electric crane, and draws all
sorts of material to it, lawyers become a very hard-worked section
of the organization. A farmer whose land is required for right of
way--everybody, in fact, to whom the railway stands in the attitude
of a purchaser of an indispensable commodity, at once gets into big
business. The moral and intellectual damages involved in cutting
a corner off a ten-acre field are simply incalculable; and only
a well-fortified legal mind can begin to reduce them to humane
proportions.

Possibly the most striking features, from a documentary point of
view, of the earlier, and, indeed, the later, years of the Canadian
Northern domiciliation at Toronto were the acquisition of charters,
and the reception of requests for new railways in every Canadian
province except Prince Edward Island. Perhaps, instead of likening
the expanding process of the Canadian Northern to a magnet attracting
filings, it is better to say that it was very like what movie fans
frequently see when they are about to observe some event which has
recently taken place in a distant part of the world. The feature is
heralded by the appearance of what looks like several sticks thrown
into the air--all, seemingly, without direction or intention, but
presently falling into an ordered announcement which he who sits may
read. That is how the Canadian Northern transcontinental system took
shape. From a series of disconnected and apparently unconnectable
projections of steel, hanging in suspense, a continuous track was
formed, trains ran upon it, and all the organs of a great commerce
began to function.

We have seen how the Davis firm had the charter for the Lake Manitoba
Railway and Canal Company--and did not finance it. The Manitoba South
Eastern was a project that seemed still-born. We connected with Lake
Superior by buying the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western--the Poverty,
Agony, Distress and Want, as you may remember.

Eastern connection with the prairies was effected on the legs of the
Ontario and Rainy River Railway, the original authority for which
was held by Port Arthur men like D. F. Burk and Jim Conmee, the
latter of whom became well known as far east as Toronto through his
membership of the Legislature, and the Conmee Act.

There were two heralds of what was to happen in the eastern section
of Ontario and in the farther West, which the uninformed onlooker
supposed were peculiar phenomena indeed--the disordered offspring
of some misguided promoter with an itch to lay rails which began
Nowhere, and ended in a less important place. Nobody now hears of
the James Bay Railway--I mean the railway of that designation, and
not a railway to James Bay. Not so many years ago, though, flat cars
bearing the name were seen in the Don Valley. Another railway whose
name has gone the way of forgetfulness was the Edmonton, Yukon and
Pacific. Not long since, a facetious writer, having the fact though
not the name of this enterprise in his mind, described it as the
Edmonton, Yukon and Aurora Borealis.

It was customary when railway charters were legislated into existence
to provide that construction must start within two years, or the
charter would lapse. Once construction began, it was comparatively
easy to induce Parliament to prolong the charter’s life, however fine
the thread on which it seemed to hang. Toronto men obtained a charter
for a railway to James Bay, and hoped to build it. Among their assets
was a secretary, W. H. Moore, whose accomplishments included an
assistant editorship of the Monetary Times, a lectureship at Toronto
University, and a call to the Ontario bar. The steel approach to
the Bay lagged in view of the Ontario Government’s undertaking of
the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, the construction of
which produced the discovery of the Cobalt silver mines. The James
Bay charter was acquired by Mackenzie and Mann. Mr. Moore moved with
it, and in 1904 became secretary of the Canadian Northern, and so
remained till the great change.

To sustain the charter, the James Bay Railway was begun on a
four-mile line from the Grand Trunk, southeast of Parry Sound,
into that town. Parry Sound was off the rails of the old Canada
Atlantic, which ends at Depot Harbour. The four miles of the James
Bay line gave the town its first railway connection with the world.
Regular service was maintained, with the engineer, Jack Findlay,
as practically the general manager, passenger and freight traffic
agent, superintendent of operation, and repairer-in-chief of the
whole system. Jack was a great success; and I have sometimes thought
that, if he had been on administrative duty in his youth, when his
scholastic education could have been somewhat improved, he would have
risen high in the service.

All the time Jack was running the James Bay Railway no problems in
motive power reached the head office. He kept his engine in wonderful
shape, looked after whatever repairs became necessary, and was as
cheerful as Mark Tapley. But there came a day when the Canadian
Northern Ontario swallowed the James Bay, and connected Parry Sound
with Toronto, at James Bay Junction. Then Jack must have a round
house and his faithful engine must be repaired by other hands. From
being an all-round genius he became a trade unionist, in spirit and
in truth. Those who were associated with him when he kept time on a
four-mile system always think of him with grateful joy; and if ever
there is a reunion, on any plane, of the pioneers of the Canadian
National System, Jack must be there, of indefeasible right.

The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific, was reminiscent of the Klondyke
rush; and a steel record of the seeming diversion of Horace
Greeley’s gospel which appeared at first to be the motive of the
Mackenzie-Mann ventures into railway-owning company. “Go north,”
was the impulse of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal venture. “Go
north” was the urge of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific. There is
something peculiarly fateful about this pull to the Aurora. From one
of the eminent journalists whom we conveyed through the West, it
produced a fascinating discourse on “To the Pole by Rail”. It has
made Stefansson famous. Through its possession of him it has brought
Wrangel Island into the dreams of an aerial and submarine route that
will shorten travelling between London and Tokio by seven thousand
miles. But operating surpluses haven’t yet been common to farmost
northern railway transportation. The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific was
like the James Bay--it held territory, and it produced a short line
that gave a great city its first railway station.

The Calgary and Edmonton on which Mackenzie and Mann were
contractors, ended at Strathcona, across the noble valley of the
Saskatchewan from Edmonton, then almost hidden among the poplar
groves of the northern bank. To build a steel bridge across the
valley was a very expensive job. Indeed, at that time to go right
into Edmonton would not add enough to the revenue derivable from
Edmonton to pay interest on the cost. Competition was a dozen years,
and hundreds of miles away.

To hold the E.Y. and P. charter, then, our people built a line eight
miles long, from Strathcona to Edmonton, going down a long ravine,
crossing the river by a team-and-train bridge, which was in large
part a public work, climbing into Edmonton, past the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s Fort and the site of the future Parliament Buildings, and
getting into the straggling town through lands that were very much of
a backyard, but which have developed into property that is now worth
millions of dollars to the Canadian people.

The operating situation here was somewhat similar to what obtained
at Parry Sound. The engineer was Entwistle, of whose connection
with administrative work three things are worthy of note, because
they are not likely to be repeated. Some time after the E.Y. and
P. was superseded by the Canadian Northern’s arrival from the
east, at the end of 1905, Entwistle was made superintendent.
But very soon he asked to be allowed to resume his place at the
throttle--an illustration of the frequent phenomenon of a refusal
of responsibility, which every executive officer of any large
enterprise has observed with considerable disappointment. It is
surprising how many men decline higher jobs with higher pay, entirely
because they are short of faith in their own ability to master
unfamiliar affairs. We shall revert to this timidity towards ambition.

A town was named after Entwistle, on the Canadian Northern, west of
Edmonton. All the coal for his engine on the E.Y. and P. was dug by
the section man from the bank within a few feet of the track on the
Edmonton side of the river.

Somewhere is a chart showing the charters that went into the Canadian
Northern Railways. It looks like an elaborated genealogical tree
of the kings of England, beginning with the Heptarchy. During my
second year in Toronto the purchases were made which afforded those
who could read the signs of the times an indication that a second
Canadian transcontinental railway was taking shape, and that oceanic
strategy had already become a daily factor in the scheme. This was
before the Grand Trunk Pacific project was publicly launched.

Quebec has had its share of railway enterprises which did not pan
out as their promoters expected, but which have played a vital part
in the economic development of the province. The most remarkable of
the local pioneering railways was the Quebec and Lake St. John. It
was built as a colonization road to Lake St. John--the Chapdelaine
country, as it may yet come to be called. The early financial
troubles of this road look romantic through hindsight; but they were
grievous to be borne when they occurred. For instance, there were
times when the train could not leave the station at Quebec until the
general manager had borrowed enough money from the passengers to buy
coal for the locomotive.

The people who promoted this railway also began the Great Northern
of Canada, to connect Quebec with Montreal as its first considerable
achievement. It left the Lake St. John line at Riviere à Pierre,
fifty-seven miles from Quebec, and made for Montreal along the edge
of the Laurentian mountains by way of Grand Mere and Shawinigan,
where vast paper and power developments have since taken place.

The Great Northern came into the market in 1904, along with its right
to enter the east end of Montreal from Joliette, on the charter of
the Chateauguay Northern. The Canadian Northern obtained it, with
terminals at Quebec harbour, including a million-bushel elevator,
since burned to the ground. Of this railway, re-named the Canadian
Northern Quebec, I became president. Alone, it was a lame duck. As a
connecting link it struck a promissory note.

Railroading in Quebec under these conditions was a very different
business from working in the audit department of the Grand Trunk
twenty years before. Then, of course, one was occupied with routine,
which mainly concerned territory west of Montreal. The Canadian
Northern Quebec was Quebec through and through. Railway conduct in
the French province has several interesting distinctions.

Whenever a piece of new line was to be opened the occasion was
utilized for a celebration in which all varieties of public men
participated.

The Quebec and Lake St. John was so essentially a colonization road
that everybody took an interest in it and expected to take passes
out of it. I am anticipating my story a little; but not spoiling its
propriety, by mentioning the opening of a short branch to La Tuque,
on the St. Maurice river, where the National Transcontinental crosses
that wonderful stream and turns westward. The Canadian Northern
had recently acquired control of the road, and I was president of
it also. As the branch had been undertaken, and all but completed
before our regime, it seemed well for me to be represented at the
inauguration by a deputy. A special train went up from Quebec.
Cabinet ministers, judges, senators, M.P.P.’s, bankers, merchants
were there--every section of the community sent delegates. At La
Tuque there was a dinner with speeches in a frigid freight shed, and
everybody returned home feeling he had contributed something to a
new chapter of the province’s industrial history. The branch hasn’t
fulfilled expectations--indeed, it has not been operated for several
years, but it had its uses.

That inaugural was in 1907. By that time the opening of a branch
line in the West had become so much a matter of course that we
thought nothing more of a new service as a historical event than we
did of issuing a temporary time card until the next revision of the
established schedules.

Allied with this Quebec form of public recognition of railway
expansion were the more distinctly political aspects of the
development. For nearly thirty years the Intercolonial had traversed
the province on the southern side of the St. Lawrence. Whatever else
might not be in politics the Intercolonial most certainly was. The
railway was as much a part of every candidate’s hopes and fears as
the ballot box itself. It was as close to every member’s duty, if
he supported the Government, as the orders of the day. A share of
dominion over it was one of the sustaining longings of hope deferred
in the heart of every opposition M.P. whose constituency it touched.

For two generations, as statisticians reckon time, and for
five generations as politicians take the count, the first
Government-owned, Government-operated railway in Canada was regarded,
in the territory it traversed, more as a rich and benevolent relative
than as a servant who gave service only for money received. One
feature of the “rich relative” notion of public-owned railways should
be mentioned tenderly. It was a legacy from the days when barter
was most common as a form of disposing of farm products, and eggs
and butter were traded at the general store at values that were
amazingly low, for groceries and dry goods, the costs of which were
extraordinarily high. Real money was scarce indeed, everywhere, and a
job that brought pay in cash was a rare and coveted beneficence. The
best job of all was a post with the Government. All over the country
there was severe competition for country postmasterships, the revenue
from which would nowadays buy but small quantities of gasoline.
Wherever the Government railway ran, a job as a section hand became a
lawful prize of electioneering war.

It is useless to mourn bitterly over these conditions which are an
inheritance not only from the economic construction of Canada, but
also from the Government departments of the Old Lands--Britain as
well as France. Men bought civil appointments as they bought the
right to appoint their own friends to the livings that rewarded the
cure of souls. When I was an office boy in Glasgow the system of
purchase in the British army was still operating. It cost twenty-two
hundred dollars to get a cadetship and sixty-three hundred dollars to
become a lieutenant-colonel. Every intermediate step in promotion was
paid for commensurately with the rank acquired.

The abolition of purchase in the British army was only achieved
after long and bitter opposition. In the younger days of those of us
who are still on the humorous side of seventy, the idea that there
must be perquisites attached to all sorts of offices was apparently
as invincible as the Rock of Gibraltar. The cook had the fat, the
fur and the feathers from everything that came into the squire’s
kitchen. The official of the College of Heralds and the royal clerk
who records the outpourings of the fountain of honour receive their
fees. The notion that it isn’t necessary to work very hard at a
Government job wasn’t born on this continent. It was expressed in the
sinecure that was waiting for a British Prime Minister’s son, and in
the ease with which the clerk in Whitehall could begin his work a
little after ten, and lay down his quill a little before four.

We are getting away from that quality of public service, though
it isn’t always easy to make progress along a straight and thorny
path--and it is harder to do it in some parts of Canada than in
others. With a country so vast, and a population so diverse, it is
impossible that the sectional benefit will always be subordinated
to the advantage of the whole. The railway builder, as well as
the Government, has to recognize, and at times, to capitulate to
something which he does not want in order to be able to get something
he really needs. The building of the transcontinental Canadian
Northern, as a privately directed enterprise had its share of these
difficulties. So did the undertaking of a transcontinental system by
the Canadian Government shortly after the Canadian Northern entered
Eastern Canada as the second stage of its evolution from a prairie
carrier to a nationwide system.

There was a great difference between the methods followed by the
Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific transcontinentals.
Fundamentally, the Canadian Northern was a wheat-country road,
designed to cover the most productive regions, and to be assured
of the essential business which would carry, later, the more
costly construction in the more sparsely populated, less productive
territory. The other line was an across-continent project from the
beginning, without any initial development of traffic whatever on
the prairies. Its cost across the northern wilderness to the Western
plains was evidently only guessed before the scheme was submitted
to Parliament--at least the public never saw the detailed reports
of engineers who had gone over the ground and estimated the cost
per mile. The expenditure on original construction was out of all
proportion to the earnings, because the road was built on the scale
of a trunk main line, when it could only expect to secure revenue
from a pioneering service.

There is great disappointment in old Quebec, to this day, because the
National Transcontinental is not bringing to the ancient port the
business that was predicted for it. It is true that the railway has
opened up country in northern Quebec, through the energy and skill of
the French-Canadian pioneer to whom the axe is as much the implement
of agriculture as the plough. But the Western wheat is not coming to
the St. Lawrence by way of La Tuque; and the good people of the city
think it ought to be pouring in.

The conditions are impossible for such a consummation and bliss.
Wheat moves from the prairies down to the seaboard in accordance
with commercial laws of gravitation which express themselves in the
relative terms at which cargoes can be shipped from the busiest ports
in America, to the biggest ports in Europe. Merely because a railway
has been built across Northern Quebec to Quebec harbour, which is
closed half the year, the law of commercial gravitation will not be
reversed.

But the railway remains a monument to a demand that was based more on
the ambitions of a section of Canada than on the true railway factors
of a situation that became more political than economic. The cost
of construction finally worked out at a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a mile--twice as much as the Canadian Northern spent to build
through the mountains from the Yellowhead to Vancouver, with very
much more steel bridge work, and very much less wooden trestle than
went into the railway between Quebec and Transcona.

What the $150,000 per mile meant, in addition to the purely
colonization aspects of the road, can be partially judged from a
glance at the map. The National Transcontinental entered a wilderness
north of New York, and didn’t leave the wilderness until it was north
of Omaha, in Nebraska. In that wilderness, at that time there was not
an existing community of twenty white people.

Of course, the times were surcharged with the will to build. The
Canadian people, seeing immigration pouring in at a rate of about
a thousand people a day, wanted railways and more railways; and
demanded them from wherever they seemed likely to come.

To one phase of this extraordinary impulse of the first few years of
this century, I think attention has been insufficiently directed.
The immense project which was to do for the Laurier fame what the
C.P.R. did for the immortality of Sir John Macdonald was put through
Parliament in 1904, and a general election endorsed it. Construction
began in 1905, with financial and other prestige behind it, such as
no other Canadian venture had.

The Grand Trunk Pacific was widely held to have relegated to a
negligible situation the railway development that depended on the
continuing initiative of two men. But when finally, in the midst of
a world war, both enterprises perforce had to come under Government
direction, and, as an immediate consequence, the receivership of the
G.T.P. had brought the old Grand Trunk into the same control, and all
the men who were principally concerned in the activities of the whole
period had stepped out, the mileage of the Canadian Northern railways
exceeded the combined mileage of the National Transcontinental,
the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Grand Trunk in Canada. It is also
apparent that if the National Transcontinental and the Grand Trunk
Pacific ever justify the capital cost, it will be because of their
union with the prairie lines of the Canadian Northern.

I shall recur to this subject, with which is associated the further
matter of record--that, even at the time when the Government of
Canada so dramatically and mightily entered the Western railway
field, it was on the Canadian Northern that popular demand after
demand was made for transportation, as the salvation of settlement.

Happily, the appeal for railways and more railways did not strike
the third vice-president as directly or as insistently as it did the
president and vice-president. I was mainly kept busy in furnishing
clothes and tools for the infant that was all legs and arms. It
was never satisfied with its outfit; but, as far as the West was
concerned, it never failed to earn the cost of its keep, and more.

The facts about the guarantee of bonds of the original line showed
that, so far from Mackenzie and Mann being the first importuners for
railway construction under Government guarantees, the pressure came
from another direction. The West was filling up. Farmers were going
into districts long distances from railways. In 1905, the provinces
of Saskatchewan and Alberta emerged from the North West Territories,
with two brand new Governments, living on the electoral favour of
people, most of whom were new to the West, were boundlessly confident
of an immediately prosperous future, and were as clamorous for
railways as famished lions are for flesh.

In more than one case the first intimation that reached us of an
obligation to construct a branch line was the news that a Legislature
had passed an Act chartering a railway through a given area, and
guaranteeing the bonds.

This sort of demand was not confined to the West. Our entry into
Quebec was followed by a constructive appearance in Nova Scotia.
Coal measures having been acquired on the west coast of Cape Breton
Island, the town of Inverness sprang into existence; and to bring
the coal conveniently to shipping a sixty-seven mile railway to Port
Hastings on the Strait of Canso was built. The Murray Government,
wanting a line from Halifax to Yarmouth along the marvellously
indented South Shore, raised the seven million dollars necessary to
build it. Our people acquired the fifty miles of existing line from
Yarmouth to Barrington; the Halifax and South Western was built to
it; and the whole is part of the Canadian National system to-day.

What Nova Scotia obtains, New Brunswick covets. New Brunswick and
Prince Edward Island were the only eastern provinces that we were
not working in within ten years of the founding of Dauphin in a
wheat field. That we stayed out of New Brunswick wasn’t the fault
of influential powers centering in Fredericton. For six weeks one
deputation, importuning for railway construction, hovered about the
Toronto office.

It is charged that the railway building in Canada of the first
fourteen years of this century was too prodigal. On the whole,
it was, though responsibility for it should be discriminatingly
allocated. But in view of what was asked for, and what was acceded
to, I think Mackenzie and Mann were entitled to adapt their speech to
Clive’s remark when he was cross-examined to show that he had unduly
enriched himself in India. As he thought of the treasures he might
have taken and didn’t, he said: “By heaven, Mr. Chairman, at this
moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”




                            CHAPTER XII.

  _Offering explanations why luxurious ease does not distinguish
                      living on a private car._


This is the apologia of the private car, as to which there is
probably more misapprehension in the public mind than about any other
aid to railway business. The notion is abroad that there is as much
relation between the private car and hard work as there was between
the melodies and the briefs of a certain eminent lawyer, addicted
to drops in aitches, of whom a competitor is said to have remarked:
“’Ere ’e comes, the ’oly ’umbug, ’ummin’ an ’ym; ’ow I ’ate ’im”.

There are private cars and private cars. Most of them should not be
called by that name. Very few which are properly so designated belong
to railwaymen.

One chilly evening, just after sundown, a Saskatchewan farmer was
crossing, with his yoke of oxen, a siding where stood a car, well
lighted and blinds undrawn. He saw a short-bearded, middle-aged man
sitting, with three other prosperous looking persons, at the table,
which was well-appointed with spotless linen, and the sort of ware
without which a meal is nowhere. He watched a white-coated man enter;
and he halted his cattle to see this man hand around a dish, and
stand respectfully while the other people took from it what they
required.

Fascinated, the farmer stayed there till the meal was concluded,
cigars were burning, and the blinds were drawn. He was abroad later
than he had expected, and had not reckoned on so chilly an evening.
He shivered as he commanded Buck and Bright to proceed; and he talked
to himself--as he has told the story since.

The lazy luxury of these railway magnates! Lolling over the country
in private cars, waited on hand and foot, out of the money which poor
devils like himself, shaking with cold, and working their bodies to
skin and bone, paid to the railway for dividends and luxuries like
the cars that made these men feel like kings and act like tyrants.
The farmer would soon show these oppressors where they got off at.
They’d begin by getting off the private car--and so on and so forth,
in human nature’s human way.

One story is good till another is told. The rolling-in-luxury side of
this episode of a siding on a chilly October night is this:

The man at the table head was the railway president. Two of his
guests were representing financial houses. The fourth man was his
secretary. The car had been dropped at the siding because, next
morning, teams would be there to drive the party forty miles north
to inspect the country through which it was intended to build a
branch line; and in which it had been reported that there were many
farmers to whom getting out their grain was a burdensome operation,
depriving them of the chance to prosper by their season’s work.

The financial men were from London, and could facilitate or hinder
the flow of millions of dollars to Canada for the development of
agriculture. They were touring the country to see what sort of
conditions their clients were being invited to back. They wanted to
visit a typical piece of country without railway facilities; and to
get an idea of the courage and capacity of pioneers who would start
farms in the wilderness ahead of means of economically getting their
produce to market.

The president was on his annual inspection trip--just as necessary
to efficient discharge of his duty as a farmer’s Sunday walk around
his fields is to his knowledge of his crops. He did not want to
drive for whole days across new country. His trusted engineers and
locators were in the habit of doing that; and time was valuable.
But it was good policy to go personally with the men who were
extremely influential in the money market that was as important to
the Saskatchewan farmer as the wheat market is. All day he had been
with his guests, telling them about the country, and observing the
condition of the track and stations through which the train passed;
and receiving messages off the telegraph wire.

Long after the farmer had gone to bed, and his oxen had exchanged
cud-chewing for slumber, the railway president, having said
“Good-night” to his guests, was dictating replies to the messages he
had received during the day, and working as hard as if he had been
in his office fifteen hundred miles away.

It is true that the car looked like self-indulgent wealth to the
farmer sitting in the wagon outside; to whom it seemed the height of
luxury to be waited upon by a man in a white coat. But it was all
in a hard day’s work to the man who was getting the money to build
railways into the prairie country, without which the owner of a yoke
of cattle would be forlorn indeed. The president, who came from the
farm, would regard it as the height of luxury to have nothing more
to worry about than to sit on a binder for a few hours, and see the
nodding heads of wheat fall on to the carrier, to be delivered in
rows of sheaves to the stooker.

Any business man who has worked his heart out to establish something
out of nothing, and has overcome difficulties that had a knack of
springing up out of nowhere, and spoiling the best-laid calculations,
knows that most capital has to be wrung out of trouble.

The farmer too, knows this; for sitting on a binder isn’t all golden
grain; and chores have their own worries. But he is apt to associate
difficulties only with manual labour. Never having travelled in a car
that is also an office he doesn’t apprehend what working on wheels
really is.

The point is that, to a man harassed by a multitude of cares, as a
railway executive is, there is no such thing as luxury. He cannot
even envy the sensation of my countryman who was encountered at a
funeral.

Into a carriage starting for the cemetery there stepped a man who was
unknown to the mourner already there. As the journey proceeded the
mourner questioned his companion. Was he a relative of the corpse?
No. An old friend then? No, in fact he didn’t know the corpse. Then
he would be a friend of some friends? No, indeed, he was a stranger
entirely; but he hadn’t been very well, and the doctor had ordered
carriage exercise for his liver.

The general superintendent of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal
Company was incessantly up and down the road for three or four years
before he had a car that was called his own. He travelled with the
other passengers when passengers were present, and in the conductor’s
caboose when the train was all freight. A freight conductor has
a private car--business couldn’t be carried on without it. He is
compelled to ride somewhere. In cold weather he is entitled to as
much warmth as a passenger. On long runs he must have something to
eat. Nobody begrudges him his caboose. Uninformed resentment is
reserved for the magnate, so-called!

When we had extended from Dauphin through Swan River, and were
operating the Muskeg Limited between Winnipeg and the cordwood swamps
of Marchand I did have a car of my own. It was very much of a used
car, for it had housed Mr. Mann during construction of the Calgary
and Edmonton. While a contractor is on his job he is compelled to be
a good deal of a gipsy. The real difference between his private car
and a gipsy caravan is that the gipsy can move anywhere he likes, and
the contractor is compelled to stay with the tracks.

Mr. Mann’s car had a romantic name--the Sea Falls. It had stood
up nobly under every kind of treatment--and bumping over skeleton
track is treatment enough to annoy even a constructor’s equipage.
When we gave it such a renovation as pride and revenue permitted, we
also extinguished its name for a number--19 was the all-sufficient
description of the old Sea Falls, and Number Nineteen came to be
regarded femininely.

I don’t think she ever learned to dance the hornpipe, but she
certainly danced. The ideal car for construction purposes must not
be heavily built. Yesterday a friend was talking about ideal fishing
country in the northern recesses of Frontenac county, to which many
wealthy Americans come every year. “You can only get into it with a
Ford,” he said.

The old Sea Falls, invariably called a she, was the first and chief
Henry of the Canadian Northern. Up to a venerable age she was never
off the track. She rolled and leaped and ricocheted, when Billy
Walker or Joe Beef let his engine get gay over a stretch of gravel
ballast. Sometimes, I think, she skipped along like a flat stone
thrown almost horizontally at the lake; but, whatever happened to any
neighbouring equipment, Number Nineteen sustained the reputation of
the Sea Falls, and remained true to steel.

The superintendent, by the way, must also be a thoroughgoing gipsy
if he is any good as a superintendent. He has an office, of course,
at his chief divisional point, where he can be seen when people have
to come to him. But his real office is the table off which he eats
his meals. His stenographer is his constant travelling companion.
The public seldom sees his car, for it is carried at the tails of
freights, as a rule, and is left at all sorts of minor-looking
places, where work has to be done.

But what about the cars of which the public sometimes sees and
hears? They are of three sorts--the railway cars, the statesmen’s
cars, and the absolutely private cars whose owners pay for haulage
on as commercial a basis as the passenger who buys his ticket at the
counter.

Broadly, the trip which the Saskatchewan farmer saw, in part, can be
taken as typical of what may be called the presidential inspection of
properties and prospects, during the expansion phase of a railway.
The chief executive of an established road that covers a continent
is compelled to travel a great deal; and to know that his journeying
days are his hardest, however inured he may be to resting on restless
wheels.

His secretary loads several boxes with correspondence, much of it
relating to matters to be taken up at points to be visited, and much
concerning all kinds of business accumulated at the head office.
Where inspection of physical property is an objective--which is
always the case, for, wherever you go, you are on the property for
whose maintenance you are held responsible by shareholders and
public--the President while the train is moving will be found sitting
at the observation end of his car, with his secretary by his side,
watching everything as it comes into an instantly dissolving view.

On a siding he sees a couple of cars belonging to an American
road, for which rental is being paid for every day that they are
on his system. They may be in this unlikely place for very good
reason--and again there may be some neglect of duty in their present
location. Note is made of it, for the attention of the superintendent
concerned. At the fourth telegraph post, after mileage six hundred
and fifty-three, there is a stack of ties, with weeds growing about
them in a profusion which suggests that there has been unwise
distribution of costly, deteriorating material.

A station not stopped at gives evidence of slovenliness in the agent.
The next has flower beds in lovely bloom--the proof of a pride in his
post for which the agent will receive a word of appreciation from a
superior who does not forget that he is also a colleague.

Crossing one of the fast-diminishing number of wooden trestles it is
observed that the water barrels are not well filled. Further on a
tank is leaking water--and money.

During a stop at a division point the President hurries to the
roundhouse, to get his own idea of the efficiency with which the
power is being handled, and repairs made without undue delay.

After a day of this description you arrive at a city where the City
Council and the Board of Trade are waiting to press for a pledge of
improvements which, to them, are most important items in a civic
programme.

In the afternoon, perhaps, you passed through a station of a small
and juvenile town for which the local Board of Trade had urged the
desirability of another express truck, and a larger cattle pen, so
that passengers on the express trains might get a better idea of the
magnitude of the business done at that point.

Sometimes the difference between the small town and the big city is
only of degree. Local patriotism is a mighty fine asset in every
community. One finds no fault against the urgency with which local
problems are pressed upon a harassed railway executive, with the
remark, often heard, that what is asked is a very small matter for so
large a railway. Many a mickle makes a muckle; and there are limits
to what can be done with the revenues of a railway, every department
of which has an Oliver-Twist-like propensity for demanding more.

Take an instance of the problems that beset your railway president
as he flits about the country--the passenger accommodation at St.
John. The Intercolonial station is on low ground. It is one of the
structures which do not reflect the magnificent ambitions of members
of Parliament, whose chief end in public life is to get public money
spent in their ridings--well spent on the whole, of course, but
spent. Lately the train sheds that served the purpose of a metal
umbrella, had collapsed, and temporary shelters over the platforms
had to be put up.

Long ago, plans were prepared for a rearrangement of the station
accommodation, which would bring the passengers into a building on
a higher level, discharge baggage at a lower elevation, improve
the street railway facilities, and generally give to St. John what
everybody admits St. John needs, on a business-like basis.

The cost of over a million and a half dollars must be shared by the
National Railways, the civic government and the street railway. The
improvements were held up because the railway executive believed
the other parties to them should contribute more to the cost than
at first they were willing to undertake. “Let George do it” is not
an isolated view of expenditures in which what some people no doubt
would like to call the king’s railway is concerned, jointly with
other public and semi-public authorities.

Situations like that at St. John abound in varying magnitude.
They call for an armoury of qualities which any one man might be
forgiven for not possessing. They are just a part of the day’s
responsibilities which crowd into the private car.

They abide with the executive while he is showing guests the aspects
of Canada in which they are specially interested. Consider two
examples from Canadian Northern ante-public-ownership days. The first
excursion that looked like a joy ride to everybody except to the men
responsible for completing it, was the visit, in 1898, to Dauphin
and Winnipegosis of as many members of the Manitoba Legislature as
could go to see the railway that had been built under legislative
guarantee. Having none of our own, we had to hire sleeping and dining
cars from the Canadian Pacific. The trip occupied two long days with
a banquet in Dauphin on the night out.

The last considerable excursion attributable to public
responsibilities was the Parliamentary journey to the Pacific Coast
when the road to Vancouver was prepared for business, in 1915.
The ever-ready cynic can say that these excursions are near, but
extravagant relatives of the electioneering campaign of which the
cheap cigar is a nauseating and corrupting feature. But, looking
back through the severe spectacles of the prohibition age, and not
forgetting that the prairie air, especially as it approaches the
Great Divide, is very prone to sharpen Eastern appetites, I think it
is well within the truth to declare that journeys like these have
been performed absolutely in the public interest.

The most solicitous railway in the world cannot give to a member of
Parliament the faculty of imparting to his constituents and to the
public generally the highly instructive information which has come to
him in his representative capacity. All it can do is to give him the
opportunity to acquire knowledge of the development of his country
which only travel under informing auspices can bestow. That we did,
at various times, and left the event to a providential future.

Prince Arthur of Connaught travelled over the Canadian Northern from
Edmonton, when on his way home from Japan, whither he had been on a
special mission for King Edward. To act as if a railway owed nothing
of courtesy to such a representative of majesty would flout the
amenities of civilization. The Prince of Wales travelled thousands of
miles over the Canadian National system. This journey couldn’t have
been prevented without injuring public sentiment, and couldn’t be
accomplished without making the most and the best of the private car.

There was the courtesy of finance in other personally conducted
travels such as those, say, of Mr. Andrew Jameson and Mr. Robert
Kindersley--to give two typical instances of civilities that had
practical respect to the future, from the farmers’ as well as from
the railway builders’ point of view.

Mr. Jameson was an ex-governor of the Bank of Ireland, and a leader
in Irish manufactures and finance. In 1907 he was revisiting this
continent with his wife and daughter Violet. The family travelled
with me from Winnipeg to Edmonton. Mr. Jameson had a qualification
for sizing up Western Canada which not many of our visitors brought
with them. As a young man he had been a rancher on the Texas
prairies. One of his reminiscences of that experience was a testimony
to the intensity of the youthful patriotism which flourishes beneath
the stars and stripes.

Jameson, driving several days over an unfamiliar trail, stayed one
night at a rancher’s house in which was a son of about eight years
of age. After supper, the boy, who should have been in bed, devoted
himself to observation of the stranger. While Jameson was smoking,
the youngster planted himself between his knees, and watched him
intently for some time. At last he broke silence.

“I can see you ain’t no American citizen,” he said.

“How do you know that? Are you sure?” Jameson asked.

“You bet I am. I can see you ain’t no American by the way you smoke.”

“That’s very interesting,” Jameson replied. “And how do you know I’m
not an American citizen by my smoking?”

“You don’t spit.”

As an indication of what happens sometimes in a private car, it can
be said that the little town of Vibank, between Brandon and Regina,
is a memorial of a very agreeable couple of days with the Jamesons.
It commemorates Violet Jameson, and the institution with which her
father was closely associated. Nobody would suspect an Irish origin
for Vibank; but it is as truly Hibernian as Pat Murphy himself.

Mr. Kindersley, since he first became concerned with the Canadian
Northern has been knighted, for distinguished services during the
war, and has succeeded Lord Strathcona as governor of the Hudson’s
Bay Company. He had charge of the issuing of war certificates--the
scheme by which scores of millions of pounds were raised by the
creation of certificates which, on payment of sixteen shillings and
sixpence, guaranteed the recipient a sovereign after five years.
As governor of “The Company,” Sir Robert toured Canada in 1920,
in celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
chartering of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Charles the Second, who
gave to Prince Rupert and his fellow gentlemen adventurers the
territory draining into the Bay. It didn’t belong to Charles, but he
had the ways of kings in those days, and gave it, exacting in return
the tribute of two elk and two beaver, whenever he visited the domain.

Before the war Mr. Kindersley came several times to Canada as the
representative of Lazard Brothers, the great financial firm of
London, Paris and New York. That house under-wrote millions of
dollars’ worth of Canadian Northern securities; and, therefore, was
intimately concerned in the enterprise, as to investing in which
their clients would be largely guided by their example.

Sir Robert Kindersley is one of those Englishmen whose eminent
affability of manner might be taken by some of our neighbours for
evidence of an extreme remoteness from business acumen. But a
shrewder business man never crossed the Atlantic.

The first division point between Saskatoon and Calgary is Kindersley,
in the midst of what used to be the greatest of all buffalo
ranges--the buffalo paths ploughed across by farmers are many of them
six inches deep, to this day. A magazine article about the beginning
of the town preserved, as was seldom done, (for writers with a
gift for vividly seeing the possibilities of an apparently common
proceeding are not always on the spot), the personalities, scenery,
atmosphere and other conditions that belong to the nativity of a
busy town. “The First of Kindersley” was illustrated, and its most
characteristic picture was a photograph of the town-lot auctioneer’s
small table and a suitcase, standing alone on the illimitable plain.

When the later regime of the Canadian National railways began, the
cars of the president and the vice-presidents who required such were
deprived of their names, and were known to the service by numbers
only. Their doors were not even painted “Official,” but announced to
the visitor that he was entering a “Business Car.”

A similar adaptation to useful uses applied to the several cars that
are used by Cabinet ministers. About the propriety of the Prime
Minister traveling in an exclusive car there are surely no two
opinions. Some departmental chiefs, too, are in the working class
when they are on journeying duty bound. There can be too much of a
good thing, of course, and, at times, judging by sundry signs and
wonders that have come forth, this possibility has been discerned
by the Cabinet as a whole, against the aspirations of a colleague
whose ideas of official frugality and personal convenience were not
endorsed.

Sir Sam Hughes was an old friend of Sir William Mackenzie, dating
back to the time when he defeated Mr. Mackenzie for the Conservative
nomination for Victoria county, in 1891. When he became Minister
of Militia in 1911, and began an extraordinary career of activity
and independence, he felt he needed a car in which the work of the
department could be done by a chief who intended to be as nearly
ubiquitous as was possible to a Cabinet Minister tied to Parliament
for several months in each year.

Colonel Hughes asked me to get him a private car, that was to be
serviceable rather than ornamental. I bought a Pullman--they were
then being taken off the road rather freely by the Pullman Company on
account of the steel car coming into favour--had it fitted up, and
turned over at a cost of about seven thousand dollars. The bill was
promptly paid, and the Roleen, named after the minister’s daughter,
was very freely used.

When the war came the Roleen had little rest. Valcartier Camp was on
our line out of Quebec, so that I was a good deal concerned with the
early movement of troops, and knew how incessantly on the job Sam
Hughes was. Most Friday nights he left Ottawa for Valcartier, and
returned Monday mornings. He regarded himself, as everybody knows,
as the real lynch pin of Canada’s share in the war. At all costs he
would have things done; and often enough they were done at a first
cost of traditional Cabinet responsibility. He honoured this as much
in the breach as in the observance; and was consequently not exactly
beloved of all his colleagues.

His creation of honorary colonels was an exercise that gave him
immense pleasure. He could not understand why some of the recipients
of his favor were not as delighted to receive as he was to bestow.
One, who returned to him the imposing commission signed by the
Governor-General--which, by the way contained a mistake in spelling,
such as probably appears on many of these treasured parchments--was
surprised, after Sir Sam’s death, to receive it from the Militia
Department.

Another member of the first Borden Cabinet regarded an exclusively
private car as a necessary aid to his departmental efficiency.
Soon after being installed he asked us to procure him one, giving
his assurance that it would be promptly paid for. This assurance
was requested because I knew of another Cabinet Minister who once
borrowed a car from the C.P.R. and never returned it, even when he
left the Government.

After awhile, and following repeated enquiries from the Minister,
reflecting the urgency of delivery, a converted Pullman was ready for
him, on receipt of word that the order-in-council authorizing payment
had been passed.

The car was kept at Chicago for a fortnight, and was then brought as
far as Sarnia and held for several weeks more. The order-in-council
was never passed; the car was re-named, and was used for several
years by the third vice-president of the Canadian Northern. Many will
remember the Toronto.




                            CHAPTER XIII.

  _Recounting midwinter episodes of location and operation in empty
                              country._


The average outsider of railway travail may envy the official who,
he thinks, continually revels in the luxuries of a private car; but
nobody has suffered the pangs of jealousy because he could not share
in some of the midwinter pleasures of the railroading pioneer in a
Western Canada which, when all’s said and done, is not a banana belt
in the earliest and latest months of the year. Between the Lake of
the Woods and the Rocky Mountains winter develops more rigours than
the poets sing; bracing though it undeniably is, and so dry, before
and after prohibition, that you don’t feel the cold.

In railway operation some of the more recent mechanical arrangements
of trains have made a day on the rail vastly superior to a day on
the trail. Engines don’t die as often as they did when the Canadian
Northern was an infant of days. Perhaps it should be explained how
engines go dead, lest some reader be as bare of railroad lore as the
director of a famous company was who, going on a trip to England,
asked the general manager of his line to prime him with a few
interesting facts about the system. If investors and others became
inquisitive over there, what would he say?

“Oh,” replied the manager, “tell them that we have a fine line with
first-class equipment--all eighty-pound rails.”

“Good point,” agreed the director, “eighty pounds to the mile, I
suppose?”

In these days, locomotives are equipped with automatic fire-box
doors, which operate without producing the intermittent glare that
used to light up the sky at night when the fireman opened the door to
shovel in fuel. Then, with the temperature down to thirty or forty
below zero, the opening of the firebox door would let in such a rush
of air that, if the boiler tubes were becoming thin, they would begin
to leak.

Cold air seems to have a faculty of doing damage, even inside a
glowing firebox, possibly on the principle which preserves the
heat of a ray of sunlight, as it passes through an intensely cold
atmosphere, so that it will penetrate thick glass, and warm a room.
The leaking tubes put out the fire, or reduce its vehemence so that
steam cannot be maintained at driving pressure. The stricken engine
coughs herself into impotence, and the train stalls. Only in a
roundhouse during weather that begets such a casualty is there hope
of resurrection for the dead iron horse.

It has been told how the superintendent of the Lake Manitoba Railway
and Canal Company almost lived on the line, nursing business with
the solicitude of a mother doing her best for difficult twins. No
spacious private car tended to make him feel like a monarch of all he
surveyed. The nearest approach to winter luxury was the stove in the
freight conductor’s caboose. If the superintendent wanted to make the
most of his operating force, he could count some of the section men
twice--first as maintenance-of-way men, and secondly as way freight
agents at the sidings which, as already remarked, furnished more
stops than stations.

One bitterly cold night in February, 1897--our first winter on the
baby road--we were coming down from Dauphin to Gladstone and Portage
La Prairie, when, as we approached Glenella siding--a place whose
hopes were linked with the name of Lady Mann’s sister--the engine’s
sighing betokened a probable halt, for which force would be no
remedy. Billy Walker, our first and faithfullest engine-driver, was
at the throttle, and managed to induce his leaking horse to crawl
into the siding. We were thirteen and a half miles from Plumas and
from the possibility of wiring to Portage la Prairie for a fresh
engine. The other locomotive of the system was at Dauphin. It was
thirty below zero in God’s free air, and the witching hour of
midnight was written on the watch. It was unsafe to sing “We won’t go
home till morning”.

Near the siding was a recently-arrived settler who, we knew, had a
team of horses. We roused him and he promised to drive me to Plumas.
Sitting in the bottom of a wagon box, set on a home-made jumper
sleigh, we drove off, over the trailless snow, with never a star
overhead to give us a pointer; the driver saying he knew the way, and
his passenger muffled to the forehead, solemn as the grave.

The driver gave signs of being almost as dead as the engine; but as
he re-asserted that he knew the way to Plumas, he was allowed to
pursue unquestioned the wiggling tenor of his way across the flat and
hoary plain.

Doubt arose in the passenger’s mind. Somehow, it seemed that instead
of going southeast towards Plumas we were making southwest for
Neepawa, and that, after awhile, instead of being on the open prairie
we should enter hilly, timbered country where the going would be more
difficult, and direction impossible to maintain in the leaden gloom.
To my doubts the farmer was indifferent, probably not being awake
enough to appreciate what was said. After about three quarters of an
hour I charged him with heading for Neepawa, and then he threw up his
hands and confessed he knew not where we were.

He was bidden to turn around the team, and let them go where they
supposed their stable to be. After half an hour of this exhilarating
travel I perceived a red light away to the east, and knew it to be
the gleaming tail of the stricken train. We reached it at half-past
one. I bade the farmer good morning, asked the conductor for his
replenished kerosene lamp, requested him to stay with his train till
another engine appeared, and started to walk the ties to Plumas.

Nothing is comparable to a situation like that to make a man rely
on his own resources, and to exalt meditation into a consoling
art--especially when he finds himself exactly where Moses was when
the light went out. Something special was in the conductor’s
kerosene--the anti-freeze was frozen. After less than a mile’s walk
the lamp was as functionless as the helpless engine. Stumbling along,
I reached the bridge over the Jumping Deer River, the ties on which
were covered with a perfect film of perfect ice. It was soon proved
to a demonstration that the foot cannot say to the hand: “I have no
need of thee.” I am not sure whether the feet and hands did not have
to rely more on their neighbours, the knees, than was customary in
most spheres of transportation. With the combined cumbrousness and
comfort of a fur coat, fur cap, and mitts that would have done honour
to Greenland’s Icy Mountains, the treacherous trestle was safely and
thankfully negotiated; and the hope of Plumas flickered once more in
a lonely human breast.

Thanks to a pair of fairly long legs, and the remains of an Original
Seceder’s faith in final perseverance, I made Plumas station at half
past five, woke the agent, wired Portage, whence the Manitoba North
Western superintendent sent an engine to Glenella, while I slept
until noon in the hotel across the way.

After twenty-seven years, the adventure looks rather entertaining
from the meridian of King and Yonge. Then it was regarded as part of
the evening’s work--a chore that might have to be done any day of
the week--a commonplace which takes a long time to assume the hue of
frosty romance.

Comparatively, the zero hours of railway operation are less perilous
than their counterparts in the life of the constructor who has
to spend winter days and nights in empty country, far from his
sheltered base. The general local administration of Canadian Northern
construction was mainly in the hands of Rod Mackenzie, eldest son
of the President. He was not technically an engineer, but had been
almost continuously on his father’s work since boyhood. I believe
he spent some time in the mountains when The Farmer Outfit was
building snow sheds for the C.P.R. To my knowledge, he was in charge
of contracts from 1898, when the first 125 miles guaranteed by the
Manitoba Legislature was completed by extending the line 25 miles
from Sifton Junction to Winnipegosis.

Rod Mackenzie was one of the most likeable men in railway service.
He had a good deal of his father’s remarkable driving force, and
attracted to himself a larger quantity of genial companionship. He
was a member of Mackenzie, Mann, Limited, though it was not generally
known that the firm included more than the two senior principals. My
own official relationship was entirely with the railway company, so
that I did not come as closely in contact with him as with the chief
engineer of the Canadian Northern, who became general manager.

Some day, perhaps, fitting tribute will be paid to the railway
engineers who have wrought so magnificently to transform the face of
Canada. They scarcely ever seem to think of their work as, in any
degree, romantic, or bookworthy. What more prosaic than a blueprint?
unless it be a blue-stocking? But what goes into many a blueprint
which shows how a river is to be crossed, or a bridge is to be built?

At this writing, the City of Toronto is concerned over a viaduct
along its waterfront, which was the subject of a Railway Commission
order ten years ago, and is now the subject of a revision by an
engineer of whose highly distinguished career the public knows
little. The scheme to build the viaduct east of Yonge Street as
originally planned, and to construct bridges west of Yonge, instead
of the Moyes viaduct, is the work of Mr. M. H. MacLeod, officially
the special consulting engineer of the Canadian National Railways
with headquarters at Toronto.

Mr. MacLeod is the quietest man who ever devised a solution for
a troublesome and expensive problem. He had no previous official
connection with this matter; but, returning in the autumn of 1923
from a trip to Europe, he saw in the press that it was once more
eruptive. Without seeing a plan, or knowing more of what was proposed
than any non-technical outsider could gather from the newspapers, he
walked over the ground, alone, using the eyes and experience of the
builder of more miles of railway in Western Canada than any other
man, and the deviser of the entrance into Winnipeg of the Canadian
Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific railways, and of their great Fort
Garry Union Station.

The waterfront scheme as adopted by the Canadian National and
Canadian Pacific Presidents is the MacLeod scheme, worked out on his
own study of the problem on the ground. I have been told by one
who was present at a meeting of prominent business leaders which
discussed it closely, that Sir Edmund Walker, who was there, told his
colleagues that he had known Mr. MacLeod for twenty-five years, as
an engineer, and his bank would back any scheme he devised up to ten
million dollars.

It was one of the constant satisfactions of twenty-two years out
of twenty-six of a Canadian Northern and Canadian National railway
experience to be a colleague and friend of Mr. MacLeod, as it is one
of the deepest pleasures of a period of reminiscence to draw upon an
episode of his service of the Canadian Northern which, on the whole,
I think, typifies, better than any other that comes to mind, the
quality of that distinguished service.

MacLeod is a Hebridean, from the Isle of Skye. He came to this
continent as an infant, and went to school mainly in the United
States. His early engineering experience was gained in the vicinity
of Toronto. He has recently told of his first meeting at Kirkfield
with Sir William Mackenzie, over forty years ago, when he was sent
to look over the country through which it was proposed to build a
railway from Lindsay to Bracebridge. He was working on the Superior
division of the C.P.R. in 1883. He built the line up the east shore
of Lake Temiskaming; and was in charge of construction in the Crow’s
Nest Pass.

MacLeod became chief engineer of the Canadian Northern in the spring
of 1900. We had the line from Gladstone to Erwood, on the way to
Prince Albert, with a branch to Grandview, westerly from Dauphin.
We also had the South Eastern, on which the Muskeg Express hauled
firewood to Winnipeg from the Lake of the Woods. When MacLeod came
to us from the C.P.R. our mileage was 600. Before he asked for
relief from strenuous duty his jurisdiction as Vice-President of the
National Railways, in charge of construction, covered over 17,000
miles.

So far as the scheme for a main line connecting Winnipeg with
Edmonton had been developed in 1900, it was intended to make the
route via Prince Albert. MacLeod’s view was that a really big line
must be built where the C.P.R. main line had first been projected;
and that our track from Grand View should be extended to where the
old and still used telegraph line to Prince Albert from Qu’Appelle
ran from the station at Humboldt towards the South Saskatchewan
River, fifteen miles north of and below Saskatoon, then a little
station mainly used for traffic to and from Battleford, the former
capital of the North West Territories, eighty miles from any railway.

During the summer of 1901 it was determined to prospect the route
from Prince Albert to Edmonton, and also to apply for a charter
for a main line to be built from Grand View via Humboldt and the
Battleford country, keeping to the south of the North Saskatchewan
River west of Battleford. While the preliminaries of the application
to Parliament were proceeding in the East, MacLeod was to find
river crossings--one of the South Branch, about fifteen miles below
Saskatoon, and such crossings of the North Branch, in the Battleford
country as might seem desirable.

So, on December the fifteenth MacLeod and C. R. Stovel, our right of
way man, who was married to a half-sister of Sir William Mackenzie,
drove out of Prince Albert to prospect a line to Battleford and
beyond, and to locate crossings. To-day a branch line connects Prince
Albert with North Battleford, and covers almost precisely the ground
that MacLeod and Stovel examined in very hard weather. Very few
people were in the country; but it was possible to find a stopping
place every thirty or forty miles. They carried their own bedding,
mainly of rabbit robes. They came through the wooded country to
Shellbrook, then through the Thickwood Hills, traversing parts of two
Indian reserves.

A settler with whom they stayed told them he hauled his grain eighty
miles to Battleford--a three days’ journey. They came round the north
of Redberry Lake, and after dark on Christmas Eve were descending
the slope to the North Saskatchewan River about where Brada now is.
They could see the dim lights of the old capital, across the valley,
on the tongue of land just above the confluence of the Battle and
Saskatchewan rivers. Between untrailed snow and tired horses, it was
nine o’clock before they reached the town, intending to rest the team
over Christmas.

Battleford’s Christmas joy did not please them; and at noon they
decided to pull out and look for a crossing up the river. The
original C.P.R. survey was kept south of the North Branch, to take in
Battleford. But MacLeod had learned that this meant crossing twenty
lateral streams, with expensive bridging of each, and most of them on
land that was too slippery to afford comfortable economical safety.
His idea was to make two crossings of the North Branch, one near the
Elbow, where the great current sharply changes its direction from
southeast to northeast, and the other above Battleford--which has
been done advantageously from every point of view, as everyone knows
who is familiar with the country on both sides of the river.

Christmas Day, then, MacLeod and Stovel left Battleford. Twenty-five
miles west was Bresaylor postoffice, their objective for more
information. The postmaster was Mr. Taylor. He and his neighbours,
Bremner and Saylor, had trekked all the way from the Portage Plains,
looking for a good location, and had settled thus near the great
Saskatchewan because the country was the most like the Portage Plains
they had seen. The postoffice name was a compromise--the first
syllables of Bremner, Saylor and Taylor, as the Canadian National
time table of to-day discloses.

But what about the river valley to the west, which must be explored
for many miles for a suitable crossing? Beyond Bresaylor the only
habitation was a shack in which two boys were living while wintering
Bresaylor cattle on hay which had been put up during the summer,
near the Big Gully; the tributary beyond which it was not desirable
to bridge the Saskatchewan. The shack was about thirty-five miles
west by north of Bresaylor, and almost straight north of the present
town of Maidstone. A trail to it was visible in the deep snow. But it
had scarcely been travelled, and the going was heavy, and slower for
horses than a used road was for a walking man.

The two pathfinders spent Christmas night in Bresaylor postoffice.
All next day they drove for the shack. Darkness fell with no
indication of dwelling or cattle. For five more hours the weary team
was driven over the scarcely discernible trail. Between nine and ten
o’clock MacLeod and Stovel stopped, intending to endure the cold of a
very bad night, in the petty shelter of a poplar-and-willow thicket.
As they were making ready they heard a bark--it was the ranchers’
dog; and comfort and food for men and beasts were assured.

Next morning the search for a crossing must be made by MacLeod alone.
There was no way of getting the team and sleigh through the river
bottom, two hundred feet below the plain. Off the ice the bush,
brush, tortuous banks of the stream, and drifts of snow would make
the travel tediously slow. Driving on the ice was impossible. Where
the current was extra-swift--and the Indian name of the Mississippi
of the North means “Swift-flowing-water”--the ice was far too thin to
carry anything as heavy as a pair of horses. So, Stovel must drive
along the southern edge of the river valley for, say, fifteen miles,
and watch for his chief coming down the ice. Then he could keep pace
with him, for a meeting at dusk, and Bresaylor could be made for the
night.

MacLeod left his fur coat with Stovel, and taking a couple of
bannocks for lunch he travelled in moccasins and a heavy pea jacket.
The day was intensely cold. Speed was doubly of the essence of the
programme--to cover the ground in the time allotted, and to keep
from freezing. At the turn of the year, in the Battleford latitude
daylight is done about four o’clock.

Once more, the day’s work seemed commonplace enough to the men
who did it. From fireside and radio, twenty years afterwards, it
looks what it was--a daring adventure, in an empty country, with a
temperature that made lonely human travel more hazardous than most
people ever know, and the possibility of a blizzard starting without
warning, to the extremest risk of life and limb. Indeed, only a few
days after MacLeod all alone, with a walking suit, two bannocks,
a box of matches, a compass and a jack-knife, his only exterior
defenses against disaster, hurried down the valley looking where
to place an imagined bridge, a C.P.R. engineer named Bass, who was
making a trial line for the C.P.R. below Battleford, was frozen to
death quite near his camp.

MacLeod strode over the ice till noon, seeing no place where a
railroad might advantageously be brought down the north bank, a
bridge built over the wide current, and conducted up the southern
escarpment. He ate his bannocks, resting long enough to be warned by
Thirty Below that further repose was impermissible. He trudged again
till three o’clock, and then, tired enough, he sat on the ice for a
smoke. Seeing Stovel and the team, on a bare knoll, overlooking the
vale, about three miles behind him, he assumed that all would be well.

He resumed his walking; and as dusk was falling began to leave the
river bed. But a wolf’s bark, which seemed to give notice to a pack,
warned him to keep somewhat longer on the ice. When he did climb up
a partially wooded ravine, and reached the top, the seeing was not
good. Evidently he and Stovel must each be searching for the other’s
tracks.

MacLeod found nothing, and being very weary, and among bluffs where
dry wood was, he tried to light a fire. The wind, which was moving
the snow in the wreathing gusts which every driver and walker
over the uncharted wintry plain knows so well, prevented any such
consolation, and the cold prohibited a stop in one spot for more than
two or three minutes. So MacLeod walked for warmth in the darkness,
searching as well as he could for a sleigh track, and finding
nothing, and bearing eastward towards Bresaylor. At last he came to a
fence, and vainly tried again to make a fire.

The night before, Stovel and he had been saved by a dog. Providence
was again to use the friend of man; for, as the isolated engineer
was in motion to avoid being frozen stiff, and was longing for the
moon to rise so that he could read his compass, a dog barked; an
indubitable dog. In a little while MacLeod was inside a house, the
good lady of which set food before him.

Stovel had been there about two hours before, very much excited, and
saying that he had lost sight of his friend, and failed to find him.
Afraid something was amiss on the ice, he had gone to Bresaylor for a
fresh team, and human help.

An hour later there was a knock at the door--it was Stovel and the
postmaster’s son; and all was clear for another night alongside Her
Majesty’s mails.

Next morning the examination of the riversides was continued, the
team again following the Saskatchewan’s southern skirt. About nine
miles above Battleford, in the afternoon, MacLeod reached the mouth
of a wide and wooded ravine, which seemed to offer prospect of the
only good crossing he had seen in a tramp of nearly fifty miles.

While he was exploring the ground, he saw Stovel above him, making
all sorts of frantic appeals for company. Thinking that some calamity
had befallen, MacLeod abandoned his job, to render aid to his
distressed and distressing colleague. Nothing was the matter, except
that the solicitous Stovel was afraid MacLeod would stay too long
below; and he himself was determined to run no risk of recent history
repeating itself with a dog’s bark.

The two drove into Battleford, and stayed at the hotel then kept by
Albert Champagne, who became Battleford’s first mayor three years
later, sat a term in the Assembly of the North West Territories, and
was M.P. for Battleford from 1908 to 1917. Next day the team of
horses rested; but the team of men sought no repose. They walked up
the river to the ravine where the search had been stopped overnight.
The site of the great crossing was there and then determined. Stovel
used to say he never walked so fast, in snow or out of it, all his
life, as he did on that eighteen mile trip before dinner. Twenty
years ago MacLeod was in splendid condition, and a terror to go when
his walking mood was on. Stovel had a notion that MacLeod was giving
him a silent admonition not to repeat the fears of the day before.
Stovel was a good guesser.

On the same trip the Elbow crossing and the one on the South
Saskatchewan, at Clarkboro, just east of Warman, were located. On the
best available information Armstrong’s surveying party was working
on preliminary surveys for a bridge about thirty miles below the
Elbow. But as soon as MacLeod had found the crossings that best met
the demand for economical grading and bridging, and for good farming
country alongside the location, he drove to Armstrong’s camp, and
moved the party south, up the valley.

It was the fifteenth of January when MacLeod and Stovel forsook
their horses for the train, after a full month of hardship which
they didn’t regard as hardship. Indeed, if MacLeod sees this account
probably he will wonder why so much has been made of so ordinary an
expedition.

The transference of Armstrong’s party contains the genius of
MacLeod’s genius. The information that took them thirty miles
below the Elbow to survey a crossing was the best information
available--until MacLeod himself looked over the ground. What his
unassisted eye discerned, the blueprints, the finished bridge, the
grades and the daily trains confirmed. It would be the same in
Toronto.

My old friend and colleague is a born, incurable, unconquerable
pathfinder. We proved it over and over again. He would go out to look
for country well adapted for settlement, and a settlers’ railway,
and not only find what he wanted, but on the way would discover
some improvement in his staff’s locations of other lines that
saved thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in
construction.

From the interior of our organization, it has been extracted by a
faithful memory that MacLeod was later than he expected, returning
from an observatory trip in this same Battleford country, where
outfits were waiting to begin grading. The few days’ delay meant
changed locations over fifty miles of track, on the strength of his
overlook of other men’s conscientious and able work. They had the
efficiency of training. He had the insight of genius. In instance
after instance the stakes that were driven on his observation were
found to be in the very spots where the precise levels determined the
final location.

One who has been chiefly devoted to operation does not regard
himself as an authority on construction. But, in a long generation
of experience one learns something of the fundamentals of railway
engineering in a country as vast as ours. For finding a road and for
building it with the least possible expense and the greatest possible
efficiency MacLeod may have had an equal, though I have never met the
man who met him. MacLeod certainly has had no superior.

The winter of 1906-7 was one of the worst in western railroad
history. It didn’t linger in the lap of spring; it pushed the spring
out of its place. Long after the time for the singing of birds had
come, an extra-special sleetstorm covered one section of track with
so thick a glaze of ice that the only way to get trains over it was
to pickaxe the ice from the rails.

Immigration was at the flood that spring. Cities and towns everywhere
were preparing for big construction programmes. Something of
a blockade was inevitable; but a breakdown in one part of our
organization let us into more trouble than honest men deserve. An
effort was made to clear up a congestion that was worsening every
day, by picking out from as many congested sidings as possible, cars
that were most urgently wanted, and making up special trains to meet
special urgencies. The result was congestion worse congested, because
it took longer to segregate the cars required than to move the whole
multitude. Our bill for per diem charges on foreign cars held by us
was appalling.

When our interior trouble was fully understood, primarily as the
outcome of Mr. Mann and the third vice-president going to Winnipeg
to probe the situation, we changed the managerial method, put
our superintendents and men on what may be called a course of
inter-emulation; with ten days as the time set for abolishing the
blockade.

In eight days all was clear, through a zeal on the part of the whole
staff which was beyond praise, and almost beyond belief. I never
saw such a mess, or such a recovery. In fourteen days the Northern
Pacific at Emerson was shouting for us to dam the tide of empties
that was flowing back to their American owners.

This blockade precipitated the appointment of M. H. MacLeod as
general manager, without relinquishing his other post. There was,
of course, some outside surprise at so unusual a fusion of offices.
It was even said that MacLeod hadn’t force of character enough--by
those who did not know what can come from the lone sheiling of the
Hebrides. But MacLeod was all there, all the time and all the way. He
was sometimes like electricity--hardly noticeable till you touched
him. He seldom kicked; but when he did there was no misunderstanding
the stroke.

Shortly before he died Sir William Mackenzie was asked what he
thought of the revised Toronto viaduct scheme. He replied that of
course it should go through, because it was MacLeod’s; and being
MacLeod’s the saving of millions, which it showed on paper, would be
a saving of millions on the contract. Sir William’s latest estimate
of MacLeod was only in keeping with long experience. He may not
have kept them as Major Rogers kept the C.P.R. cheque, but he was
given more than one letter by Sir William, signing as President of
the Canadian Northern, authorizing him to spend on betterments sums
running beyond seven figures, on his sole discretion and authority.
Similar instances of executive confidence may be recorded elsewhere,
but I scarcely think so.

The quality of the railway pathfinder is essentially the same whether
he walks alone, in the depth of winter, on Saskatchewan ice, looking
for a place to build a steel bridge a thousand feet long, or whether
he is poking around a waterfront littered with shipping warehouses,
and considering how to get twenty trains an hour into and out of a
station. It works with a seeing eye and a building hand. MacLeod has
them both. He is in his own class; but he is of a great company of
engineers to whom ungrudging tribute is richly due, and too seldom
paid.




                            CHAPTER XIV.

  _Reciting events, the Great War being chief, which destroyed the
                         Canadian Northern._


Nothing in North American transportation quite equals the rise and
fall of the Canadian Northern. Those who were intimately associated
with its twenty-six years’ history scarcely realized the extent to
which Mackenzie and Mann were unique among the roadmakers of all
the continents. For the accumulation of wealth, and also for the
domination of railway systems of huge mileage, James J. Hill was in
a class by himself. He died worth sixty million dollars--without a
will. He obtained vast riches through the iron ore deposits of the
Mesaba range, in the Minnesota hinterland of Lake Superior--there was
nothing like it in Canada. His railways connected Chicago with the
cities and plains of the United States northwest, even to the Pacific
Ocean. His ships sailed to Nippon and far Cathay.

Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann made no enormous fortunes
out of the railway they built from Atlantic to Pacific tidewaters.
But they performed a feat which no American combination ever
achieved. Their enterprise was more original than anything which Hill
carried to profitable result; for they began beyond where Hill, and
even the Canadian Pacific, had left off. Indeed, Hill pulled out of
Canadian railway building rather than share responsibility for the
first line on Superior’s northern shore.

Mackenzie and Mann’s original railway carried settlement a hundred
miles north of the line beyond which implement manufacturers had
refrained from extending their credit. They went, not only where
railway obligations had not gone, but where, aforetime, railway
obligation was afraid to venture. They looked ultimately to great
fortune for themselves--there has never been any pretense to the
contrary. But they had in them infinitely more than a lust for
pelf. The first justice that is done to these two men is a frank
recognition of the pioneering, constructive passion which made of
them great Canadians.

Ambition that was all self-sacrifice never braced a continent with
steel. The money changers do not open the purse of Fortunatus to
Simon Pure altruists. Railways must be carried to completion on the
financial engines that are available to mundane men. The Canadian
Northern was brought into being because the time had come when more
than the C.P.R. was needed in Western Canada. It is not good for a
railway to be alone in so broad a land. The combination that had
grown out of a contest over the ownership of a corral-full of mules
away up in the Selkirks was the ordained instrument to prove that an
impossible piece of work could be done.

Sir William Mackenzie, in his favourite car, the Atikokan--which was
bought while it was being used by Admiral Dewey on his triumphal
tour--was discussing with a guest one night in 1905 the prospects
of the Canadian Northern, which had not yet reached Edmonton. His
inveterate optimism then believed that Hudson Bay would be reached
within three years. Asked if he had ever been to the Bay he answered:

“No; I haven’t been to Sao Paulo, either; but I’ve taken a million
dollars out of there within the last three years.”

He told of having received an offer from the Grand Trunk to buy the
Canadian Northern at the time the Grand Trunk Pacific scheme was
brewing, and of refusing it, though there would have been millions of
dollars in it for himself and his partner.

“Why didn’t you sell out?” his guest asked.

“I like building railroads,” was the simple, truthful, profound
answer.

The money-grubber doesn’t talk that way. He doesn’t act as Mackenzie
and Mann always acted.

Many of us, who never had personal control of millions of dollars,
and to whom a moderate fortune is a hunger to be eagerly appeased,
and a divinity to be constantly adored, cannot conceive of the
possession of money being a mere adjunct to those who do great
things through their capacity for changing other people’s money into
enormous vehicles of commerce.

The money-making side of Mackenzie and Mann, the Canadians, was,
if you like, what the penchant for fussing with detectors and
amplifiers is to the radio fan. He’s after the result--the miracle
of the perfectly reproduced voice, singing a thousand miles away. He
cannot get his result by being indifferent to the peculiarities of
the squeal that precedes the tone.

Mackenzie and Mann could not have built and acquired approximately
ten thousand miles of railways by preaching altruism and despising
the money market. They could not have done it if their sole
propulsion came from love of money for money’s sake.

As construction contractors they would have piled up huge profits;
and would have got out when the getting was good. As this is written
the Mackenzie estate is being realized for the heirs. Without knowing
anything of the details, I think it can be predicted that the
popular notion that Sir William piled up fabulous wealth out of the
opportunities furnished by Government guarantees, and construction
contracts let to himself at his own price, will prove to be as vain
as some of the other current delusions about him.

From time to time, base and baseless charges were made to the effect
that moneys raised in London for railway construction were used
for other purposes, and that excessive contractors’ profits were
selfishly provided for. Two grosser libels were never perpetrated.
The first is merely absurd. The second is almost equally so when
the costs of construction per mile of the Grand Trunk Pacific and
National Transcontinental and the Canadian Northern are compared.

It has already been suggested that the Canadian Northern was not
conceived as a transcontinental railway, with the beginning of the
Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company’s line between Gladstone
and Dauphin. The scheme, as a scheme, growed, with Topsy-like
inevitability. Before it could finally prosper it was perforce
surrendered to its chief guarantors by its authors. It is not
necessary to wait for Time’s final justification, in dollars and
cents, before the nation understands its essential magnificence--and
also the extent to which another sort of ambition in the political
and railway worlds contributed to its temporary bafflement.

To judge it broadly, and surely, the first requisite is an
appreciation of the prairie factor in any Canadian transcontinental
railway. The reports and maps of forty-five years ago show the
C.P.R. main line originally projected across territory, every mile
of which, between the Red River and the ascent to the Yellowhead
Pass was first given a railway by Mackenzie and Mann. In less than
twenty years the Canadian Northern, developed from a pioneer piece of
track, operated, in all departments, by a force of fourteen, into a
system which, during the war, was running trains into centres of one
thousand population and over, representing ninety-seven per cent. of
the populations of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and ninety per cent. of
the population of Alberta.

In 1915-16, the traffic year of the most prolific crop the West had
ever grown, the Canadian Northern hauled 132,000,000 bushels of grain
to Port Arthur from the prairies. We were then in the pinch of the
constriction which finally brought about national ownership; and
insufficiency of equipment caused us to lose a good deal of our share
of the grain traffic.

Even so, although the C.P.R. had every advantage, including its
double track all the way between Winnipeg and Fort William, and
nearly all the way from Winnipeg to Moose Jaw, we hauled 31.1 per
cent. of the total, against the C.P.R.’s 56.3 per cent., and 12.6 per
cent. of all other lines.

Deferring allusion to the controversial question of the wisdom of
projecting two new transcontinental railways in the first decade of
this century, it is worth while glancing at the Canadian Northern’s
relation to the growth of the nation’s business as affected by the
construction of the sections north of the Great Lakes, and across the
mountains to Vancouver.

Each of these sections is a timbered area; and each has contributed
materially to the distinction earned by the Canadian Northern, of
being the greatest Canadian carrier of forest products. Thirty
per cent. of the capacity of all the lumber mills of Canada was
on Canadian Northern lines. Thirty-two per cent. of the traffic
created by Canadian lumber mills was water-borne; so that the C.N.R.
competed for just about half of the rail-hauled lumber business of
the country. Taking 1915-16 as a representative year, here are the
figures of lumber hauled by the three great Canadian systems:

  Canadian Northern                    3,883,739 tons
  Canadian Pacific                     3,832,163  ”
  Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific  2,297,925  ”

During 1917, the last year before nationalization, we hauled 3,850
cars, or eighty-five million feet, of lumber up the Fraser Canyon and
over the Yellowhead Pass. The timber on territory tributary to the
Canadian Northern main line in British Columbia was then figured at
30,380,000,000 feet; and on Vancouver Island, between Victoria and
Alberni, at 25,000,000,000 feet.

While my own work was in the operating and traffic departments, it
was, of course, concerned with the fundamental features of the system
as a whole. Grades are as much a part of traffic as cars and cargoes.
When we began to emerge as a potential transcontinental, what was the
outlook for ultimate prosperity, so far as it would be governed by
ease of operation, and the magnitude of population to be served?

Ease of operation is mainly a matter of low grades. The Canadian
Northern main line from Atlantic tidewater to Pacific tidewater
has better grades than all the other railways on the continent.
The mountain sections, of course, are the most eloquent of grading
advantage or disadvantage to the railways crossing them. The
importance of low grades between the prairies and the Pacific was
immensely enhanced by the Panama Canal, which has already made
Vancouver a great grain port. The Canadian Northern maximum climb
between Edmonton and Vancouver is four-tenths of one per cent., or
twenty-six feet per mile. The Grand Trunk Pacific grades are almost
equally good, but as they lead to Prince Rupert, 400 miles farther
than Vancouver from the canal, the balance of advantage is obvious,
as between the two junior routes.

The C.P.R. was first projected to reach the Pacific through the
Yellowhead Pass, which is by far the best for railway purposes
between Mexico and the Yukon. But the main line location being
changed, two climbs over summits were necessary before the long
descent to the ocean down the Thompson and Fraser rivers could
begin--over the Rockies, at the Kicking Horse, and over the Selkirks,
by the pass Major Rogers discovered, forty-three years ago. The
maximum altitude reached by the Canadian Northern is 3,700 feet. The
maximum of the C.P.R. is 5,332 feet, with a drop to 2,443, and a
second rise to 4,340 feet.

The maximum Canadian Northern grade eastward is seven-tenths of one
per cent. The C.P.R. maximum is two per cent.--it was over three
during thirty years of operation. Put another way, by the time you
are twenty miles beyond Calgary on the C.P.R. you are as high as the
highest summit of the C.N.R., and on the C.N.R., instead of having to
rise a further 1,600 feet, and then to climb in a few miles, 1,900
feet more, there is only a negligible second rise to get over the
watershed of the Canoe and the North Thompson rivers, whence the road
to the Pacific is downhill.

The contrast between the Canadian Northern and the more southerly
American roads is even greater. The Union Pacific switchbacks to a
maximum of 8,200 feet, and the Sante Fé to 7,421 feet.

The difference made by the grades to operating costs can be judged
by the difference in the load which an engine can pull up a
four-tenths and a one per cent. grade. Up twenty-six feet to the
mile--four-tenths--a 190-ton locomotive will haul 3,768 tons. Up
sixty-feet per mile--one per cent.--she will drag only 1,780 tons.
The disparity increases with the acclivity.

The Canadian Northern, then, had the elements of a great permanent
success, given enough tributary population creating traffic to earn
expenses and fixed charges during the earlier operating years. That
there was calamitous overbuilding of Canadian railways nobody will
deny. To attempt to fix responsibility for it might invite a certain
degree of political controversy which no lover of a quiet life
desires. This is a strictly moral tale, and a few facts will point
out their own moral.

In 1904, when a general election solidified the Grand Trunk Pacific
legislation, the Canadian Northern had already in existence 2,500
miles beyond Port Arthur, all aiding the Western development which
was absolutely vital to Canada’s future. This railway was altogether
a native growth, the executive force in which had been concerned
with Western railway construction since before the first locomotive
entered Winnipeg. There was no imposition from without--no grandiose
scheme intended to dazzle an electorate, or fill a Parliament with
swelling pride. The Canadian Northern grew in Time’s own fruitful
womb; and struck its roots deep and wide all over the Western land.

From the point of view of the prairie provinces’ development, the
nicer problem of the wisdom of hastening the Superior and Mountain
sections may be put aside momentarily by this question: “What would
be the relative positions of the two junior railways if their
revenues depended solely on traffic originating between the Great
Lakes and the Great Mountains?”

In different terms, the question is: “How do the old Canadian
Northern and the old Grand Trunk Pacific compare, twenty years after
the Grand Trunk Pacific was launched, as servants of the country,
which is the only reason for their existence?”

Every commercial traveller who knows the West, and every superficial
observer of the flow of grain to the Lakes’ head, is aware that years
and years before the G.T.P. hauled its first car of wheat into Fort
William, the Canadian Northern avalanche of grain converged upon Port
Arthur from branches which appeared upon the map like the fingers of
a hand.

In the year of the first G.T.P. car’s arrival at Fort William the
Canadian Northern earned nearly twenty-one million dollars. If the
Canadian Northern had remained a prairie road, doing business only
between the Lakes and Mountains, it would never have been in Queer
Street, but would have more than paid for operating costs, fixed
charges and betterment requirements out of revenue, because it was
the West’s own product to meet the West’s own needs.

Neither as a prairie road, nor as a prairie-and-mountain road has
the Grand Trunk Pacific ever earned its operating expenses. The only
section which has shown more earnings than operating expenses, is
the line between Winnipeg and Fort William, which was built as the
National Transcontinental. That result has only been possible to
this piece of line because Canadian Northern traffic is handed to
it at Winnipeg, under the co-ordinating arrangements without which
for many years to come the Grand Trunk Pacific, which was built at
unprecedented expense per mile for a pioneer road, would resemble
nothing so much as the seven lean kine of Joseph’s immortal dream. To
a large extent the former National Transcontinental is being used as
the old Canadian Northern harvesters’ second track between Winnipeg
and Lake Superior.

Why, then, did the Canadian Northern fall, and two great builders
with it? The obvious but misleading guess is that the prosperous
middle was bankrupted by the lean and voracious Montreal-Port Arthur
and Edmonton-Vancouver ends. Ambition o’er-leaped itself and met the
fate excessive leaping invites. The man who is a better biter than
chewer will always choke. The guess and comment are plausible--much
more plausible than what I believe is the true explanation of the
debacle of Mackenzie and Mann, which was, finally, the war. There
were other contributing causes, of course, but the real overwhelmer
was Armageddon.

Few men seemed to realize in 1911 and 1912 that the period of swift
expansion which had given prosperity to all sorts of businesses in
Canada was about to conclude. Hindsight is proverbially better than
foresight. It is easy, even for statesmen, to realize now, that there
had been too little increase in the basic productions of agriculture,
and too much addition to manufacturing and other plants which could
only flourish permanently on a constantly expanding fruition of the
soil, along with steady development of forest and mining industries.

Sir George Paish, editor of “The Statist”, after a tour of Canada
before the war, said that we had furnished ourselves with plants
capable of taking care of three times our then production from
natural resources. Immigration was flowing too much to cities and
towns. Free land was becoming comparatively scarce, and even in the
prairie country sixty-five per cent. of the immigration was keeping
off the farms. Early in 1912 the Government was warned in its
Special Commissioner’s Report on Immigration that the basis of its
immigration policy should be changed so as to deflect public money
into scientific land settlement.

In the fall of 1912 signs of an approaching constriction of C.N.R.
earnings began to appear. The Superior and Mountain sections were
under way. The London money market, partly through conditions caused
by wars in the Balkans, was not as responsive as before. Dominion
and Provincial Government guarantees did not now ensure the immediate
sale of securities, at the most favourable prices. In the spring
of 1914 application to Parliament for special assistance became
imperative.

We had been able to meet all fixed charges out of revenue every year
since 1897. Connection of Toronto with Port Arthur around the north
of Lake Superior had been made on the first of January. But, with a
diminishing immigration and a slackening of employment in the cities,
it would take time to win for this part of the system between older
and younger Canada, a traffic commensurate with the proportion of
the total trade between East and West which the Canadian Northern
had created. Even to-day, the old Canadian Northern originates heavy
East-and-West business for other railways.

The British Columbia lines, which were being constructed at a speed
and an economy that was possible only because of the long experience
of engineers like M. H. MacLeod and T. H. White, were bound to cost
more than the amounts of any Government guarantees. It had become
necessary to finance some construction by short term notes, at a
higher interest than guaranteed securities called for. Application
was, therefore, made to the Government at Ottawa for guarantees
amounting to forty-five million dollars, to enable the road to be
finished between Quebec and Vancouver.

Sir William Mackenzie, who always handled financial business at
Ottawa, was turned down flat by the Government. But, as Sir Donald
Mann says, a refusal never meant any more to him than a spur to
persistence in advocating his cause. After much labour in placing the
facts where they could be appreciated, the aid was promised. Against
considerable opposition, in the late spring the legislation was
passed and Sir William went to England to raise the money.

He succeeded in placing a substantial proportion of the securities
with a great financial house. A first issue of three and a half
million pounds was taken by the public, less than three weeks before
the formal declaration of war against Germany. The financial house
did not repudiate its bargain, but there was no prospect of raising
money in London for Canadian railway construction in August, 1914,
or subsequently, during the war. Indeed, the British Government
prohibited any issue of any description from any of the Dominions,
while hostilities lasted.

It would have been unwise to stop work in Canada because of a war
the duration of which was not foreseen. Though we were restricted in
pace, construction went on, the money for which was obtained in New
York, through more short term notes, with the securities unsold in
London as collateral. Guaranteed as the collateral securities were,
they could only realize about sixty per cent. of their face value.
This and the higher rate of interest, had the effect of considerably
raising the cost of capital required for construction.

When, to inaugurate the linking of Quebec and Vancouver by the
Canadian Northern, an excursion of Parliamentarians from the St.
Lawrence to Burrard Inlet was arranged in the fall of 1915, it was
clear that New York must be permanently drawn upon, if the situation,
believed to have been finally saved at midsummer, 1914, were not to
descend into disaster.

Sir William Mackenzie, at an age when chiefs of the C.P.R. retire on
their highly deserved pensions, faced a heavier task than anything
that confronted Stephen, Smith, or Van Horne in the C.P.R.’s most
trying period. The Canadian Government, with London still an
inexhaustible reservoir, was the C.P.R.’s last and safest resort.
Mackenzie saw a world war engrossing every energy of the Dominion,
and rendering London financially impotent to him. For sheer tenacity,
for courage which attacked the most formidable obstacles without a
quail; for capacity to bring things to pass, I think Canada has not
yet begotten his equal. The marvel is, not that he and Sir Donald
Mann could not finish all that they had begun; but that they carried
it so nearly to the triumph, hope of which had been like a pillar
of cloud to them in the days whereon the multitude applauded, and a
pillar of fire in the night of difficulty such as they had endured
when the non-Canadian was preferred before them, and when the panic
of the fall of 1907 smote North America.

Beginning as an unknown venturer into Lombard street, Sir William
Mackenzie had brought to Canada over three hundred million dollars
for Canadian Northern Railways, which had made possible an amount
of development of all kinds, the subtraction of which from Canada’s
economic content to-day would leave the nation poor indeed. But,
while this was happening, the star of Canada had been in the
ascendant, and it seemed that British money had at last developed an
unchangeable westward impetus.

There seem to be investment flows and ebbs in the affairs of
men. They are without the regularity in time, but they have the
variability in volume of the Bay of Fundy tides. One recalls periods
wherein there was either so little opportunity or inclination to
proceed with the development of the earth’s natural resources that,
as an old London friend said, a man with a hundred thousand pounds to
lend could take it down to the City, and not earn enough with it to
buy his lunch. There is, no doubt, a psychological explanation of the
accession and diminution of fiscal confidence in times of peaceful
commerce undisturbed by the threat of war. There is also a partial
accountability for the turning of capital into this or that channel
of increase. It is the tendency of investment to overplay its hand
when the habit has grown of putting faith and cash into a particular
species of enterprise.

During the first period of Canadian railway expansion following
the Crimean war wheat in Ontario went up to two dollars a bushel.
Real estate in towns like Whitby and Ingersoll rose to the fabulous
price of $300 per foot frontage--the selling value of land on
Jasper Avenue, Edmonton’s greatest thoroughfare, when the Canadian
Northern approached from the East, and the capital of the infant
Alberta had been set up there. Van Horne’s faith in the empty West
was based on the fertility of its soil and the certainty that the
United States would soon fill sufficiently to create a demand for
more northern lands. But that expectation would be fulfilled--or
its fulfilment accelerated--when shrewd men would induce capital to
flow into the virgin terrain. The C.P.R. had the tremendous task of
pioneering with steel across the Canadian plains. The northern areas
of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta awaited an equal, indeed, a
more daring enterprise. Mackenzie and Mann were the all-Canadian
instrumentalities for the adventure. They must obtain capital through
London.

Representation there was a vital concern, seeing that it was not
proposed to hand control of the great enterprise to directors who
knew no more of Canada than was known by the English administration
of the Grand Trunk. Absent treatment was no part of the creed of the
two boldest Canadians of their time. The financial representative
was found in a man of extraordinary mentality and financial genius,
Mr. R. M. Horne-Payne. His services to Canada are really registered
in the creation of vast agricultural regions out of solitude, and in
the firm establishing of communities, from quiet hamlets to rushing
cities, where the highest amenities of civilization have succeeded
the wandering buffalo, and have substituted the sawmill for the
towering pine.

The final reliance for Canadian railway expansion was of course, the
comparatively small British investor. But, with so many opportunities
to place money all over the world, this multitudinous host could not
be depended on to produce, at a day or two’s notice all the money
that was required to build a thousand miles of track from Pembroke
to Port Arthur. Rushes to gold and silver camps have no counterpart
in railway building spread over many years. To windward of the small
investor, there must, therefore, be anchorages in the deeps of
underwriting.

The railway requires, say, fifteen million dollars for a certain
range of construction. Experience has shown that the wide advertising
of an issue in the British money market usually brings at once
subscriptions of from thirty to forty per cent. of the money
required. Great financial houses must be found to guarantee purchase
of the whole issue; they, in turn, retailing the securities as the
demand for them continues. The retired colonel, who takes five
hundred pounds’ worth of Government-guaranteed debenture stock on
to-day’s advertising, will be ready for more at midsummer, when
he gets what he wants from his broker--and that is how issues are
absorbed, when they are not all snapped up as soon as they are
offered.

[Illustration: A. J. MITCHELL

“Vice-president in charge of finance ... retired with the president”

  (P. 170)]

[Illustration: R. M. HORNE-PAYNE

“A man of extraordinary mentality and financial genius”

  (P. 243)]

The financial representative of the swiftly-growing Canadian
Northern required, then, three outstanding qualifications--first,
great and sincere faith in Canada’s immediate future; secondly,
capacity to impart his confidence to important underwriters; and
thirdly, a sound judgment of the temper and capabilities of the
investing class whose response is the primary justification of the
underwriters’ confidence. Mr. Horne-Payne, in a degree that can
only be appreciated by those who have worked with him, has these
qualifications--the proof of which was the British investment of over
three hundred million dollars in the Canadian Northern, during his
representation of it.

One illustration only of his faculty can be given. A friend saw him
at his house in Brentwood, Essex, early one autumn. “I have just come
in after motoring from Buxton, where I have had a short holiday,”
said Horne-Payne. “We passed through Leamington. I think I can get
about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds out of the town next
winter.” The records show how accurate his forecast was.

The war changed all that. With London closed to him, the indomitable
Sir William, who never parted with his nerve, found in New York
a combination which was willing to consider seeing the Canadian
Northern through, by taking care of the millions of dormant
securities that must become active, by paying off the short-term
notes; and by furnishing the funds necessary to raise the system to a
standard worthy of its Dominion-wide theatre of operation.

While we hung on to the job of making the best of a heart-breaking,
never-ending crisis, which even the delusive gains of the war could
not mitigate, the New York syndicate invited Mr. E. E. Loomis, now
President of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and Mr. J. W. Platten,
President of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company, of New
York, to report on the value of the property. These gentlemen, in
turn, appointed Messrs. Coverdale and Colpitts, two Canadians of high
standing in the engineering profession in the United States, who had
been conspicuously engaged in railway and industrial valuations, to
examine thoroughly the physical features and contributories of nearly
ten thousand miles of Canadian Northern railway.

A year was spent on this investigation. But, while it was going on,
the Dominion Government, in view of the perilous condition of the
old Grand Trunk, as menaced by its offspring, the G.T.P., and of the
utterly hopeless position of the National Transcontinental, which the
Grand Trunk had refused to take over, appointed a Royal Commission,
consisting of Sir Henry Drayton, chairman of the Dominion Board of
Railway Commissioners, President Smith of the New York Central lines,
and Mr. William Acworth, an eminent British railway economist, to
report on the whole railway situation of Canada. No criticism is due
the Government for this action, in view of its commitments to both
junior transcontinentals.

Early in 1917 the Coverdale-Colpitts report was printed. It
absolutely justified the broad policy on which the Canadian Northern
had been built; and there was good reason to expect that the New York
syndicate would participate in Canadian Northern responsibilities.
But on its heels came the Drayton-Acworth report, recommending
nationalization, and the Smith minority report, demurring. No
syndicate in the world would have committed itself to heavy financing
of a great railway system, under such conditions. The New York people
held off. We held on, but with only the scantest chance of coming
through the war corporately alive.

In the end the Government assumed control of the Canadian Northern
congeries of railways. The alternative was a receivership and
reorganization, in which the guaranteed securities would have to be
honoured by the Governments concerned; and the unsecured investors
would have to take their meagre chance of full salvation. On the
whole, perhaps, the best interests of the greatest number were best
served by what was done. But if Mackenzie and Mann had been merely
bent on self-service they might have come more profitably out of a
formal Canadian Northern bankruptcy.

They held almost all the capital stock. Their position would have had
what Grand Trunk junior shareholders have since called the nuisance
value of a certain ability to hamper any attempt to make a settlement
without their concurrence. But the British investors were held to
have the dominant claim. The arbitrators’ award of ten million
eight hundred thousand dollars to the capital stockholders, limited
beforehand by agreement with the Government to a round ten millions,
meant no such gain to them. They had pledged their interest, and the
money had gone into construction. Certainly they had stood to gain
by the success of the great venture. They also stood to lose. They
lost, and raised no voice in lamentation.

In no sense do these discussions profess to be a history of the
Canadian Northern, or of the two remarkable men whose partnership
made the railway. Perhaps I was daily too deeply immersed in meeting
the responsibilities which grew out of the superintendency between
Gladstone and Dauphin, to be qualified to present the story in its
historical perspective. But that immersion at least gave me, in many
respects, a unique all-around intimacy with the enterprise itself,
and its bearing upon the expanding life of Canada during a most
fateful quarter of a century.

Sir William Mackenzie spent much of his time on trans-Atlantic
missions. He was also interested in many other undertakings which
absorbed their due proportion of his time. Sir Donald Mann, whose
capacities are in keeping with the solidity of his physical frame,
did a great deal of planning ahead. The problem of access to the
Pacific was very much in his mind for twenty years, though he said
little about it. The railway policy on which the British Columbia
Government appealed to the country in December, 1909, was worked
out during Sir Donald’s visit to Victoria in the preceding winter.
Negotiations for charters were almost entirely in his hands.

It was not a sinecure to keep pace with the multitudinous demands
for equipment in men, material and methods which arose out of the
addition of an average of nine furlongs of railway per day to the
system, for the first eighteen years; and of a total of 1,958 miles
in 1915. Between six and seven hundred towns and shipping points are
on the map as the direct result of that record, with every phase of
which I was closely associated. We had good fortune in assembling an
able, loyal and economical staff. Errors were made, of course--who
makes no mistakes never makes anything. But if the story of the rise
and fall of the Canadian Northern is ever written by some man who
can by no possibility be called an interested partisan, his finding,
on the unquestionable facts, can only be that the creators of the
enterprise deserved more of their country than it is now possible for
both of them to receive.




                            CHAPTER XV.

  _Speaking some truth about the difficulty of operating a railway for
                            the nation._


On this continent there surely never was such a weird phantasmagoria
of railroad changes as occurred during and immediately following the
war.

Canada led the Western Hemisphere into the fight that was to save
freedom, and was to magnify Canning’s saying about the New World
redressing the balance of the Old. The cost of the war in economic
disturbance, during its progress, and since the delusive peace, was
as little foreseen as its immediate cost in blood and treasure. What
Armageddon did to North American railways is not yet appreciated by
the millions who use them.

As the war worsened, the Canadian railway situation worsened with
it. The penalties of overbuilding were felt on every side. There was
extraordinary development of war industries; but the cessation of
immigration, the attendant drag upon agriculture and commerce; and
the curtailment of ordinary measures of maintenance and betterment
made it inevitable that very heavy expenditures must be faced as soon
as peace returned.

The war brought a grievous end to the Canadian Northern as a
Mackenzie and Mann enterprise. It also demonstrated beyond a
peradventure the hopelessness, from the beginning, of the Grand
Trunk’s fathering of the Grand Trunk Pacific, by throwing that
western system into the hands of the Government, under a receivership.

Then, as if these difficulties were not aggravating enough, the
entry of the United States into the war, at a time when wages across
the line had soared almost beyond trade unionist dreams of avarice,
threw the railways into a Government pool, with a confounding result
on Canadian railway administration. The McAdoo wages award on the
railways which came under control of the Secretary of the Treasury
raised expenses on all Canadian railways to a point which, though
they compelled rate increases, still could not adequately be met
by any charges which the Railway Board deemed fair to the public
interest. The policeman’s lot in the Pirates of Penzance was indeed
a happy one compared with the Canadian railway executives’ job
towards the end of the war, and during the period of re-construction
immediately following the armistice.

In such circumstances it was fated that we should carry through
one of the strangest phases of the history of transportation--to
change two great systems of privately projected and privately
controlled railways, into public ownership properties, to join them
with a network of Government railways already in existence; and to
prepare the way for the speedy incorporation with these three main
ingredients, of the senior system of Canadian railways--the Grand
Trunk.

One had travelled a long way from the tiny line between Gladstone
and Dauphin, although it was less than twenty-two years from the day
I left the old Manitoba North Western to the period during which
the new directors of the publicly-owned Canadian Northern Railway
took over the Intercolonial and the National Transcontinental, and
“Canadian National Railways” was first used as a name that was to
represent the legal unity of the largest system in the world.

Perhaps, if we were hunting for records here, something unique might
be discovered in one’s service. A little pioneer railway came into
existence; grew to a system of nearly ten thousand miles, passed from
private ownership to a national enterprise; carried on for four years
under its former statutory identity, during which period there were
associated with it, first all the Government railways whose building
was fundamental to Confederation; and, secondly, the Grand Trunk
Pacific, launched as a semi-public enterprise with the intention of
dwarfing its existence. Only one general officer was concerned with
every phase of that kaleidoscopic story.

His experience involved a multiplicity of responsibilities which,
viewed from a comparatively restful contact with less exacting
business, seem now to be chiefly remarkable for the fact that
they did not entirely swamp his sense of personal identity. An
advantage of being away from it all is that one may obtain a
clearer perspective of what happened, and of the trend of its
public importances, than was possible when one was encompassed by
administrative labour.

There were eight years between the outbreak of war and the departure
of my colleagues and myself from the Canadian National Railways.
That fateful period seems naturally to divide itself into three
distinct phases: the labour immediately attributable to the war;
the measures required to make the best of the general situation
left by the war, and the methods by which it was endeavoured to
reconcile the efficiency of private management with the essentials of
responsibility to Parliament. The last first.

As far as public policy was concerned, the situation into which
a Board of Directors, newly appointed by the Government, entered
was made for them by events which happily, perhaps, for them, were
part of the war, as well as part of a railway problem of the first
financial and administrative magnitude. We came into office when
members of Parliament had something to think about besides jobs.

Even if the word “politics” were not used here, readers would use it;
for, after all, you cannot have a revolution in a nation’s railway
affairs which depends on Parliamentary action, without political
considerations entering into it. Besides the great interest of the
whole body politic, which is statesmanship, the pull of the hungry
partisan is sure to be felt, sooner or later.

Except for the infinitesimal proportion of men to whom nothing in
public service is so important as the chance to get their hands on
some public post or property, I think the public sentiment west of
Montreal was, and is, all for keeping politics out of all the railway
administration for which Parliament became responsible by the taking
over of the Canadian Northern, and the receivership of the Grand
Trunk Pacific.

During private ownership, the few attempts which were made to
influence appointments by friends of Governments which had given
guarantees had failed ignominiously. When the Canadian Northern
became a National liability altogether, the war was almost at its
worst. The acquisition of the system meant so much obligation that
few supporters of the Government felt like making a party holiday
out of the transaction. The war had for three years been the
universal preoccupation, when, in 1917, party considerations were
subordinated to the formation of a Union Government. From the point
of view of starting with a clean slate, as far as the attentions of
old-fashioned machine politicians were to be apprehended, conditions
could not be more favourable for nationalizing thousands of miles
of railway, hitherto privately directed. Indeed, the Government
exercised its authority over the Canadian Northern, before the Union
Government arrived, by appointing as directors: Mr. W. K. George of
Toronto, Mr. William Christie of Winnipeg, and Mr. Harry Richardson
of Kingston. This happened almost without Parliamentarians or the
public waking up to its significance.

Mr. Richardson was appointed to the Senate. Senator Nicholls of
Toronto had been a director of the Canadian Northern from the
beginning. While the final transfer to the Government was still in
the future, certain legislation was pending affecting the railway,
and these two senators resigned their directorships so as to avoid
every appearance of political advantage being associated with the
railway.

It was in the spring of 1918 when the complete surrender of the
Canadian Northern to the Government was announced. On May 15th Sir
Robert Borden described to the House of Commons the administrative
policy of the Government:

“As to the immediate future, I have already said that we do not
intend to operate the Canadian Northern system directly under a
department of the Government. It is our intention to operate it
at present through the corporate machinery by which it has been
operated in the past. There will be a reconstituted Board of
Directors. We shall endeavour to get the best men we can; and we
shall not interfere with them. We shall leave the administration
and operation of the road to be carried on absolutely under that
Board of Directors, and we shall use every means available to the
Government (and, if necessary, we shall come to Parliament for that
purpose) in order that anything like political influence, political
patronage or political interference--I am using the word ‘political’
in its narrowest sense--shall be absolutely eliminated from the
administration of that road.”

This was the only policy which could be laid down with adequate
appreciation of the magnitude of our task. It would be less than
justice to Sir Robert Borden to refrain from saying that he and his
Government lived up to that declaration. The same is true of his
successor, Mr. Meighen. Neither directly nor indirectly did either of
these Prime Ministers make a single communication to me, or intended
to reach me, as far as I have the slightest inkling, with a view to
influencing any decision likely to affect any man’s good will towards
the Government.

Up to that time Government railways to the north of the St. Lawrence,
had not been operated on the basis of political advantage which
had affected the Intercolonial management from the beginning. The
National Transcontinental, between Quebec and Winnipeg, except for
the grain traffic to Fort William, was a sort of waif, with so
scanty a revenue that, with the war occupying everybody’s mind,
nobody interested in votes seemed to pay it any attention. It found
practically nothing for idle political hands to do. Satan was busy
elsewhere.

Between the Ottawa and the Pacific, members of Parliament had not all
their lives seen the section men of the only railway in their region
changed with every change of Government, because they were friends of
the departing Administration, and friends of the incoming Government
had been promised their jobs.

The election of December, 1917, was followed by limitations of
patronage which the old-style politicians did not like; but which
they knew it was futile then to attempt to revoke. Sir Robert
Borden’s declaration was received without vociferous enthusiasm and
without audible complaint from his supporters.

Parliament prorogued eight days after the Premier notified the
politicians to keep off the track. In September the complete new
Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern was appointed. Not one of
them knew anything of his contemplated appointment until he received
the direct offer of a place. Not one of them was considered because
he had any political influence. Every one of them was chosen for his
potential value to the board as a man of wide experience in business,
in most cases as a large shipper of freight; and in one case because
he was of the foremost financiers in the Dominion. Every man hated
the idea of political influence being injected into the railway
business. If it be of interest to such as love to look minutely into
such matters, it was found later that a majority of the Board were
old-time Liberals.

We were a real Board of Directors, and I think no more harmonious
body of business men ever worked together--I don’t mean in the sense
that there were no differences of opinion; but in the sense that
there was unity of aim, and a single-minded desire to do the best
that was in us for vast properties, in the success of which the
national prosperity was very heavily at stake.

The Board had not been at work very long before it discovered that
it had been given the task of fusing ancient and modern, and that
one of the elements in the projected fusion was not in love with
the operation. There was, indeed, some temptation to feel that the
situation was expressed by:--

      For East is East and West is West
      And never the twain shall meet.

Our appointment as the Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern
system was followed by an order-in-council appointing us to
administer all the Canadian Government Railways, and to that extent
removing them from the immediate oversight of the Minister of
Railways and Canals, who was liable to be changed as some section men
were.

It is as well to copy here the letter which Dr. Reid, the Minister
of Railways, wrote to me when he had parted with the direct
responsibility for administering the Government lines:

“Now that the Board of Directors has been appointed for the Canadian
Northern Railway and that the Transcontinental Railway and the
Intercolonial Railway and all other branch lines of railway owned by
the Dominion Government are being placed under your Board for the
management and operation, I wish to impress on you the understanding
that I had with you here last week, namely: The Board must operate
the railways without any interference or influence from anyone
connected with this Department or any influence outside of it.

“The future of the Government ownership of railways in my opinion,
depends entirely on their operation being carried on free from any
political or other influence. The operation should be carried on the
same as a private corporation, keeping in view at all times economy
and the interests of the shareholders who of course, are the people
of Canada.

“If you desire any information from the Government or consideration
of any matters in connection with the Government Railways, then I ask
that you submit it in writing, so that I can lay all matters before
the Governor-in-Council in the proper way. I shall then forward you
the reply officially. In this way a proper record will be on file.

“This in my opinion, is the way to carry out the operation of the
road, and if you agree with me, I hope you will see that this is
done.”

The name Canadian National was used, as already said, for general
convenience, but legal identities were then in no way affected. The
Board’s first duty was to see the property it was to manage. There
was a trip to the Pacific coast and then one to the Atlantic seaboard.

Since before the war the West had known the disadvantages of hampered
operation and delayed completion of branches that were urgently
required. It wanted service; and it had no hoary traditions,
practices, or hopes to recover or maintain. No old war horses had
been running loose for ten years expecting that when next the
fortune of political battle turned out a Minister of Railways they
would be turned into the paddock.

The East was as different from the West as chalk is from cheese--it
could not be otherwise. For nearly fifty years the Government railway
had been an unquestioned engine of political patronage. The oldest
inhabitants when they gazed at a time-table saw in it the covenants
of Confederation. The attitude of many men who are not so grey
was and is: (1) That the Intercolonial being named in the British
North America Act, and projected and promised as a political link
between eastern and central Canada, must so remain; (2) That, taking
not the most direct route from Montreal to Halifax, and therefore
giving rates to shippers based sometimes less on mileage haul than
on the shippers’ desire, the Intercolonial must not be treated as a
commercial railway; but as a sort of douceur to induce the maritime
provinces to remain confederated with the Canadas.

This view has been advocated with great fervour by deputations that
have come to protest against the ruthless administration that had its
head and offending in Toronto. It is not unanimously held, down east.
Even some politicians have said openly to their friends that there is
nothing worth fighting about in the views of the departed fathers of
Confederation, and that the East must look for business connections
with the West only on businesslike bases.

A few days after the armistice the Board reached Moncton for a
Saturday afternoon and Sunday acquaintance with the Intercolonial
headquarters. It found the atmosphere as chilly indoors as out,
after the President had given to a representative meeting the
Board’s assurance of goodwill, and appreciation of the need for the
local officers to have large jurisdiction; and had sketched the
possibilities of interchange between Eastern and Western officers
with a view to broadening the experience of the whole staff.

A gentleman of much ability and intense local patriotism presented
us with a picture of an Ontario we had never seen before; and
generally left the impression that something like a Western pirate
was determined to prey on an Eastern victim.

Plainly, we were not as welcome as the flowers in May. The archangel
Gabriel could not have become popular down by the sea if he had
undertaken the job of co-ordinating the services of the railways
which the Dominion of Canada now possessed. With all the good will
in the world, it can be said that it was too much to expect that
excellent men, habituated to party control of a railway, would
discern the least beneficence in the revolution which had come upon
the ancient institution.

There never was anything substantial in the objections to control
from Toronto, as compared with the former conditions. Actual conduct
of the Intercolonial centred in Moncton, as much as it always did.
What really happened was that Toronto was substituted for Ottawa;
and a President and Board of Directors succeeded a Minister. The
local superintendents’ proposals for the year’s betterments, as
passed upon by the general manager, formerly reached Ottawa, and
were there approved by the Minister or rejected, in readiness for
the estimates to come before Parliament. Now, by the like process,
proposals reached Toronto, before being incorporated in Parliamentary
estimates. Fundamentally, that was the change. But, there was the
difference that existed between the President and the Minister--as to
coming into office and going out, they weren’t both subject to the
same powers as determined the choice of the section men.

It would have been vain to look for the instantaneous disappearance
of a temper which, during two generations, had been deeply embedded
in the political consciousness of three provinces and of half
of a fourth. Sir Robert Morier, who was regarded as the ablest
British ambassador of the later Victorian era, used to say it
was the business of the statesman to be five per cent. ahead of
public opinion. How far Sir Robert Borden’s policy was ahead of
public opinion in the maritimes--or rather the opinion of the party
stalwarts--one cannot say. But as session succeeded session it became
clearer and clearer that, in the East, the administration of the
National Railways would be regarded from a very different point of
view from that which actuated the West.

In the House of Commons there were criticisms of my former relation
to the Canadian Northern, and demands for more plentiful financial
details of our work. Nothing was ever alleged, or could be alleged,
on the first count, of which dignified notice could be taken. The
second criticism did raise a question of public policy; and it is as
well to say one or two things about it.

Against Parliament’s right to control the expenditures of
Parliamentary money no word can be said. But there are limitations,
for instance, when competitive contracts and commercial services are
concerned. There is, indeed, a question of the use of ordinary common
sense, which must not be jettisoned by a railway president, and ought
not to be abandoned by a politician.

Look at imperial naval defence for a minute. The House of Commons is
asked to vote say two million pounds for a battleship to be built by
Vickers-Maxim. Every member of the House, therefore, has the right
to inquire into everything relating to the contract. But honourable,
experienced, trusted servants of the Crown have been employed to
formulate a proposal on which their character, skill and experience
are staked. Suppose one member, not to say twenty, began to inquire
meticulously into the prices for all sorts of materials--the House
would become tired of and then furious with him, and he would be
suppressed as a nuisance.

Parliament’s attitude to a national railway must be based on one
of two assumptions--that the management is worthy or is unworthy
of confidence. The efficiency of its management, like that of any
other public management, is to be judged from the methods employed
to carry on its business. The first test of these methods belongs
to the known character of the administrative chiefs of the railway.
On this point I have nothing further to say. The second is in the
processes by which financial demands reach Parliament. What were
these processes?

In the old days, I believe, the estimates for the Intercolonial were
well sifted, first through district officers, and finally by the
Minister with whom a committee of the Cabinet was associated. But,
based on too abundant experience, there was always the fear, in the
railway officials, of political interference from the constituencies;
and always the possibility that somebody with a real or fancied
grievance would get access to the Minister.

The Board’s method was for the local superintendents’ suggested
appropriations to be refined by the officers above them, passed on by
the President, submitted by him to the directors; revised by them,
and then by the President carried to the Minister and a strong and,
as I can testify, a vigilant committee of the Cabinet. Finally they
were brought to the House by the Minister, with whom sat his deputy,
who was also a director of the railways. Then they were open to the
criticism of two hundred and thirty-five members, and were entirely
subject to the approval of the House of Commons, which could demand
all our reports.

Now let us take a concrete case, not of permanent betterment, but of
contracts for one of the most important operating supplies. In 1922
we were summoned before the Public Accounts Committee. What took
place is on the record. Inquiry was made by a member for the current
cost of a commodity for the supply of which known friends of his were
also in the field. I took the position that it would be against the
national interest to disclose prices, which, I knew from experience,
were apt to be taken by certain firms desiring to get the business,
the duty and freight added, and a tender put in for a few cents per
ton below the price obtained by absolutely strict competition. I
instructed my subordinate not to bring the information demanded.

The member demanding the information is one of the most expert in
all the forms of the House. When we pointed out that the subject of
his demand had to do with the current year’s expenses, with which
Parliament was concerned only as estimates; and did not touch the
year’s business then before the Public Accounts Committee, no further
effort was made to get the information. It would be inaccurate to say
no further effort was made to get me. The episode was typical of many
things, as to which men of affairs will need no further elucidations.

Heaven preserve me from expressing political opinions; but there is
a temptation to say that the Conservative party may regard itself
as fortunate in the Borden Government’s double experience of war
and railway administration. From the point of view of observing the
conditions which Sir Robert laid down in May, 1918, the war stress,
and the necessity for respecting the non-partisan avowals of the
Union Government helped greatly to wean old fashioned politicians
from the ancient customs. Whatever their private feelings about the
loss of patronage and the helplessness of pull, they could not launch
bitter complaints to Mr. Speaker without harming their own side of
the House. Some of them had the mortification, though, of seeing
their traditional opponents making attacks, which, naturally, were
received with intense interest and favor by some of the folks back
home.

During the session of 1921, strong attacks on us were made; and were
continued in the campaign that preceded the election on December 6th
of that year. The Board was assailed on the ground of interlocking
directorates. Intimation was given that there would be an alteration
if the Government were changed. Evidently we were to be the section
men to retire with the Minister of Railways.

One of the most vehement critics of our administration was Mr.
Kennedy, of Windsor, who became Minister of Railways. There is no
reason why I should not tell of my first meeting with Mr. Kennedy.

Naturally, I had taken note of what had been said in the House by Mr.
Kennedy. When he sent for me I took along the Hansard report of his
speech. Though I had heard good accounts of how he was shaping as a
railway administrator, it seemed best to be ready to let humility
wait upon candour.

We had never met. As soon as I entered his room, and before there
was time to say anything, Mr. Kennedy opened with a speech of which
this is a fair summary: “Mr. Hanna”, he said, “before we begin
our official relations I want to say something to you. You know,
politicians in opposition often make criticisms and say things which,
if they bore the responsibility of office, they wouldn’t say. You may
have read some pretty strong things I said about you. I want you to
forget them entirely, if you will. I know nothing about the railway
business; and you have spent your lifetime in it. I want your help in
mastering my job, as freely as you care to give it me.”

To such frankness only one reply was possible. I offered to prepare
for him a survey of the work we had done since 1918, the head of each
department setting forth its activities.

When that had been done Mr. Kennedy was extremely appreciative
of a very voluminous document, all of which, I came to know he
had read. Mr. Kennedy won my entire respect, for the speed and
comprehensiveness of his grasp of whatever was put before him; for
his desire to give the Board all the support to which we had become
accustomed, and for the openness and confidence with which he treated
me personally and officially.

It is characteristic of an old politician that he cannot believe
his fellow on the other side has changed his habit. The persistence
of the partisan attitude towards the Intercolonial manifested
itself speedily after the election of 1921. It must have been
assumed by many veterans of hustings and committee rooms that
all the talk inside and out of Parliament about the abolition of
political considerations from the National Railway management was
so much bunkum. Letters soon began to arrive from Parliamentarians
the substance of which was “Now that we are in power, of course,
our friends will have consideration.” Hundreds of such letters
went on file, some of them from men high in the nation’s service.
Surprise was great when it was found that the talk about political
eliminations wasn’t merely gas.

In July, 1922, the resignation of the whole Board of Directors was
asked for by the Minister, I believe with sincere regret. It was made
known that besides myself, Mr. A. J. Mitchell, the vice-president in
charge of finances, would be forgotten when the new executive was
formed. We carried on until October, when the execution was publicly
performed, and one life, at least, was appreciably lengthened.




                            CHAPTER XVI.

  _Narrating several occurrences which made huge Canadian National
                        deficits inevitable._


Comparisons may be odious; but they are sometimes illuminating. To
many sincere well-wishers to the experiment of nationalizing about
twenty thousand miles of Canadian railways, the clearest remaining
impression of the earlier years of that regime is of enormous
deficits. Apprehension of the causes of these deficits is not clear.
It certainly could not be among those who once advocated turning over
this national property to a competitor for a dollar a year, leaving
the nation to carry all the fixed charges on a capital obligation
four or five times the size of the national debt before the war, and
about two-thirds of that interesting burden in this tranquil era.
Before discussing the purely Canadian situation it is worth while to
look at what happened across the line.

When the United States entered the war, all the railways were taken
over by the Government, under the supreme direction of the Secretary
of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, and with a guarantee of pre-war profits
to the owners. The so-called national administration lasted twenty
months, and lost one billion, four hundred and forty-three million
eight hundred and ten thousand dollars, or more than the total fixed
assets of the Canadian National Railways before the inclusion of the
Grand Trunk. Besides this loss, the Government advanced, during its
control, one billion one hundred and forty-four million dollars for
equipment, additions to, and betterments of properties which the
nation does not own. The chances for complete recovery of that money
are probably nothing more than chances.

That was nationalization in the United States, under the autocratic
control and operation of a politician.

Nationalization in Canada began under vitally different conditions,
as to the properties taken over, and the character of the management.
When in 1920 the effects of the American experiment were being
acutely felt in Canada, I happened to speak to the Ottawa Canadian
Club. This comparison of conditions on both sides of the border was
made; and I think its fairness is still beyond question:

                       IN UNITED STATES.         IN CANADA.

  1st. The Reason.    War measure.              For economic causes.

  2nd. The object.    Unified service           Adequate and efficient
                      regardless of cost.       service.

  3rd. Duration.      Temporary; this very      Permanent; due to
                      condition being quite     conditions on which
                      unsettling.               the policy was based.

  4th. Method of      Political--Mr. McAdoo.    Non-political; board
  Management.                                   of management of
                                                business men.

  5th. Competition.   Eliminated; practical     Preserved; strong
                      monopoly of the           competition assured.
                      worst kind; over
                      265,000 miles.

  6th. Result on      Indifference.             On their toes.
  Staff.

  7th. Result         Guaranteed return to      Recognition of
  generally.          Railways on investment.   efficient service.

                      Dictator McAdoo           Promotion from merit
                      wages award proved        alone.
                      to be a thirty-chapter
                      serial with supplements.

It would be a signal failure of duty here if one did not offer
the warmest tribute of gratitude and admiration to the Board
of Directors, which the Government appointed in September,
1918, to serve with me, and which administered 17,478 miles of
railway, formerly the Canadian Northern, Intercolonial, National
Transcontinental and Grand Trunk Pacific. The directors were:

  A. J. Mitchell, Toronto.
  G. A. Bell, Ottawa.
  Robert Hobson, Hamilton.
  E. R. Wood, Toronto.
  F. P. Jones, Montreal.
  Sir Hormisdas Laporte, Montreal.
  R. T. Riley, Winnipeg.
  C. M. Hamilton, McTaggart, Sask.
  Col. Thos. Cantley, New Glasgow, N.S.

Later, Mr. F. P. Jones resigned for business reasons, Mr. C. M.
Hamilton retired to become a candidate for provincial honours in
Saskatchewan, (he is still in the Government at Regina), and Col.
Thomas Cantley resigned when selected as a candidate in the Federal
election of December, 1921; thus accentuating the non-political
character of the Board.

It is proper to repeat that these gentlemen gave to the work,
shortly to be sketched, exactly the kind of supervision which able,
conscientious men give to the management of private concerns. Many an
anxious discussion did we have about the broad lines of policy, and
the measures essential to laying deep and sound the bases of future
success of a business which perhaps had heavier handicaps upon it
than were hindering any magnitudinous contemporary enterprise.

One of the most precious qualities in the administration of
great businesses, including Governments, is what Napoleon called
two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, which is very different from
the desperation of battle-heat. A glance at the fundamentals of the
Board’s situation, will indicate whether they showed the Napoleonic
quality, in the cold, dead hour, when temptations to turn over for a
snooze are most potent.

The Board inherited a vast mileage and a traffic volume, which was
not likely swiftly to be enlarged, once the troops were returned, and
the war shipments, which had taxed the Intercolonial, for instance,
almost to its limits, for the first time in its long history,
were over. All costs were at a height, which before the war, was
unthinkable. Rates had not risen in comparison. The physical property
was badly run down, owing to war conditions, in which connection were
two especially heavy burdens, the quality and extent of which the
general public could not be expected to appreciate.

The life of a tie and of a wooden trestle is from seven to ten years.
On the Canadian Northern, the National Transcontinental, and the
Grand Trunk Pacific, there were many trestles which must be replaced
either by fills or steel bridges. You would be surprised to know how
many trestles there were between the Yellowhead and Prince Rupert,
where it was popularly assumed that steel bridges had eliminated the
old-time feature of pioneer construction.

To those who are not very familiar with an important phase of
railway practice, perhaps it may be explained that wooden trestles
are built in places where it is intended to make entirely new and
costly embankments for roadbed. But it is not done that way in the
beginning, because a wooden trestle is quickly and cheaply put up,
whereas, to make an embankment with, perhaps, hundreds of thousands
of cubic yards of earth or rock, means the employment of innumerable
teams at enormous expense, and much delay in laying rails.

Sometimes, indeed, trestles are built because the character of the
earth’s foundation makes it uncertain whether the first location is
the best, and a trestle is adaptable to whatever slight deflection
may be necessary. For several years you can use the trestles, relying
on traffic developing sufficiently to pay for the embankment out of
revenue. You then build it economically by work train, with the cars
loaded by steam shovel and unloaded by a steampower plough, that
sweeps the flat cars clean.

The supersession of trestles was a large and expensive element in
the Board’s work of putting the National Railways into first class
operating efficiency.

There was another costly factor of immense importance which did
not enter into the “national” administration of the United States
railways. Thirty-five per cent. of all our mileage had been taken
over from the contractors during the war. Anybody who has noticed
what happens when a gas or water main is disturbed in a street, knows
that though the filled earth, when the job is done, is a hump in the
road, it becomes a hole as the earth settles. Every motorist has
mourned when he hasn’t objurgated, as he comes again, again and again
to a piece of new provincial highway where the concrete has not been
put down, because the “fill” must have time to settle. Thirty-five
per cent. of the National Railway mileage was, to a considerable
extent, like the roadway of the disturbed water main, or the
disturbed motorist. Besides these factors new roundhouses, section
men’s residences, water facilities and many terminal plants had to be
provided or improved.

In so general a sketch as this it is impossible to distinguish
between expenditures on capital and maintenance accounts. We were
compelled to go to Parliament for large sums for ordinary as well as
for deferred maintenance, in addition to what was imperative for new
equipment, terminals and completion of branch line construction.

In the public apprehension of somewhat complex financial
relationships, the uppermost idea no doubt was that the Canadian
National Railways were losing millions, hand over fist, on the
mere running of trains, and that the money voted by Parliament was
swallowed up in hopelessly irrecoverable deficits. The report for
1921 gives the distribution of the total net cash advances to the
Canadian Northern:--

  Refunding of loans, including principal of
      equipment securities                     $ 32,306,952.49
  New Construction                               29,804,673.62
  Betterments                                    21,962,955.31
  Railway Equipment                              42,339,483.81
  Rails, accessories and other material          19,212,656.94
  Capital contracts payable                       1,973,820.00
  Fixed charges and operating deficits          103,487,706.71
                                               ---------------
        Total                                  $251,088,248.88
                                               ---------------

The good citizen, who always pays his way, and looks upon everything
connected with Government as a deadly allurement to wasteful
extravagance, is tempted to assume that a first class recklessness
and a third-class efficiency have gone into the Canadian National
Railways’ management. A reading of the abridged report made to Mr.
Kennedy in 1922, of the Operating and Maintenance Department, which
is given in the appendix should help to correct this error. Still,
a tendency to persist in it may linger, especially among those
who regard our great rival, the C.P.R. as being filled with the
excellences which public service is believed conspicuously to lack.
Saddened owners and candid friends of the Canadian National Railways
may not discover unaided a feature of the war and post-war situation
which makes the practice of comparison more interesting and less
odious than it usually is. It has to do with what has already been
noticed--that thirty-five per cent. of the Canadian National mileage
was received from the contractors during the war.

Does it ever mean anything to the critical public, I wonder, that
Parliament and the Dominion Board of Railway Commissioners recognise
no difference between the pioneer railway and its old-established,
flourishing senior? The Canadian Northern was not begun until the
Canadian Pacific had been operating transcontinental trains for ten
years. Its main line was built through practically empty prairie
country. But though it was a pioneering system, it had to meet the
same conditions as to passenger and freight rates that governed
the C.P.R., with the established traffic of the only continuous
transcontinental railway in the world. This disparity applies with
equal force to the opening up of the northern wildernesses in Quebec
and Ontario by the National Transcontinental and the Canadian
Northern.

The emergence of the National Railways placed upon us a
responsibility for creative, pioneering services the magnitude of
which has surely not been fully appreciated by Parliament, public or
press. So far as one is aware, the value to the country of a pioneer
railway has never been worked out on an actuarial basis. Take, say, a
territory three hundred miles long by thirty miles wide into which
settlement is introduced by a railway. Thirty towns are established
in it through which all the newly-created business of the region
passes. That business is represented not only by what is visible in
the thirty towns and their sustaining farms. It is in the factories
of Ontario, the financial, theological and other institutions of the
East, and in all the paraphernalia of transportation, from coast to
coast, including the car and engine shops, and the divisional towns.

The common denominator of the whole range and multitude of activities
set in motion by the pioneer railway is the Government, the expenses
of which, avowedly for the general advantage of Canada, are roughly
divisible into two sections--as the expenses of a great bank
are. There are the expenses of established business which yields
dividends, and those which are chargeable to promotion, expansion,
pioneering--which will presently become profit-making. The Government
furnishes various administrative services to newly-opened country
which do not produce an immediately balancing revenue. No criticism
can be offered against this general policy. Banks carry on branches
in sparsely populated localities, for similar reasons. They support
their children for a while because presently the children will
support them.

Railways are expected to furnish services which cost more than they
bring. The Canadian National is carrying a larger proportion of
these than ought to have been assumed, under a properly controlled
programme of original construction. But that does not alter the
fact that the pioneering service is being given, under the orders
of a Board of Commissioners which, broadly speaking, treats the
youthful branch as if it were the matured trunk. The point I wish
to suggest is that, to obtain a fair perspective of the Canadian
National Railways, as they were between 1918 and 1922, these aspects
of a thirty-five per cent. of mileage taken over after the Great
War began, should be taken into account; especially in relation to
the heavy expenditures necessitated by a continuation of extremely
adverse conditions.

Look at one of the financial aspects of these tremendous, but typical
necessities for tremendous expenditure. The well-conducted railway,
as already said, expects to replace its trestles out of revenue; and
to carry its maintenance from the same source. On the Intercolonial
it had never been expected that revenue would care for all these
charges. The capital account was continually increased, the money
being supplied by Parliament from taxes, and not carried as an annual
recurring liability, such as the bonded indebtedness of a railway
which must live by commercial processes alone. The Intercolonial was
always true to this form before 1919.

If the National Railways were to be managed as a business, and not as
a makeshift, the Board felt that there should not only be a thorough
rehabilitation of the property, but that all possible costs should
be charged to revenue so that there could be no mistake about the
strictly businesslike character of the whole administration. That
meant requests for vast sums of money, and the charging of them
against revenue, which in turn meant the declaration of huge and, to
the short-sighted, terrifying deficits.

The money could only come from Parliament, on the demand of the
Government. My old colleagues of the Board would not thank me
for saying that they showed extraordinary courage in putting the
situation, in all its formidability, up to the Government. But, to
many seasoned business men, in their place, what they did would have
required volcanoes of two-o’clock-in-the-morning bravery.

If there had been anything like the ancient brand of political
control, or profit, in the Government’s railway dispositions, what
would the Cabinet’s attitude have been? It would have said “Keep
your expenditure down to the lowest possible limit, not giving first
regard to the foundation for future commercial success. Charge
as much of your expenses as possible to capital account, to keep
deficits down, so that we may make the best possible immediate
showing to the voters.”

The Government did nothing of the kind. The Board went to the Cabinet
with a big, hard, forbidding business proposition, which only the
lapse of years could justify. To its enduring honor, be it said, the
Government courageously faced the situation with a kindred spirit;
found the money, and said never a syllable about the political
effects of so much courage, and so much danger.

Though the Board exhibited such splendid courage, let it not be
supposed that there was anything exhilarating about our job. After
all it is a heart-breaking affliction to have to go on month after
month with the results of ceaseless endeavour written monotonously
in red ink. To any Scotch soul, the continued outlay of more
than a dollar to earn a dollar was bound to feel very much like
predestinated doom. There was no escape from the experience in the
present. Without it there was no hope for the future. Thousands of
miles of railway were on the verge of dilapidation. To allow the
process to go farther would be to invite the permanent disaster which
we were determined, if possible, to avoid.

In trying to give to the general public an intelligible account of
a railway administration, there is always the danger of fogging
the story with statistics--of making it impossible to see the wood
for the trees. I am anxious to make it clear that the Board of
Directors, of whom I had the honour to be the head, approached and
performed their duty in a fashion which became the dignity of their
employer--the Canadian nation--and reflected high distinction upon
themselves.

From our first inspection of the property, from Sydney and Halifax
to Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and from our study of the economic
conditions affecting the expansion of revenue, we evolved a definite,
coherent policy. I take the liberty of repeating what I endeavoured
to express in a memorandum which I read to the Select Standing
Committee on National Railways and Shipping, on April 20th, 1921.
Speaking of the general supervision exercised by the Board, and after
stating that they were the directing force in the general policy of
the railways, I said:

“It has been accepted by them as a definite policy that a national
railway system be built up of the various lines owned by the
Government, which in all respects will be the equal of the Canadian
Pacific Railway in its ability to give the communities it serves good
and adequate railway service. To carry out such a guiding policy it
has been necessary to assume that ultimately the traffic for which
the main lines of the system were laid down would be developed. Where
any limiting condition exists which prevents the above-mentioned
policy from being carried out it is the aim of the directors to
remove such a condition. It has therefore been necessary, in addition
to taking up deferred maintenance, to make a start on the progressive
programme of improvements to the physical properties of the system.
It is a matter of regret that much of this work, which could not
further be postponed, had to be undertaken during the last two years
under conditions which added largely to the expense. This situation
was intensified by the fact that initial tie and bridge renewals for
a long section of the main line came due within the period under
review. The extra outlay which it has been necessary to make in an
effort to put track and equipment in the proper physical condition
is largely indicated by the increases in the principal headings of
expense already set up in the statements being placed before you.

“This has involved the expenditure of money to improve locomotive
terminals; extend sidings and switching yards; to put in double
tracking, and improve many other operating conditions, so that a
greater efficiency can be secured from the equipment now owned, and
so that additional traffic may be handled without congestion. It
has also been necessary to undertake some branch line extensions,
particularly those on which some work has already been done prior to
the war.

“Additional rolling stock and motive power has been required, large
additions to the equipment being necessary to put this system in a
position properly to handle its proportion of the traffic of the
country.”

Because of the enormous amount of work to be done, and of the
cost of materials having increased to unprecedented figures, even
then--although the later increases added greatly to the burden, and
wages were also much higher and labour less efficient--we had to
consider carefully the order in which the programme should be carried
out. We therefore, placed the works in the following order.

1. Those absolutely necessary to the continued operation of each line.

2. Those absolutely necessary to the reasonably satisfactory handling
of traffic.

3. Those not absolutely necessary but which would reduce the cost of
operation sufficiently to justify fully the expenditure.

Under such a policy we carried on for over three years. Each year
increased the burden of troubles and anxieties due to advancing costs
of materials and wages, as you may now see.

Our first year, (and the first post-war year,) 1919, far from seeing
any let up to the accumulation of embarrassing labor conditions
originating in the McAdoo award and its many supplements, or a
reduction in costs of material, brought an aggravation of the
situation. The United States Government’s decision to accept
the losses of the United States railroad administration as war
expenditures, was official recognition of the disproportion between
expenses and gross earnings. We carried on without charging any of
our difficulties to war account.

Freight and passenger rates in 1919 remained stationary, while
wholesale prices, according to the Department of Labour’s index,
advanced from 286.5 to 322.7, and the average annual wage of railway
employes increased from $1,061.20 to $1,315.93.

In this year, due to the large amount of deferred maintenance which
was essential to bringing the property up to normal conditions, the
increase in labour cost alone was $19,000,000, and in materials
$2,500,000. The increased cost of our labour was more than half of
the total annual revenue of the Dominion Government when Sir George
Foster became Minister of Finance.

“From bad to worse” describes the situation in 1920, from the
operating point of view. The Canadian National, in common with
other Canadian railways, was carrying the accumulated burdens of
the McAdoo award and its oppressive supplements, etc., as well as
still higher costs for coal, materials and supplies. The inadequacy
of earnings in this situation was fully recognized; but the rates
question was not dealt with in Canada. The continuation of the United
States Government guarantee of pre-war profits to the railroads up
to September, 1920--twenty-two months after the armistice--prevented
increases of charges over there to meet the increased wages. As we
were operating under United States wage rates it was felt that the
Railway Commission should hold us down to United States freight rate
levels.

In this year, too, another crushing blow was dealt the railways by
the Chicago award, which was adopted in Canada under strike pressure.
The award which was made in September, but was retroactive to May
8th, increased wages by over 25 per cent. This, applying to more than
four months’ back pay involved a payment by the Canadian National of
almost six million dollars.

During this year of boom prices and deferred maintenance, the
programme of improvements and betterments had to continue, as much
of the work could not longer be deferred. But at what a cost! In
labour and materials, exclusive of coal, the increase approximated
$29,000,000. In our direct transportation account, our coal bill
alone showed an increase of $6,200,000.

Though 1920 was bad enough, 1921 excelled it in horror. In reviewing
the results of this year, the United States railroad authorities
have called it the worst year in the history of the United States.
“The decline of both freight and passenger traffic was the greatest,
absolutely and relatively, that ever occurred in the country,” the
Railway Age said.

The Canadian railways experienced practically similar conditions
to those existing in the United States. But the Canadian National
System, unlike many other lines, finished the year with its physical
property in better condition than ever before. We drastically reduced
operating and maintenance forces, because the deferred maintenance
work had practically been completed; and because, due to the previous
two years’ work, operating conditions were improved. Though our
traffic, in common with that of other railways, fell away, the year
closed with gross earnings practically the same as in 1920. We were
able to effect such economies in every department that we reduced our
operating expenses by $21,250,000.

Misery loves company. Sometimes, when you are in trouble, it is a
consoling thought that you have not monopolised the chastening rod.
Our handicaps considered, we were not as badly off as some American
railways which, in dividend-earning power, had been regarded as
surest among the sure--the Pennsylvania, for instance.

This line had an operating loss of over $23,000,000 in 1920, or a
total loss of $48,250,000, including taxes and fixed charges, as
against net earnings of over $89,500,000 only four years before--in
effect, and comparatively, a deficit of $112,500,000.

The Canadian Pacific in 1916 had a surplus of $15,500,000, after
paying all fixed charges, and dividends. But in 1920 with an increase
of $87,000,000 in gross revenue over 1916, the C.P.R. not only lost
the advantage of the increased earnings, but advancing expenses
exhausted so great a proportion of their gross that the surplus
in 1920 was only $450,000, after providing for fixed charges and
dividends.

In the spectacular declines of such railways as the Pennsylvania
there was no branch-line factor such as affected our situation. It is
axiomatic in railway practice that most branch lines, of themselves,
do not pay, and that, without the branch lines that do not pay, the
main lines can’t pay--at least their prosperity would be heavily
reduced. In a sense, of course, if you do not build a line into a
prairie region where settlement has already taken place, you will get
business, for the remote farmer will haul his grain to the station,
and his supplies must be hauled a longer distance than would be the
case if he were closer to the steel. But settlement will remain
sparse, and farmers will not grow as much grain, if they have to haul
it twenty, forty or sixty miles to market.

In the main, promises of railways that were made to vanguard
settlements in the old Canadian Northern days had been fulfilled.
Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann were so saturated with
the pioneering spirit that it was more difficult to keep them from
getting ahead of traffic than it was to fulfill the promises that
were made.

During the war, of course, all branch line construction was at a
standstill. Work had been done on twenty-four Canadian Northern
branch lines, which the National Board had to take up when the war
was over. One Grand Trunk Pacific branch was under construction, so
that we had twenty-five extensions to take care of. In this field of
general policy our rule was not to ask Parliament for any sort of
blanket authority to make changes from the estimates submitted at
each session. We proposed a programme which we intended to live up to
and not to exceed. We recognized the supremacy of Parliament as to
capital expenditure, as we fought for the supremacy of the Board with
regard to details of contracts.

These twenty-five expansions were in the West. But there were branch
line problems in the East. Indeed, there were portions of main lines,
which, for local traffic purposes must be treated as if they were
branches. In the farther East were several lines which were built
and operated by small companies until, though low wages were paid,
their economic impossibility as independent organizations threw them
into Government control. Service had to be given, with wages raised
to the level of main lines. On one branch line, in Ontario, where
the engineer had been paid less than a hundred dollars a month, his
earnings under the McAdoo awards were raised to the income of an
Ontario Cabinet minister--six thousand dollars in a year.

The Board, loaded with many lines which, as distinctive features of
the system, could never be expected to pay operating expenses out
of revenue, introduced an entirely new system of transportation in
Canada--the self propelled single car, operated by one driver and
one conductor, like an ordinary street car. We placed this sort
of service, some of it run by gasoline, and some by electricity,
on several branch lines, saving costs in power, in the weight of
equipment used, and in wages, at the same time giving greater
frequency and efficiency in service. The policy has, I believe, been
extended under the substituted management, with considerable success.
A light service for example is being given between Toronto and Parry
Sound, on the old Canadian Northern.

One is inclined to think that in this kind of service, rather than
in the electrification of branch railways, which is far more costly
than the general public supposes, the most economical and efficient
adjustment of old steam lines to modern conditions will be achieved.
The principle of the automobile on rails offers a flexibility which
nothing else can; and the possibilities of the electric storage
battery are not yet exhausted.

Very inadequately the scope of the Board’s work, from the fall of
1918 to the fall of 1922 has been sketched--although we stepped out
in October, our resignations were requested in July. The co-operative
spirit was not confined to the directors, or even to the higher
branches of the daily service. The esprit de corps that was developed
far exceeded the expectations of those who believed that Government
ownership meant general slackness. The consolidation of the staffs of
the Intercolonial, the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern
was accomplished without friction of any kind; and the loyalty of the
employes all over the system was admirable.

The justification of the policy laid down in 1918 is contained in the
figures of earnings and expenses for the four years of our regime--it
is fair to include the whole of 1922 in this survey, since we retired
in October and the new chief did not take charge until mid-December.
It will not be too wearisome to give, on the next page, the only
considerable table of statistics which this work contains.

From the mass of facts embedded in these tables one can only extract
a few. The progressive decline in the total loss on operating after
the zero year of 1920--a decline which has been accentuated in
the figures for 1923--is obvious. But it is not so obvious that
the disparity between earnings and expenses in 1922, is due to
the revival of the Crow’s Nest Agreement which threw the railways
backward, from a business point of view. We had expected to break
almost even in 1922; and would have done so, if the revived agreement
had not lopped over eight millions from revenue.


                  CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS

         COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF EARNINGS AND EXPENSES

            (For the Years 1919, 1920, 1921 and 1922)

     GROSS EARNINGS           1919                1920
  Canadian Northern      $53,562,177.57      $66,695,398.80
  Canadian Government     40,179,380.93       44,803,045.84
  Grand Trunk Pacific     11,294,617.87       14,408,549.66
                         --------------      --------------
      Total             $106,036,176.37     $125,906,994.30

   OPERATING EXPENSES:
  Canadian Northern      $60,034,023.92      $82,953,978.60
  Canadian Government     47,728,205.73       55,445,651.29
  Grand Trunk Pacific     17,587,567.37       24,543,063.60
                         --------------      --------------
      Total             $125,349,797.02     $162,942,693.49

   OPERATING DEFICIT:
  Canadian Northern       $6,471,846.35      $16,258,579.80
  Canadian Government      7,548,824.80       10,642,605.45
  Grand Trunk Pacific      6,292,949.50       10,134,513.94
                          -------------      --------------
      Total              $20,313,620.65      $37,035,699.19


     GROSS EARNINGS           1921               1922
  Canadian Northern      $69,088,474.16      $60,679,033.37
  Canadian Government     41,275,314.84       40,939,945.70
  Grand Trunk Pacific     16,638,677.64       18,516,977.58
                         --------------      --------------
      Total             $127,002,466.64     $120,135,956.65

   OPERATING EXPENSES:
  Canadian Northern      $75,564,385.30      $63,625,763.09
  Canadian Government     46,990,047.74       43,436,667.67
  Grand Trunk Pacific     20,668,360.51       22,809,843.99
                         --------------      --------------
      Total             $143,222,802.55     $129,872,274.75

   OPERATING DEFICIT:
  Canadian Northern       $6,475,911.14     $2,946,729.72
  Canadian Government      5,714,732.90      2,496,721.91
  Grand Trunk Pacific      4,029,691.87      4,292,866.41
                          -------------     -------------
      Total              $16,220,335.91     $9,756,318.04

The most outstanding fact hidden in the statistics is the relation
of the Canadian Northern to the Grand Trunk Pacific and National
Transcontinental lines. As to this, we will leave out a detailed
comparison with the line between Winnipeg and Fort William, which
gets its share of the grain traffic to the head of lakes, remarking
only that, thanks to the proportion of grain diverted from Canadian
Northern lines at Winnipeg and important points west, this section of
the great project of twenty years ago is by far the best of the whole
line between Winnipeg and Moncton.

Now look at the figures for the C.N.R. and the G.T.P. This is what it
cost to earn a hundred cents in each of the four years:

                        1919     1920    1921    1922
  Canadian Northern    112.1    124.3   109.3   104.9
  Grand Trunk Pacific  156.2    170.3   140.2   123.2

For the gulf between earnings and expenses, 1920 was the worst year
in North American railway history. But it was the year in which
the Grand Trunk Pacific was first co-ordinated with the Canadian
Northern--beginning with the grain movement, in September. Thanks
to the diversion of traffic to the Grand Trunk Pacific and National
Transcontinental, Canadian Northern gross rose only 24.4 per cent.;
while the Grand Trunk Pacific increased 28.4 per cent. But the
increase in the cost of earning a dollar on the C.N.R. was 12.2 cents
as against 14.1 cents on the G.T.P.

The conditions as to increase of traffic from the country served by
these former rivals, are, relatively, what they were before the war.
If the two lines were on anything like an equal footing as regards
the quality of the territory served, and the amount of business
available, for instance, at such competitive points as Saskatoon,
Regina and Edmonton, where both compete against the C.P.R., the ratio
of operating losses would have been about the same, in 1922, when the
return to normal was well on the way, and would have been much nearer
attainment but for the Crow’s Nest revival. But, though the G.T.P.
total earnings were not one-third of the C.N.R. total earnings, and
were an increase of nearly two millions over those of 1921, or 11.1
per cent., the loss on operation was nearly a million and a half more
than on the Canadian Northern. If the Canadian Northern loss had been
proportionally the same as the Grand Trunk Pacific, it would have
been over fourteen million dollars instead of less than three.

These remarkable comparisons, it cannot be too clearly emphasized,
are in spite of the turning over of immense quantities of C.N.R.
business to the G.T.P. The conviction remains that, if the C.N.R.
could have been kept as a separate entity, it would have made a small
profit during these four years, with the exception of the abysmal
1920, and its emergence into an entirely self-sustaining system would
have been immediately in sight.

One aspect of the co-ordination of the C.N.R. and G.T.P. is specially
worthy of remembrance. During the heavy season of grain movement
to the Lakes it has been an excellent policy to transfer millions
of bushels to the old National Transcontinental at Winnipeg, to
relieve the congestion on the old Canadian Northern between
Winnipeg and Port Arthur, via Fort Frances. The effect of this sort
of double-tracking has been partially offset by the necessity to
operate as two separate railways, with two sets of roundhouses,
repair shops, etc. There has been a special advantage to the National
Transcontinental side of the account, though. During, say, eight
months of the year, the Canadian Northern could handle all the
business accruing from its own lines at Winnipeg. But the diversion
having been made for the grain-congestion period, it is continued
for the balance of the year. A facility in movement for the Canadian
Northern during the rush season is more than paid for by a loss of
traffic for the rest of the year.

Such, then, was the irresistible logic of railway events when the
irresistible logic of political events presented to the directors,
including the two who had given long and undivided service to the
properties, a freedom from responsibility which has been appreciated
at its high private value.

The report for the year 1922, the policies for which were laid
down under the first President’s chairmanship, was written by
another hand. Six months after the old administration ceased,
this is what was reported to the Minister of Railways and the
Governor-General-in-Council:--

“On behalf of the Board, I would like to state that after inspection
of the main arteries of the system, we find that the work undertaken
has been well performed, and that the expenditures have been well
applied. While the demands for capital expenditure on a system
of such extent in a growing country, as the former Board stated,
are never-ending, yet it may now be said that the three groups of
lines, until recently the Canadian National Railways, enter the
consolidation in excellent physical condition and operating at a
high mark of efficiency as regards actual performance, or movement
of traffic, and other factors controllable by management. Apart
from certain well-known cases of duplication, the lines are well
located and in exceptional position to successfully perform the
transportation demands of the country. The problem, as far as the
lines covered by this report is concerned, is how sufficient traffic
may be developed to carry the overhead and maintenance expenses.
As far as transportation costs go, an economical performance is
being made. Under these circumstances the margin for improvement,
with the present light volume of traffic, is largely dependent on
circumstances beyond the control of the management.

“On some of the older sections there are still improvements that
should be undertaken, but in the main the lines are modern in
character, and were built or have been brought up to standards which
are ahead of actual traffic requirements, except under stress of
seasonal movements.”

Finally, touching these early years of nationalization, one may be
allowed to indicate the footing on which we parted from our working
associates by repeating two paragraphs from the President’s farewell
circular:

“It has been our constant aim to keep the National system free from
anything that could be used to support a charge that the Government’s
railway, steamship, express and telegraph services, were being
used for political purposes. I can only say for myself and those
directors who retire with me that nothing in the nature of political
interference would have been tolerated while we were in charge. It is
a necessary policy if efficient administration is to be obtained.

“In sending out this note of farewell, which will reach many of those
with whom I have had practically a working lifetime’s association,
I desire to express my hearty appreciation of the friendly personal
relationships and friendships which have resulted from our joint
efforts to do the best in our power for the fine properties in which
we were employed, which properties, I know, we have felt are of such
potential worth that they can be made great national assets. The way
has not always been smooth, and the work has always been hard, but it
has always been worth while, because of those with whom I have had
the pleasure of sharing the load. For all of you who remain to carry
on I wish the best of good luck. I hope that you will be permitted
to advance the interests of Canada’s National Railway, Steamship,
Express and Telegraph services, to an extent that will demonstrate
that public ownership may still be consistent with good management.”




                            CHAPTER XVII.

  _Shedding sidelights on unities of Canadian railway management
                           during the War._


A railway is a republic and a monarchy. It is a republic because
there is no pre-emption of high offices for any favoured class among
its servants. It is a monarchy in the virtual dictatorship of its
President. The Canadian National system has practically a hundred
thousand employes, to every man of whom, if he entered the service
young enough, the highest executive office is open.

All the great rises in railway history have not begun on headquarters
staffs. The most important vice-president of the Canadian
National--S. J. Hungerford--came from the lathe. President Smith of
the New York Central lines, worked on the section. Van Horne was a
telegraph operator. Lord Shaughnessy was a clerk in Milwaukee. Sir
William Whyte, who administered the C.P.R. west of Fort William with
great distinction for many years, was a brakeman on the Credit Valley
line. Sir William Mackenzie taught school. Sir Donald Mann’s prowess
with the axe is proverbial, wherever the story of his encounter with
a touchy Russian officer in Manchuria is told.

Two aspects of the openness of the climb to railway summits are,
perhaps, worth discussing--the ability and character developed among
executive officers; and the relations of railway with railway when
they meet as rival, and sometimes hostile, powers.

Basically, one does not claim a superiority for either generation
of colleagues with whom he has worked during fifty years. On the
whole, I think, we older fellows, who are a little nearer the
Shorter Catechism than some of our more recent executive brethren,
compare fairly favourably with our heirs. But, in social and ethical
standards, there has been a tremendous leveling up in the railway as
well as in other worlds.

Take drink--or rather, think of drink, and the general business code.
Leaving aside the controversy which breeds such a remark as that a
man would rather have prohibition than no alcohol at all, there has
been a beneficent change in custom. In the old Bonaventure station at
Montreal, over forty years ago, every pay day saw the office desks,
in some departments, littered with almost as many whiskey bottles as
pay checks. Where the bottle abounds, its unhappier fruits will be
found also. It may be due to a lack of observation, as well as to
a want of experience, but I cannot assert whether, in Montreal at
that time, spiritual discussion was as inevitable a concomitant of
spirituous indulgence as it was reputed to be in Scotland in days not
lang syne. But nothing is more certain and more gratifying than the
elimination of intoxicating liquor as an ingredient in daily business.

With slacker social proprieties than we now enjoy, the lower standard
of ethics in the railway business showed itself in manners which
may be mentioned without offense, seeing that there have been
great changes for the better. Forty years ago the great bodies of
railway workmen were not organized in unions. The recurring bottle
on the office desk had its fellow where men like engineers gathered
together. The advent of labour unions, though it brought a few
complications with which, perhaps, the services need not have been
troubled, unquestionably raised the morale of all the bodies of men
enrolled in them. To-day there is the severest look-down on the man
who allows liquor to mar his efficiency--it was so, long before
prohibition descended upon us. Any man in trouble because of drink
gets very little sympathy and very short shrift from his union.

With the rise in morale as to personal behaviour has come a
corresponding advance in the breadth and ability with which the men’s
side of labour difficulties is handled whenever cases of discipline
arise--of which something presently.

Improvement of morale does not largely influence another condition,
which may not affect railways more than it does other walks of life:
though, with the multitudes of men, and variety of departments,
the situation may be thrown into stronger relief in railway
administration than in some other branches of industry. I allude to
promotion, and the reasons why some men--most men--do not rise high
or fast.

An old friend in London who had developed a unique business out of
nothing, was asked what percentage of those who had worked under him
during sixty years had enough executive capacity to deal with an
emergency when their superior was away, without being frightened by
their assumption of responsibility. His answer was: “Perhaps two per
cent.--not more.”

Sir William Whyte with whom this facet of success was discussed,
thought the estimate was low, for railways, because the very nature
of railroading--movement, climatic emergencies, accidents, for
example--develops latent ability to meet unexpected conditions, to an
extent that does not apply to a calling wherein the employes operate
in one set of buildings. But, Sir William said, an outsider would
be surprised at the number of men who declined promotion because of
fear that they would be inadequate to enlarged, unfamiliar duties.
One recalls our first engineer at Edmonton who, promoted to a
superintendency, asked for his throttle again.

One is sometimes divided between the two views--that ability is
scarce in the world, and that it is abundant. The question was once
raised among a company of men of affairs--How many high officers in
public, or semi-public service, are the superiors in ability of their
chief subordinates? One, with a wide knowledge of lands and men, said
he thought that perhaps two in five would be the average.

“Oh,” said another, who had sat in Parliament, “your percentage is
far too high. There may be ten able men in the House of Commons--one
in sixty-seven!”

It is true that many men in railway service have a lower estimate of
their own ability than their superiors have had; and that they have
remained stationary because they hadn’t the courage to rise when the
chance came. There are others--not many--who have risen pretty high
because, in the man-power of a railway there is something like the
steam-power which moves trains. A man may be just as powerful as a
locomotive; and just as narrow, and just as helpless if he doesn’t
stay on the track where he was put.

Here, for instance, is a youth in an office, blessed with the great
virtues of willingness, diligence, method, perseverance, and the
ambition to better himself. He isn’t everlastingly looking at the
clock. If he is asked to stay late, he shows that he likes to be
thought important enough to be invited to share an extra burden. All
these distinctions may belong to a head which does not harbour an
expansive, wide-seeing mind. They combine into an efficiency of a
sort that is not at all to be despised, and which almost inevitably
brings promotion.

In spite of the impulses to a liberalized mastery of his work, such
a man will develop qualities that magnify the tendency to use red
tape which afflicts some officials in all large institutions, from
Governments down. It narrows the capacity of subordinates through
a persistent, but usually unrecognized dread of giving an official
inferior full scope to develop any originality he may possess. The
fear of the secondary man coming to the primary place is common
everywhere. You cannot expect a small man to display the qualities of
a giant.

A railway officer, like the centurion who, being under authority,
had soldiers under him, may wire two or three thousand miles to a
subordinate and know that his directions will be obeyed. Perhaps
there is no more potent inducer of a sense of authority than this
ability to command, at long range, by the invisible messenger. It
sometimes produces in a railway official, to whom the wires are free,
a rather morbid pride in keeping in touch with his office when he
is away, by making his office keep constantly in touch with him. An
old colleague used to say that if he could edit the departmental
telegrams of any leading railway system on this continent, and
be paid a cent a word for prevented verbiage, he would become
disgracefully rich in five years.

The admirable tendency in executive efficiency--the encouragement
of initiative--is represented by the practice of the departmental
head whose duty carried him often and far afield--frequently for
weeks at a time he would be absent from his office. He secured the
ablest assistance his appropriation afforded; and when he went away
his instruction to his deputy was:--“Don’t bother me with telegrams,
unless it is absolutely necessary--I assume you are equal to your
job. Whatever comes up, don’t be afraid to deal with it, according to
your best judgment. Always have a clear reason for whatever action
you take, and when I come back I will back you up, even if I don’t
agree with all you have done.”

It is rather a tempting excursus--this discussion of the discovery
and use of executive ability; but it must be passed by, with the
further remark that, on the whole, railways, as I have known them,
are staffed by able, conscientious men, in all ranks; and that, while
our twenty years of phenomenal expansion cannot recur, and the scope
for promotions will be limited, compared with what it was, railway
service will always be a great arena for the use of talents of the
highest order, even though they may first be exercised in the most
unlikely-looking corners of a great system.

Railway rivalry is as keen as any other rivalry in business or
politics, though I think it is healthier than what one sometimes
sees in the political sphere, where ultimate rewards and punishments
lie with electorates who may have given no study to the affairs
they judge. Human nature being human nature, the personal equation
sometimes enters prejudicially into the larger responsibilities
confided to individuals.

The public has occasionally seen it in speed contests and rate wars.
In the middle eighties the Grand Trunk, stung by the too challenging
advent of the C.P.R., and both lines being subject to certain
personalities which should have subdued themselves, ran competing
trains between Ottawa and Montreal in something over two hours. For
several years, owing to incompatibilities at the top, the Grand Trunk
and C.P.R. did not exchange passes. When the Grand Trunk Pacific was
building, and a Grand Trunk Pacific man had business in Montreal,
although the shortest way was by C.P.R.--and the journey would
bring revenue to the C.P.R. sleeping and dining car departments--he
travelled via Chicago, because President Shaughnessy and President
Hays had fallen out.

It is no reflection on Lord Shaughnessy or Sir William Mackenzie to
say that they did not get along well together. The explanation was in
the conscious majesty of the C.P.R. in presence of a rival which had
carried all the marks of infant feebleness and youthful audacity; and
in the natural-born imperiousness of a man who knew without boasting
of it, that he was doing a great work, and did not need, on his
abilities, to take second place to any native or adopted Canadian.
But even here, the individual incompatibility could be subordinated
to a statesmanlike regard for interests which were greater than
either man’s temperament--of which two instances may be given.

Perhaps the most brilliant stroke the Canadian Northern ever made was
the acquisition of the line from Regina to Prince Albert from its
owners, and away from its lessees the Canadian Pacific. When it is
said that at the beginning of its operation as a Canadian Northern
branch the old Qu’Appelle and Long Lake furnished six million bushels
of wheat for delivery at Port Arthur, the importance of the change
may be appreciated. It gave us main line haulage equal to 600,000
miles for one full-loaded car.

In the fall of 1906 the lease to the C.P.R. was expiring, and the
owners of the railway offered it to the Canadian Northern. Mr.
Mackenzie caused Sir Thomas Shaughnessy to be asked whether he
desired to retain the road, as he would not negotiate if the C.P.R.
wished to retain the property. The reply was a speedy “No,” and the
transfer was settled that very day.

On the other side of the account--a time came when it was thought
that some closer association between the C.P.R. and C.N.R. might
be advisable, in view of the impending competition of the G.T.P.
against both. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, meeting a Canadian Northern
officer one day in Montreal, took him to his room; and said there
was an opportunity for better relations between the two lines. He
and Mackenzie, Sir Thomas said, didn’t get along very well, but that
needn’t make any difference. Wouldn’t his present friend and old
colleague take the matter up, in a friendly spirit, with Mackenzie?
The effort was made, with excellent prospects of success, until
political consid--but that’s another story.

These things are mentioned because, when one goes on to say that
railway relations are fully as good as human nature and commercial
competition will permit, it must not be understood that anything like
Christian perfection is claimed for our sort of people. Speaking
broadly, but very comprehensively, the personal relations of railway
chiefs are excellent. When difficult questions have been fought over,
and fought out, friendliness resumes its wonted dominion over the
contenders. It would be said by my friends Mr. Beatty, President of
the C.P.R., and Mr. Kelley, formerly President of the Grand Trunk,
I think, that our relations were always of the happiest, whether we
were associated competitively, or co-operatively.

Mr. Kelley, who dropped out of Canadian activities when the Grand
Trunk organization was nationalized, was like M. H. MacLeod, in his
change from engineering to general administration. He was an American
with a wide range of construction experience, abroad as well as in
the western United States when the Indians were a menace to advancing
civilization.

Mr. Beatty, too, is an example of what is regarded as a change of
profession. He went to the C.P.R. as a young lawyer; and became
president at forty years old, after several years’ headship of the
legal department. He exemplifies the great truth about administrative
quality--that it is not routine proficiency, but grasp of varying
conditions, and capacity quickly to reach and execute decisions which
constitute the title to supreme executive control.

When, in October, 1918, Lord Shaughnessy retired, and Mr. Beatty
became his successor, a very experienced C.P.R. director was asked
why so young a lawyer had been so remarkably elevated. “Because he
is the best-equipped man for the job,” was the complete answer.

I do not think it is true that as men of affairs grow older they
are prone to look back and say there were giants in those days. As
a father rejoices in his son’s eminence, so an old railroader is
delighted to see executives who are young enough to be his boys
conspicuously displaying every mastery of their work. After all, to
have any other disposition would indicate that the generation going
down the hill had been unable to impart anything worth while to those
who are ascending the heights.

One’s pride in President Beatty as a man who adorns his profession,
and dignifies every phase of Canadian achievement he touches, is
the gratification of a competitor as well as the appreciation
of a colleague during the strain of war. The Canadian Pacific
is a Canadian institution; and I am certain that in its first
Canadian-born President it has a chief whom his countrymen will have
abundant cause to honour without waiting for his absence to direct
attention to the value of his presence.

Railway relationships were doubly gratifying during the war, which
had its compensations. The question arose of obtaining the maximum
efficiency of war service from the Canadian railways, as it had more
instantly arisen in Britain, and was fated to appear in the United
States. In Britain there was a Governmental amalgamation of railway
services, as there was in the United States several years later.

Something like the British method was proposed in Canada; but the
Government decided to put patriotic efficiency up to the railways
themselves. The Railway War Board was the outcome.

It was established in co-operation with Dr. Reid, Minister of
Railways and Canals, who showed in this, as in the subsequent
setting up of the Canadian National Board of Directors, an exemplary
superiority to political influences. His letter to me, at the
handing over of the Government railways to the directors who were
appointed to administer the Canadian Northern, containing the most
explicit assertion of the necessity for conducting our business on
a purely businesslike basis, was, I have no doubt, all the more
readily written, because of the experience already gained, of how the
railways could serve the nation and the war with disregard of the
ordinary rivalries of competitive business.

We who served on the War Board can say that we gave to the nation the
maximum of efficiency and economy in our power. We merely did our
bit. We never looked for a word of gratitude from Parliament--and
proved the wisdom of “Blessed is he who expecteth little.”

Curiously, the Government ownership of railways played an absolutely
unique part in this phase of railway history. The Intercolonial, in
a wonderful, and totally unforeseen way, justified its building as a
political railway. One is the more delighted to say this, because of
a somewhat different tone that has perforce been discernible in one’s
allusions to some aspects of its administration from its earlier to
its latter days.

For three years our Atlantic ports absolutely saved the situation,
as far as Canada’s sustained support for the war was concerned.
Until the United States followed our example, in April, 1917,
the short-line military access to the Atlantic ocean during the
winter was not open to Canada. We couldn’t reach Portland by the
Grand Trunk, or St. John, freely, by the C.P.R., because either
movement meant using a foreign neutral for military purposes. The
Intercolonial, therefore, was our true approach to Europe.

But the Intercolonial ran only from Montreal; and troops and supplies
had to come from all over Canada. There could not be efficient
movement from and to Montreal without co-operation in all the country
between Montreal and Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The four main
Canadian railway systems for war purposes were, therefore, operated
as one vast national system. The Intercolonial in winter and spring
was the only small end of the funnel. In summer, as Halifax was the
nearest port to Britain, and the submarine menace made the shortest
possible sea voyage more important than short land journeys on this
side of the Atlantic, the Intercolonial was also in extensive use.

In several vitally important respects the Intercolonial was more
consequential than the other lines combined. It had to receive a
larger proportion of wounded and returning troops than any of them.
The first provision for hospital trains fell on the Intercolonial;
and the “fish trains” were its peculiar care. Before coming to the
“fish trains’” part in making the world safe for democracy, let a
word be said about Moncton’s and Halifax’s patriotic service.

Moncton, perhaps, excelled all other Canadian cities in the constancy
of its beneficence to soldiers going to the war. Never a troop train
reached Moncton the soldiers in which did not receive hospitality
from the citizens, and inspiration from the town band. On one day,
for example, the band gave melodious welcome to eleven trainloads
of soldiers. Many of the players were Intercolonial employes, who
sacrificed much time and money to speed the departing warriors.

Halifax was blown to pieces by the war. But her recovery from the
worst disaster that has befallen any Canadian city was swift and
courageous. With troops going or coming, on many of the biggest
steamers afloat--the Olympic was the greatest ferrier of valour
the world has ever seen--there was promptitude and skill in every
movement out and in. During demobilization Halifax was used in summer
as it had been during hostilities, in the interest of speed. On the
morning of July 9th, 1919, the Olympic docked at No. 2 pier at 7.15.
The first special train, Intercolonial to Montreal, thence C.P.R.,
to Vancouver, pulled out at 7.40, the next at 8.02 and the third at
8.15. The eleventh special from the Olympic, brought the total of
men disembarked up to 5,430, and left at five minutes past eleven.

“Fish trains” carried British gold to be minted at Ottawa, most of
it to be sent to the United States to pay for war material. “Silk
trains” carried Chinese coolies who were brought across the Pacific
to work behind the trenches in France and Flanders. Between July,
1917, and April, 1918, sixty-seven “silk trains” entered Halifax
carrying 48,708 coolies. But the coolies, even when they could be
kept behind blinds, were not as interesting as the boxes of gold, of
which the public knew nothing, and about which observers along the
route were mystified indeed.

Warships brought to Halifax gold cargoes each worth from ten to
twenty million dollars. The average sized “fish” special consisted
of six baggage cars (the first as a buffer behind the engine, and
accommodating guards), and a private car, in which were railway
officials. At night an armed guard rode on the engine. Through a
train telephone, notice was given of anybody having authority to pass
through the cars.

The most precious “fish train” was of eleven cars, holding
sixty-seven million dollars. A wheel tapper at a division point said
to another, “I wonder what kind of a train this is, with so many
baggage cars and no passengers.”

“I’ve heard it’s carrying gold,” said the other.

A discussion of the values followed, and the estimate was made that
the freight was worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars.

After all, these features of war service were only unusual variations
from phases of railway management which are special to Canada. We
love our climate. Canadian children would almost as soon lose the
summer as do without the winter. But there are certain disadvantages
in our relationship to the North Pole. It is all very well to say
that things don’t grow in the winter, anyway--not even in Texas. But
the longer the winter the more handfeeding of cattle there must be.
A Cobalt silver mine’s ore mill must be heated in winter, as one in
Mexico need not be. It takes more coal to keep up locomotive steam in
forty below zero than must be burned at forty above.

Trains fall behind their schedules in very cold weather, not because
of operating inefficiency, but because temperature is the mightiest
tyrant in the world. Compared with the southern states, or northern
England, for example, equipment must be built to subdue Jack Frost
in his sharpest mood. Treble windows, asbestos-covered steam pipes
beneath the cars, to withstand the piercing cold and the rushing
wind, which takes the heat from them faster than the summer sun
drinks dew--these are some of the factors against time-keeping when
the thermometer is low.

Dripping water from wash-rooms or dining-car kitchens will often
freeze the outlets of pipes. When the train is examined at a division
point, instead of the customary ten minutes for testing, and priming
the cars with ice and water, twenty or thirty are occupied thawing
out the pipes at crucial spots.

If, when winter comes, there were a freezing of the track, and no
thaw until the spring break, care of lines would be comparatively
simple. But the all-powerful temperature is as changeable as an April
sky. Thaws and rains arrive, switches and sidings must be kept clear
of ice, so that when trains pass or turn in there is no uncertainty
about where they will go. Depressions and elevations in the roadbed,
through the freaks of frost, compel the adjustment of the rail
levels--shimming it is called--which makes spring travel somewhat
unstable.

The item of station and water-tank fuel is big. How many people
realize that every water tank must be heated, night as well as day,
from fall to spring, and that in most cases the water supply must
be maintained by a man who patrols perhaps fifty miles of line on a
gasoline-driven jigger, doing nothing but pumping and warming water?

It isn’t all lavender, this running of railways in a Canadian winter.
One’s admiration for the constancy of the men who are out on the
line never diminishes--it is good medicine to have walked half the
night in thirty below zero to obtain help for a frozen-up train on a
pioneer line. As we are touching on the service of workmen, perhaps
this is a suitable place to name a feature of the Railway War Board’s
work which deserves far more appreciation than can be given to it
here.

Formerly each railway was a separate entity, as far as the trade
unions were concerned. The war brought about a unification which is
still effective in many respects. For all labor matters we formed a
Board of Adjustment on which the railways and the unions had equal
representation. The chairman was changed every six months, the
companies and the unions supplying him alternately.

Every contested case of discipline came before the Board, as before
a Court. It was threshed out, and a decision arrived at, by which
the company concerned stood, even though it was against the grain to
reinstate a man whose dismissal was believed to have been justified.

In no case was it necessary to call in an independent authority
to review a judgment of the Board of Adjustment. The labor
representatives were as judicially minded as their colleagues.
I did not sit on this Board, but was, of course, in the closest
touch with its work and results. Nothing finer in desire for, and
capacity to get at the truth could have been displayed than the men’s
representatives invariably showed.

It must not be supposed that one’s admiration is confined to what,
for the want of a better word, must still be called the lower
ranks of the service. After all, a railway is an entity of vast
ramifications. To be a true success it must work effectively in all
its parts, and win the goodwill of those whom it serves. It would
take pages and pages to sketch, ever so fragmentarily, the wealth
of comradeship, official and otherwise, which was woven into half a
century’s railway service.

Publication of these recollections has renewed, in lively fashion,
many memories and associations which one had rather supposed the
years had dimmed. Survey of what has been written and received makes
it only too clear how inadequately one has shown forth the excellence
of friends and comrades whose goodwill, forbearance and support have
made a long and exacting toil infinitely worth while.




                           APPENDIX A

              ABRIDGED SPECIAL REPORT OF THE OPERATING
                AND MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT, CANADIAN
                 NATIONAL RAILWAYS, FROM THE FALL OF
                       1918 TO THE END OF 1921.

  The following account of the operating and maintenance department
  of the Canadian National Railways is a shortened form of the
  report of the Vice-President in charge, which was included in the
  comprehensive survey of the railways’ position, submitted by the
  President to the Hon. Mr. Kennedy, on his becoming Minister of
  Railways and Canals, and as the outcome of the interview mentioned
  on page 265. Perhaps no report which has reached the public gives so
  succinct and comprehensive a sketch of the manifold activities of
  the operating and maintenance department of a great railway system.
  It is thought these appendices will be of some value to Canadian
  taxpayers who are interested in knowing how their money has been
  spent on railways account.


The Management of the National Railways, during 1918-21, was required
to weld a number of disjointed and separately operated Railway
properties into a single system, completely rearrange jurisdictional
territories, and reorganize all departments, dispose of the
accumulated arrears of work in connection with the maintenance of
equipment and permanent way and structures, provide large quantities
of new rolling stock, develop and inaugurate the use of new
standards, systems, methods, plans and forms, while dealing with the
most extensive and important wage movement that ever took place in
the history of roadbuilding.

The functions of the Operating and Maintenance Department may be
broadly grouped as follows:

  (a) Transportation (i.e., train and station service).

  (b) Maintenance of rolling stock.

  (c) Maintenance of track bridges and buildings, including the
  provision of additional facilities or the extension or improvement
  of facilities on all lines, excepting those still under construction.

The Railways are generally divided into two grand divisions, viz:

EASTERN--6,828.0 miles; embracing all lines situated east of
Armstrong, Ont., and Port Arthur, Ont., and extending to the Atlantic
Coast, including Prince Edward Island. In charge of a General Manager
whose office is at Montreal, Que.

WESTERN--10,030.4 miles; embracing all lines Armstrong, Ont., and
Port Arthur, Ont., and west to the Pacific Coast, including those
on Vancouver Island and the Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific Railway. In
charge of a General Manager whose office is at Winnipeg, Man.

Eastern Lines are again subdivided into three General
Superintendents’ Districts, viz:

  District    Located                      Headquarters at     Miles
  Maritime  Principally in Maritime         Moncton, N.B.     2671.3
               Provinces
  Quebec    Principally in Quebec           Quebec City       2356.1
  Ontario   All in Ontario                  Toronto, Ont.     1800.6

Western Lines are subdivided into four General Superintendents’
Districts, viz:

  District    Located                      Headquarters at     Miles
  Central    Principally in Manitoba        Winnipeg, Man.    3156.6
             (including Duluth, Winnipeg
             and Pacific Railway lines in
             Minnesota 172.6 miles).
  Prairie    Principally in Saskatchewan    Saskatoon, Sask.  3181.8
  Western    Principally in Alberta         Edmonton, Alta.   2162.5
  Pacific    Principally in British         Vancouver, B.C.   1529.5
               Columbia

Note--In the Pacific District, an Assistant General Manager is
in charge instead of a General Superintendent, on account of its
remoteness from General Manager’s headquarters.


General Superintendents’ Districts are again subdivided into
Superintendents’ Divisions, each averaging approximately five hundred
miles.

The general division of territory under General Managers, General
Superintendents, and Superintendents is substantially the same
as on the Canadian Pacific. The General Managers’, General
Superintendents’, and Superintendents’ staffs are also generally
similar to those on the Canadian Pacific, and the division of duties
and responsibilities, and the relationships between sub-departments
are substantially the same.

The actual work of operation is divided between sub-departments
as follows, and the first five functions are those generally
handled divisionally, while the balance are largely controlled by
departmental organization.

1. TRANSPORTATION:--Operation of trains, switching in yards,
operation of freight houses, team tracks, etc.

Car Service and Car Accounting--Having to do with the distribution,
movement and record of cars, and collection of per diem and demurrage.

2. MECHANICAL:--Maintenance of locomotives, cars, work equipment,
including shops and roundhouses, and the preparation of plans,
specifications, etc., for new equipment.

3. MAINTENANCE OF WAY AND STRUCTURES:--Maintenance of track, bridges,
buildings, and the provision of additional or improved facilities on
operating lines.

4. POLICE AND SPECIAL SERVICE:--Policing and protection of Company’s
property, investigating of irregularities, etc.

5. MEDICAL SERVICE:--Physical examination of employees, attention
to persons injured on the railways, and general supervision of all
matters relating to the health of employees and patrons.

Note:--Associated with this Department is a Safety organization for
the prevention of personal injuries.

6. TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH SERVICE:--Local services of this
character, and being actually a part of the Transportation Department.

Note:--All through telegraph service, whether Commercial or Railway
business, is provided by Canadian National Telegraphs.

7. DINING AND SLEEPING CARS, AND HOTELS:--Operation of dining,
sleeping, parlor and tourist cars, and hotels, restaurants, etc. (In
charge of a Manager, who reports directly to the Vice-President.)

8. COAST STEAMSHIPS AND FERRIES:--Operation of Grand Trunk Pacific
(British Columbia) Coast Steamships and certain car ferries, tugs,
barges, etc., employed on both the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts in
connection with Railway operations.

9. ELECTRIC RAILWAYS, (126.2 Miles):--Operation of certain electric
railways in Ontario. Each of these lines is in charge of a general
officer who reports directly to the Vice-President in charge of the
Operating and Maintenance Department.

The organization is a combination of the departmental and divisional
systems and is arranged along the general lines that the experience
of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways has shown
to be best for the conditions and vast territory involved. Each
territory has a substantially complete organization, under a
single officer, who is required to follow the general policy and
observe the standards prescribed by the expert at the head of each
sub-department. For operating action the organization is divisional,
but the work is planned and prescribed under departmental standards,
subject to the approval of the territorial Executive head of
Department.

The Vice-President in charge of the Operating and Maintenance
Department has the following Staff Assistants:--Transportation
Assistant, Engineering Assistant, Mechanical Assistant (Locomotives),
Mechanical Assistant (Cars), General Superintendent of Car Service,
Statistician, Chief Electric Engineer, Engineer of Standards,
Superintendent of Police and Special Service.


TRACK AND STRUCTURES:--Tracks were showing the cumulative effect
of the stress of the War years, during which an abnormal volume of
business had to be handled over portions of the system, particularly
lines east of Port Arthur, and the maintenance work on all lines was
abnormally difficult on account of the shortage and inefficiency of
labor, and the difficulty and time necessary to secure supplies of
material.

Vigorous action had to be taken to permit of satisfactory service.
This work has been energetically carried on with gratifying results
insofar as economy, regularity and safety of transportation are
concerned. Unfortunately, prices and scarcity of labor and material
continued to increase until the latter part of 1920, with the result
that the cost of performing this absolutely necessary work was
abnormally high during the first two years.


RAILS:--Most of the main line east of Winnipeg was laid with 80 or
85lb. rails, but many miles of main lines were still laid with rails
on branch lines had to be replaced, on account of wear, and their
inability to carry heavy cars.

Parts of the main lines west of Winnipeg were already laid with 80 or
85lb. rail, but many miles of main lines were still laid with 60lb.
rails which, on the more important traffic sections were replaced by
85lb. rails, and the lighter steel thus released was used on branch
lines under construction.

The installation of heavier new rails does not necessarily imply the
scrapping of the rails that are taken up. They are generally used
over and over again. In this way a large mileage previously laid with
light rails has been equipped with 80 or 85lb. sections.

The statement of new rails purchased for application during the years
1919, 1920, 1921 and ordered for 1922, follows:--

  Year                 Tons    Miles
  1919                92,703   692.0
  1920                67,238   532.0
  1921                79,754   559.0
  1922 (on order)     51,000   360.0


TIES:--The general condition of ties on the older lines, due to
deferred maintenance during the war necessitated an abnormally high
percentage of renewals. On the Eastern branch lines very large
numbers of ties had to be installed immediately, to maintain traffic
with reasonable safety.

The situation was markedly aggravated because of a very large mileage
constructed between 1910 and 1914 on which the original ties had to
be largely replaced, the average life of untreated softwood ties
being approximately eight years.

The condition of ties on these lines of late construction is now
approaching normal, and on the older lines is satisfactory.

The new ties laid for maintenance and not for new construction, are
as follows:--

  Year               Number     Average Cost
  1919             7,203,532      .73c
  1920             7,245,035      .81c
  1921             5,898,374      .85c
  1922 (ordered)   4,500,000      .57c
  (to be applied)  5,500,000


BALLASTING:--A great deal of the mileage was insufficiently
ballasted. Speed of trains was restricted, riding qualities were
wholly unsatisfactory, and the expense of constantly restoring track
to passable surface and alignment was unnecessarily high.

Some of the more recently constructed main lines were fairly well
ballasted when built, but a good deal of the ballast was, as is
usual, absorbed in the embankment before it solidified. As the dump
settled it left many sags and irregularities in the track. It was
imperative to apply a very considerable amount of ballast in excess
of what might be considered normal for older track. Most of this
extra work has been performed. This experience in connection with new
lines is common. Track is not usually considered to be stable until
it has been ballasted three times. The use of heavier locomotives
and cars, to secure economical operation, also necessitated heavier
ballasting on certain sections.

The improvement in track conditions has been most marked, and we are
now enjoying better riding, greater track stability, and less cost of
maintenance.


BRIDGES, TRESTLES AND CULVERTS:--Prior to the period under review,
the Intercolonial main line bridges had generally been replaced by
heavier structures to carry larger and more powerful locomotives.
But construction of double track at certain points necessitated new
double track bridges, the most expensive one being over the Tantramar
River in New Brunswick.

The situation on the branch lines, including the Halifax and
Southwestern Railway was very unsatisfactory. The steel bridges were
generally of insufficient strength to safely carry the heavy cars
coming into general use on all roads. The wooden structures required
complete replacement or very extensive repairs. While a considerable
number on those branch lines require attention in the near future,
most of them have been dealt with.

The National Transcontinental bridges were generally of a high
standard, but some pile trestles, particularly at points where the
foundations were uncertain, have been replaced.

On the Canadian Northern Quebec lines the bridge situation was
very serious. Bridges are very numerous. The large steel ones were
generally too light for heavy locomotives. Replacement of the timber
structures was imperative. Traffic from the paper and pulp industry
had so rapidly increased, that it could not well be handled with the
comparatively small locomotives that could use the bridges. It was
expedient to reduce the loads of large capacity cars, or to place
lighter cars between them to ensure safety. Besides the inability to
handle satisfactorily all of the traffic offered, the use of so many
train units was extremely wasteful. There was no alternative but to
replace most of the bridges.

This work was undertaken in the spring of 1918, to make the main
line between Ottawa and Quebec, between Montreal and Joliette;
between Garneau and Riviere au Pierre; and between Quebec and
Chicoutimi; suitable for Mikado locomotives, with a tractive effort
of 53,000 lbs. compared with those of 25,000 and 30,000 lbs. formerly
available. With a very large increase in the tonnage and decrease in
the number of trains, the economies in operation are very great.

On the Canadian Northern main lines between Ottawa and Port Arthur,
and Toronto and Capreol, while steel bridges of high classification
were provided over the principal streams many ravines were crossed
by timber trestles, the intention being to fill them with earth when
the lifetime of the original timber had expired and provide steel or
concrete structures over the streams.

There were eighteen miles of timber trestles on these lines in
Ontario. To date about one-half of this mileage has been disposed of.

The same policy in respect to timber trestles was followed on the
Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific Railways in the West.

There are many large timber structures on the Grand Trunk Pacific
between Winnipeg and Prince Rupert, and also on the Canadian Northern
between Warden and Brazeau in Alberta. Again, on the line between
Wayne and Calgary there are many comparatively small trestles but
about one-third of them have been replaced. There are also quite a
number of timber structures on the Canadian Northern between Edmonton
and Vancouver, but most of them are small. All large openings are
crossed by heavy steel bridges.


STATIONS AND OTHER BUILDINGS:--The only large stations that have been
constructed are terminal buildings at Levis, Capreol, Hornepayne and
Rainy River. Ordinary stations have been erected at intermediate
points either to replace ones destroyed by fire, or under order of
the Board of Railway Commissioners to meet the demands of increased
traffic.

The roof of the train shed at St. John collapsed in 1919 as a result
of age and corrosions, and was entirely removed, temporary wooden
umbrella shelters over platforms being substituted. The station
building itself has also suffered to some extent, apparently through
the settlement of foundations. Plans have been prepared for a new
station of different type, suitable to the peculiar topographical
conditions, but as grade separation and the cutting down of grades
are involved, an agreement with the City is necessary before any work
can be undertaken.

Numerous enlargements of freight sheds and express buildings have
also been made, to provide for growing traffic.

Owing to labor shortage, it was exceedingly difficult to maintain
section forces, largely on account of lack of living accommodation at
isolated points. It was found necessary to build section houses each
year. This policy will necessarily have to be continued for several
years before the lines are completely equipped.

On account of the newer main lines running through thinly populated
territory, and the terminals being located where no previous
settlement existed, it has been necessary to build cottages for
our employes, notably, Napadogan, N.B., Parent, Que., Capreol,
Hornepayne, and Atikokan, Ont., Kamloops and Boston Bar, B.C. No
further large expenditures in this connection are anticipated, except
at Edson, Alta., on account of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk
Pacific consolidation.

On account of rapid development of lumbering and mining north and
west of Sudbury, the lack of accommodation for unmarried employees at
Capreol became acute. Adopting the practice of the Grand Trunk and
Canadian Pacific Railway, a building was erected at that point and
turned over to the Railway Y.M.C.A. to operate. This institution has
been of great benefit to the employees, and has undoubtedly resulted
in improved morale and better service. Several other points on the
System greatly need some facility of this kind.


WATER SUPPLIES:--East of Winnipeg good water is so abundant that the
only work required was to ensure the regular supply, or in a few
instances, to provide new supplies to facilitate traffic movement, or
to substitute gravity or hydraulic ram operation instead of pumping
to reduce the cost. This applies also to western Alberta and all of
British Columbia.

Between Winnipeg and Edmonton, or Calgary, the situation is entirely
different. Rivers are few and far between and the difficulty of
securing adequate supplies of water at proper intervals is very
great. Much of the water obtainable from wells or small lakes is
so heavily charged with suspended matter or salts in solution that
it produces scale on the interior of boilers, causing them to leak
so seriously as frequently to result in complete failure on the
road, and greatly to increase the consumption of fuel and boiler
maintenance costs.

There are many stretches between water tanks of such length that
locomotives could not pull fully loaded trains with the water carried
in their own tenders and had to draw one or more water cars behind
them. Until recently, it was at times necessary to employ from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred water cars simultaneously. This
practice is very expensive, as each car usually displaces a revenue
load, its maintenance cost is very high, and the trouble and delay at
terminals incidental to their use are very great. On a single G.T.R.
subdivision of less than a hundred miles, during a period of heavy
traffic, water cars on trains, cost $10,000 per month.

A certain amount of work was done each year, but was undertaken on
a much larger scale in 1921. Pipe lines of considerable length have
been constructed to obtain water from several streams. Numerous
existing wells have been deepened or enlarged. But, in general,
the policy has been followed of providing storage reservoirs by
excavation, or by the damming of ravines, or by a combination of the
two, in which to catch and hold the water resulting from melting
snow in the Spring of the year, or from rainfall. This water is the
best obtainable on the Prairies. The open storage arrangement has
the advantage of showing at any time the total quantity of water
available.


TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE:--Lines east of Quebec, and west of Port
Arthur, were moderately well equipped with wire facilities, but
between Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and Port Arthur there were only two
iron wires, both of which were used exclusively for local railway
operation.

The consolidation of the Canadian Northern and Canadian Government
Railways into the Canadian National System, with headquarters at
Toronto, greatly increased the volume of telegraph business with that
city; and it immediately became necessary to provide some additional
circuits. In 1919 two copper wires were strung between Toronto and
Quebec, and between Toronto and Winnipeg, and, later, an additional
copper from Quebec to Toronto, and two additional from Toronto to
Winnipeg. Two of these wires are used as a metallic circuit for
telephone train despatching and they are also used at the same time
for simplex telegraph service. The remaining two are assigned to the
Canadian National Telegraphs for commercial business.

An iron wire was strung from Edmonton to Vancouver and an additional
iron wire from Kamloops to Vancouver to meet pressing requirements,
but increased facilities between the former points are still required.

Telephone train dispatching circuits were also extended on the
Intercolonial, and telegraph facilities in the Prairie Provinces were
improved.

Metallic circuit telephone service for train despatching is a very
great improvement over the telegraph service previously employed, and
has now been adopted by all of the larger railways. It is not only
much more rapid, thus greatly reducing delay to trains and increasing
the total number of trains that can be handled, but in many instances
makes it possible to reduce the number of despatches. The train crews
carry portable telephones, and when emergencies arise, hook onto the
wires and immediately get in touch with the dispatcher. Formerly, to
report a breakdown or derailment it was frequently necessary to walk
many miles to a telegraph office.

The entire maintenance and operation of telegraph and telephone
facilities, except those required for train despatching and local
railway purposes, was handed over to the Canadian National Telegraphs
in the Fall of 1920. It may be noted, however, that the combination
of the general railway and commercial business makes for economy
in that a considerable portion of the railway business can be
transmitted during the slackness of commercial business.


YARDS:--Island Yard at St. John was reconstructed to provide
additional terminal facilities for winter export business.

The yard at Moncton was altogether too short for the trains hauled by
the larger locomotives placed in service during recent years, and the
situation of the roundhouses and other engine facilities prevented
any extension. This lack of track length involved a great amount of
terminal delay and extra switching. The handling of the numerous
passenger trains was exceedingly difficult and expensive. The
roundhouses, built many years ago for small engines were altogether
unsuitable. The coal dock was worn out; and all other facilities
were wholly inadequate for present requirements. The lack of proper
facilities at this point where a very large number of trains were
handled, involved much additional expense in operation, and, at times
made it impossible to give satisfactory service.

It was decided at the beginning of 1920, to provide new enginehouse
facilities and extend the yard. Land was acquired for immediate
and future requirements and a certain amount of grading and the
construction of a large culvert were done. Last Spring the additional
yard grading, and the construction of a 40-stall enginehouse, with
machine shop, power house, stores building, coal dock, water tank and
ash pits, were undertaken by our own forces, and the buildings have
been occupied since December 17th, 1921.

The principal roundhouse, engine terminal and yard of the
Intercolonial in the Quebec District is at Chaudiere, a short
distance southwest of Quebec City, but there was also a large
roundhouse at the north end of the Quebec Bridge, built by the
National Transcontinental Commission. The Grand Trunk had a small
enginehouse at Point Levis. All three were being operated at much
unnecessary expense. The facilities at Chaudiere were enlarged in
1920 and 1921 and all engines in that vicinity handled there at a
saving of $75,000 per annum.

Canadian Northern engine terminal facilities in the east end of
Montreal were unsatisfactory. A 10-stall enginehouse, with stores
building, machine shop, and all other usual facilities, has been
constructed at Longue Pointe.

The roundhouse at Hornepayne, Ont., destroyed by fire in 1920, was
replaced by a permanent structure of a new design, to meet the
extraordinary snow conditions, and extreme cold of that region.

On Western Lines, it was necessary to rebuild in brick or concrete,
the wooden roundhouses at Atikokan, Rainy River, Kamsack, Humboldt,
and North Battleford.

At Saskatoon, the original Canadian Northern yard is in the centre
of the City. Our facilities became wholly inadequate during periods
of heavy traffic. Canadian National and Grand Trunk Pacific
co-ordination greatly increased the pressure upon this terminal. The
two railways intersect at Nutana, in the southern part of the City.
Suitable land was available there. Work was commenced upon the new
yard, enginehouse and other terminal facilities in 1920. The terminal
has been in use since November, 1921.

Except at Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Fort William,
terminal facilities are now fairly satisfactory and apparently no
very large expenditure at any one point will be necessary during the
next few years although the growth of traffic at Winnipeg is so rapid
that it may possibly enforce some improvements at that point.

At Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa large developments are
involved, which will require a great deal of careful consideration.
Some additional facilities are immediately necessary at Quebec City,
to take care of growing traffic, and a proportion of the Grand Trunk
business.

At Fort William it is imperative that large modern yards and
terminal facilities be constructed immediately. Otherwise it will
be impossible materially to increase the grain traffic that can be
handled from the prairies to Lake Superior. Favorable options have
been secured upon suitable property, a very satisfactory tentative
agreement has been made with the Township of Neebing, for the closing
of streets, fixed taxation, etc., and plans have been developed.


REPAIR SHOPS:--The chief plants for repairing equipment,
manufacturing material, etc., are at Moncton, N.B., St. Malo, (Quebec
City), Leaside (Toronto), Transcona (near Winnipeg), Fort Rouge (in
Winnipeg). Smaller plants at which a limited amount of general repair
work is performed are at Riviere du Loup, Que., Limoilou, Que.,
Capreol, Ont., Port Arthur, Ont., Saskatoon, Sask., Edmonton, Alta.,
Port Mann, B.C., and Prince Rupert, B.C.

The outstanding developments were the equipment and opening of the
large St. Malo Shops, Quebec, and the construction and opening of
the moderately-sized plant at Leaside, Toronto. The former plant,
constructed by the National Transcontinental Railway Commission, was
completed in 1914, but was neither equipped with machinery nor used
until 1919. The lack of adequate repair facilities in the Province of
Quebec, together with the rapid growth of traffic, produced a serious
situation, and the equipping of St. Malo shops was undertaken in
1919, actual repair work being commenced in the fall of that year.

There were practically no repair shop facilities on the National
Lines in Ontario. A very serious situation in regard to the condition
of equipment having developed, work was commenced early in 1918, at
Leaside, a suburb of Toronto, upon a moderately-sized plant for the
repair of locomotives and cars, which began operation in 1919. This
plant is not of great capacity but the necessary land is owned by the
Railways, and the design of the plant will permit of large extension.
As the principal repair shops of the Grand Trunk Railway are located
at Montreal, Que., Stratford and London, Ont., that Road having no
important repair facilities at Toronto, it is likely that under
co-ordination it will be found advisable to enlarge the plant at
Leaside, to take care of some of the Grand Trunk work. It is highly
desirable that a freight car shop be provided at Leaside at an early
date.

It is unlikely that any large extensions will be required in the
plants at Moncton, Transcona, and Fort Rouge, in the near future,
but there is immediate need of a medium-sized plant at Edmonton, as
there are now no adequate facilities for repairs between Winnipeg and
the Pacific Coast, and only a freight car shop of moderate size at
Port Mann, B.C. As the distance from Winnipeg to Vancouver is 1,565
miles, and from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert 1,758 miles, and as most
of the equipment has to be hauled to Winnipeg for general repairs
and then hauled back to the point at which it is to be used, a large
saving can be effected. Highly suitable property at North Edmonton is
owned by the Grand Trunk Pacific, and plans for a plant there are in
preparation.


ROLLING STOCK:--The rolling stock owned was wholly insufficient.
Very little new equipment had been provided since 1913, and traffic
had grown enormously. It was impossible properly to maintain the
equipment during the war, on account of the shortage and inefficiency
of labor, difficulty of securing materials, and lack of shop
facilities in Ontario and Quebec. The situation was aggravated by
the shortage of equipment on United States railways. Canadian-owned
cars sent into the United States loaded with paper, pulp, pulp-wood,
lumber and other commodities, were generally retained by the American
roads.

The National Railways are the originating lines for a large volume of
the classes of traffic referred to. As it was generally impossible
to secure a sufficient number of American-owned cars to move the
products enumerated above, the volume of which had grown enormously
during the war, we were faced with the alternatives of supplying
cars for the export of commodities referred to, thereby incurring
the risk of losing some of their equipment for an indefinite length
of time, or by refusing to furnish their cars for this business, to
deprive the paper and lumbering interests of Canada of the means of
exporting their products, thus causing serious injury to the business
of the country, and tending to aggravate the already serious exchange
situation.

The policy adopted by the Canadian National Railways under these
conditions was to make every effort to secure American-owned
equipment for this traffic, and make up the deficiency as far as
possible with system-owned cars. It was the only sound policy, but
it deprived the National Railways of a considerable number of their
cars, particularly during 1919 and 1920.

The National ownership of locomotives, freight cars, and passenger
cars, was relatively below that of the other principal Canadian
railways. If all had been available it would have been totally
inadequate to meet traffic requirements. The public demand for
additional train service, and car supply was most insistent and the
actual need of additional equipment very great, so that many new
locomotives, freight and passenger cars were ordered in 1918, 1919
and 1920, delivery being generally from six to twelve months after
each order was placed.


LOCOMOTIVES:--As it was highly desirable to employ the most powerful
locomotives in order to handle the maximum tonnage per train, the
policy was adopted of only purchasing heavy engines, placing them
upon lines with the greatest density of traffic and with suitable
track and bridge conditions.

Besides the ordinary repair work a certain amount of locomotive
improvements, such as heaters, brick arches, etc., to increase
capacity and reduce fuel consumption, which had been commenced some
years before, was continued, and is still being carried on.

During the first eight months of 1921, through shrinkage in traffic,
several locomotives were out of service, but all engines were
employed during the Fall. This extra motive power available on
September first, made it possible to increase the volume of grain
handled from the Prairies to the head of Lakes during the past four
months, as compared with previous years.

Several subdivisions can now carry heavy locomotives for which
such power is not available. It is, therefore highly desirable in
the interest of economy, that additional freight locomotives be
purchased. A few large passenger engines are also badly needed in
order to satisfactorily handle heavy through trains on certain
sections. Five powerful freight locomotives of special design are
essential to handle coal traffic on the Bickerdike branches of the
Grand Trunk Pacific. These locomotives would effect very substantial
economies, and fully justify the expense involved.


PASSENGER CARS:--One of the first and most urgent problems of the
National Railways was the securing of sufficient passenger cars to
handle returning overseas military forces. One hundred and thirty
steel Colonist cars with wood interior finish were ordered for the
earliest possible delivery.

The shortage of general passenger equipment was also extreme. A
considerable number of cars in service at that time were wholly
unsuitable on account of age, weakness, and obsolete character. The
constant increase in the number of cars required to be handled on
long-run passenger trains led us to adopt all-steel equipment for
main line services. Very careful consideration was given to design,
and the new passenger equipment is fully equal to that of any other
line.


FREIGHT CARS:--As there was much variation in the freight cars
previously ordered by the several lines, each design was carefully
considered, and new standards adopted.

Heavier locomotives and longer trains imposed such severe stresses
upon the older types of wooden cars that many more repairs were
required. During the war cars in bad order accumulated. During
Government Control in the United States all freight cars were pooled,
and equipment repairs greatly neglected. When Canadian cars were
returned in great volume last fall and winter a large percentage were
in defective condition. Recently about ten per cent. of our freight
cars were in bad order, or about twice the normal number.

Contracts were placed with Canadian car builders some time ago to
make heavy repairs to three thousand cars and the forces in our own
shops were augmented. The freight equipment should be in normal
condition by September 1st.

A serious trouble with freight cars of older designs is the pulling
off of wooden draft timbers. Four years ago we began to replace
wooden draft timbers with steel members. This greatly reduces the
cost of repairs, delays to shipments and trains, and prolongs the
life of cars.

The Canadian National lines at the end of 1919 had 1,644 locomotives.
At the end of 1921 the total was 1,718. The Grand Trunk Pacific
engines at the same periods were 259 and 256. Passenger equipment
during the same periods stood at: C.N.R., 1,816 and 1979; G.T.P.,
355 and 352. The freight car situation was C.N.R., 1919, 62,576;
1921, 66,591. G.T.P., 1919, 15,232; 1921, 14,908. At the end of 1921,
therefore, this Department was responsible for 1,972 locomotives,
2,331 passenger cars and 81,499 freight cars. We also had altogether
4,032 work cars.


C.N.R.--G.T.R. CO-ORDINATION:--Following the acquisition through
special legislation of the Grand Trunk Railway System on March 8th,
1920, a mixed Committee of Management was appointed by the Government
to co-ordinate the two systems to improve service and reduce cost of
operation. This Committee consisted of the following:

 Mr. Howard G. Kelley, President Grand Trunk Ry., Chairman. Mr.
 Frank Scott, Vice-President Grand Trunk Ry., Finance. Mr. W.
 D. Robb, Vice-President Grand Trunk Ry., Operating. Mr. C. A.
 Hayes, Vice-President Canadian National Rys., Traffic. Mr. S. J.
 Hungerford, Vice-Pres. Canadian National Rys., Operating.

A conference of officers of both lines appointed sub-committees to
study and report upon various phases of activity, which, if approved
by the Committee of Management, were immediately put into effect.

Traffic and ticket offices throughout the United States and Canada
were consolidated, terminals and stations were used jointly, track
connections were constructed to permit of consolidation, freight
movements rearranged, interline passenger services established, and
tickets and passes interchanged. Express services were also closely
co-ordinated.

Most of the physical connections and other required facilities
have been provided, and authority will be asked to complete the
program. Very substantial economies in operation have been secured,
and the relative position of the Government-owned lines materially
strengthened. The Operating Department consolidations are at the
following points:


FREIGHT STATIONS:--Toronto, Toronto (Cherry St.), Port Hope, Cobourg,
Grafton, Colborne, Brighton, Trenton, Belleville, Napanee, Kingston,
Brockville, North Bay, Pembroke, Ottawa (Hurdman), Ottawa, Washago,
Rockland, Hawkesbury, Aston Junction, Lyster and Ste. Rosalie.


PASSENGER STATIONS:--Parry Sound, Napanee, Brockville, North Bay,
Pembroke, Rockland, Hawkesbury, Ste. Rosalie, Quebec, Washago,
Kingston, Cobourg, Grafton, Colborne, Brighton, Aston Junction and
Lyster.


YARDS:--Toronto, North Bay, Hawkesbury, Pembroke, Rockland and Ste.
Rosalie.


ENGINEHOUSES:--Toronto, Brockville, Pembroke, Hawkesbury, Ste.
Rosalie, Kingston, North Bay, Ottawa, Rockland, and Chaudiere.


G.T.P. ABSORPTION:--Owing to the Grand Trunk’s difficulties, on
March 7th, 1919, the Minister of Railways and Canals was appointed
Receiver of the Grand Trunk Pacific, and on July 12th, 1920, an Order
in Council was issued appointing the Board of Directors, Canadian
Northern Railway, Managers of the Grand Trunk Pacific, acting on
behalf of the Receiver.

Immediately the official staffs of the two lines were amalgamated
and reorganized. Departmental officers and staffs were also
consolidated. Train services were rearranged to secure the shortest
routes, and arrangements made for the joint use of terminals and
other facilities. Duplicate offices have been abolished, and
certain freight sheds, stations and roundhouses have been closed,
passenger train services materially improved and freight traffic
short-routed, the whole involving very substantial reductions in
operating expenses, capacity to handle a larger volume of business,
and improved service to the public.

Various physical connections have already been provided, but several
important ones remain to be constructed.

The Grand Trunk Pacific has a terminal at Jasper, seventeen miles
east of the summit of the Rocky Mountains. The Canadian Northern has
one at Lucerne, five miles west of the summit. The rails were removed
from portions of the two lines between Edmonton and Red Pass Junction
in 1917, and sent to France for war purposes. Traffic has since been
handled over one route consisting of portions of both lines. Only
one of the two terminals mentioned is now required. The facilities
at either of the points are not adequate. Something more must be
provided at whichever point is selected.

The Operating Department’s co-ordinations are:


FREIGHT STATIONS CONSOLIDATED:--Winnipeg, Portage La Prairie, Regina,
Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Canora, Battleford, Edmonton, Stony Plains,
Moose Jaw, Yorkton, Calgary and Evansburg.


PASSENGER STATIONS:--Portage La Prairie, Yorkton, Saskatoon, Canora,
Battleford, Moose Jaw, Calgary, Prince Albert, Stony Plains,
Evansburg and Edmonton.


YARDS:--Fort Rouge, Transcona, Winnipeg Terminal, North Regina,
Nutana, Prince Albert, Edmonton and Calgary.


ENGINEHOUSES:--Winnipeg, Rivers, Melville, Regina, Moose Jaw, Prince
Albert, Edmonton, Edson and Calgary.


TRAIN SERVICES:--The regular train services incidental to the
co-ordination of Government-controlled lines have been given a great
deal of study. We have now daily time freight services between
Halifax and Vancouver, with regular connections reaching all
important points. The results are gratifying. In the way-freight
services substantial economies and improvement in service have been
secured.


STANDARD OFFICE WORK:--The co-ordination of independent roads, each
with its own methods, systems and forms, necessitated the adoption of
new standards.

A staff of engineers has been established at headquarters, which
prepares standard plans and specifications, for bridges, culverts
and buildings, and develops uniform methods and instructions for the
construction and maintenance of such facilities, instead of having
it done at the various offices of the Chief Engineer. The members
of this staff were generally withdrawn from outlying offices where
they were not replaced. The establishment of this office does not
represent any considerable increase in cost.

It was formerly difficult to secure satisfactory reports of
operations, exercise proper control, or make fair comparisons of
results and costs, because there was no uniformity in connection with
reports.

Standard forms of reports and methods have been adopted with very
favorable results. A very fine system of Operating Statistics has
been inaugurated similar to that in use on Class I United States
Railways, which makes it possible for Division, District, General
and Executive Officers to know promptly the results from and the
efficiency of operation in any territory.

The benefit in reduced operating costs resulting from numerous
physical improvements is now being felt. The provision of those
contemplated, particularly in respect to water supplies and track
connections to short-route traffic, and save train mileage, will also
have a very important effect upon operating costs.

Very substantial improvements in freight and passenger train service,
in economy of operation and satisfaction to the public have been
effected, the latter being indicated by the steadily increasing
public patronage. Much of the criticism of the National Lines is
due to conditions which are now largely non-existent, or to lack
of information as to the character of service now furnished. As a
striking example of the progress that has been made, the western
grain moved to the Head of Lakes during September, October, November
and December, in 1920 and 1921, respectively, is quoted:--

  1920      42,016 cars.
  1921      65,238 cars.

One of the greatest handicaps is the necessity of maintaining
duplicate main lines in certain provinces, involving great additional
expense without proportionate increase in revenue. Another is the
extremely low traffic density of a considerable proportion of the
system mileage, which must be operated throughout the year in the
interest of people who have settled in adjacent lands and have
developed business interests. Generally speaking, the lines in
question have low grades, and an increase in population would make
them profitable. Another handicap is the considerable number of older
branch lines principally in Eastern Canada which must be operated,
but on which the volume of traffic is so small as to involve very
serious loss in operation.

It is a pleasure to pay tribute to the splendid loyalty, energy, and
enthusiasm displayed by the official and working staffs as a whole.
It can be said, without reserve, that the officers and employees
of the National are as enthusiastic and zealous in their work as
those on any privately-owned railway. No tendency to relax has
been observed since certain lines were acquired by the Government.
This enthusiasm is one of the most valuable assets of a large
organization. If encouraged it will be a most powerful factor in
placing the National Railways upon a basis entirely satisfactory to
the owners, the people of Canada.




                            APPENDIX B

             EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE CANADIAN NATIONAL
                   RAILWAYS’ TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT, FOR
                THE PERIOD SEPT., 1918--DEC., 1921, AS
                     SUBMITTED TO THE MINISTER OF
                             RAILWAYS.

To indicate what has been accomplished by the Traffic Department
during the past three years, it is desirable to define the functions
of that Department in the Railway Organization. It may be described
as the sales department of the railway--selling transportation--under
a Freight Traffic Manager, and Passenger Traffic Manager, each
supervising his sphere of the work over the entire Canadian National
Railways.

These heads are provided with assistants with prescribed
territories--each of these assistants being supported in turn, by
district men in immediate charge of assigned territories and staff.

The duties of the departmental heads are:--

1.--To establish the basis for the publications containing the prices
at which the transportation is to be sold.

2.--To confer with officers of the Operating Department respecting
services required to give patrons the maximum of satisfaction,
consistent with cost.

3.--To advertise the prices and services, as by printed tariffs, time
tables and other suitable advertising material and methods.

Advertising must then be delivered to the direct selling forces--the
district passenger and freight men, and ticket men behind the
counters, stationed in Canada, United States and Overseas.

All these representatives are required to keep themselves informed
upon the day-to-day requirements of their districts. They must
observe, if traffic is offering freely, if the proper proportion of
competitive traffic is secured, if efficient service is given, and
they must render such assistance to our patrons as will facilitate
their comfort as passengers, or their requirements as shippers.

The supervision of the departmental heads also includes negotiations
for the interchange of traffic with steamship connections, with other
railways in Canada and the United States, and for the consummation
of arrangements for satisfactory service for our patrons, and the
maximum haul for the railway.

An officer with the title of General Foreign Freight Agent is also
provided, supported by a sufficient staff for soliciting the inland
rail haul on traffic from or to Overseas; for assisting patrons in
securing quotations and space from Ocean Steamship connections; and
generally, for keeping informed upon the world’s trade conditions.

The efforts of the Foreign Freight Department on this side are
supplemented by the co-operation of the European Manager, in London,
who, with a staff in Great Britain and agencies on the Continent,
gathers up traffic that cannot be secured on this side. He also
secures and forwards information as to prospective traffic, as to
competition through Canadian and American ports. Through these
representatives quantities of traffic are secured that might
otherwise pass to competitors, American as well as Canadian.

The European Manager also co-operates with steamship connections
Overseas and the railway representatives on this side in developing
passenger traffic of the various classes, and in promoting
immigration.

In Australia, New Zealand and the Orient, officers have also been
appointed who perform similar functions with respect to the movement
of freight and passenger traffic through Pacific Coast ports.

These Overseas representatives in Great Britain, on the Continent,
in the Orient and Australasia are expected to gather traffic for the
Canadian Government Merchant Marine, as well as to work closely with
all other possible steamship connections.

Periodical reports--weekly, monthly, or daily when necessary--are
submitted by all the district men to their immediate superiors, and
are passed on through the passenger or freight traffic managers
to the vice-president in charge of traffic. From these reports is
gleaned the information necessary to a proper supervision of the
work, and to be passed on to the President, to assist in keeping him
informed upon the movement and conditions of business throughout the
entire system.

In the development of our traffic organization, but three years have
passed, since the combination of the former Canadian Government
Railways with those of the Canadian Northern, and little more than a
year since the absorption of the Grand Trunk Pacific.

Co-ordination with the traffic organization of the Grand Trunk has
proceeded as far as possible under the existing conditions, the
district and soliciting forces having been consolidated.

It may be said that with the consolidation of a number of Canadian
National and Grand Trunk offices, the absorption of the Grand Trunk
Pacific staff, and the resumption of work by our men returned from
overseas, that we have greatly strengthened the personnel of our
official and soliciting forces. We now have a most efficient staff
in Canada and in the United States whose loyalty and devotion to duty
is specially worthy of mention, as it is sometimes assumed that only
those employed in privately-owned corporations can be credited with
these attributes.

Success is only attained by the sales department of any large
enterprise, through an efficient organization composed of experienced
men with initiative, who are capable of responding promptly to
every reasonable demand upon their services, in the interest of
the enterprise they represent. Nothing produces efficiency in all
lines of activity more than rivalry. With a large competitive
system, privately owned, and operated in the same territory by
which to measure our results, the rivalry that necessarily follows
should ensure against inefficiency and stagnation, in so far as our
organization may be permitted to function under the same business
principles as those governing its competitors.

It is felt that this spirit of rivalry has dominated every officer
and representative of the traffic department since its organization,
not as an incentive to pursue unfair methods, but rather as a
stimulant to their determination that results must be accomplished by
close attention to the wants of patrons, and to the service rendered
by all departments of the railway.

Perhaps it is too much to expect, with operating forces extending
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that complete satisfaction will be
given by the staff at all times; but it should be realized that an
organization in existence only three years, and engaged to a large
extent in co-ordinating the services of a number of lines, previously
operated independently, and in some cases in competition, has much
yet to accomplish to gain the strength, and the same traffic-getting
power as its chief competitor. This rival organization has gradually
strengthened, as its mileage and territory grew, and as its
facilities, both railway and steamship, for securing traffic, were
increased.

Due economy, consistent with efficiency, has been observed in the
organization of the Canadian National traffic force. The ratio of the
cost to the gross revenue for last year, 1920, was 1.94 per cent.,
against 2.31 per cent. on the C.P.R. In this connection it should
be borne in mind that we are meeting the competition of a strongly
entrenched rival, and the results indicate a substantial measure of
success.


GRAIN:--The following table of grain movements will give some
indication of the productive value of the territory served by the
lines of the former Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific, and it
may not be out of place to point out that the portions of the three
prairie provinces, served by the trunk lines of these companies,
have been the steady producing areas of the West, where crop failure
has been less frequent or entirely absent.

Number of cars of grain inspected and handled each crop year from the
First of September to December 31st.

                  1918         1919          1920          1921
              Cars     %    Cars     %    Cars     %    Cars     %
              -----------   -----------   -----------   -----------
  C.N.R.      27,334 31.3   26,771 31.7   33,101 27.4   52,924 36.2
  G.T.R.      11,044 12.6   12,511 14.8   12,238 10.1   19,226 13.2
              -----------   -----------   -----------   -----------
  Total       38,378 43.9   39,282 46.5   45,339 37.5   72,150 49.4
  C.P.        48,491 55.4   44,799 53.0   75,375 62.4   73,219 50.1
  G.N.           677   .7      455   .5      146   .1      690   .5
              -----------   -----------  ------------  ------------
  Total       87,546  100   84,536  100  120,860  100  146,059  100

From the foregoing it will be noted that a total of 72,150 cars have
been handled by the National Railways--September 1st, to December
31st, of this last season’s crop--in contrast with:--

  1920  45,339 cars equal to 59.1% increase
  1919  39,282  ”     ”   ”  83.7%    ”
  1918  38,378  ”     ”   ”  88%      ”

A new movement of grain took place in 1920, of some 600,000 bushels
of wheat from Alberta points to Vancouver, for export via steamships
using the Panama Canal route to Great Britain. A substantial increase
is shown this present season, and will possibly total close to three
million bushels by both railways; the National Railways are handling
considerably more than 50 per cent. of this quantity. To December
29th we had delivered at Vancouver 754 cars and on the same date had
1,114 cars in transit and were making deliveries in Vancouver as
rapidly as the grain could be handled by the Government elevator at
that port.[3]

The easy grades of the National lines through the mountains are
favorable to such a movement. The grain this season is going forward
to Japan as well as to U.K. ports.

In the last crop year the Canadian National Railways also handled
approximately 50 per cent. of the grain moved East, all rail,
from the head of the lakes to Eastern Canada and the eastern
seaboard--thus indicating the ability of the railway to participate
fully in this competitive movement.


LIVE STOCK:--The Canadian National Railways are also actively
participating in the competitive movement of live stock traffic from
Winnipeg and West as illustrated by the following:--

                     To                            To
               Eastern Canada                 United States
                    and                            via
               United States                  Emerson
               Number of Cars                 Number of Cars
            Total     Via    Via           Total     Via    Via
  Years   All Lines  C.N.R. C.N.R.       All Lines  C.N.R. C.N.R.
  1919      3,274      974    30%          5,476      739   13.5%
  1920      5,235    2,404    46%          3,182    1,496   47.0%
  1921      2,983    2,027    68%          1,559      758   48.6%

This very favorable showing is largely due to rapid transit,
excellent transportation arrangements and recognition by the shipper
of the efficiency and quality of our service.


COAL:--Commercial coal produced at mines served by the former
Canadian Northern lines for each coal year ending with April 30th, in
tons:--

  1914-15      393,421
  1915-16      513,722
  1916-17      758,878
  1917-18    1,018,250
  1918-19    1,140,879
  1919-20    1,198,864
  1920-21    1,328,429

Adding to the foregoing the production at mines on the Grand Trunk
Pacific from May 1st, 1920, to April 30th, 1921, of 553,114 tons, we
have a total tonnage for the year of 1,881,543 net tons.

The Drumheller district in Alberta on the Saskatoon-Calgary branch of
the Canadian Northern, produced 54 per cent. of the total tonnage.
The following figures are of interest indicating the growth of the
tonnage in that district.

  Output Coal Year
  ending April 30th    Net Tons
        1912             1,183
     1912-13            15,564
     1913-14            52,321
     1914-15           149,837
     1915-16           222,729
     1916-17           377,626
     1917-18           607,783
     1918-19           796,070
     1919-20           886,407
     1920-21         1,007,154


TRAFFIC BY LAKE AND BY RAIL:--In another line of competitive
traffic the Canadian National has shown its ability to participate
fully, illustrated by the increase in the year 1920 of some 79,600
tons by rail and by lake from Eastern to Western Canada, over the
corresponding movement of the previous year, this increase being
equal to 31½ per cent. The all-rail westbound traffic for 1921 shows
a heavy decrease, due to the general depression in business. We are
confident, however, that we have secured a greater proportion of the
total tonnage that has moved by all-rail or by lake-and-rail both
westbound and eastbound.


PASSENGER SERVICE:--The consolidation of the Canadian National-Grand
Trunk Pacific lines has not only had the effect of removing an
important competitive element but has enabled us to effect important
economies and improvements in train services. Between Winnipeg and
Vancouver we have been able to shorten our schedule by ten hours,
thus meeting the running time of our competitor between these points.
We have also been enabled to make substantial savings in train
mileage.

In the past we have been seriously handicapped in securing the rail
haul in connection with ocean steamship passenger business, by reason
of our competitors having a more frequent service from Atlantic
ports, than the steamship lines with which we co-operate.

The White Star and Cunard Lines recently announced that they were
instituting an improved service by the St. Lawrence route. Under this
arrangement there will be almost an equal number of sailings by these
lines as by those of our competitor. This will enable us to secure
a larger proportion of rail business, not only of passengers going
overseas, but of passengers arriving by the steamship lines, destined
to points in Canada--Trans-Canada or the United States.

We might also refer to the difficulty thus far experienced in
getting support from the Canadian Australasian Line operating on the
Pacific between Vancouver and Australia and New Zealand. This line
has been receiving from the Dominion Government a yearly subsidy of
$180,000.00, nearly $500.00 per day--in return for this expenditure
by the Government its Railway should receive consideration in its
passenger interchange, Canadian and Trans-Canada, but to expect such
we must give a supporting rail service.

The inauguration of the daily transcontinental service following
tri-weekly trains, the co-ordination of the Canadian National-Grand
Trunk service between Toronto and Ottawa, and numerous other changes,
have effected a much improved all-round service on Canadian National
lines, which has met with many evidences of public approval. There
is little doubt that the splendid service provided by these
trains, with unexcelled equipment, has had a far-reaching effect in
influencing the public mind in favor of the railway.

Business depression has seriously affected passenger travel all over
Canada during the past year, and the volume of business shows a
consequent falling off. We continue, however, to carry an increasing
proportion of the competitive travel, so that the prospects for the
future are distinctly encouraging.

Lack of hotel accommodation in the mountains has seriously
handicapped us in increasing the long haul, incident to
transcontinental travel, but as there is a prospect of this being
remedied during the coming year, it will not only assist us directly
in securing this class of travel in Canada, but will be a valuable
medium to enable us to bring to the attention of the whole of
the selling forces of the United States railways this feature of
accommodation and the great attractions offered by our scenic route
through the Northern Rocky Mountains, and will result in attracting
additional tourist and transcontinental business.

The necessity of making known, what the Canadian National lines
are and the territory they serve, also the numerous additions and
changes in train service has involved a large amount of advertising
during the past two years. This was necessary, not only to inform the
public at large but also the transportation selling forces of other
lines--particularly in the United States, in a position to direct
business to us. The accumulating effect of this advertising is now
beginning to be felt and is undoubtedly reflected in the proportion
of competitive travel that we are securing. Steps are being taken
to complete a wall map of the system which will fill a great want
and when it is distributed, will have more effect in informing the
Canadian public as to what constitutes the Canadian National Railways
than any other medium.


DEVELOPMENT AND COLONIZATION:--It would appear necessary to emphasize
the fact, that we fully realize the vital importance to Canada
in general, and the Canadian National Railways in particular, of
increased population. Immigration of the right kind should be
fostered from Overseas, as well as from the United States, and
settlement encouraged on our lines, not only in Western Canada, but
in the Maritime Provinces, Quebec and Ontario.

To increase population, particularly in the agricultural districts
is a necessity, and to that end, we have been working in the United
States with a specialized staff at Chicago, Boston and Seattle,
co-operating with our Canadian staff, and in close co-operation with
the representatives in the United States, and in Canada, of the
Immigration and Colonization Department of the Dominion Government.

Through the work of our Industrial and Resources Department,
colonization is stimulated, and suitable people induced to settle in
Canada, and acquire lands along the lines of the Canadian National
Railways; adding directly to the country’s wealth, in capital, and
in the plant and effects they bring with them, and as producers of
increased traffic for the railway.

In order to give some idea of the activities of the Department in
the United States during the period under review, it is worthy of
mention that information is being sent out periodically to some forty
thousand enquirers. The Chicago office alone is in correspondence
with between five and six thousand prospective settlers, and has
distributed some 374,000 pamphlets giving information about Canada
and the Canadian National Railways.

It is estimated that over one million acres have been taken up so
far in the West along the National lines, under the auspices of the
Soldiers Settlement Board, and that 67 per cent. of the homesteading
in 1920 and upwards of 80 per cent. in 1921, applied for in the
prairie provinces were contiguous to the National lines.

Government figures show that during the past two years, 86,000
settlers came from the United States to Canada. Analysis indicates
that two-thirds of such migrants from the United States are farm
settlers. As most of the more recently developed mixed-farming areas
are tributary to the Canadian National lines, it is fair to assume
that at least fifty per cent. of these farm settlers settled along
our railways, or allowing 2 to each family, 14,250 families, during
that period.

Records show that on an average each American family takes up a half
section, and is ultimately worth at least $750 a year revenue to the
railway. Therefore, the settlements of the past two years may be
computed to have a potential value in annual revenue to our line of
from ten to twelve million dollars.

With references to colonization in Eastern Canada it may be said that
progress is being made along the former National Transcontinental
lines. In the Abitibi District, that portion thrown open to
colonization by the Quebec authorities, stretching from the Megiscan
River 125 miles to the Ontario boundary, Government Agents now report
a population of some 15,000 souls. Over three thousand families
settled in the district last year, which is a satisfactory indication
that a farming community is being built up along this line.

Agricultural exhibitions have been held at Amos and Makamik, giving
evidence of the interest that is being taken in the raising of
live-stock and agriculture generally. In this connection it is of
interest to note that a representative of the Quebec Agricultural
Department estimated the value of the crops produced in the Abitibi
District in 1921 at $1,100,000, consisting in the main of oats,
potatoes and garden vegetables.

As the Industrial and Resources Department of the railway becomes
better known it is being called upon to give information on the
whole field of Canadian National resources and the activities and
conditions of the country generally, and in this respect it is
well equipped to meet the situation, having men of experience with
technical training and wide knowledge of the country. It is also
provided with perhaps the best working library of its kind in the
country, dealing with the mineral and forest resources, agriculture,
water powers, trade and commerce, fisheries, general statistics and
other information on Canada.


              T. H. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO


                             FOOTNOTES:

[1] This mention of a tune unexpectedly produced striking proofs of
the correctness of the idea the allusion was meant to convey, of the
carefulness with which personal reminiscences are read, and of my
own shortcoming as a musical remembrancer. In this chapter as first
published “Belmont” was given as the name of the tune my father
changed. Immediately Mr. John A. Hyslop of Toronto, wrote to The Star
Weekly a kind letter in which he said: Pollokshaws was not the only
place where certain tunes were so associated with certain psalms, but
the idea was peculiar to Scotland generally. I think, however, that
Mr. Hanna is mistaken when he refers to his father attempting the
daring innovation of singing the fortieth psalm to some other tune
than “Belmont”. This tune is not well suited for “I Waited for the
Lord My God”. Throughout Scotland generally this fine old psalm was
always sung to “Balerma”, while “Belmont” is usually associated with
“By Cool Siloam’s Shady Rill”.

The turn of the year also brought this letter from Alberta, which
is printed as a delightful example of how old associations may be
revived, as well as of the depth in the Scottish character to which
the ancient melodies have attained:--

                                     Lougheed, December 27th, 1923.
                                               P. O. Box 63,

D. B. Hanna, Esq.

Dear Sir,

I take the liberty to write you, having seen a sketch of your life
in the “Manitoba Free Press”, which I read with pleasure as well as
great interest.

I was in Speirs Bridge, Thornliebank at the time you wrote about,
when all the old chums were there, such as Agnes and Jane Hamilton,
Agnes and Mary Stark, Tina and Agnes Tattersall, Alice Ritchie, the
Sives and the Lambies, James Craig, Deaconsbank, and the Patersons at
the Castle. You remember the Misses Picken and the black man, Andrew
McEwan. I remember quite well your sister, Mrs. Wardrop, and your
brother, Hugh, also the Sunday School children, and at this time of
year, the grand Christmas tree in the print works.

We were really a model people as well as a village. I recall the
Old Men’s, and Old Women’s tea with Robertson the Mason, and his
quadrille band, and the Templar’s soiree and dance on New Year’s
night, with Willie McNaught in the chair, and Donald Cameron.
These old memories are worth something. I can look back on scores
more of faces which were so familiar, and are so pleasant to think
about--Peter Hunter and Willie Stark, as leaders of music in the
Sunday School, and dear Mr. Weild, the minister. Now I feel relieved
a bit.

My husband was born in Rob’s Lea Farm, and they used to be in
Henry’s croft too. McKinnon is his name. We came up here in 1911
and settled on a C.P.R. farm six miles out of Lougheed. After that
we homesteaded, seven miles from our farm, and bought a quarter of
school land joining our homestead, so that we have two farms, three
quarter sections of land. We brought pure bred horses with us. But
we lost such a lot that long winter. Before that we were so well
fixed, but it may be good times will come back again. We trust so;
for everybody. We had a dandy crop this year--all kinds of feed, and
we are still holding to a bunch of stock in the hope that prices will
come again.

Now I offer you my congratulations on your success. My husband joins
me. I sent the “Manitoba Free Press” to my brother, Robert Bell, in
Alexandria, N.B., which I am sure, he will also read with pleasure.
At this season we like to offer greetings, and especially to old
friends.

Again accept my warmest regards.

                           I am, Yours respectfully, I. M. McKINNON.

P.S.--I must correct you in the name of the tune “Belmont”; it should
be “Balerma”.


[2] A few days after this was printed in Toronto I received a letter
from another former clerk at Buchanan Street, who was there after my
time enquiring if the perpetrator of this discipline was not “Old
D----”. It was.

[3] At the time this book was in the press it was estimated that
50,000,000 bushels of the 1923 crop would be exported to Vancouver.




  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  One of the repetitive title headings ‘Trains of Recollection’ in
  the frontmatter has been removed.

  The Table on page 290 was printed sideways in the original book.
  It has been rotated to the horizontal and split into two parts in
  this etext.

  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained: for example,
  waybills, way-bills; firebug, fire-bug; program, programme;
  Scotsman, Scotschman; employes, employees; fluctuous; destinated;
  growed; apocryphers; gipsy; woodware.

  Pg 41: ‘it semed likely’ replaced by ‘it seemed likely’.
  Pg 73: ‘instal the machinery’ replaced by ‘install the machinery’.
  Pg 77: ‘atempts to flavour’ replaced by ‘attempts to flavour’.
  Pg 88: ‘whole dum section’ replaced by ‘whole durn section’.
  Pg 100: ‘arival at Fort Garry’ replaced by ‘arrival at Fort Garry’.
  Pg 127: ‘semed a good’ replaced by ‘seemed a good’.
  Pg 130: ‘his old asociates’ replaced by ‘his old associates’.
  Pg 235: ‘Canadan Northern, then’ replaced by
          ‘Canadian Northern, then’.
  Pg 239: ‘guaranteed securites’ replaced by ‘guaranteed securities’.
  Pg 255: ‘In was in the’ replaced by ‘It was in the’.
  Pg 265: ‘was corncerned only’ replaced by ‘was concerned only’.
  Pg 321: ‘Water Supplies:--’ replaced by ‘WATER SUPPLIES:--‘.
  Pg 326: ‘the couutry, and’ replaced by ‘the country, and’.





End of Project Gutenberg's Trains of Recollection, by David Blyth Hanna

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63059 ***