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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 3 (July 1, 1932)

The Canadian Pacific — Romance Of A Great Railway

page 41

The Canadian Pacific
Romance Of A Great Railway.

It is not often that the story of commercial enterprise and achievement based upon strict adherence to historical data can be told with all the glamour of a romantic novel; yet this is what Mr. R. G. MacBeth had done in the book just published under the above title. Three hundred and fifty octavo pages of well-printed letterpress—every one of them essentially readable—and a number of telling illustrations shew how facts may be presented in their most pleasing form in relating the tale of what was really a magnificent adventure—the building of the great trans-continental railway known the world over as the “C.P.R.”

It tells how Joseph Howe—orator, poet and statesman—in 1851, made the following remarkable declaration: “I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet,” he said; “but I believe that many in this room will live to hear the whistle of the steam engine in the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and to make the journey from Halifax to the Pacific in five or six days.” This only twenty-two years after Stephenson's “Rocket” was built!

Old political battles that had to be won before railroading on the gigantic scale conceived for this undertaking could be proceeded with, are retold in a new, attractive way. Names of the political giants of those days, Sir John A. Mac-Donald, Alexander MacKenzie, Sir Charles Tupper, are recalled vividly to mind, and then the work of the engineers. Marcus Smith, Walter Moberley, Donald A. Smith, and the host of others who gave of their best in driving through this Homeric enterprise, from the 'sixties onward, is graphically recorded.

In 1881 the contract with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was put through Parliament, and its first President, Lord Mount Stephen, set the pace and laid the course so ably followed by his successors in that office, Sir William Van Horne, Lord Shaughnessy, and Mr. E. W. Beatty. Of Van Horne, James J. Hill (probably the best known of all railroaders on the American Continent) said: “You need a man of great physical and mental power to carry the line through. Van Horne can do it. But he will take all the authority he gets and more; so define how much you want him to have.” So, Van Horne became suddenly “the organiser of an army—not for destruction but for construction—a great mobile force which was to move steadily forward under the direction of his genius and daring. That army was to use high explosives and unbounded physical energy, but it was with a purpose to enrich and not to devastate the country. It was to use ploughshares instead of swords, but its victories were to be certain and enduring. The fight was to be hot and at times the line would waver, but there would be no retreat.”

After facing and overcoming incredible difficulties, the line was built, and the first train arrived at Vancouver in May, 1887.

From 1899 until 1918, the line was under the Presidency of Lord Shaughnessy, when Mr. E. W. Beatty succeeded him as President of “an enterprise which belts the earth as a contributing element in the onward march of the human family. There is still romance and fascination in the countless activities of an organisation with whose continued prosperity is wrapped up the welfare of numberless homes and uncounted legions of human beings. The contemplation of the future of this world-encircling enterprise introduces us to a realm of mystic adventure whose limits are undefined, being beyond the power of finite intelligence to estimate.”

The book is printed by the “Ryerson Press,” Toronto, and should form a valuable historic addition to any library.