Read Online The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 by Pierre Berton - Free Book Online
Authors: Pierre Berton
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sternwheel steamboats unloading passengers and merchandise, and storekeepers hawking their wares. He ran into his English acquaintance, who was bemoaning the fact that he had sold his homestead to a land shark for a piebald pony, a second-hand meerschaum pipe, a broken German silver watch, and $7.25 in cash.
Since no transfer papers had been executed, the surveyor was able to get the tenderfoot’s homestead back for him. He did not return to Brandon again until Christmas, by which time the rails had passed through “and areal live town was in full swing.” Alas, the young homesteader had grown homesick and had again sold out, this time for three pairs of navy-blue socks, a second-hand concertina, six packages of cigarettes, eighteen dollars in cash, and steerage passage to Liverpool. Shortly afterwards, Secretan discovered, that little piece of land was purchased for eighty thousand dollars.
As for Grand Valley, which might have been the new metropolis, it lapsed into decay. The McVicar brothers, still trying to peddle lots, offered Robert Adamson, the Winnipeg banker, a half interest in the site if he could persuade the CPR to build a station on their property. That was September. Adamson was unsuccessful. In January, the McVicars and their neighbours tried again: they offered eight hundred acres of their land free to two lumber merchants if they could persuade the CPR to put in a station by May, 1882. But the trains went roaring through without stopping and the McVicars eventually sold out their townsite for fifteen hundred dollars. When Beecham Trotter passed through, early in 1882, “Grand Valley was a living corpse. The few buildings were forlorn. The business that was still being done … made a noise like a death rattle. The C.P.R . had refused to stop trains there.” Some years later, Charles Aeneas Shaw happened upon John McVicar ploughing in the vicinity with a team of mules. The farmer ran out onto the road. “Oh, Mr. Shaw, I was a damn fool. If I had only taken your advice, I would have been well off now!”
For future speculators in townsites, the fate of the little community on the Assiniboine was an object lesson in how not to deal with the great railway.
4
The “paid ink-slingers”
Sir Henry Whatley Tyler was the kind of man who, on his visits to the United States, enjoyed riding conspicuously on the cowcatchers of locomotives. He had been, variously, a captain in the Royal Engineers, a British railway inspector, and a Member of Parliament. Since 1876 he had been president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, an enterprise that was directed from England. He might also have been president of the Canadian Pacific, but he could not stomach the idea of an all-Canadian route over the barren desert of the Canadian Shield. Like most Britons and many Canadians, including perhaps half of Sir John A. Macdonald’s cabinet and several directors of the CPR , he believed it an act of incredible folly to build seven hundred miles of line across country incapable of settlement. His own road ran south of the Great Lakes on its route from Sarnia to Chicago. That, clearly, was the sensible route to take. Macdonald was one of the few public figures who believed otherwise. Even George Stephen, in the early months, was unconvinced.
A handsome and debonair man with a military bearing, Tyler was noted for the brilliance of his conversation and his effectiveness at repartee. Shareholders’ meetings held no terrors for him; he apparently enjoyed being baited. His sense of humour was infectious and his wit often ironic. He could hold his own in any verbal battle. Behind the sophisticated façade there was a will of steel. With the help of his shrewd general manager Joseph Hickson, he had beaten the Vanderbilt interests and pushed his railway into Chicago, consolidated several lines in the New England states, and made the Grand Trunk one of the great railway systems of North America. But was it a Canadian system? Its
Since no transfer papers had been executed, the surveyor was able to get the tenderfoot’s homestead back for him. He did not return to Brandon again until Christmas, by which time the rails had passed through “and areal live town was in full swing.” Alas, the young homesteader had grown homesick and had again sold out, this time for three pairs of navy-blue socks, a second-hand concertina, six packages of cigarettes, eighteen dollars in cash, and steerage passage to Liverpool. Shortly afterwards, Secretan discovered, that little piece of land was purchased for eighty thousand dollars.
As for Grand Valley, which might have been the new metropolis, it lapsed into decay. The McVicar brothers, still trying to peddle lots, offered Robert Adamson, the Winnipeg banker, a half interest in the site if he could persuade the CPR to build a station on their property. That was September. Adamson was unsuccessful. In January, the McVicars and their neighbours tried again: they offered eight hundred acres of their land free to two lumber merchants if they could persuade the CPR to put in a station by May, 1882. But the trains went roaring through without stopping and the McVicars eventually sold out their townsite for fifteen hundred dollars. When Beecham Trotter passed through, early in 1882, “Grand Valley was a living corpse. The few buildings were forlorn. The business that was still being done … made a noise like a death rattle. The C.P.R . had refused to stop trains there.” Some years later, Charles Aeneas Shaw happened upon John McVicar ploughing in the vicinity with a team of mules. The farmer ran out onto the road. “Oh, Mr. Shaw, I was a damn fool. If I had only taken your advice, I would have been well off now!”
For future speculators in townsites, the fate of the little community on the Assiniboine was an object lesson in how not to deal with the great railway.
4
The “paid ink-slingers”
Sir Henry Whatley Tyler was the kind of man who, on his visits to the United States, enjoyed riding conspicuously on the cowcatchers of locomotives. He had been, variously, a captain in the Royal Engineers, a British railway inspector, and a Member of Parliament. Since 1876 he had been president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, an enterprise that was directed from England. He might also have been president of the Canadian Pacific, but he could not stomach the idea of an all-Canadian route over the barren desert of the Canadian Shield. Like most Britons and many Canadians, including perhaps half of Sir John A. Macdonald’s cabinet and several directors of the CPR , he believed it an act of incredible folly to build seven hundred miles of line across country incapable of settlement. His own road ran south of the Great Lakes on its route from Sarnia to Chicago. That, clearly, was the sensible route to take. Macdonald was one of the few public figures who believed otherwise. Even George Stephen, in the early months, was unconvinced.
A handsome and debonair man with a military bearing, Tyler was noted for the brilliance of his conversation and his effectiveness at repartee. Shareholders’ meetings held no terrors for him; he apparently enjoyed being baited. His sense of humour was infectious and his wit often ironic. He could hold his own in any verbal battle. Behind the sophisticated façade there was a will of steel. With the help of his shrewd general manager Joseph Hickson, he had beaten the Vanderbilt interests and pushed his railway into Chicago, consolidated several lines in the New England states, and made the Grand Trunk one of the great railway systems of North America. But was it a Canadian system? Its
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