Read Online The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 by Pierre Berton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pierre Berton
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to pump millions into one faltering railway, were now asking them to pour more millions into its chief competitor! The Grand Trunk propaganda to discredit the CPR in the British market found fertile ground.
All that summer and fall, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian North West were subjected to a torrent of abuse in the press of Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, some of it inspired by the Grand Trunk, some of it by the Liberal opposition, some of it by United States railway and immigration interests, and some of it by honest doubtsas to the practicality of a scheme as wild as this one seemed to be. After all, Canada was attempting a far more ambitious project than the United States had tried when the United States had almost ten times the population.
The American attitude was summed up in a brief interview in the New York Herald with the taciturn Jay Gould, the American railroad financier, shortly after the CPR was formed:
REPORTER : There is a great project underway up in Canada?
GOULD : The Canadian Pacific Railroad?
REPORTER : Yes; what do you think of it?
GOULD : Visionary.
REPORTER: N O dividends?
GOULD : Perhaps in one hundred years. It will be a good excursion line for English tourists and Canadian statesmen when Parliament adjourns.
REPORTER : But they say there are great possibilities.
How about the great agricultural resources …?
GOULD : One, the chief one, of the successful agricultural conditions is not there.
REPORTER : Which is?
GOULD : Population.
A large section of the British press, led by The Times of London, had convinced would-be immigrants that Australia was a far better prospect than the forbidding Canadian plains. The Governor General, Lord Lorne, the handsome and poetic son-in-law of the Queen, determined to remedy this impression by a personal tour of the railway’s route to the Rockies. He invited four British journalists, including a man from The Times , to accompany him at his personal expense. Single-handedly, the young marquis had decided to change the minds of his countrymen about the new Canada.
It was a colourful excursion, though the start could not have been prepossessing. The viceregal retinue set off from Port Arthur at the head of Lake Superior on the still-unfinished government line that led towards Winnipeg. The rails stopped at Lake Wabigoon where the passengers were forced to forsake the carpets and sofas of their specially accoutred caboose and, after a brief steamer trip, to endure the ordeal of a nine-mile portage. It was an exhausting tramp, rendered more uncomfortable by a forest fire which had destroyed the half-way house prepared for the party’s refreshment. The smoke-grimed travellers arrived, more than a little breathless, at the shanties and workshops of Eagle Lake to be greeted by the sound of bagpipes and the spectacle of a fleet of canoes, gaudily painted and deckedwith flags for the occasion. Crews of voyageurs and Indians hustled them across the water to a vast barge groaning with iced wines and elaborate dishes served up on spotless linen.
The remainder of the journey was marked by similar contrasts – stretches of bleak rockland, awkward portages, handsome private coaches, interspersed with triumphal arches and uniformed guards of honour. On the outskirts of Winnipeg, Donald A. Smith, one of the largest shareholders of the CPR , entertained His Excellency at his home, Silver Heights, whose façade had been temporarily transformed into a replica of Inveraray Castle, the viceroy’s ancestral seat. At Rapid City, a town of real estate speculators struggling for recognition west of Winnipeg, a retired British colonel, flawlessly attired in formal afternoon dress, read an official welcome; the Governor General was more relaxed in flannel shirt and riding breeches. At the end of track, thirty-five miles beyond Portage la Prairie, the marquis laid a rail: “Considering the limited experience he has had in laying rails, it is
All that summer and fall, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian North West were subjected to a torrent of abuse in the press of Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, some of it inspired by the Grand Trunk, some of it by the Liberal opposition, some of it by United States railway and immigration interests, and some of it by honest doubtsas to the practicality of a scheme as wild as this one seemed to be. After all, Canada was attempting a far more ambitious project than the United States had tried when the United States had almost ten times the population.
The American attitude was summed up in a brief interview in the New York Herald with the taciturn Jay Gould, the American railroad financier, shortly after the CPR was formed:
REPORTER : There is a great project underway up in Canada?
GOULD : The Canadian Pacific Railroad?
REPORTER : Yes; what do you think of it?
GOULD : Visionary.
REPORTER: N O dividends?
GOULD : Perhaps in one hundred years. It will be a good excursion line for English tourists and Canadian statesmen when Parliament adjourns.
REPORTER : But they say there are great possibilities.
How about the great agricultural resources …?
GOULD : One, the chief one, of the successful agricultural conditions is not there.
REPORTER : Which is?
GOULD : Population.
A large section of the British press, led by The Times of London, had convinced would-be immigrants that Australia was a far better prospect than the forbidding Canadian plains. The Governor General, Lord Lorne, the handsome and poetic son-in-law of the Queen, determined to remedy this impression by a personal tour of the railway’s route to the Rockies. He invited four British journalists, including a man from The Times , to accompany him at his personal expense. Single-handedly, the young marquis had decided to change the minds of his countrymen about the new Canada.
It was a colourful excursion, though the start could not have been prepossessing. The viceregal retinue set off from Port Arthur at the head of Lake Superior on the still-unfinished government line that led towards Winnipeg. The rails stopped at Lake Wabigoon where the passengers were forced to forsake the carpets and sofas of their specially accoutred caboose and, after a brief steamer trip, to endure the ordeal of a nine-mile portage. It was an exhausting tramp, rendered more uncomfortable by a forest fire which had destroyed the half-way house prepared for the party’s refreshment. The smoke-grimed travellers arrived, more than a little breathless, at the shanties and workshops of Eagle Lake to be greeted by the sound of bagpipes and the spectacle of a fleet of canoes, gaudily painted and deckedwith flags for the occasion. Crews of voyageurs and Indians hustled them across the water to a vast barge groaning with iced wines and elaborate dishes served up on spotless linen.
The remainder of the journey was marked by similar contrasts – stretches of bleak rockland, awkward portages, handsome private coaches, interspersed with triumphal arches and uniformed guards of honour. On the outskirts of Winnipeg, Donald A. Smith, one of the largest shareholders of the CPR , entertained His Excellency at his home, Silver Heights, whose façade had been temporarily transformed into a replica of Inveraray Castle, the viceroy’s ancestral seat. At Rapid City, a town of real estate speculators struggling for recognition west of Winnipeg, a retired British colonel, flawlessly attired in formal afternoon dress, read an official welcome; the Governor General was more relaxed in flannel shirt and riding breeches. At the end of track, thirty-five miles beyond Portage la Prairie, the marquis laid a rail: “Considering the limited experience he has had in laying rails, it is
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