The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 (2 page)

Sir George Etienne Cartier
, Minister of Militia and Defence, 1867-73. Macdonald’s Quebec lieutenant.

Doctor Charles Tupper
,
M.P
. for Cumberland, Nova Scotia; President of the Privy Council, 1870-72; Minister of Inland Revenue, 1872-73; Minister of Customs, 1873; Minister of Public Works, 1878-79; Minister of Railways, 1879-84.

Sir Francis Hincks
, Premier of United Canada, 1851-54; Minister of Finance, 1869-73.

Hector Louis Langevin
, Minister of Public Works, 1869-73; Postmaster General, 1878-79; Minister of Public Works, 1879-91. Carrier’s successor as Macdonald’s Quebec lieutenant.

J. J. C. Abbott
,
M.P
. for Argenteuil, Quebec. Sir Hugh Allan’s legal counsel in 1873; legal counsel for the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

LIBERALS (CLEAR GRITS AND REFORMERS)

Alexander Mackenzie
, Prime Minister of Canada and Minister of Public Works, 1873-78.

Edward Blake
,
M.P
. for Durham West, Ontario; Premier of Ontario, 1871-72; Minister without Portfolio, 1873-74; Minister of Justice, 1875-77; President of the Privy Council, 1877-78. Succeeded Alexander Mackenzie as Liberal leader, 1880.

Sir Richard Cartwright
(Conservative to 1869), Minister of Finance, 1873-78.

Lucius Seth Huntington
, Solicitor General for Lower Canada, 1863-64;
M.P
. for Shefford, Quebec, 1867-78; President of the Privy Council, 1874-75; Postmaster General, 1875-78. His speech in 1873 touched off the Pacific Scandal.

James D. Edgar
, chief Liberal whip, 1872-74; delegate to British Columbia on
CPR
negotiations, 1874.

The Pathfinders

Sandford Fleming
, chief engineer of the government-owned Intercolonial; Engineer-in-Chief of the
CPR
, 1871-80; succeeded by Collingwood Schreiber. Devised a workable system of standard time.

Marcus Smith
, in charge of surveys in British Columbia, 1872-76; Fleming’s deputy in Ottawa, 1876-78. Strong proponent of Bute Inlet as
CPR
terminus.

Walter Moberly
, assistant surveyor-general of British Columbia, 1865-66; in charge of mountain surveys for
CPR
, 1871-72. Discovered Eagle Pass.

Henry J. Cambie
, in charge of British Columbia surveys after 1876, replacing Marcus Smith.

Charles Horetzky
, photographer and explorer. Conducted exploratory surveys in the Pine Pass and Kitlope River regions.

The Entrepreneurs

Sir Hugh Allan
, Montreal ship owner and financier whose syndicate was awarded the
CPR
contract in 1872. His heavy subscriptions to the Conservative Party implicated him in the Pacific Scandal.

Jay Cooke
, Philadelphia banker who financed the Northern Pacific Railroad and hoped to control the
CPR
.

George W. McMullen
, Canadian-born promoter from Chicago who produced American backers for Sir Hugh Allan’s company.

Senator David L. Macpherson
, Toronto railway builder and rival of Sir Hugh Allan. He made a fortune in Grand Trunk Railway construction contracts and headed the Interoceanic Company, which bid unsuccessfully for the
CPR
contract in 1872.

James J. Hill
, Canadian-born fuel and transportation merchant in St. Paul, Minnesota. Member of the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

Norman Kittson
, early Minnesota fur trader; Hill’s partner in Red River Transportation Company and subsequent ventures. Member of the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

Donald A. Smith
,
M.P
. for Selkirk, 1871-78; Labrador fur trader who rose to become resident governor and Chief Commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada. He was a partner of Hill and Kittson in Red River Transportation Company and subsequent railroad ventures. Member of the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

George Stephen
, Donald A. Smith’s cousin; president of the Bank of Montreal, 1876-81. He helped Smith, Hill and Kittson organize the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. Member of the
CPR
Syndicate and president of the
CPR
, 1881-88.

John S. Kennedy
, New York banker who represented Dutch bondholders of the bankrupt St. Paul railway and arranged reorganization. Member of the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

Duncan McIntyre
, president of Canada Central Railway. Member of and spokesman for the
CPR
Syndicate, 1880.

The Builders

Joseph Whitehead
, Liberal
M.P
., awarded contracts on the Pembina Branch of the
CPR
and on Section Fifteen between Cross Lake and Rat Portage, west of Lake Superior.

Adam Oliver
, Liberal
M.P.P
., awarded telegraph contracts west of Fort William. Implicated in “Neebing Hotel” scandal.

J. W. Sifton
, awarded construction contract west of Fort William (with his brother Henry) and telegraph contract west of Winnipeg (with David Glass,
M.P
.). Father of Sir Clifford Sifton, founder of Sifton newspapers.

John Shields
, Conservative Party fixer, member of contracting firm of Manning, Shields and McDonald. Involved in behind-the-scenes manipulation for Contract Forty-two for construction of the
CPR
line between Eagle River and Rat Portage, west of Lake Superior.
Michael Haney
, construction boss who took over and completed Section Fifteen for the government after Joseph Whitehead suffered financial reverses.

The Bystanders

Frederick Temple Blackwood, Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
, Governor General of Canada, 1872-78. Succeeded by the
Marquess of Lorne
.

George Brown
, former leader of the Reform Party; publisher and editor of the
Globe
, Toronto. Alexander Mackenzie’s mentor. Murdered in May, 1880.

George Walkem
, Premier of British Columbia, 1874-76, 1878-82. A strong advocate of the Bute Inlet route for the
CPR
, his first term was marked by a long battle with Alexander Mackenzie over delays in commencing the railway.

George Monro Grant
, minister of St. Matthew’s Church, Halifax, 1863-77; secretary to Sandford Fleming on the chief engineer’s transcontinental trip, 1872. His book,
Ocean to Ocean
, describes that journey.

John Macoun
, self-educated botanist; companion of Fleming and Grant on their trip from ocean to ocean. Examined the fertility of the North West for the government.

Father Albert Lacombe
, Oblate missionary whose parish was the Far West. Appointed pastor to railway workers east of Winnipeg in 1880.

Goldwin Smith
, independent journalist, critic and editor of several publications, such as the
Bystander
. A Regius professor from Oxford who made his home in Toronto’s Grange, he actively espoused the cause of commercial union with the United States.

Jesse Farley
, receiver for the bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. He later sued James J. Hill and Norman Kittson, claiming the reorganization of the railroad was his idea. The suit failed.

From Sea to Sea

It is New Year’s Day, 1871, the year in which Canada will become a transcontinental nation, and in most of British North America it is bitterly cold. In Ottawa, where it is 18 below, the snow, gritty as sand, squeaks eerily beneath the felted feet of morning church-goers. A cutting wind, blowing off Lake Ontario, is heaping great drifts against the square logs of the Upper Canadian barns, smothering the snake fences and frustrating the Grand Trunk’s Montreal-Toronto passenger schedule. On the St. Lawrence, in front of Quebec City, that annual phenomenon, the ice bridge, is taking form. In the harbour of Saint John, the rime hangs thickly upon the rigging, turning schooners and barquentines into ghost ships
.

Only at the colonial extremities is New Year’s Day a green one. In the English gardens of Victoria, British Columbia, the occasional yellow wallflower still blooms shyly, and in the verdant colony of Prince Edward Island the fields are free of frost. The editorial comments are as salubrious as the climate. The potato farmers of Souris and Summerside read their Saturday
Islander
with approval: “In our cosy little Island we have scarcely experienced anything but the blessings of Providence,” it says. “It is probable that never at any previous period of our existence were we as rich a community as we are at the moment.” There is cause for rejoicing: the colony is eagerly awaiting new proposals from Canada calculated to entice it into Confederation; the rumours say that these will be far more liberal than the ones that have been rejected. And why not? After all, British Columbia has been promised a railway!

Three thousand miles to the west, the steam presses of the
British Colonist
are pumping out a New Year’s salutation for the morrow. For British Columbia, the editor writes, the outlook has never been brighter: “Clad in bridal attire, she is about to unite her destinies with a country which is prepared to do much for her.” The paper carries a reprint from a Tory journal back east, praising the Government for the nuptial present it is about to bestow
.

The world is in its customary turmoil — the Germans at the gates of Paris, the insurrectionists bedevilling Cuba — but in Canada there is nothing but good humour. Even George Brown, the caustic editor of the
Globe,
is in a mellow mood. One can almost surmise a half-smile lighting up those long, Scottish features as he scribbles an
unusually benign editorial in his Toronto office. “Peace and plenty prevail,” he writes, “and there is nothing for us but hope and encouragement as we welcome the advent of another year.”

It is the Lord’s Day and all across settled Canada the curtains are drawn and the church bells are sounding. Only an eccentric would resist their summons. Because of the Sabbath, all the elegant and sometimes lusty New Year’s rituals of the Canadian social classes have been postponed for a day. The brass and rosewood, the sterling and cut glass have all been polished to a high gloss by an army of servants, making ready for Monday’s “calling.” Then will the gentlemen of the towns, frock-coated and convivial, trudge unsteadily from threshold to threshold, to be greeted by well-bustled matrons with puckered lips and full decanters. The temperance movement is crying out against such debauchery. In Montreal, it is reported, some of the ladies have been persuaded to serve coffee. That city, a correspondent notes, has already given the New Year “a sober and orderly welcome.”

Far off beyond the sombre desert of the Canadian Shield, at Fort Garry in the new province of Manitoba, the welcome is not so orderly. Fiddles screech, pipes skirl and the settlers caper like souls possessed to an endless succession of Red River reels, while nearby tables groan with smoking joints of venison and buffalo. The great Scottish feast of Hogmanay – New Year’s Eve – is far more important than Christmas
.