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William Van Horne first met James Jerome Hill, an almost mythical American railway magnate, in 1876, when he was busy transforming the small, bankrupt Southern Minnesota Railroad into a paying property. Hill, who had settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, was then reorganizing the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway with the aid of several associates, two of whom — Donald Smith and George Stephen — were Scottish Canadians. Hill quickly became Van Horne’s mentor and friend. That they were attracted to each other is not surprising. Both were driven, gifted, practical railroading men with inquiring minds, amazing stamina, a strong aesthetic streak, and a passion for art. They even bore a striking physical resemblance to each other — stocky, bald, and barrel-chested.

In 1881 it was Hill who suggested to George Stephen, the CPR’s president, that Van Horne be invited to become general manager of the fledgling company, incorporated earlier that same year. Relatively little of the CPR’s main line had been built by then, and the CPR syndicate was eager to see the pace of construction speeded up. “You need a man of great mental and physical power to carry this line through,” Hill wrote to Stephen. “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.” Van Horne was indeed the ideal choice for pushing through the construction of the railway. For one thing, he had a practical knowledge of almost every department of railway work, from the construction of bridges or the laying of curves to the management of an extensive system. He also had the ability to make tough decisions, an asset that would prove indispensable to building the CPR.

James J. Hill, empire builder of the American Northwest and Van Horne’s friend and arch railroading rival.

Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, C6654.

The construction of a transcontinental railway had been a central issue in Canada ever since Confederation in 1867. Many people all across the wide, sparsely populated country believed that a ribbon of steel was essential to the survival of the fragile Canadian union. The framers of the British North America Act had even incorporated the Intercolonial Railway in Canada’s constitution, and the terms of British Columbia’s entry into Confederation in 1871 also contained a provision calling for the construction of a transcontinental line.

The new federal government had been able to complete the eastern section of the project quite easily by finishing the construction of the Intercolonial Railway in 1876, the first through-train arriving at Quebec from Halifax on July 6 of that year. The western section would pose far more problems and take much longer to complete. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald made the first attempt, placing a privately owned syndicate headed by the wealthy shipping magnate Sir Hugh Allan in charge. The entire enterprise soon collapsed, however, when it was reported that Allan had contributed large sums of money to Macdonald’s party during the hard-fought election campaign of 1872. The eruption of the “Pacific Scandal” and the findings of a royal commission that implicated Macdonald and his Quebec lieutenant, Sir George-Étienne Cartier, forced Macdonald to resign in late 1873.

Surveys of potential routes and piecemeal construction continued, however, under the Liberal government of Alexander Mackenzie (1873–78). Although his administration adopted a more cautious fiscal policy, it nevertheless spent 25 percent of its budget on surveys and construction in one year alone, 1875.

By the time that Macdonald and the Conservatives returned to power in 1878, British Columbia was threatening to secede from Confederation if all the terms of its admission to Canada were not met. As if to underscore the seriousness of its threat, it sent a provincial delegation to London in the spring of 1881 to seek a repeal of the union. Macdonald wasted no time in swinging into action, realizing full well that the province might leave the union. Even if it did not, an American railway near the international border could siphon off western Canada’s commerce by constructing spur lines northward. Hill’s St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway, which linked St. Paul with St. Vincent, Minnesota, at the Manitoba border, was a case in point. The possible invasion of the southern prairies by an American railway was not the only factor that had to be considered. There was also Canadians’ pride, their nationalism, their determination not to become Americans. Macdonald knew that any future transcontinental line between Montreal and the Pacific had to be an all-Canadian railway and not simply a connection with a line bending north from the mid-western United States.

To construct the transcontinental, Macdonald and the Conservatives decided to have a private company build and operate the railway, but with some government assistance. Their choice was the one group that appeared to have the necessary resources and credentials to carry out such an intimidating undertaking — James Hill and his St. Paul associates. Eager to snare the CPR contract, they had formed a syndicate in October 1880 for that very purpose.

Heading the consortium was George Stephen, who resigned as president of the Bank of Montreal to lead the new company. This self-confident financier and shrewd negotiator would handle the CPR’s budget and governmental relations, assisted by Richard (R.B.) Angus, general manager of the Bank of Montreal. Another prominent syndicate member was Stephen’s cousin, Donald Smith, a newly defeated Conservative member of parliament and a senior Hudson’s Bay Company official. The company also included James Hill, who would focus on construction and operations; the ineffectual vice-president Duncan McIntyre, who controlled the Canada Central Railway; and a number of bankers from New York and Europe.

Although Macdonald detested Donald Smith and knew that westerners reviled the monopoly held by the Canadian Pacific Railway, he pressed ahead with the “Pacific Bill,” believing that only this syndicate could get the job done. The legislation that passed in the House of Commons on January 27, 1881, required the Canadian Pacific Railway to build a railway within ten years and to operate it “in perpetuity” from Callander, Ontario, to Port Moody on Vancouver Island. In return, the Canadian government would grant the company $25 million, twenty-five million acres of land, the lines already under construction (including the Pembina line and railway sections in the Fraser Canyon built by the American contractor Andrew Onderdonk), a twenty-five-year monopoly over running rights in western Canada to the United States, and generous tax and customs concessions.

Van Horne could be impetuous at times, but, before accepting the syndicate’s offer, he first made a reconnaissance trip north of the border in October 1881. Evidently he was impressed by what he saw, particularly by the quality of the grain on the gently rolling prairie and the abundance of the crops grown by the Red River settlers in their lush, green fields. All this augured well, he thought, for the future of traffic carried by a transcontinental train. On his return home, he wrote to Hill and accepted the CPR’s offer. He knew that his prospects for advancement in the United States were excellent — that he probably could have had the pick of any choice railway position when it became vacant. He also realized, however, that in joining the CPR he was taking on an enormous risk.

The CPR had launched itself on a giant gamble. Its main line was to follow a southern route that required it to penetrate the Rockies and the Selkirk Mountains, located in southeastern British Columbia just west of the Rockies. As yet, however, nobody knew how this feat could be done or even if the track could be pushed through the Selkirks. In addition to these formidable obstacles, there were rivers to be crossed and, in the east, marshy muskegs to be conquered. And, of course, there was the enormous distance that had to be traversed. But Van Horne also knew that an extremely attractive offer was being dangled before him: an annual salary of $15,000, a princely sum for those days. In fact, it would be the largest salary ever paid up to that point to a railway general manager in North America. Still, in accepting the offer Van Horne was probably swayed more by the prospect of a major challenge and his love of adventure than by financial considerations.

Shortly after accepting the CPR’s offer, Van Horne moved from Milwaukee to Winnipeg, which would be his home until he relocated to Montreal nine months later. He left his family behind in Milwaukee, where they remained until April 1883, when they joined him in Montreal. This separation was difficult for them all, though he did find time for a few visits home.

Van Horne arrived in Manitoba’s raw, infant capital on the last day of 1881, when temperatures were skidding to about forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit and the city was awash in New Year’s celebrations. He immediately established his headquarters in a dingy office above the Bank of Montreal, and the next morning he began work. Winnipeg was teeming with new immigrants, many of whom were forced to seek accommodation in the city’s immigrant sheds because they could not afford the skyrocketing rates charged by crammed hotels. This overcrowding would make a forceful impression on Van Horne during the time he lived there.

The CPR’s decision in 1881 to build its main line through Winnipeg virtually guaranteed that the city would expand at a giddy pace. Waves of farmers and agricultural labourers from Ontario, the United States, and Europe began pouring into Canada’s gateway to the West and the adjoining town of St. Boniface. The resulting frenzied land boom was well under way when Van Horne arrived on the scene. That January city lots were flipped like pancakes, selling for double the previous day’s price. Before the boom collapsed in late 1882, it would plunge the city into the wildest sixteenth months in its history and help to ignite frantic land speculation in other projected railway towns in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories as well as in Port Moody, British Columbia.

Van Horne was particularly concerned about speculation on land expected to be designated as town sites and CPR stations. Under no circumstances would he tolerate the idea of anybody making a fortune at the CPR’s expense. On his first day in his office he placed a small ad in the January 2 Winnipeg newspapers cautioning the public against buying lots expected to be snapped up for stations along the CPR line until he had officially announced their locations. Among those caught up in the orgy of speculation were senior CPR officials based in Winnipeg. Leading the pack was a courtly Southern aristocrat, Thomas Rosser, the CPR’s chief engineer. Within a month of assuming his new position, Van Horne not only sacked Rosser but also instructed the superintendent of construction to investigate the source of any continuing leaks of plans and, if necessary, to take the appropriate action.

Winnipeg, the gateway to the Canadian West, at about the time Van Horne arrived to take up his job as general manager of the CPR.

Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, C33881.

Van Horne received a frigid reception from his colleagues in Winnipeg. His reputation as a manager who pioneered new ways of doing things in railway operations made tradition-loving railway men resent him. There was also his nationality and his personality: he was a plump, blunt-speaking Yankee who initially hired other Americans whose work he knew and respected. “We did not like Van Horne when he first came up to Winnipeg as General Boss of Everybody & Everything,” the locating engineer, an Englishman named J.H. Secretan, wrote in his diary. “His ways were not our ways and he did not hesitate to let us know what he thought of the bunch in a general way.” He continued: “At first he had no use for Englishmen or Canadians especially Engineers and told me once ‘if he could only teach a Section Man to run a transit he wouldn’t have a single d–d Engineer about the place.’”

Van Horne’s most important American recruit was Thomas George Shaughnessy, who became the purchasing agent for the entire CPR system in 1882. The job, second only in importance to Van Horne’s, would showcase two of Shaughnessy’s talents: a remarkable ability to get the best value for every dollar spent, and an equally useful talent for staving off creditors during the railway’s construction phase. Hiring Shaughnessy and basing him in Montreal would prove to be one of Van Horne’s first strokes of genius after he joined the CPR.

Within ten days of arriving in Winnipeg, Van Horne, accompanied by James Hill and Major A.B. Rogers, the engineer in charge of the CPR’s mountain division, journeyed east to Montreal to meet the other syndicate members, and then on to Ottawa to talk to the leading politicians in the nation’s capital. At Chicago, where his train stopped while en route to Montreal, Van Horne boldly announced to a newspaper reporter that the CPR intended to construct six hundred and fifty miles of track in 1882. Whether six hundred and fifty or five hundred, the number usually cited in this connection, Van Horne appeared to be promising the impossible.

At the meeting in Montreal, the CPR directors confirmed their choice of a southern route for the railway. This decision meant that the main line would go through Kicking Horse Pass in the Rocky Mountains rather than through the more northerly Yellowhead Pass, which was the choice favoured by Sandford Fleming and other engineers because of its easier grades. In the interests of economy and speed of construction, Van Horne supported the selection of the more steeply graded Kicking Horse Pass and the southern route. He also pitted himself at this meeting against his friend James Hill by arguing forcefully for the immediate construction of the Lake Superior section of the CPR’s main line. For his part, Hill vehemently opposed the idea. As he saw it, the forging of an all-Canadian route across the rugged, lake-strewn Shield country north of the Great Lakes was highly impractical. In his opinion, such a line, “when completed would be of no use to anybody and would be a source of heavy loss to whoever operated it.” Hill thought that the CPR should build from Callander, Ontario, to Sault Sainte Marie, and from there across a bridge to the U.S. town of Superior-Duluth, and then on to Winnipeg via his own railway, the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway.

Van Horne found such an idea abhorrent. The last thing he wanted to see was the CPR become dependent on one of Hill’s railways, even for a short distance. The transfer of people and freight from one train to another at two points on the journey would be cumbersome, but, most important of all, he was convinced that the difficult lake stretch could not only be built but could be operated profitably. Moreover, he was keenly aware that leading politicians of the day such as Sir John A. Macdonald wanted to see the CPR adopt an all-Canadian route. Hill was furious, and he swore to get even with Van Horne, even if he had “to go to Hell for it and shovel coal.” Later, when the decision to build north of Lake Superior was confirmed, Hill formally withdrew from the syndicate. Henceforth he and Van Horne would become bitter railroading rivals. Meanwhile, Van Horne would develop a close friendship with George Stephen, the tall, sartorially elegant president of the CPR.

When Van Horne began his new job early in 1882, the end of track — the site where track was being laid — was at Oak Lake, Manitoba, one hundred and sixty-one miles west of Winnipeg. He intended to build five hundred miles of track that construction season, but that spring it looked as though his plans and his credibility might be torpedoed by dreadful weather conditions. March blizzards were followed by rapidly rising temperatures that quickly thawed the Red River and its tributaries, causing disastrous flood conditions in all their valleys. Large stretches of track were under water, stopping rail traffic for miles around. The resulting massive blockade of traffic choked off the delivery of rail supplies and interfered with the transportation of incoming settlers and their goods. So numerous were the delays that few people believed the CPR could reach its construction goal that season.

The delivery of rail supplies was of particular concern. Before construction of the prairie section began in the late spring, Van Horne had to arrange for the freighting of huge stores of rails and other materials to Winnipeg, the main supply point. The dimensions of this operation were immense. Since the St. Lawrence River would still be frozen when construction began, steel had to be shipped from New York and New Orleans and then hauled to Manitoba via St. Paul. Stone had to be ordered from every available quarry, lumber from Minnesota, railway ties from Lake of the Woods and Rat Portage (now Kenora), and rails from England and the Krupp works in Germany. As general manager, Van Horne had the responsibility for monitoring the whereabouts of these supplies as they made their way from their place of origin to the staging area. He accomplished this overview by arranging for hundreds of checkers to report daily on the arrival and movement of CPR supplies through American cities en route to Winnipeg.

Despite the delay in beginning construction, 1882 saw the completion of four hundred and seventeen miles of main track and twenty-eight more miles of sidings — a truly amazing achievement. By the end of August 1883, the railway stretched all the way from Winnipeg to Keith, ten miles west of Calgary and within sight of the forbidding Rocky Mountains.

To lay the track on the Prairies, a huge construction assembly line extended for a hundred miles or more across the open plains. At its head were CPR engineers and surveyors who located and staked the route that the railway would take. They were followed by grading crews and then the track gangs. To construct the line, the syndicate had hired a company headed by two Minnesota contractors, R.B. Langdon and David Shepard, who in turn parcelled out the work to more than sixty subcontractors.

Determined to speed up operations, Van Horne ordered the track to be advanced at five times the speed that crews had been laying it. During this period of frenzied prairie construction, the general manager seemed to be everywhere. When not doing paperwork in his Winnipeg office, he was out on the Prairies, riding on hand cars or flat cars, in a caboose, or, where the rails had not been laid, in a wagon or a buckboard. Despite his portliness, he moved about continually, “going like a whirlwind wherever he went, stimulating every man he met,” reported Angus Sinclair, one of the contractors. Van Horne had a habit of arriving at work sites unexpectedly and descending on local officials like “a blizzard,” observed an admiring Winnipeg Sun reporter. “He is the terror of Flat Krick. He shakes them up like an earthquake and they are as frightened of him as if he were old Nick himself.” Those who saw him in action were constantly amazed by his stamina, to say nothing of his daring. Watching their boss ignore his weight and march across trestles and ties at dizzying heights left all spectators thunderstruck.

To accomplish his goal, Van Horne would summarily dismiss men who were indifferent to their work or not inclined to obey orders. Collingwood Schreiber, the engineer-in-chief for the federal government, recalled that Van Horne would often say to him, “If you want anything done, name the day when it must be finished. If I order a thing done in a specified time and the man to whom I give the order says it is impossible to carry out, then he must go. Otherwise his subordinates would make no effort to accomplish the work in the time mentioned.” It was a philosophy that served the general manager well.

Van Horne’s somewhat autocratic manner and contempt for “the impossible” is well illustrated by a story retailed by J.H. Secretan:

One day he sent for me to his office in Winnipeg and, rapidly revolving his chair, squinted at me over the top his pince-nez, at the same time unrolling a profile about one hundred miles at a time, saying, “Look here, some damned fool of an engineer has put in a tunnel up there, and I want you to go and take it out!” I asked if I might be permitted to see where the objectionable tunnel was. He kept rolling and unrolling the profile until he came to the fatal spike which showed a mud tunnel about 900 feet long — somewhere on the Bow River at mileage 942. I mildly suggested that the engineer, whoever he was, had not put the tunnel in for fun. He didn’t care what the engineer did it for, but they were not going to build it and delay the rest of the work. “How long do you think it would take to build the cursed thing?” he asked. I guessed about twelve or fourteen months. That settled it. He was not there to build fool tunnels to please a lot of engineers. So, perfectly satisfied that the matter was settled and done with, he whirled around to his desk and went on with something else, simply remarking, “Mind you go up there yourself and a take that d–d tunnel out. Don’t send anybody else.”

I asked for the profile, and when I reached the door, paused for a minute and said, “While I’m up there hadn’t I better move some of the mountains back as I think they are too close to the river.” The “old man” looked up for a second, said nothing, but I could see the generous proportions of his corporation shaking like a jelly. He was convulsed with laughter.

The prairie section of the CPR was not, as is so often thought, built across only flat plains. Its route also included low rolling hills that presented many obstacles to laying a well-graded railway line. These challenges, though, were nothing compared to those that had to be met laying track through the mountains of British Columbia and across the Canadian Shield. Van Horne’s mettle and managerial genius were tested as never before in 1884 and 1885, the years in which the railway was pushed further in both these areas, to the west and the east.

Construction in mountainous British Columbia was especially challenging, for it was here that the most difficult terrain and weather along the entire CPR route were encountered. The seven-hundred-mile prairie section that lay between the Assiniboine River at Brandon, Manitoba, and the Elbow River at Calgary had required only one major structure — the South Saskatchewan Bridge at Medicine Hat. By contrast, the mountain line required many bridges, tunnels, and snow sheds, usually on the flanks of steep granite mountains pierced by deep canyons. Before construction in the mountains could be completed, miles of track had to be cut through solid rock and countless rivers had to be crossed, some by iron bridges more than a thousand feet in length and one by a wooden bridge two hundred and eighty-six feet above the water below — the highest bridge in North America. Moreover, fourteen streams had to be diverted from their natural beds by tunnelling them through solid rock.

Describing Van Horne’s intervention in a Rocky Mountain canyon, an unidentified spectator, H.R. Lewis, wrote:

There were men felling trees & men drafting great logs, men building trestles & braces & wooden bulwarks, men laboring to the utmost of their physical powers & men directing their labors, & one man there was, sturdy, plainly dressed & calm of bearing, who directed the directors. He seemed to be everywhere, giving his personal attention to each detail of the work. He found the spots claiming immediate attention & measured accurately with his eyes the speed of the rising waters.

He superintended the unloading of rock brought by puffing engines & assisted with his own hands in placing the heavy blocks of stone. He told the carpenters how to secure the huge wooden braces, the smiths where to fasten their iron clamps & with it all never lost for one moment his cool, authoritative demeanor.

The horrendous construction problems posed by the mountain section frequently led even qualified engineers to disagree among themselves on how certain portions of the line should be built. On these occasions, Van Horne had to act as the final arbitrator on these “grave engineering questions.” The fate of many workers rested on his decisions. Much of this difficult and dangerous toil was done by fifteen thousand Chinese labourers who were brought to British Columbia between 1880 and 1885 to work on the railway. Hundreds of them met their death as they built the line between Vancouver and Calgary, often from exposure in the harsh weather conditions or from being crushed by falling rock or killed by dynamite blasts.

To the east, the difficulties and costs associated with laying track across the six hundred and fifty-seven miles of remote, rugged terrain that lay between Callander and Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario, presented a different type of challenge. Van Horne had no illusions about the magnitude of the problems involved in building in this region, particularly along the rocky stretch that hugs the shoreline of Lake Superior, which he himself defined as “two hundred miles of engineering impossibilities.” However, exuding his usual confidence, he added, “But we’ll bridge it.”

The grading and track-laying crews began their work in 1883, starting out from both ends of Lake Superior. On this stretch of the route the crews had to deal with the extremely variable topography, the steep cliffs that descend to the lake, and the general lack of earth with which to construct embankments. Perhaps the greatest challenges were the many swampy muskegs — the crews had to re-lay one stretch of track seven times. There were sinkholes, too — seemingly solid patches of ground that suddenly gave way under the weight of a train, with costly, time-consuming results. And there were landslides — on one occasion a slide swept away a section of track and, with it, thousands of dollars’ worth of steel rails. When the telegram conveying the bad news reached the unflappable Van Horne at this desk in Montreal, he merely lifted his eyebrows and uttered a quiet exclamation.

Construction was also hampered by the total lack of access to the northern shore of Lake Superior except over ice in the winter and by water during the rest of the year. Yet, somehow, steady supplies of the building materials had to get through. To this end, Van Horne ordered the purchase of boats to transport supplies and men to the north shore’s work sites. He also ordered the construction of three twenty-three-hundred-ton steel passenger and cargo steamers. They were launched on Scotland’s Clyde River and sailed across the Atlantic in October 1883. Eventually the boats were based in Owen Sound, where they became a vital link in the first-class immigrant services that the CPR was able to offer from Montreal to the Rockies in the summer.

It was during construction on the north shore that Van Horne imported the first “track-laying” machine to be used in Canada. It was his answer to the difficulties posed by track-laying, especially in challenging areas. A delivery gantry rather than an actual machine, it carried rails forward in troughs along one side of the lead car and ties on the other side.

Referring to Van Horne’s multiple achievements on this stretch of the transcontinental, the authoritative Railway and Shipping World observed in 1900, “It is well to say in passing, that if Van Horne had accomplished nothing else, his victory over the engineering difficulties afforded by the line along Lake Superior’s north shore would give him fame enough for one man.”

Van Horne had to cope not only with the physical challenges that hampered the progress of construction, but also with labour shortages, strikes, and “the demon rum.” In the West, which was under federal jurisdiction, the sale of alcohol was banned. It was not prohibited, however, in Ontario, where enterprising liquor peddlers found an eager market. Heading their list of customers were the toiling navvies, who frequently turned to alcohol for relief from the exhausting work they performed and the extremely primitive conditions under which they lived. Van Horne attempted to dampen rum’s appeal by arranging for the construction crews to be well fed, but this solution was not enough to stave off a chronic liquor problem. All too often drunkenness led to lawlessness and violence, such as the rioting and gunplay that erupted on the north shore in October 1884. It was so serious that authorities summoned a magistrate and some policemen from Toronto to restore order.

Construction of Canadian Pacific’s main transcontinental line showing end of track at year’s end.

Map by Vic Dohar.

Day-to-day problems such as these absorbed much of Van Horne’s attention; but even as he was dealing with these concerns, he was spinning far-reaching plans for the CPR’s future. He was convinced that the railway should strive to become an integrated international transportation company, with ships, grain elevators, hotels, and telegraph lines. And so the visionary Van Horne began to acquire ancillary services even as the main line was still being built. He arranged, for example, for the CPR to purchase control of a dormant express company, and he established the Canadian Pacific Telegraph service.

Knowing that the railway’s economic survival depended on the successful settlement of the Prairies, he spearheaded the establishment of a wide-ranging and effective promotional scheme to attract settlers and tourists alike to the Northwest. The highlight of this campaign was an advertising program that saw the railway’s immigration department distribute vast quantities of publicity material — posters, brochures, pamphlets — in the United States, Great Britain, and northern Europe. The hook to lure immigrants was Canada’s huge agricultural potential. For tourists, the attention-grabber was Canada’s natural wonders, particularly its mountains. A large coloured poster, produced as early as 1883, trumpets “The Grand Transcontinental Highway from the Cities of the East to Winnipeg and Manitoba’s Boundless Wheatfields.” The poster’s bottom left-hand corner shows a clump of fresh produce and a vessel containing sheaves of wheat. Tourism was promoted by an article written by the Marquis of Lorne, Canada’s former governor general, and reprinted as a pamphlet in 1886. Entitled “Our Railway to the Pacific,” it is illustrated by engravings from drawings by the marquis’s wife, Princess Louise. The pamphlet lavishes praise on the men who built the railway, the settlement opportunities it has opened up in the Canadian west, and Canada’s scenic beauties.

Van Horne’s longstanding interest in art meant that he took a special interest in the pictorial side of this project. In 1884, for example, Van Horne commissioned William Notman and Son, a well-known and highly respected Montreal photographic firm, to dispatch a party to the west to photograph the prairies and the construction of the CPR’s line through the Rockies. He provided the photographer’s son, William McFarlane Norman, with an official car for this purpose. Evidently the quality of the work and the grandeur of the photographed landscape met Van Horne’s requirements exactly because a selection of the photos appeared in a pamphlet, The Canadian Pacific: The New Highway to the East. But nothing delighted Van Horne more than having the CPR sponsor artists to serve the cause, usually prominent Canadian landscape painters. His earliest recruit and the only artist actually commissioned by the CPR in these years was the English-born John Fraser. Among his works were black and white sketches used to promote tourism, one being a view of the Banff Springs Hotel. Non-commissioned artists also benefited from the CPR’s largess. These artists were provided with free transportation after they convinced Van Horne that their work would serve the CPR’s interests. Although copies of their paintings were used in promotional material, the originals often ended up in the private collections of Van Horne, George Stephen, and other company officials.

In 1884 Van Horne himself made a long-anticipated trip to British Columbia. He wanted to look over construction in the mountains and to decide on the location of the railway’s Pacific terminus. Although Port Moody had been designated as the CPR’s terminus, Van Horne and Stephen both had serious misgivings about its suitability as a port for the railway. In the spring of that year, for instance, he received news that Port Moody’s harbour was too small for the CPR’s purposes. Twelve miles further west, however, at Coal Harbour and False Creek (an extension of English Bay), there was a superb townsite. When he was finally able to set foot in Port Moody that August, Van Horne’s fears about the location were confirmed. The next day, he travelled to the mouth of Burrard Inlet by boat. Here, just inside the inlet, he decided, would be the site of the new western terminus. After hard bargaining with the provincial government, the CPR agreed to extend the railway from Port Moody to Granville if the government gave the company half the peninsula on which the present city of Vancouver now sits. In addition to negotiating the formal agreement that resulted in 1885, Van Horne also named the townsite. He was always interested in sea captains, especially if they boasted Dutch blood, so he suggested that it be called “Vancouver” — after the island that had taken its name from George Vancouver, the intrepid explorer who had sailed off the B.C. coast in the eighteenth century.

George Stephen and the CPR directors and shareholders were all delighted with Van Horne’s performance. At the annual shareholders’ meeting on May 14, 1884, they elected him to the board of directors. Then, immediately after the meeting, the board elected him vice-president and appointed him to its executive committee. In less than two and a half years, Van Horne had progressed from being general manager of the railway’s construction to a prestigious position and a member of its governing circle. But here he soon faced even greater challenges. The Conservative government of John A. Macdonald thought that the CPR had been generously compensated by the transfer of existing rail lines to it, the land grant, and the tax and customs concessions. However, the extreme difficulties of building across the Canadian Shield and in British Columbia, in addition to the purchase of feeder lines in eastern Canada, soon led to huge cost overruns, and, by the summer of 1882, the company was in deep financial trouble.

To add to its misfortune, the CPR’s enemies made vicious attempts to discredit it, thereby undermining the company’s reputation in British and American financial circles. Foremost among the CPR’s rivals was Van Horne’s bête noire, the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), a largely British-owned and -directed railway, whose main line ran from Sarnia and Toronto to Montreal. As early as 1873, Grand Trunk management tried to frustrate Sir Hugh Allan’s attempts to generate loans in London, and, in the 1880s, they attacked the CPR on several fronts.

To raise much-needed funds, the CPR agreed to sell a huge chunk of its lands to an Anglo-Canadian consortium, the Northwest Land Company. This company was charged with managing town-site sales in several major western communities.

Still, the CPR edged ever closer to the financial abyss. In the fall of 1883, when the situation was critical, George Stephen decided to petition the federal government for relief. Previously Van Horne had left Stephen to scramble for money, but in November of that year he journeyed to Ottawa with Stephen and other CPR luminaries to make their case for additional funds. After arriving in the nation’s capital, the mendicants went directly to Earnscliffe, the prime minister’s home, to outline the situation to Macdonald and stress the absolute necessity of immediate government assistance.

Initially Macdonald turned them down. But he reversed his position after he heard John Henry Pope, the acting minister of railways and canals, declare, “The day the Canadian Pacific busts, the Conservative Party busts the day after.” In other words, the fate of the Conservative Party was inextricably linked to that of the Canadian Pacific.

To provide the generous assistance demanded by Stephen, the Conservatives had to push a bill through Parliament that would grant the railway relief. For that to happen, however, they first had to examine the CPR’s finances. Following a searching inquiry, the government engineer Collingwood Schreiber and the deputy minister of inland revenue reported that they were completely satisfied with the railway’s accounts and integrity. Van Horne was then summoned to a Cabinet meeting to explain his company’s progress and needs.

Meanwhile, the government took steps to provide immediate assistance to the CPR. Before the House of Commons met in January 1884, the Conservatives supported Stephen’s application for an extension of a current loan from the Bank of Montreal, which had refused to grant one unless it had written assurance from the government that it stood by the Canadian Pacific for repayment of the loan. In addition, Stephen and the government also agreed at this time on the terms of aid sought by the CPR. For the company the stakes were enormous. As security for a huge loan, Stephen agreed to mortgage the entire railway, including land-grant bonds and outstanding stock. At Van Horne’s instigation, Stephen also promised to have the main line completed in half the time stipulated in the original contract.

Late in the winter of 1883–84, Van Horne made another trip to Ottawa, this time to see history in the making. Here he watched the prelude to what would turn out to be one of the longest and most acrimonious debates in the history of the Canadian transcontinental railway. When the relief bill was presented to the House of Commons, it seemed that every agency and individual who opposed the CPR was given the opportunity to unite against it. Despite threatened defections within his own Cabinet and blistering attacks from outside, Macdonald nevertheless managed to push the relief bill through Parliament. He succeeded in doing so, however, only by resorting to considerable cajoling in caucus and behind the scenes and by awarding concessions to Quebec and the Maritimes. The bill finally became law on March 6, 1884. A week later the Bank of Montreal debt was retired.

Van Horne was taken aback and dismayed by all the frantic horse-trading and other political machinations required to keep the CPR afloat. To one Cabinet minister, he wrote, “It has always been a matter of principle with me never to enquire into a man’s politics in transacting business, but I must say that our past winter’s experience in Ottawa has somewhat staggered me.” Hitherto, he had remained aloof from politics, whether in the United States or in Canada. He did not belong to any political party, and he repeatedly resisted the common Canadian practice of hiring staff on the basis of their political affiliation (to say nothing of religion). The only thing that mattered to Van Horne was individual ability. Nevertheless, he was prepared to play the political game if that was necessary to safeguard or further the CPR’s interests. One such occasion arose during the 1883 Ontario provincial election, when Macdonald and the federal government asked for political assistance from the CPR. Acutely conscious of the railway’s dependence on the government, Van Horne was quick to provide that support.

Regrettably, the government’s generous loan did not spell an end to the railway’s financial difficulties. In early 1885 Stephen found himself once again making frequent pilgrimages to Ottawa in the hope of obtaining even more financial assistance. While he haunted the anterooms of Cabinet members, Van Horne focused on cost-cutting, and Shaughnessy tried valiantly to stave off creditors. With bankruptcy once again a real possibility, what was needed was a dramatic event that would focus attention on the CPR’s plight and underscore the vital role that could be played by a completed transcontinental railway. Fortunately, there was such an event — the North-West Rebellion, the second revolt led by Louis Riel, which broke out in March 1885.

For the first time in their history, Canadians were confronted by an armed uprising on their own soil with nothing but their own resources to defend themselves. Macdonald could have requested the assistance of imperial troops, but he rejected this option. Instead, he said, the government would use citizen soldiers — who, in all parts of the country, clamoured to enlist. Van Horne, recognizing a golden opportunity, lost no time in offering the use of the CPR to transport troops from eastern Canada to the Northwest. He insisted on but three conditions from the government; that they raise the troops, provide the CPR vice-president with a week’s notice of their departure, and allow him free rein in making arrangements for their provisioning and transport.

In making his offer, Van Horne was fully aware of the good publicity that such a move would bring the railway. Indeed, he impressed on his subordinates that not only the CPR’s reputation but perhaps its very existence would depend on the speed and efficiency with which it could transport men and equipment to the site of the uprising. He knew that there were still four breaks in the line north of Lake Superior, but he figured that sleighs could take the men over two of the gaps on the desolate frozen lake and that the troops could march over the other two. Regardless, even he must have felt somewhat apprehensive as he contemplated the challenge of shuttling men and military and artillery supplies over primitive, incomplete roads stretching across frozen, forested wasteland. Horrendous as the obstacles were, however, Van Horne, aided by Donald Smith and Joseph Wrigley, the Hudson’s Bay Company trade commissioner, successfully resolved the problems associated with provisioning more than three thousand soldiers and transporting them, their horses, and their equipment over such distances.

In transporting troops quickly to the site of the insurrection, Fort Qu’Appelle, the CPR demonstrated its worth. No longer could the railway be regarded as a leech repeatedly sucking money from the federal treasury. Finally it was recognized as a real asset to the country, a steel rail binding the infant nation together. Van Horne soon detected the “very great change” in public opinion with respect to the need for the CPR, and he confidently predicted on April 4 that, “in the light of the present difficulty, Parliament will deal fairly with us before adjournment.”

Parliament did eventually come to the company’s aid, but not before the railway was almost pushed into bankruptcy by escalating costs and the chronic shortage of funds. The situation became especially critical in July 1885, when Van Horne was driving construction forward in British Columbia. Between July 14 and August 1, several CPR debts were slated to come due. This prospect, together with the knowledge that the pay car had not gone out in weeks, persuaded Van Horne to take immediate action. He ordered a special train to rush him to Ottawa on July 13, the day before the first note was due and while a relief bill was still being debated in the Senate. When he found Macdonald, he informed him that the CPR would “go smash” the next day if Dominion Bridge called in its debt. The government had to do something fast. The prime minister could not hurry the Senate along in its deliberations, but that did not matter. Once the bridge company realized that Senate approval was imminent and that it would soon be paid, it gave the company a few days’ grace. On July 20 the relief bill received royal assent, and a temporary loan of $5 million became available immediately. Three days later Stephen cabled from London that Baring Brothers, a well-known investment firm, would come to the CPR’s rescue as well.

Henceforth Van Horne could banish financial worries from his mind and concentrate on pushing the line through to completion. As the eagerly awaited day fast approached, he was inundated with inquiries about the date and the place at which the final two rails would be joined. These inquiries were accompanied by a flood of requests for details about the ceremony that would be staged to mark the historic occasion.

Van Horne flirted briefly with the idea of organizing an elaborate ceremony, but he found it impossible to limit the number of invited guests. To do so would result in “a vast deal of disappointment and ill feeling,” he informed a correspondent from Victoria. Furthermore, a big ceremony would have involved considerable expense — the last thing the company could afford. He therefore settled on the simple last-spike ceremony that unfolded that raw November day at Craigellachie, British Columbia.