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Impossible Railway Building of the Canadian Pacific By Pierre Berton DJ 1972
The Impossible Railway Building of the Canadian Pacific By Pierre Berton
Hard cover with Dust Jacket
Copyright 1970, 1972
A triumphant saga of exploration, politics, high finance and adventure.
574 Pages
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSxi
LIST OF MAPSxiii
CAST OF MAJOR CHARACTERSxv
From Sea to Sea3
1 An "act of insane recklessness" ... The dreamers .. . "Canada is dead" ... The struggle for the North West ... The land beyond the lakes ... Ocean to Ocean ... The ordeal of the Dawson route 7
2 Poor Waddington . . . Sir Hugh Allan's shopping spree ... The downfall of Cartier . . . George McMullen's blackmail 41
3 Lucius Huntington's moment in history ... Scandal! ... The least satisfactory royal commission ... Battle stations . . . Macdonald versus Blake 61
4 "Hurra! The jolly C.P.S.!" . . . The bitter tea of Walter Moberly ... That "old devil" Marcus Smith92
5 Lord Carnarvon intervenes . . . "The horrid B.C. business" ... The Battle of the Routes114
6 The first locomotive ... Adam Oliver's favorite game ... The stonemason's friends ... "Mean, treacherous coward!" 131
7 Resurrection ... "Get rid of Fleming" ... Bogs with-out bottom ... Sodom-on-the-Lake154
8 Jim Hill's Folly ... "Donald Smith is ready to take hold" ... Enter George Stephen . . . A railway at bargain rates ... The Syndicate is born 179
9 "Capitalists of undoubted means" ... Success! . . . The Contract ... The Great Debate begins ... The "avenging fury" . . . Macdonald versus Blake again ... The dawn of the new Canada 206
10 The end and the beginning . . . How John Macoun altered the map ... The first of the CPR towns .. . The "paid ink-slingers" ... Enter Van Horne 237
11 The great Winnipeg boom ... Fool's paradise . . . "Towns cannot live of themselves" . . . The bubble bursts 269
12 The new broom ... Five hundred miles of steel . . . End of Track ... Edgar Dewdney's new capital . . . The Grand Trunk declares war 292
13 "Hell's Bells Rogers" . . . On the Great Divide . . .The major finds his pass ... The Prairie Gopher ..."The loneliness of savage mountains" 330
14 Onderdonk's lambs . . . "The beardless children of China" . . . Michael Haney to the rescue . . . The Sentinel of Yale 363
15 The Promised Land ... Prohibition ... The magical influence ... George Stephen's disastrous gamble .. . The CPR goes political 388
16 The armored shores of Lake Superior ... Treasure in the rocks ... The Big Hill ... "The ablest railway general in the world" ... The Pacific terminus ... Not a dollar to spare ... The edge of the precipice 419
17 Eighteen eighty-five ... The return of the Messiah ... "I wish I were well out of it" ... Marching as to war ... The cruel journey 461
18 The Westerner is born . . . Stephen throws in the towel ... Riot at Beavermouth ... The eleventh hour ... A land no longer lonely ... The last spike 497
Aftermath525
CHRONOLOGY535
NOTES545
BIBLIOGRAPHY565
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS575
INDEX follows page 576
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following page 202
Sir John A. Macdonald. (Public Archives of Ontario)
Alexander Mackenzie. (Public Archives of Canada)
Edward Blake. (Public Archives of Canada)
Sir Hugh Allan. (Public Archives of Canada)
Sandford Fleming and party. (Public Archives of Canada)
The surveyors on the prairies. (Public Archives of Canada)
Pacific Scandal cartoon, by J. W. Bengough. (Toronto Public Library)
Pacific Scandal cartoon, by J. W. Bengough. (Toronto Public Library)
Work train carrying railroad ties. (Glenbow-Alberta Institute Museum)
Teams on the prairie. (Public Archives of Canada)
George Stephen. (Notman Collection, McCord Museum, McGill University)
William Cornelius Van Home. (Notman, McCord)
Drawing of main street in Yale. (Public Archives of Canada)
Chinese at work. (Public Archives of Canada)
A Chinese camp. (Public Archives of Canada)
Andrew Onderdonk. (Public Archives of Canada)
Fraser Canyon tunnels, Spuzzum, B.C. (Notman, McCord)
Following page 394
Major A. B. Rogers. (Glenbow-Alberta Institute Museum)
James Jerome Hill. (Minnesota Historical Society)
Grading along the Columbia River. (McCord Museum, McGill University)
Blasting north of Lake Superior. (Ed McKnight)
Corey's tunnel, in the Rockies. (McCord Museum, McGill University)
Nepigon Bridge.
Stoney Creek Bridge. (Public Archives, British Columbia)
Edd & Joe Saloon. (Canadian Pacific Railway Archives)
Rogers Pass village. (Canadian Pacific Railway Archives)
Sod homestead. (Public Archives of Canada)
Inspector Samuel B. Steele. (Glenbow-Alberta Institute Museum)
Gabriel Dumont.
Troops on open cars. (Public Archives of Canada)
Driving the Last Spike. (Canadian Pacific Railway Archives)
First excursion. (Public Archives, British Columbia)
First train to Vancouver. (Vancouver Archives)
MAPS
Canada before the CPR: 18712
Prairie trails and explorations24
Fleming's route (Ocean to Ocean) : 187132-3
The Dawson route38-9
Walter Moberly's country103
The Battle of the Routes120-1
Fleming's survey: 1877136-7
Government contracts, CPR141
The St. Paul and Pacific Railway: 1873 180
The change of route: 1881244-5
The prairie line: 1881251
The land boom: 1881-82284
Regina, 1882-83319
The Selkirks before the CPR333
The Far West before the CPR338
The Rockies before the CPR341
The Onderdonk contracts366
The prairie line: To 1883389
The line in the East428
The Kicking Horse Pass: 1884431
Burrard Inlet: 1884-85444
The Rogers Pass: 1884-85464
The Saskatchewan Rebellion: 1885473
The CPR in Ontario: To 1885485
Gaps in the line: March, 1885488
The CPR in Quebec: To 1885502
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION:
IN 1871, a tiny nation-just four years old, its population well below the four million mark- determined that it would build the world's longest and costliest railroad across 2500 miles of empty and forbidding country, much of it unexplored, most of it unpopulated. This decision, bold to the point of recklessness, was to alter the future and the shape of the nation and to change the lives of every Canadian then and for a century to come.
For fourteen years-from the dispatch of the first survey parties into the wilderness above Lake Superior and high into the unknown peaks of the Canadian Rockies until the driving of the last spike at Craigellachie on the western slope of Glacier National Park in 1885-the struggle to build the Canadian Pacific Railway fascinated, convulsed, consumed, threatened, and finally unified the entire young nation.
During these turbulent years, Canadians-and many Americans-of every stripe fought for the railway or against it. Their tale is crammed with human drama beyond the reach of fiction: financial scandal and double-dealing that threatened the Government in Ottawa and shook the money markets in New York and London, land speculation and swindles that brought boom and bust to prairie villages, an alcoholic Prime Minister able to dominate an unruly Parliament, armed rebellion in Manitoba, the development of the North West Mounted Police, surveyors wintering in fifty-foot snowdrifts, prostitutes, gamblers, and bootleggers carousing in the construction camps while thousands of Chinese laborers toiled-and often died-to force a right of way through the majestic but unyielding country of the North West. Until, ultimately, the almost incredible feat of flinging 25oo miles of steel across a continent in less than five years was accomplished.
Pierre Berton's magnificent reconstruction of this heroic saga, based on unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and letters, as well as on public documents, newspapers of the time, and other primary sources, is an important contribution to history as well as a book that will bring to life for every reader a great adventure and the all-too-human figures who lived it.
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