Canadian Pacific Railway

“ Despite the derisive critics who always have ridiculed the inception of big undertakings, the Canadian Pacific Railway men looked beyond the North Shore to the West-land that would someday become the granary of the Empire. ”

“ Little did these adventurous pathfinders who discovered mountain passes and ocean lanes think that, before a century had passed, a group of men with vision and courage would follow the inspiring example of the explorers by land and sea, and achieve not only the crossing of a continent, but the girdling of the earth in a magnificent transportation system. Yet despite the gloomy prophecies of failure uttered by sceptics who declared that the thing could not be done, the Canadian Pacific Railway has driven its iron horses through the mountains to stand by the Western Sea. ”

“ Battling for Life We can say at once, in explanation of the financial struggles before mentioned, that the Canadian Pacific Railway was constructed to a finish across Canada in a period of monetary storm and stress. ”

“ The Canadian Pacific Railway, while traversing but one small northeastern corner of the United States, is essentially an American railroad, both in equipment and in operation. It forms an important half of that all-British Red Line encircling the globe, of which any Englishman is so very proud. ”

“ Canadian railroads compete with those of the United States for our traffic, and without the restraints of our interstate-commerce act. Their cars pass almost without detention into and out of our territory.
The Canadian Pacific Railway brought into the United States from China and Japan via British Columbia during the year ended June 30, 1892, 23,239,689 pounds of freight, and it carried from the United States, to be shipped to China and Japan via British Columbia, 24,068,346 pounds of freight. ”

“ The big Republic to the South of us has done some amazing things, such as the Panama Canal in recent years, but even that commercially daring country only attempted a transcontinental railway when it had nearly forty millions of people. Canada undertook the task when her population was less than four millions. To the onlooking world the attempt must have appeared like “a forlorn hope”—a sort of a “Charge of the Light Brigade” against batteries bristling with obstacles of a wholly unprecedented kind. But there are always some men who are unafraid, and the dream of seers was to be realized. ”

“ This immense task of opening new lines and establishing new industries has been continued by all Van Horne’s successors till the Dominion and a good deal of the States knows the Canadian Pacific as it knows its city streets and country roads. In fact the Canadian Pacific is so ubiquitous that men take with the utmost gravity the old joke that the clocks of the country are set to the railway time as if the road was in control of the calendar. ”

“ The Railway Company which in 1886 chartered three tramp steamers for the Pacific Ocean trade, now has an immense fleet of its own on the great oceans, on the Mediterranean, Carribbean, Adriatic and South China Seas, as well as upon the wide coasts and inland waters of this broad Dominion of Canada. From the small beginning the Canadian Pacific has become the world’s greatest transportation system under one management by sea as well as by land. ”

“ It was about this time that the prospect of a railway from Toronto to the Georgian Bay was first mooted, the mouth of the Nottawasaga River being the expected terminus. A talented Toronto engineer whose name I think was Lynn, published a pamphlet containing an outline route for the railroad, which was extended through to the North-West. To him, doubtless, is due the first practical suggestion of a Canadian Pacific Railway. We, in Sunnidale, were confidently assured that the line would pass directly through our own land, and many a weary sigh at hope deferred did the delusion cost us. ”

“ The business world is sometimes as drab and dead and unemotional as a sand waste, but it has its oasis spots, and words like those just quoted mark one of them. During those years, however, it is a notable thing, that whenever a proposal was made even by Mount Stephen to Van Horne, that the business administration of the Canadian Pacific Railway should be conformed to English methods, the bluff railroader refused point-blank. ”

“ Once, when a Winnipeg newspaper man asked him why the Canadian Pacific had not launched out into certain projects of railway building in a new direction, he said: ‘The future is always uncertain, and an executive must always be prepared to meet contingencies that may arise and circumstances that may emerge. The Canadian Pacific is a very large enterprise, and its success is so vital to Canada that we must exercise due caution. ”