CHAPTER XI

THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY AND THE NORTH-WEST

THE

THE Intercolonial Railway had been built as a necessary link between the old provinces of Canada, to give them cohesion and to create common interests where these had not existed before. But cohesion in the east was only a basis for expansion in the west. On the acquisition and development of the vast regions between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains depended the future of the Dominion. Amid many difficulties and not a little bungling, as we have seen, they were acquired. The construction of railways and the introduction of colonists were essential to their development, and to these objects Macdonald and his colleagues, on their return to power in 1878, addressed themselves with foresight, enthusiasm, and indomitable courage. For the tasks before them, they needed all the support that these qualities at their best could give. It is true that the continent of America had already been bridged and the Rockies had been crossed by a line of railway through the United States, but the conditions under which it had been done had been far different from those with which Canada had now to deal.

The population of the Eastern and Western States numbered forty millions; the advance guard of civilization had been pushed far west of the Mississippi; a large and wealthy population had already settled and built great cities on the Pacific coast, before the people of the United States attempted to link together their east and west. The white inhabitants of British Columbia, on the other hand, numbered only ten thousand; the whole population of Eastern Canada only four millions; two thousand miles of the country to be traversed were practically without a settler when the statesmen of the Dominion undertook the gigantic task of uniting their most distant borders by a line of rails, recognized by them as a necessary part of the frame-work of a great nation. Four hundred miles of rough granitic country north of Lake Superior, uninhabited, and, save for a mining population, well-nigh uninhabitable; then one thousand two hundred miles of virgin prairie; after that five hundred miles of mountain railway through the almost unexplored passes of the Rocky and Selkirk Ranges; this was the problem that confronted the engineer, the contractor, the financier, the politician. The skill of the engineer, the resources of the builder, the audacity of the financier were all to be strained to the utmost. But all these would have been of no avail but for the unflinching courage of the strong men at the helm of the State, in whom the people

THE LIBERAL POLICY

had put their trust. Under the terms of the bargain made with British Columbia in 1870, the railway connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic was to be begun within two years, and completed within ten. The work was to be carried out by a private company assisted by large money and land subsidies from the Dominion government. When Macdonald's administration fell in 1872, it of course became impossible for the company represented by Sir Hugh Allan to carry on the work, even if it had been able, as it was not, to raise the necessary capital.

The Liberal party had, while in opposition, vigorously criticized the original scheme, as placing too heavy a burden upon the resources of the Dominion. On coming into power it adopted a policy of government ownership, and of gradual construction in scattered sections connecting the extensive lake and river stretches which it was proposed to utilize as part of the highway from east to west. The agreement with British Columbia was abandoned as impossible of fulfilment. That province naturally resented what it considered a breach of faith. A representative of the government sent out to allay the discontent failed in accomplishing his purpose, and all the tact and influence of Lord Dufferin, then governor-general, who visited the province in 1876, was required to prevent the repudiation of the Confederation agreement.

On Macdonald's restoration to power in 1878 his first care was to carry out his election pledges in regard to a national trade policy. But no sooner was this inaugurated than he reverted to the transcontinental railway scheme which he had always deemed essential to the consolidation of the Dominion. Experience with the Intercolonial had now converted him from his earlier preference for government ownership and operation, and on June 29th, 1880, he announced at a political picnic at Bath, Ontario, that negotiations were on foot with a syndicate of private capitalists. In September the contract was signed. In six years it was completed.

Never did a young country embark upon a more audacious enterprise; never did capitalists throw their all into a more hazardous speculation; never did a cool and wary politician more strikingly display a readiness to risk his reputation and his fame on a momentous adventure. Among the obstacles to the work, not the least serious was the pessimistic view of the situation taken by the leaders of the Liberal party. Even when in power in 1874 Alexander Mackenzie, the Liberal prime minister, in a formal State paper of instructions to Mr. Edgar, the agent of the government sent to British Columbia, had described the task of completing the line in the ten years as a "physical impossibility." "You can point out," he said, "that the surveys for the Intercolonial were

ATTACKS ON RAILWAY POLICY

begun in 1864, and the work carried on uninterruptedly ever since, and although the utmost expedition was used, it will still require eighteen months to complete it. If it required so much time in a settled country to build five hundred miles of railway, with facilities everywhere for procuring all supplies, one may conceive the time and labour required to construct a line five times that length through a country all but totally unsettled."

No one doubts the honesty of conviction with which such an opinion was given; the accuracy of judgment can only be measured by the fact that when Macdonald was again in a position to control the work the whole line was completed for through traffic, as has been said, in six years. Alexander Mackenzie had in 1880 been replaced in the Liberal leadership by Edward Blake, a man of equal honesty of purpose and wider range of ability, but little imagination or enthusiasm. Both in parliament and throughout the country the new leader employed his power in delivering a series of eloquent but mournful attacks upon the railway contract, in which he fancied he saw ruin for the State. The leading Liberal organ declared that the new line would never "pay for its axle-grease." Nor were political opponents the only critics. British financiers, looking coolly at the vast stretches of country to be covered, inclined towards the opinion of one of their number who said, "Somebody will have to hold these Canadians