Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 26–30 - Wayne Larsen Quest Biography

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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.

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      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,

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