Railway Nation: Tales of Canadian Pacific, the World's Greatest Travel System

By David Laurence Jones

A riveting, visually engaging collection of vignettes highlighting the rich heritage of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Since its founding in 1881, Canadian Pacific has made an indelible mark on the lives of Canadians. Most commonly associated with its iconic railway, at its height CP also ran hotels, steamships, and an airline, and had myriad involvements in immigration, irrigation, resource development, war contributions, and international trade. It has been said that no other single corporation has shaped Canadian national identity as much as CP.

Railway Nation: Tales of the World’s Greatest Travel System is a compilation of more than fifty thrilling and historically significant stories based on colourful anecdotes and archival sources dating back to the company's golden era. From the construction of the ground-breaking Spiral Tunnels on what was previously the most dangerous and accident-prone stretch of railway track in the Rockies, to the CPR-manufactured Valentine tanks that helped the Soviet Union fight off the Nazis in World War II, to the long and frustrating struggle of CP stewardesses fighting against sexist employment policies, this lively and nuanced portrait of an iconic company is illustrated with fascinating archival photography and will be an essential addition to any Canadian history buff's library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heritage House
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781772033502

David Laurence Jones

David Laurence Jones is the former manager of internal communications at Canadian Pacific Railway. A history graduate from Concordia University, he worked for fourteen years in the railway’s corporate archives, researching and collecting stories and anecdotes about the CPR’s rich heritage. He is the author of Railway Nation: Tales of Canadian Pacific—The World’s Greatest Travel System, as well as The Railway Beat, Tales of the CPR, See This World Before the Next, and Famous Name Trains.

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Preface

The stories in Railway Nation: Tales of Canadian Pacific, the World’s Greatest Travel System were largely inspired by my early years at Canadian Pacific, when I worked in the company’s Corporate Archives, which was part of the department of Public Relations & Advertising (later Communications & Public Affairs).

The Canadian Pacific Corporate Archives collection was established in 1974, more than ninety years after the incorporation of the company—so we had a lot of catching up to do.

At the time, a number of factors contributed to the decision to start a formal archival program. The primary function of the company’s Windsor Station headquarters building was on the wane, with fewer and fewer train arrivals and departures using the Montreal terminal facility. Much of the vault space below the station was being refurbished for uses other than storage. While many records were being microfilmed and then discarded, some original materials were retained for their intrinsic and historic value. The CPR president’s vault, as well as those assigned to the company secretary and the legal department, was rediscovered to contain letters, engineering plans, advertising items and other materials of great historic interest, dating back to the railway’s formative years in the 1880s.

With the approaching centennial of CPR’s incorporation, public interest in the company’s history was on the rise. The most overt example of this renewed fascination was the enthusiastic reception of popular historian Pierre Berton’s bestselling histories of the company—The National Dream and The Last Spike, as well as the airing of an accompanying CBC television series.

Around the same time, CP was exiting several business ventures that were no longer viable, among them passenger rail service and passenger steamship service. Before long, the company would systematically divest of other assets, including its airline, much of its trucking interests and several hotels, to concentrate on core railway operations. Many of the closed businesses would forward their critical bookkeeping and ephemera to the head office.

For the next several decades, the staff of Canadian Pacific Corporate Archives, under the guiding hand of highly respected and knowledgeable historian and archivist Omer Lavallée, would accept and organize new acquisitions of legal and potentially historic significance. While the vast majority of these records came from a variety of company departments, additional material was acquired, where appropriate, from individual employees, collectors, and private dealers.

Although the corporate archives was a private collection, with the primary function of serving the business requirements of Canadian Pacific, members of the public could make special arrangements to consult the archives for research or commercial purposes. Upon submission of a written request, access was provided at the discretion of the company. And, indeed, over the years hundreds of people took advantage of the opportunity to produce research papers, magazine articles, books, and movies from the information contained within the various records groups that were made available to them.

It was during my fourteen-year tenure with the archives that I encountered most of the stories and images that are presented in this compilation, while organizing, preserving, and cataloguing boxes full of letters, accounting records, engineering plans, advertising brochures, promotional posters, photographic negatives and prints, and much more. Though my father had been a CPR employee, and I grew up in a family that often took train trips to visit relatives during the summer months, I had not been aware of the full extent of Canadian Pacific’s enormous contributions to the settlement and development of Canada.

But I did know that I liked tales about the golden age of passenger trains, luxury steamships, fancy hotels, and the people who were lucky enough to frequent them. The more I discovered about the endless connections between the transportation activities of Canadian Pacific and the vast army of immigrants, travellers, tourists, and others who have been guests of the World’s Greatest Travel System, the more I though others would like these tales, too.

Note: Canada did not adopt the metric system until 1970. As the lion’s share of the stories in this book take place prior to that date, imperial measurements have been left in place. Due to the nature of the material explored, units of measurement come into play quite often. Rather than belabour the narrative with scores of parenthetical conversions throughout, miles, feet, pounds, and tons have been allowed to stand on their own.

1:

Ribbons of Steel

When the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, it was the country’s first transcontinental, and the longest railway in the world under one management. Built in an era when railways were often constructed and exploited for political gain, the CPR had literally ensured the survival of the fledgling Canadian confederation from sea to sea, as envisioned by the nation’s founders.

The decision of the CPR syndicate members to build the line on a more southerly route than had long been anticipated by government surveyors and private land speculators alike established the pattern of settlement in the country’s Golden Northwest for decades to come. It also rewarded the company’s patrons with some of the most spectacular scenery on earth, as the railway made its way along the rugged shores of Lake Superior, across the wide-open expanses of the Prairies, and through the towering peaks of the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains.

Canadian Pacific would soon grow to be much more than just a profitable railway or an essential instrument of national unity. The ambitions of company management to establish its own hotel chain, launch its own steamship line, and invest in a host of other transportation and resource-based involvements insured that the future of the CPR would be inextricably linked with the future of the country.

A black and white version of the frontispiece with Sir Donald Smith driving last spike of the C.P.R. He has a hammer in his hand and he's standing over the rail while surrounded by a huge group of men in work suits and bowler hats observing him. All photos in this book are black and white unless otherwise specified.

Donald Smith drove two "last" spikes at Craigellachie on that fateful day. A third, ceremonial spike didn’t even make it to the event.

Photo by Alexander Ross, Author’s collection

The Saga of the Three Last Spikes

At 9:22

am

, Pacific Time, on November 7, 1885, Donald Smith drove a plain iron spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway’s transcontinental main line linking Canada’s populous Eastern centres with the country’s more isolated communities on the West Coast.

The spike hammered down by the future Lord Strathcona was just like the countless others that had been used to hold in place the twin bands of steel from one end of the country to the other. CPR’s general manager, William Van Horne, had seen too many failed railroads in the United States begin with elaborate ceremonies and gold spikes to mark their completion. Eschewing such conceits, he decreed that his railway would keep things simple. He told the Eastern press that anyone coming to see the last rails laid on the CPR main line would have to be either connected to the railway in some way, or they could pay their own way.

Despite the attitude of the railway boss, however, in the months leading up to the line’s completion Canada’s governor general, Lord Lansdowne, had ordered a silver-plated spike be prepared, in anticipation of receiving the call to be present at the historic event. Ultimately, neither the governor general nor the fancy spike would be involved.

In the absence of CPR president George Stephen, who was in the UK negotiating a critical mail subsidy to keep alive the company’s whole financially shaky endeavour, Smith was chosen to do the honours. Smith was the senior member of the founding CPR syndicate of investors and Stephen’s cousin. The name for the location where the tracklayers from the East met those from the West had been predetermined by Van Horne to recognize the importance of Stephen and Smith’s contributions to the national enterprise. Craigellachie, from the Gaelic, meaning Rock of Alarm, was the location in Scotland where the two men’s clan had traditionally kept vigil against all enemies. In the darkest hour of CPR’s financial dilemma just a year earlier, a determined George Stephen, immersed in negotiations to stave off disaster, had cabled his cousin Donald Smith with the fateful words: Stand fast, Craigellachie!

Now with the grand project nearing completion, other notables such as Sir Sandford Fleming, A.B. Rogers, and several high-level railway officials looked on as Smith struck the spike that had been set up for the simple ceremony a glancing blow, bending it slightly and rendering it defective. CPR roadmaster Frank Brothers twisted and pulled it from the tie and replaced it with another that was successfully driven home by Smith. Once the cheering had died down, Van Horne, called upon to make an impromptu speech, said simply: All I can say is that the work has been well done in every way.

Arthur Piers, private secretary to the general manager, spotting the spike that had been bent by Smith lying beside the track after the ceremony, picked it up and put it in his pocket. But the ever observant elder statesman of CPR saw this and asked Piers to hand over the now significant trinket, from which he had pieces of the iron mounted alongside a row of diamonds in spike-shaped pins as souvenirs for ladies connected with the railway party who were not present at the historic occasion.

Frank Brothers then removed the successfully driven last spike from the roadbed to discourage others from seeking to acquire the ultimate nation-building keepsake. Many years later, it was presented to then CPR president Edward Beatty, who kept it in a special presentation box on his office desk in Montreal’s Windsor Station.

Lord Lansdowne’s silver spike was, in later years, given to members of Van Horne’s family, who served as faithful custodians of the artifact before turning it over to the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), in 2012, where it currently resides.

The bent and chopped up spike was donated by Lord Strathcona, the great grandson of the CPR director who bore the same title, to Canada’s National Museum of Science & Technology (now Canada Science & Technology Museum) in 1985, one hundred years after the CPR’s completion. It is now on long-term loan to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a tribute to immigrant railway workers.

The intact spike, considered by many to be the most authentic and significant Last Spike of the CPR, disappeared from Beatty’s desk some time before the Second World War, never to be seen again.

The Big Hill

For railway builders, two considerations are top of mind when the steel hits the ground: lay it straight and lay it flat. Curvature not only adds distance between Point A and Point B but contributes mightily to wear and tear on both track and wheels. Gradients are even worse, requiring more horsepower to pull loads uphill, more brake action to go down, more fuel to get where you’re going, and more skilful train-handling to prevent runaways, pull-aparts, and the potential damage that the continuous stretching and compressing of the slack between cars can cause.

When the builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway made the decision to take a direct route through the Rocky Mountains via the Kicking Horse Pass, rather than run the line by way of the more northerly and circuitous Yellowhead Pass, they heeded the first cardinal rule while sacrificing a strict adherence to the latter.

Following the standard that had been set for virtually all previous railway lines constructed in North America, the Canadian federal government had specified in CPR’s contract a maximum gradient of 2.2 percent for the entire transcontinental line, from one end to the other. What that meant was that no section of track should rise or fall more than 2.2 feet for every 100 feet that it progressed across the country. However, the fateful decision to use the Kicking Horse led to a temporary relaxation of this standard for a distance of just over seven miles between Hector, at the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and Field, in the valley of the Kicking Horse River to the west, on what was soon to be known as the notorious Big Hill.

A railway track that winds against the side of forested mountain. There are lots of tree stumps and cleared areas around the tracks, and there's a little building. In the foreground, a man sits upright on a stump, looking out onto the valley below.

If the grade became too much to handle, CPR switchmen could send runaway trains onto uphill safety spur lines like the one shown here on the main line west of Hector, BC.

Author’s collection

To avoid the slow and expensive tunnelling that would be required to maintain CPR’s contractual obligations, the railway builders convinced the government to allow a grade of 4.5 percent—more than double the specified maximum—over this short stretch of track. To address the obvious safety concerns this would entail, a unique set of mitigating construction features and operating procedures was put in place.

Safety switches and runaway spurs were installed at three locations on the steep slope, each manned by a switch tender, or guard, who, in the case of a runaway train, could divert the movement off of the main line and onto an uphill section of track, in much the same way today’s truckers use highway runoffs on mountain roads when they experience brake failures. The railway’s operating rules required its employees to set the switches to divert all downhill movements onto the safety spurs.

A steam train stopped at a wooden station. A small plume of mist or smoke comes out of a valve on the top.

General Manager Van Horne acquired powerful Consolidation locomotives to operate on the Big Hill.

Photo by Ernest Brown, Author’s collection

As trains approached each switch, their engine crews were obliged to blow four short whistle blasts to indicate that their trains were under control. Only then would the men at their posts throw the switches to allow trains to bypass the safety spurs and proceed down the Big Hill. Passenger trains were required to make a full stop before reaching each safety switch on the way down, but still often arrived in Field with brake shoes smoking. Eight miles per hour was fixed as the maximum speed for passenger trains to descend.

Westbound train crews were instructed to conduct tests of their brakes and inspect track sanders before beginning their descent. Inexperienced engineers were not allowed to come down the Big Hill alone. For their first few trips, their engines were coupled in behind other locomotives operated by veterans of mountain operations until they got a feel for the precipitous downhill manoeuvre.

For eastbound, uphill movements, one or more pusher engines were added to the rear end of trains at Field, which became known for the small fleet of powerful locomotives stationed there and the cadre of intrepid operating employees who specialized in escorting both freight and passengers safely up and down the hill. The pusher engines were uncoupled at Hector before trains proceeded toward Lake Louise and Calgary.

Initially, two of these Consolidation locomotives were permitted to take no more than seventeen loaded freight cars in daylight or twelve at night. A single engine was limited to twelve cars by day or nine by night. As the size and weight of trains increased over the years, so too did the size and power of the locomotives used to negotiate this challenging stretch of track. Even under the best of conditions, it could take as long as an hour to move a train between Field and Hector.

Accidents on the Big Hill were inevitable; indeed, a couple occurred before the line was even completed, including one nasty incident before the safety switches were installed during which sixty-five men working on construction were injured while bailing from an out-of-control train. Another train—wrecked on New Year’s Day in 1899 and dubbed the Eggnog Express by a present-day history buff—dumped whiskey and eggs all over the first runaway track. Other spills were not so amusing.

In the twenty-five years that the CPR operated over this perilous section of track, before it was finally eliminated by the construction of the world-famous Spiral Tunnels, many employees were injured or worse, and much railway equipment was reduced to splinters in various mishaps. However, fatalities were mercifully rare, and the CPR was fortunate enough to never lose a paying customer to the Big Hill.

Taking Cover from Avalanches

By the time the last spike was driven on the CPR main line on November 7, 1885, only a few trains were able to pass over the railway that year before the mountain sections were abandoned to the elements for the winter.

Without snow sheds to cover the sections of track most exposed to avalanches, regular operations were out of the question. Instead, to profit from the enforced delay, crews were stationed in the mountains—particularly on the western slope of the Selkirks—to observe the frequency of the snowfall, the depth to which it might accumulate, and the consequential occurrence of avalanches that could endanger the line.

It was well known that Rogers Pass—the elusive route through the Selkirk Mountains discovered by the irascible Major A.B. Rogers in 1881—was prone to snowfalls of up to fifty feet deep during any given winter, and also that the avalanches that began more than a mile above the railway’s sinuous roadbed could roar down the slopes at more than a hundred miles per hour. The observation camps set up that winter confirmed the worst fears of the railway men.

Men stand on a wooden platform, about 2 to 3 meters high up next to the track. Some men stand on the track as well. There's a roof over the whole area.

Countless hours of work and continuous trainloads of wooden timbers went into snow shed construction during the winter of 1885–86, after the main line was completed through the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia.

Author’s collection

Although the winter of 1885–86 was milder than the previous one, Division Engineer Granville C. Cunningham nevertheless observed nine avalanches of varying intensity during the season in one location alone. Some sections of track were buried multiple times, with up to forty feet of snow. A single slide was recorded to be 1,800 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep.

James Ross, the engineer in charge of construction in the West, wrote to railway general manager William Van Horne to express his concern that the threat of snow slides might be more than either man had anticipated.

You can imagine what the effect of one million tons of ice and snow passing through the air at the rate of 100 miles per hour in the width of a few hundred feet would be. Trees three feet in diameter are torn to pieces like so many matches; if one-tenth of a tree is left standing, this portion is stripped of every branch and limb and slivered and split to the snow line.

And along with the devastating effects of ice, snow, and ruinous debris came another potential menace.

The effect of the wind during the progress of the slide is something terrific, scattering small timber and bush for a height of three hundred feet up the opposite side of the mountain . . . no train would be safe if caught in such a tornado.

As a result of the winter’s startling revelations, a total of thirty-one individual snow sheds were planned for Rogers Pass alone, some as long as two thousand feet, representing an aggregate length of more than five miles of track under cover. The additional work added more than $1,120,000 to the cost of putting the line in shape for the 1886 season and involved the cutting and shaping of millions of board feet of hewn and sawn wood.

A curved length of track on a hill that has roofed structures over the track where the slope is steepest and might be at risk of sliding or falling on the track.

To guard the line against the prodigious snowfalls and frequent avalanches that occurred in the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains, CPR built miles of snow sheds. The two sheds pictured here are located at the base of Cheops Mountain, where the track loops through the Illecillewaet Valley.

Author’s collection

Twelve-inch by twelve-inch timbers of solid cedar and Douglas fir, braced and bolted together, were used for the cribwork and heavy planking covered the roofs. Where it was necessary to protect large sections of track, the snow sheds were divided into several short sections with open spaces between, as potential fire breaks. Above the openings, the ground was cleared, if continual avalanches had not already done so, and massive V-shaped fences were constructed to deflect slides over the sheds built to withstand them.

Because the shelters for snow protection also obscured the best views of the Illecillewaet and Asulkan glaciers, Van Horne instructed his construction forces to lay sections of summer track outside the snow sheds, onto which the trains could be diverted so as not to deprive the railway’s patrons of the magnificent scenery afforded by the stretch of track from Bear Creek to the CPR’s mountain hotel at Glacier, BC.

Despite all of these precautions, avalanches could and did still occur in unexpected spots, sometimes with fatal results. In February 1887, a large slide buried the plow that had been sent to clear away an earlier deluge of snow, along with sixteen men who worked to clear the line. Six of the men died, including a locomotive crew.

The worst incident occurred in 1910, when a mammoth avalanche demolished Shed 17, turned a hundred-ton rotary snowplow on its side, deposited the tender six hundred feet away, and killed sixty-two men almost instantly. Locomotive engineer Bill Lachance defied fate when he was blown from the cab of his engine and suffered no more than a broken leg, after floating on top of the slide until it ran its course. The avalanche left so much debris and, tragically, so many bodies in its wake, the line had to be cleared by an army of shovellers rather than by plows.

In the first thirty years of operations, the CPR’s death toll among snowfighters had reached more than two hundred, until the construction of the Connaught Tunnel enabled trains to run five miles under Mount Macdonald and pass beneath the most treacherous stretch of track in the Selkirks. With great care and no small amount of luck, the CPR had lost no passengers to the frequent avalanches that plagued Rogers Pass. The Great Northern Railroad, just south of the border in the United States, had not been so fortunate. In the winter of 1910, two of its passenger trains stranded by snow in Stevens Pass were swept away by an avalanche, taking with it the lives of forty-nine men.

Many of the worst spots for potential avalanches on railways around the world, including on the CPR, would over the