Canadian Pacific Railway

I

Introduction

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada’s first transcontinental railway and the instrument that enabled the nation of Canada to expand across North America from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. Primarily constructed between 1881 and 1885, the CPR ran from Canada’s largest city, Montréal, Québec, to the new city of Vancouver, British Columbia, on the Pacific coast. Today, the Canadian Pacific Railway is one of the longest railroad networks in North America.

The CPR was primarily constructed to satisfy the province of British Columbia, which had agreed in 1871 to become a part of Canada on the condition that a railway be built from eastern Canada to the Pacific coast within ten years. The CPR also was designed to open up the prairies of western Canada to settlement and agricultural development, and to serve as part of a transportation system for increasing trade between Britain, Canada, and East Asia. In addition, a surveyor for the CPR, Sandford Fleming, played an important role in the development of the concept of international standard time as a means to simplify and standardize transcontinental train schedules.

II

A False Start: The Pacific Scandal

In order to attract entrepreneurs to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Conservative Party government of Canadian prime minister Sir John Alexander Macdonald offered a C(Canadian)$30 million cash subsidy and a land grant of 20 million hectares (50 million acres) along the route of the railway. In 1872 the CPR contract was awarded to a group of businessmen headed by Sir Hugh Allan, a Montréal multimillionaire. The next year, the Liberal Party, the opposition party in Parliament, uncovered evidence that Allan had given Macdonald and one of his cabinet members C$350,000 to help the Conservatives win the 1872 election. The Liberals charged that Allan had obtained the CPR contract in return for his campaign donations. By November 1873 it was clear that the Conservatives would be defeated in Parliament because of this Pacific Scandal, and the Macdonald government resigned. The Liberals won the 1874 general election, and Allan was forced to give up the CPR contract. The Pacific Scandal had brought the CPR venture to a standstill.

III

Getting Under Way

The new Liberal government of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie invited proposals to build the CPR with incentives similar to those of 1872. However, the Pacific Scandal had tainted the CPR project, and a major economic depression from 1874 to 1879 made investors unwilling to undertake such a risky venture. In the absence of serious offers from businessmen to undertake the project, the government was forced to start construction itself.

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The government began construction by building the Pembina branch of the railway from Winnipeg, Manitoba, south to the Canada-United States border. Completed in 1878, this line connected with an American railroad to Saint Paul, Minnesota, linking Manitoba by rail with the neighboring province of Ontario via the United States. Mackenzie was faced with strong demands from the government of British Columbia to carry out the Conservatives’ promise to have the CPR completed by 1881, but he was unwilling to finance such an expensive project during a period of declining government revenues. The Liberals tried to appease the province by conducting extensive surveys of the CPR route through the prairies and British Columbia. This had little effect, and in 1878 British Columbia’s legislature passed a resolution affirming the province’s right to withdraw from Canada.

Macdonald and the Conservatives were returned to power in the 1878 general election. In 1879 the government awarded American railroad contractor Andrew Onderdonk a contract to build part of the main line in British Columbia from Port Moody, at the head of Burrard Inlet, to Savona’s Ferry (now called Savona), 40 km (25 mi) west of the city of Kamloops. This action helped to alleviate much of the dissatisfaction in British Columbia.

The economic depression temporarily lifted from 1879 to 1882, and several groups of businessmen and financiers made offers to build the CPR. In 1880 the government signed a contract with a Montréal-based group headed by Sir George Stephen and Donald Smith. Stephen, the CPR’s first president (1881-1888), played a key role in completing the railway by using his financial skills to raise large amounts of private capital needed for the project.

IV

Building the Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was established in February 1881. The new company, which was to complete the railway by 1891, would receive a cash subsidy of C$25 million to complete the main line, and a land grant of 10.1 million hectares (25 million acres) in the prairies of western Canada. The federal government would turn over, at no charge, the sections of the railway it had begun: the Pembina branch from Winnipeg to the Canada-U.S. border; the 343-km (213-mi) section from Port Moody to Savona’s Ferry; and a 686-km (426-mi) section from Fort William (now Thunder Bay), Ontario, to Winnipeg. The CPR was to use the government money to build three sections: the 669 km (416 mi) from Savona’s Ferry to Calgary; the 1352 km (840 mi) from Calgary to Winnipeg; and the 1052 km (654 mi) from Fort William east to the town of Callander, Ontario, on the eastern end of Lake Nipissing. The company would have to use its own capital to construct the 554-km (344-mi) link from Callander to Montréal.

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