Canadian Transport Sourcebook

Chapter XVII

Construction

The three most important executive officers of the Canadian Pacific Railway at that time were W. C. Van Horne, general boss of everything and everybody: T. G. Shaughnessy (now Lord Shaughnessy) general Purchasing Agent, destined to be President, and I. G. Ogden, Auditor. Ogden was the man behind the pencil, who manipulated figures and dealt in millions without turning a hair. Incidentally, I might mention that Mr. Ogden was an ambidextrous marvel and could write with both hands at the same time, I believe, and could also add up a couple of columns simultaneously. They were a wonderful trio, difficult to match.

The firm of Landgon & Sheppard, of St. Paul, Minnesota, had the contract for the construction of some eight hundred miles of the main line. Langdon was an old stonemason of Scottish descent, and Sheppard was an engineer, not a bad team to build a railway. They sublet most of the grading and covered the ground so rapidly it was difficult to get out of their way, with Van Horne everlastingly driving them forward in his ambitious determination to finish five hundred miles that year.

I have heard grading outfits passing my camp in the night before the line was actually located. Everything was on the rush from morning till night and all night long. We had never seen the like in Canada before. Long lines of heavily loaded waggons wearily pursued their Western way with supplies for sub-contractors.

The organization of this great contracting firm was almost perfect. They sent in supplies for their subs in a most lavish manner, as they well knew that without the sinews of war the battle could not proceed. Hundreds of camps strung along for hundreds of miles, thousands of men, mules and horses. Everybody busy, lots of work for all. About this time, my chief, General Rosser, resigned and was succeeded by Mr. James, late of the old Grand Trunk Railway, an Englishman. James was a long, lean, goodnatured fellow, a thorough Britisher and a true sportsman. He and old Langdon used to make periodical trips to the front, which I suspect was their only holiday. They always had the latest sporting weapons and shot everything in sight from a gopher to an antelope. Often they got lost in trying to chase some beast, but when they found my camp, after a long drive, from the end of the steel, they were like two school-boys and exhibited the bag they had collected on the way up with great pride. James would produce a couple of prairie chicken, alongside of which Langdon would solemnly lay down an owl; then James would extract a few fat duck that Langdon would cap with a gopher and a couple of wretched badgers or a poor little coyote that had fallen a victim to his prowess. Nothing escaped them if they could hit it. One day James and I were alone, Langdon having gone ahead in another waggon. I sighted an antelope skimming along on a ridge quite a long distance off, and pointed him out to my enthusiastic sportsman. He had a Henry rifle, and promptly jumped out of the waggon, loaded, and adjusted the sight. I think it must have been at least five hundred yards, and although the poor animal was on the dead run, having noticed us, to my surprise he dropped it. It was, of course, a pure accident. We drove over to where it lay and found it was shot plumb through the head, breaking the base of his horns. This spelt victory for the Chief Engineer, for when old Langdon came along with a few prairie chickens, all James did was to point proudly to the carcase of the antelope and offer to present him with the head as a souvenir to take back to his home at St. Paul.

They were a brace of good old sportsmen.

The line was now covered with graders, and contractors' camps were strung out for hundreds of miles. Tracklaying swiftly followed, and though in those days they had no tracklaying machines, the rapidity with which it was done was astonishing. Donald Grant, a seven foot giant, was in charge of this work with a gang of about 125 men. Winnipeg was the base of supplies, and construction trains ran on a regular schedule. Each train contained material for exactly one mile of tracks, so many cars of rails and fastenings, ties, telegraph poles, and bridge material when required. It all worked like clockwork. These trains, loaded in the Winnipeg yards, came up to the front regularly on time, were rapidly unloaded. The empty train backed out, and the ties were pitched on the prairie and loaded on the waggons which were waiting for them at the end of the track. They were then distributed by hand, rails were handed along by the men with the iron car, followed by the spiking gang; and in less time than you could possibly imagine another mile of the great railway was completed. While all this was taking place on the plains, work was also proceeding in the mountains. A tote road was built through the Kicking Horse Pass to bring in supplies, and contracts were let for the heavy rock excavation and tunnels. Along the bleak North shore of Lake Superior the heaviest kind of work was also being rushed to completion.

I was often amused during the track laying on the plains at the sight of the Indians who would arrive apparently from nowhere, simply appearing. Squatted on their haunches in double rows, they would take in the proceedings, only occasionally emitting a grunt of half-concealed surprise and admiration as the "Fire waggons" as they called the engines, slowly pushed the steel rails to the front. I often wondered what thoughts penetrated the dusky domes of the savage warriors as they saw those two little bands of steel slowly but surely creeping westward across their old hunting grounds. They would sit for hours patiently watching the wonders of the paleface, and then when evening came, they would fade away, in the dusk, and go home to relate to their families that they had seen thousands of white men, springing up like blades of grass on the prairie. And what puzzled them most was that these white men had no squaws and papooses with them.

The regularity of the arrival of these construction trains at the front, upon which so much depended, showed the perfect organization of the operating department at the base, which was then under Mr. Egan, General Superintendent. The number of miles of track laid in one day varied, but I believe old Donald Grant once accomplished close upon five miles, which was said to be a record. And so the shiny steel snake wiggled its way across the old home of the Bison whose bones lay bleaching in its path.

While we were on survey and location before this army of graders and tracklayers arrived, we had good sport of all kinds. There was plenty of game, both big and little, from a buffalo to a badger. The last buffalo I shot was at Swift Current, some six hundred miles west of Winnipeg, probably about the last left in Canada. There were three cows calmly grazing on the opposite banks of the Creek, and I got two out of the three, the other one ambling away. It was not at all exciting and more like shooting domestic cattle in a barnyard, but we needed the meat.