Canadian Transport Sourcebook

Chapter XXII

The Last Spike

I have often been asked why the C.P.R. went through the "Kicking Horse Pass" instead of the "Yellow Head", the latter being well known to have moderate gradients and being far easier for construction. I can only say, as I have attempted to explain in this book, that the rumoured reasons seem to have been because Van Horne put his finger on the map, and, Czar-like, demanded the "shortest possible commercial line," which no doubt he got; then, as I have also mentioned, Major Rogers reported favourably of the "Kicking Horse," and finally, it seemed, this euphonious name appealed to the sporting instinct of the London Stock Exchange and the English controllers of the money market who were handling the C.P.R. Stock. Be this as it may, the prairie section was rushed to completion heading for what is now the City of Calgary on the Bow River, the fat was in the fire, and it was "Kicking Horse" or bust.

Thousands of men, mules and horses, from morning till night, were busily digging up the rich alluvial soil, constructing a road-bed for the future transcontinental trains. Grading machines and scrapers covered the plains for hundreds of miles, following close upon the heels of the locating engineers, and almost before the ink on the last plans and profiles was dry, the snort of the Iron Horse could be heard in the distance.

Sir John A. Macdonald is reported to have said upon one occasion in the House of Commons, when making a speech upon the subject of the Canadian Pacific Railway: "Mr. Speaker, although I may not live to see the completion of this great Transcontinental highway, I hope I may someday look down and see the the two oceans united by a band of steel." Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, then the leader of the opposition, interjected the remark: "Perhaps the Right Honourable gentleman will be looking up." However, Macdonald did live to see the consummation of his great project, as he did not die until 1901.

All honour to that grand old Statesman whose brain conceived the magnificent idea of binding the East and West together in bonds of steel, and all honour to the officers and men of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who carried to success this wonderful undertaking in the face of every known danger and difficulty from "The driving of the first Stake to the driving of the last Spike." Wise old David Harum once sagely remarked: "A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog, they keep him from broodin' on bein' a dog." And so it is I think with a book, for it if is short and at all amusing, it will keep people from brooding over their troubles, but if too long drawn out it becomes wearisome, and would make them wish they had been born a dog, fleas and all, so that then they could never have read it.

The lats act in the great drama of building a great Continental Railway was performed by Sir Donald Alexander Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona). It occurred at a place now called Craigellachie in the Eagle Pass—November 7th, 1885,at nine a.m.

I once read in the work of some fiction monger that the golden spike used upon this occasion was afterwards withdrawn and presented to Mrs. Alexander Mackenzie, the wife of the Premier of Canada, and that he had often seen her wearing it in Ottawa as a pendant to her necklace. I regret to throw any doubt upon this romantic "pipe dream," but in the first place I do not believe there ever was a golden spike; secondly, I know that Mrs. Alexander Mackenzie was not the wife of the Premier of Canada in 1885, who happened to be the Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, and thirdly, if there had been a golden spike, the weight of it, if worn on a pendant would have broken the poor old lady's neck.

Not having been present at the performance assigned to the late Lord Strathcona, in driving the last Spike, I cannot do better than to quote a few descriptive lines from Mr. Lawrence Burpee's most excellent book on the life of Sandford Fleming. He says: "Early on the morning of the 7th, the junction was verging to completion and at nine o'clock the last rail was laid in its place. All that remained to finish the work was to drive home one spike. By common consent the duty of performing the task was assigned to one of the four Directors present, the senior in years and influence, whose high character placed him in prominence—Sir Donald Alexander Smith. No one could on such an occasion more worthily represent the Company or more appropriately give the finishing blows, which in a National sense, were to complete the gigantic undertaking. Sir Donald Smith braced himself to the task and he wielded the by no means light spike-hammer with as good a will as a professional tracklayer. The work was carried on in silence—nothing was heard but the reverberation of his blows."

There was evidently no ceremony. In the picture you can single out Van Horne quite easily, and also Sandford Fleming, looking highly respectable in a tall hat. Thus came to an end this great struggle, without any music or firing of guns, and when Sir Donald Smith had assaulted the head of that last spike several times, the great Continent was spanned at last, and a voice in the crowd was heard, in the most prosaic tones, to sing out: "All aboard for the Pacific!"