Canadian Transport Sourcebook

11

New Blood From Scotland

IN THE early stages of their development, it was fortunate for the provinces of British North America that the British Navy ruled the Atlantic seas. Napoleon could not save the French, and the War of 1812 crushed the budding American Navy, so that nothing interfered with the steady flow of manpower and money coming from the motherland. A large fleet of sailing ships was needed to carry the half million emigrants who were added be­tween 1840 and 1850. Six weeks was a quick passage in these days. Many there were who fell prey to ship's fever and never arrived at all. me first attempt at a regular passenger service to the St. Lawrence is credited to Captain Alexander Allan, com­mencing in 1519 with the brig lean, already mentioned, square-sterned and carvel built, making several round trips from Greenock each summer. Hugh Allan, the Captain's second son, came to Canada in the brig Favourite in 1826, and after clerking in a drapery or drygoods store, entered a firm of shipping agents and shipbuilders of which he soon became a partner and eventually the chief. He had a forceful, rugged personality and retained to the last simple habits of life, although he became one of the wealthiest men in Canada and was knighted in 1874 for his pioneer work in establishing steamship services between Canada and the old country. Interested in banking, he became a director of the Bank of Montreal and founded the Merchants Bank of Canada. When railways came into the Canadian picture, Hugh Allan was prominent among the promoters, and was particularly in the limelight in the early seventies as one of the two competitors for the Canadian Pacific Railway charter which caused the tem­porary downfall of John A. Macdonald's ministry. He was ap­pointed President of the Provisional Board of Directors.

The sailing ships in service in the early days of the Allan family were such as the Canada (330 tons) built in 1830, the Brilliant (429 tons) built in 1834, the Gipsy (598 tons) built in 1838, the Blonde (676 tons) built in 1841. The original Favourite was re, placed by another of the same name in 1839. The last four vessels were all from Montreal shipyards. Other early Allan sailing ships were the Caledonia, Montreal, Ottawa and St. Lawrence. The emi­grant fare was three pounds, five shillings, or about sixteen dol­lars, the passenger bringing his own food. Six weeks or more at sea might well grow monotonous, and the passengers to pass the time would give the sailors a hand and sing with them the capstan and halyard chanties which remained many a year to cheer the winter evenings in after life on forest clearings. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic under its own steam was the Royal William, originally built for the Quebec-Halifax trade for a small company in which Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, was one of the incorporators. The Royal William was sent across the Atlantic to be sold, not on regular service. However, in 1838, the year in which Donald Smith came to Lachine, Samuel Cunard went to England to negotiate a subsidy from the British Govern­ment for a steamship service to North America. Succeeding in this mission, he started in 1540 a service between Liverpool, Halifax and Boston, which was supplemented at Halifax with a service to Quebec. The American business proved more profitable to Samuel Cunard than that to Canada, so when Hugh and Andrew Allan, in 1854, put in a steamship service Fortnightly in summer, to the St. Lawrence, and monthly in winter to Portland, Maine, helped by a mail subsidy of twenty-five thousand pounds a year, they stepped into the first place in the Canadian trade.

Sir Hugh Allan

The decision to operate a steamship service was encouraged by the completion of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway in 1852, connecting Montreal with Portland, and thus providing a winter port and therefore the possibility of a year-round service for Can­ada, even though the winter port was in the United States. That service, however, was for a time disrupted by the demand for transports created by the Crimean War and the two new steamers built for the Allans, the Canadian and the Indian, were diverted the Black Sea till they could be spared for their original inten­tion. The Allan Line plays a vital part in our story, for it was eventually ab­sorbed into the Canadian Pacific fleet on the Atlantic, and has supplied a large number of highly efficient captains and traffic officers to the Canadian Pacific personnel. John A. Macdonald saw that, without a winter port of its own, Canada (which previous to Confederation was limited to the territory now represented by the Prov­inces of Ontario and Quebec) was shut off from direct connection with the motherland for six months in the year, and that union between Canada and the Maritime Provinces was required to eliminate the crippling handicap of hostile inter-provincial tariffs. In 1858, his colleague, Georges Etienne Cartier, accompanied by Alexander T. Galt and John Rose, went on a mission to get the British Gov­ernment to agree to discussions on Union between the Provinces, In this year resolutions were passed in the Canadian Parliament urging the British Government to support a proposed railway link­ing the Provinces, which, during the winter months, could carry on intercourse only through the United States, and claiming that such railway was a military necessity, forming part of a high­way which would ultimately extend across British North America from Atlantic to Pacific.

The outbreak of Civil War in the United States and the tension caused by the "Trent" affair gave strength to such arguments, and after disturbing delays, Sandford Fleming was appointed jointly by the British Government and the Provinces to prepare estimates of the probable cost of the proposed Intercolonial Railway, the British Government guaranteeing a loan of three million dollars for preliminary surveys.

Fleming was a Fifeshire Scot who came to Canada at the age eighteen, in 1845, looking for an engineering job. He was en­couraged in his desire to emigrate to Canada by Edward Ellice, whose family was closely associated with the Northwest Company and who himself was a considerable factor in the amalgamation of that company with the Hudson's Bay Company, of which he eventually became deputy governor. Ellice was also a director of John Galt's Canada Company, and was interested in the settle­ment of the country as well as the fur trade. After some prelimi­nary experience in land surveying, Sandford Fleming joined the staff of the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway as assistant engi­neer. This was a small railway running less than a hundred miles out of Toronto, afterwards known as the Northern Railway, and eventually absorbed by the Grand Trunk. He had become chief engineer when the construction of the line was completed, and, looking about for wider opportunities, accepted in 1863 a mission from the Red River settlement at Fort Garry to go to England to interest the British Government in the construction of a road uniting that settlement with the eastern provinces. Fleming had for some years been advocating the advisability of building a transcontinental railway through British North America, com­mencing with a road from Lake Superior to the Red River settle­ment. The memorial which he was asked to convey to the Canadian and British Governments stated:

Brig Jean, first vessel of the Allan Line

"With reference to that section of the country lying between this Settlement and Lake Superior, it is respectfully submitted that the difficulties to be encountered in opening up an easy communica­tion are entirely over-rated ... this was the regular route by which the North-West Fur Company imported and exported heavy cargoes for more than a quarter of a century, and which the Hudson's Bay Company have used more or less for nearly three-quarters of a century. The whole country through which the proposed road would run, almost from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, is remarkably level We believe that a railway could be here laid at a cheaper rate than in most countries. ... This is the most natural highway by which commerce and gen­eral business with the East could be carried on. It would also be the most expeditious ... and thus from Van­couver's Island to Nova Scotia, Great Britain would have an unbroken series of Colonies, a grand confederation of loyal and flourishing provinces, skirting the whole United States frontier, and commanding at once the Atlantic and the Pacific."

Sandford Fleming, circ. 1860

Five years after Sandford Fleming came to Canada, another young Scot arrived in Montreal who was to figure largely in the business of Canadian transportation. This was George Stephen (afterwards to become Lord Mount Stephen), born in Dufftown, in the northeast of Scotland, who started in business life as a draper's apprentice at Pratt and Keith's, in Aberdeen, and was working in the store of T. F. Pawson and Company, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, when chance brought him to the attention of a relative, William Stephen, who was an importer of woollen and cotton goods in Montreal. In­vited to come to Canada, George Stephen joined William Stephen' firm in 1850, and showed such promise that three years later he was sent to London as a buyer for the firm. There he was be­friended by one of London's merchant kings, James Morrison of "Morrison's Millions" fame, who had made a fabulous fortune on the principle of "small profits, quick returns." Morrison's own rise was due to a romantic incident. It was the custom in his youth for the apprentice to live in his master' house. There he was attracted to a good looking maidservant, and meeting her (as he thought) one evening on the stairs, he flung his arms round her and kissed her. The lady, however happened to be not the maid but the master's daughter, who took to heart this evidence of supposed affection and married him. James Morrison did not live to regret the incident, but prospered exceedingly in what was known as the Fore Street Limited Liabil­ity Company, a leading house in the London drapery business. James Morrison was a man of wide vision and had taken keen interest in railway legislation as a member of the British House of Commons. He also was attracted by the nature of his business to the handicrafts and Fabrics of the Orient, and had assembled a notable collection of Oriental works of art, as well as Dutch and Italian Old Masters, at Basildon Park, Berkshire. As a Frequent guest in Tames Morrison's mansion, George Stephen enlarged his knowledge of the world and acquired that interest in the produce of the Orient which had a bearing on the policies which he later directed as first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Fifty years later, when he was given the freedom of the city of Aberdeen, in recognition of his service to the British Empire, he said:

"Any success I may have had in life is due in a great measure to the somewhat Spartan training I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, in which I entered as a boy of fifteen. To that training, coupled with the fact that I seemed to have been born utterly without the faculty of doing more than one thing at a time, it is due that I am here before you today. I had but few wants and no distractions to draw me away from the work I had in hand. It was impressed upon me from my earliest years by one of the best mothers that ever lived that I must aim at being a thorough master of the work by which I had to get my living; and to be that I must concentrate my whole energies on my work, whatever that might be, to the exclusion of every other thing. I soon dis­covered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish any­thing without hard work, and fortunately I knew it."

Soon after George Stephen came to London, war broke out be­tween Turkey and Russia, and the merchants in the drapery busi­ness advised him to purchase and ship woollen and cotton goods heavily to Canada, as the price was certain to rise. Stephen had been taught by Morrison that quick decisions were vital in busi­ness, so without waiting for instructions (the Atlantic cable was not laid till 1865) he shipped such large consignments of goods by the Allan boats to Montreal that William Stephen thought his buyer had gone crazy. However, prices went skyrocketing in the Crimean War, and the foundations of the Stephen fortunes were laid. On his return to Canada, George Stephen soon became the dominating partner, and bought up the business when William died in 1860.

The Honourable Peter Mitchell, a prominent Canadian poli&Shy;tician, once said of George Stephen "If there's any man in Canada that can put the yellow fuzz on the bumble bee, it's George Stephen." He was now one of the most substantial men in Mont­real and became interested in banking, spending his spare time in reading up the subject. His early training as a salesman had made him fastidious about clothes, and as soon as he could afford it, he had a valet—an unusual luxury in the Montreal of that day. He had married an Englishwoman of great personal charm and culture, whose ambition to become an actress had been nipped in the bud by stage fright. Montreal is hot in July and summer, so he took summer places, his favourite being at Causapscal in the Metapedia Valley in New Brunswick, with salmon fishing at the door, in "a Highland glen such as I have never seen out of Scotland." There and in Montreal the latch was always loose for old country visitors, and in this way Stephen became a close friend of Colonel Garnet Wolseley, afterwards to become field-marshal of the British Army, who came to Canada early in 1862 to make arrange­ments for the reception of British troops sent across the Atlantic in anticipation of trouble with the United States following the Trent affair. Colonel Wolseley stayed at the Montreal House, which was the Ritz Hotel of its day, and became a frequent guest, He was fresh from service in the recent Chinese War, an account of which he published in book form, and fascinated Stephen wit his accounts of China and Japan, a country which he had visit after the surrender of Peking. Wolseley was Frank in his opinion that the Chinese are the most remarkable race on earth and were the coming rulers of the world, needing only a Chinese Peter the Great or Napoleon to make them so. Stephen was interested in Wolseley's own narrative of the later Red River Expedition, which opened the eyes of the incredulous to the possibilities of communication between Lake Superior and the western prairies. George Stephen, as a director of the Bank of Montreal, came in touch with Donald Smith, who turned out to be his cousin and was making periodical visits to Montreal in connection with his now considerable investments. The first meeting between the cousins was not till 1866. At that time Donald Smith presented a countrified appearance, with long sandy hair, a heavy red beard and bushy red eyebrows. He presented himself at Stephen's house ,in Montreal with a bright coloured carpetbag, which he had bought to impress the Indians of Labrador. George Stephen, however, was by this time far from being an Indian and was not impressed.

Upper Fort Garry

Courtesy of the Hudson's Bay Company.

The Bank of Montreal, the oldest existing bank in Canada, was established in 1817, with a charter based on that which was drawn up by Alexander Hamilton for the first Bank of the United States in 1791, its first president being a Northwest trader named John Grey. Careful management enabled it to survive periods of de­pression, and its position was still further strengthened when David Davidson became general manager and reorganised the bank with the introduction of Scottish methods and principles. Bank clerks trained in the old country were encouraged to come out, and among these was R. B. Angus, a young Scot born at Bathgate, near Edinburgh, who at the age of twenty-six came from the Manchester and Liverpool Bank in 1857 to join the staff of the Bank of Montreal. In 1861 when the Canadian banks were taking over from the eastern banks of the United States the financing of the crop movement from the northwestern states, R. B. Angus was sent by the Bank of Montreal to Chicago to establish a branch there, after which he was made associate manager of the branch in New York. In 1864 he returned to Montreal as local manager, the year in which the outstanding stability of the bank was recognized by its securing the Canadian Government's account. R. B. Angus was particularly happy in making social contacts, a useful qualification in banking business. In 1869 he was appointed general manager, and as such came into particularly close association with George Stephen and Donald Smith, and thereby a few years later into the Canadian Pacific scene.

R. B. Angus in 1877

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