PREFACE
In the literary world, there are writers who have done noteworthy work in their declining years. It is on record that Longfellow, for the fiftieth anniversary of his class at college, wrote:
"Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Lepidus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
Who each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten
Had but begun his Characters of men."
With such notable examples of successful defiance of age to stimulate me, I have, at "more than fourscore years", made my first literary venture. This appears in form as my reminiscences—which many of my friends have expressed the hope I would write.
A considerable part of this work covers my early days on the Prairies, and in the Rocky Mountains, when I was one of the engineers employed on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. That was sixty years ago. There are few of us now left to tell a first-hand story of that work. So I have felt I should do my part in preserving some record of those days, by relating my own experiences.
In my presentation of these I have naturally mentioned quite frequently those with whom I was most closely associated. However modest the positions which some of them held, they played a necessary part in the construction of the railway; and, later, were prominent in the development of the West. They were worthy pioneers, whose names I have endeavoured to preserve, so that, though they pass out of sight they will not be forgotten.
P. TURNER BONE.
300 Fourth Avenue West,
Calgary, Alberta,
May, 1945.