The grading and track-laying crews began their work in 1883, starting out from both ends of Lake Superior. On this stretch of the route the crews had to deal with the extremely variable topography, the steep cliffs that descend to the lake, and the general lack of earth with which to construct embankments. Perhaps the greatest challenges were the many swampy muskegs — the crews had to re-lay one stretch of track seven times. There were sinkholes, too — seemingly solid patches of ground that suddenly gave way under the weight of a train, with costly, time-consuming results. And there were landslides — on one occasion a slide swept away a section of track and, with it, thousands of dollars’ worth of steel rails. When the telegram conveying the bad news reached the unflappable Van Horne at this desk in Montreal, he merely lifted his eyebrows and uttered a quiet exclamation.
Construction was also hampered by the total lack of access to the northern shore of Lake Superior except over ice in the winter and by water during the rest of the year. Yet, somehow, steady supplies of the building materials had to get through. To this end, Van Horne ordered the purchase of boats to transport supplies and men to the north shore’s work sites. He also ordered the construction of three twenty-three-hundred-ton steel passenger and cargo steamers. They were launched on Scotland’s Clyde River and sailed across the Atlantic in October 1883. Eventually the boats were based in Owen Sound, where they became a vital link in the first-class immigrant services that the CPR was able to offer from Montreal to the Rockies in the summer.
It was during construction on the north shore that Van Horne imported the first “track-laying” machine to be used in Canada. It was his answer to the difficulties posed by track-laying, especially in challenging areas. A delivery gantry rather than an actual machine, it carried rails forward in troughs along one side of the lead car and ties on the other side.
Referring to Van Horne’s multiple achievements on this stretch of the transcontinental, the authoritative Railway and Shipping World observed in 1900, “It is well to say in passing, that if Van Horne had accomplished nothing else, his victory over the engineering difficulties afforded by the line along Lake Superior’s north shore would give him fame enough for one man.”
Van Horne had to cope not only with the physical challenges that hampered the progress of construction, but also with labour shortages, strikes, and “the demon rum.” In the West, which was under federal jurisdiction, the sale of alcohol was banned. It was not prohibited, however, in Ontario, where enterprising liquor peddlers found an eager market. Heading their list of customers were the toiling navvies, who frequently turned to alcohol for relief from the exhausting work they performed and the extremely primitive conditions under which they lived. Van Horne attempted to dampen rum’s appeal by arranging for the construction crews to be well fed, but this solution was not enough to stave off a chronic liquor problem. All too often drunkenness led to lawlessness and violence, such as the rioting and gunplay that erupted on the north shore in October 1884. It was so serious that authorities summoned a magistrate and some policemen from Toronto to restore order.
Construction of Canadian Pacific’s main transcontinental line showing end of track at year’s end.
Map by Vic Dohar.
Day-to-day problems such as these absorbed much of Van Horne’s attention; but even as he was dealing with these concerns, he was spinning far-reaching plans for the CPR’s future. He was convinced that the railway should strive to become an integrated international transportation company, with ships, grain elevators, hotels, and telegraph lines. And so the visionary Van Horne began to acquire ancillary services even as the main line was still being built. He arranged, for example, for the CPR to purchase control of a dormant express company, and he established the Canadian Pacific Telegraph service.
Knowing that the railway’s economic survival depended on the successful settlement of the Prairies, he spearheaded the establishment of a wide-ranging and effective promotional scheme to attract settlers and tourists alike to the Northwest. The highlight of this campaign was an advertising program that saw the railway’s immigration department distribute vast quantities of publicity material — posters, brochures, pamphlets — in the United States, Great Britain, and northern Europe. The hook to lure immigrants was Canada’s huge agricultural potential. For tourists, the attention-grabber was Canada’s natural wonders, particularly its mountains. A large coloured poster, produced as early as 1883, trumpets “The Grand Transcontinental Highway from the Cities of the East to Winnipeg and Manitoba’s Boundless Wheatfields.” The poster’s bottom left-hand corner shows a clump of fresh produce and a vessel containing sheaves of wheat. Tourism was promoted by an article written by the Marquis of Lorne, Canada’s former governor general, and reprinted as a pamphlet in 1886. Entitled “Our Railway to the Pacific,” it is illustrated by engravings from drawings by the marquis’s wife, Princess Louise. The pamphlet lavishes praise on the men who built the railway, the settlement opportunities it has opened up in the Canadian west, and Canada’s scenic beauties.
Van Horne’s longstanding interest in art meant that he took a special interest in the pictorial side of this project. In 1884, for example, Van Horne commissioned William Notman and Son, a well-known and highly respected Montreal photographic firm, to dispatch a party to the west to photograph the prairies and the construction of the CPR’s line through the Rockies. He provided the photographer’s son, William McFarlane Norman, with an official car for this purpose. Evidently the quality of the work and the grandeur of the photographed landscape met Van Horne’s requirements exactly because a selection of the photos appeared in a pamphlet, The Canadian Pacific: The New Highway to the East. But nothing delighted Van Horne more than having the CPR sponsor artists to serve the cause, usually prominent Canadian landscape painters. His earliest recruit and the only artist actually commissioned by the CPR in these years was the English-born John Fraser. Among his works were black and white sketches used to promote tourism, one being a view of the Banff Springs Hotel. Non-commissioned artists also benefited from the CPR’s largess. These artists were provided with free transportation after they convinced Van Horne that their work would serve the CPR’s interests. Although copies of their paintings were used in promotional material, the originals often ended up in the private collections of Van Horne, George Stephen, and other company officials.
In 1884 Van Horne himself made a long-anticipated trip to British Columbia. He wanted to look over construction in the mountains and to decide on the location of the railway’s Pacific terminus. Although Port Moody had been designated as the CPR’s terminus, Van Horne and Stephen both had serious misgivings about its suitability as a port for the railway. In the spring of that year, for instance, he received news that Port Moody’s harbour was too small for the CPR’s purposes. Twelve miles further west, however, at Coal Harbour and False Creek (an extension of English Bay), there was a superb townsite. When he was finally able to set foot in Port Moody that August, Van Horne’s fears about the location were confirmed. The next day, he travelled to the mouth of Burrard Inlet by boat. Here, just inside the inlet, he decided, would be the site of the new western terminus. After hard bargaining with the provincial government, the CPR agreed to extend the railway from Port Moody to Granville if the government gave the company half the peninsula on which the present city of Vancouver now sits. In addition to negotiating the formal agreement that resulted in 1885, Van Horne also named the townsite. He was always interested in sea captains, especially if they boasted Dutch blood, so he suggested that it be called “Vancouver” — after the island that had taken its name from George Vancouver, the intrepid explorer who had sailed off the B.C. coast in the eighteenth century.
George Stephen and the CPR directors and shareholders were all delighted with Van Horne’s performance. At the annual shareholders’ meeting on May 14, 1884, they elected