In the 1896 contest, by contrast, Van Horne and the CPR remained on the sidelines. Nevertheless, observers found it difficult to believe his repeated denials of CPR intervention. Van Horne told a Globe reporter, “We were somewhat in the position of a girl who had once been whoring, but who had reformed and was trying to lead a correct life — it was difficult to make everybody believe it.” As it turned out, the railway’s reform was not complete: in Winnipeg, CPR personnel actively supported the Conservative candidate.
Although he was not directly involved in the 1896 election, Van Horne was still vitally interested in the outcome and what it would mean for several issues that were important to him. Immigration was one of them. He dismissed the Conservative government’s work in this area as “hardly visible” and, as seen in chapter 6, he devised an ambitious settlement scheme of his own. Regrettably, the government never adopted it. He expected the new Liberal government led by Wilfrid Laurier to give immigration the same short shrift, but the dynamic Clifford Sifton, the new minister in charge of immigration, worked tirelessly to revamp the lacklustre immigration service he had inherited and to fill the empty prairies with suitable agriculturalists.
As much as he respected Sifton, however, Van Horne took strong exception to his choice of immigrants, many of whom came from eastern and central Europe. In typically blunt fashion, Van Horne outlined his concerns to newspaper editors. One of these was Sir John Willison, the long-time editor of the Globe. Van Horne bombarded him with letters about the growing anti-Chinese agitation sweeping the Pacific coast which, he feared, would culminate in increasingly restrictive legislation against Chinese immigration. Like other Canadian industrialists, he wanted access to a plentiful supply of cheap, hardworking labour, and the Chinese filled the bill admirably. “We must have in British Columbia a good supply of digging machines which, unlike steam shovels, can climb hills and go down into mines. These can be most cheaply and readily had from China,” he informed Willison.
From time to time in these years, Van Horne was asked to serve in a semi-diplomatic role because of his friendship with leading American political figures. He became a quasiambassador to Washington for the new Laurier government, which frequently asked him to probe the Yankee frame of mind during a period of tension between Canada and the United States. Tariffs and the dispute over the Bering Sea near Alaska ranked high on the list of irritants poisoning the relationship between the two countries. It was the tariff question, however, that directly involved Van Horne in his new role. After introducing the two-tiered Fielding tariff in 1897, the government asked him to find out whether the American government would institute reprisals or admit Canadian goods at a rate equivalent to the minimum Canadian tariff. His mission completed, Van Horne informed Ottawa that the United States would certainly not accept any reciprocity proposals.
Van Horne’s services were also enlisted in the potentially dangerous Alaska boundary dispute, a dispute between Canada and the United States over the boundary of the Alaskan panhandle running south off British Columbia’s coast. The dispute smouldered for decades before coming to a head in 1897, when the Klondike Gold Rush was under way and both the Canadians and the Americans sought control of the trade it produced. After the storm signals went up, Van Horne made another trip to Washington and, in his report, alerted the government to potentially dangerous conditions in the Klondike mining community. In a letter to the leader of the Opposition, he warned that even a trivial ill-advised move by Ottawa could trigger another Boston Tea Party, only this time in the Yukon.
In the 1890s, discerning friends and colleagues realized that Van Horne’s enthusiasm for his job was waning. His loss of interest was due to several setbacks, such as his failure to establish a fast Atlantic steamship service — a fallout from the financial panic of 1893 — and the mortifying surrender of the Duluth and Winnipeg Railroad to James Hill. There was also his deteriorating health, brought on by years of overwork, smoking, and self-indulgence in food. More than anything else, though, it was probably the lack of scope for his creativity that robbed Van Horne of his enthusiasm for the presidency. He was essentially a “constructor,” a man who loved building for its own sake. Once the CPR was nearing completion, he began to lose interest in it and to find management details more and more distasteful.
In the final years of his presidency, Van Horne talked increasingly of retiring, only to be thwarted by Shaughnessy, who was “anxious to see our affairs in fairly good shape during his Presidency.” By 1899, when the CPR was paying substantial dividends, Van Horne believed that condition had been met. Before resigning, however, he decided to take an extended vacation trip. Japan was one possible destination. He had many friends there and the inauguration of the Pacific steamship service had earned him the gratitude of the emperor and government officials alike in Japan. Van Horne, however, had qualms about being on the receiving end of lavish attention and hospitality. He disliked ostentation of any kind and cringed at the thought of the ceremonial observances that would mark a visit to that country. He therefore decided to postpone a trip to that far-distant land and to travel instead to southern California, hoping that the heat there would “burn out” his chronic bronchitis.
With a party of friends, he set off in the Saskatchewan, his private rail car, in April 1899 for San Francisco. There, John Mackay, the Dublin-born head of the Commercial Cable Company, booked the best rooms for them in the luxurious Palace Hotel, stocked them with the finest cigars, and refused to allow anybody to pay for anything. After a week of festivities in the city, Van Horne’s friends returned to the East, and Van Horne, along with Mackay and the manager of the Southern Pacific Railroad, took the train to Monterey, stopping first at Palo Alto. While in Monterey, Van Horne decided he had been away long enough. He immediately telephoned for his car to be hitched to the next train and, in a few days, he was back in Montreal.
After he had returned home, Van Horne took the bold step he had been contemplating for months: he resigned from the CPR presidency. Many outside observers had been expecting it for some time. Their suspicions had earlier been confirmed when a newspaper reporter, acting in response to rumours, had inveigled an admission from Van Horne that he intended to resign. No date had been provided, but the published account of the interview precipitated a selloff of Canadian Pacific stock. In both London and New York, the price of the company’s shares dropped several points. Confidence in the CPR was only restored when its officers issued a denial of the newspaper story. On June 12, however, Van Horne presented his formal resignation at the company’s regular board meeting. The directors chose Thomas Shaughnessy to replace him, but Van Horne was kept on as a director and was immediately appointed to the newly created office of board chairman. As chairman, he was an ex officio member of the CPR executive committee, so he continued to play a significant role in deciding company policy.
Van Horne could regard the legacy he had turned over to Shaughnessy with justifiable pride and satisfaction. In spite of the prolonged depression that had gripped Canada during most of his term as president, he had managed to improve and expand the system significantly. In fact, by the end of 1899, the extent of the railway’s lines totalled seven thousand miles. If the American lines the company owned were included, the increase in the eleven years of his presidency after 1888 exceeded thirty-five hundred miles, or 65 percent. Despite competing interests and his deteriorating health, Van Horne had succeeded admirably in making the CPR a powerful force in the Canadian economy.
8
The Family at Home
Over the years, Van Horne and his family had moved often, following the rapid progress of his railway career in the American Midwest. It must have been a relief when, in 1883, he seemed settled with the Canadian Pacific Railway and the family finally joined him in Montreal.
The stage for this move was set in the autumn of 1882. That fall, the steadily escalating pressure of railway business weighed heavily on Van Horne, both in his office in Winnipeg and in Montreal, the location of the CPR headquarters.