Disaster struck in late January 1913, when fire raced through the school, allowing boarders and the two founders to escape with only their night clothes. In the early hours of the morning, Maud Edgar and Mary Cramp made their way to the Van Horne mansion, where they were provided with overnight accommodation and clothes. Van Horne was in Cuba at the time, but when he was notified of the conflagration, he immediately contacted the insurance adjustors. He also got in touch with his favourite architect, Edward Maxwell, and asked him to direct the necessary repairs. Next he instructed Bennie to look after the Carsley property in his absence, keeping in mind that his father was “anxious to help Miss Edgar in any possible way without throwing away money.” Van Horne continued to assist the school in its rebuilding program until January 1914.
Still, despite his kindness to many individuals, Van Horne was downright stingy in terms of charitable donations to hospitals, colleges, welfare organizations, and other organizations that serve the community. His will, drawn up in January 1915, made no provision for bequests to non-profit organizations or charities, nor did it provide for friends or family retainers. By contrast, Lord Strathcona’s will listed a large number of generous bequests to colleges, college professorships, and hospitals in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. During his lifetime, Van Horne did make one or two noteworthy donations to public institutions, but, overall, he hated to part with money that he could use to purchase yet another painting or Japanese vase.
In the final decade of his life, Van Horne continued to shuttle constantly between Montreal and New York and Montreal and Havana. Interspersed with these excursions were transatlantic voyages in luxuriously appointed ships. When he made the crossing to England, it was primarily for business, the renewal of old friendships, and for viewing paintings and other art objects.
In the summer of 1912, Van Horne, accompanied by Addie and young Addie, journeyed to Joliet to participate in the homecoming festival timed to coincide with the July 4 festivities. It had been forty-eight years since he left the town, where he had spent a good part of his youth and where, in his last job, he had been the ticket agent and telegraph operator for the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Now he was the centre of attraction at a public meeting in the town’s library — and there he regaled his audience with recollections of his first visit to Joliet as a boy. What most impressed those who had known him half a century earlier was his total lack of pretension. He was still the same Will Van Horne they recalled from earlier days, a man of rough-and-ready comradeship.
The Joliet reunion was so exhilarating that Van Horne returned to Montreal feeling energetic and rejuvenated. He turned his attention with renewed vigour to the construction of his Cuban home, San Zenon de Buenos Aires. Once it was completed, he planned to make it his retreat during Montreal’s long, harsh winters.
Van Horne also continued to take a lively interest in the fate of the CPR. Any perceived danger to the company immediately roused him to action, as did any implied threat to Canadian manufacturers or to Canada’s ties with Britain. When reciprocity — free trade with the United States — resurfaced during the 1911 election, Van Horne marshalled all his forces to fight it. Canadians were bitterly divided over the issue: the farmers demanded a broad free-trade agreement to eliminate duties on a wide range of natural products and to lower them on some fully manufactured and semi-finished articles; they were opposed by manufacturers and other ardent supporters of the National Policy, who considered tariffs essential in order to nurture Canada’s infant industries. Van Horne loudly supported the protectionist side: as he told one reporter, “I am out to do all I can to bust the damn thing.” That included addressing public meetings in Montreal, St. Andrews, and Saint John and striving to convert friends and acquaintances to his anti-reciprocity position. In addition, he feared that free trade with the United States “would loosen the bonds which bind Canada to the Empire and ultimately destroy them.” When the Liberal prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, lost the election, Van Horne was ecstatic. He declared: “Canada’s first great trial is ended and she now stands out in brilliant sunshine without a cloud in the skies.”
Van Horne was quick to offer the new Conservative prime minister, Robert Borden, advice on how best to run his government and even the men he should appoint to certain powerful positions in the Cabinet. Borden ignored his ideas, however, along with his suggestion that the money-losing Intercolonial Railway be administered by three competent commissioners along strictly business lines. Van Horne had stature as a pre-eminent businessman and railway manager, but he could be politically naïve with regard to making Cabinets and fulfilling election promises. Despite rebuffs, however, he continued his efforts to influence Borden’s thinking on various issues of the day.
No social democrat, Van Horne believed that just about anything could be accomplished through effort, determination, and goodwill. To one interviewer he observed that able men have always “appropriated a large amount” of the world’s goods and that to deny them these just rewards “would be to send us back to chaos.” As a devout family man, however, he was prepared to lobby for legislation that would, he thought, help to preserve the family — the basic unit of Canadian society. Discipline, along with industry, undivided attention to duty, and unswerving loyalty to family, friends, and the CPR, were the tenets that governed Van Horne’s life. He attached the greatest importance to discipline, for, to him, it was the foundation of character. It had made possible his climb to lofty heights. He also believed, though, that to reach such heights, men had to be masters of humbug — and among such masters he included his friend and railroading rival James Jerome Hill.
While engaged in a stunning array of activities, Van Horne had to cope with recurring health setbacks and the nagging realization that his overall heath was not good. There had been attacks of bronchitis, but potentially much more serious was the onset of diabetes and a kidney disease, glomerulonephritis, which Van Horne always referred to by its more common name, “Bright’s disease.” Especially irksome was a lengthy bout of “inflammatory rheumatism” that confined him to bed and home for weeks on end in the winter of 1913–14. Unfortunately, as soon as the rheumatism abated, a carbuncle developed on one of his knees and confined him once again to his bedroom. Never a submissive patient, he openly defied his physician’s order not to smoke more than three cigars a day.
When he was finally able to resume his normal life, Van Horne headed directly for Cuba. There, the island’s sun and his focus on beautifying San Zenon des Buenos Aires hastened his recovery. In early June, four days after his return to Montreal, he headed for Europe. Accompanied by Bennie, he made what would prove to be his last visit to London. Although business matters absorbed much of his attention, he also sandwiched in a meeting with his old colleague Lord Mount Stephen, an interview with the art dealer Stephan Bourgeois, and a visit to the theatre to see a play selected by Bennie.
No sooner had they returned to Montreal than the First World War broke out. The pugnacious Van Horne had always thought that wars were inevitable and, indeed, a good thing. In 1910, as tensions rose in Europe, his friend Samuel McClure, the American publisher, had raised the topic of war in a letter. In reply, Van Horne stated that he had no use for universal peace and nothing but praise for war as a promoter of man’s highest qualities. If worldwide peace reigned, he continued, “I feel sure that it would result in universal rottenness…. All the manliness of the civilized world is due to wars…. All the enterprise of the world has grown out of the aggressive, adventurous and warlike spirit engendered by centuries of war.” In 1914, however, he was certain there would not be any war.