Conceived in 1880 to weld the confederation of Canada by joining together its far flung provinces, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company is now the world's greatest transportation system.

More than just a railway, Canadian Pacific owns, operates, and manages a large fleet of ocean, coastal, and inland water vessels, an airline, a large group of hotels across Canada, a world-wide express service, and a huge communications network.

Formed 13 years after Confederation to connect the province of British Columbia with Eastern Canada by hurdling the forbidding Rocky Mountains, and spanning the then uninhabited prairies, at a time when the country was faced with the threatened secession of British Columbia from the union, the C.P.R. acquired several incomplete sections of track laid in earlier days by government agencies, and in five years of arduous construction completed Canada's first trans-continental rail line.

Spurred by men of vision, such as George Stephen, later to become Lord Mount Stephen, the first president of the railway company, Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona), and personally led by William Van Horne, then general manager, later chairman, president, and Sir William Van Horne, the construction men welded Canada's east and west coasts with a steel band.

The first transcontinental train left Montreal for the British Columbia settlement of Port Moody on 28 June 1886, just a little more than six months after the driving of the famed Last Spike at Craigellachie, B.C., on 7 November 1885.

At first, as the railway drove westward over the prairies and through the tortuous passes of the Rockies, dire forecasts of impending disaster were made by many, for the road had no goods or passengers to transport through the sparsely settled regions it served. Undaunted, the nation builders made plans for creating traffic.

In 1887, a fleet of three ships was chartered to bring tea and silk from the Orient to Canada's west coast to provide eastbound freight for the new transcontinental railway.

These three ships were the forerunners of the great "White Empress" fleet of the Canadian Pacific. The hotels and tea houses established in the Canadian wilderness to entice travellers have since grown into a chain of year-round hotels and palatial summer resorts.

The Canadian Pacific brought settlers from the United Kingdom and Europe to settle the untenanted plains, and irrigation schemes supervised by the company made veritable gardens out of some arid and once unproductive regions.

Telegraph services, first used for train dispatching, were made available to settlers of the prairies and in fact to all of Canada. Today communication service, since vastly augmented and improved and including microwave, teletype, and telex operations, are used for radio broadcasts, telephone communications, and television transmission. As Canada expanded, Canadian Pacific added allied services to compliment its rail facilities, and these related activities have helped Canada, both in peace and war.

During the First and Second World Wars, when Canada stood behind the mother country in the battle to maintain world freedom, the railway and its steamships provided much needed transportation for troops and supplies.

Company shops turned out tools of war, shells, tanks, naval guns, and engines. Canadian Pacific's vessels saw service on all the seven seas as troop transports, armed merchant cruisers, and Admiralty supply and mother ships.

During the Second World War, Canadian Pacific operated the first efficient trans-Atlantic bomber ferry service which was later taken over by the R.A.F. Canadian Pacific Air Lines later operated flying schools as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.

In Canada, Canadian Pacific comprises more than 17,000 miles of railway and owns or controls another 5,000 miles of track in the United States.

Dieselization of the C.P.R, began in 1943 and has played an important role in improving efficiency of operations.

Extensive dieselization of passenger and freight operations has been made throughout the system, including yard and terminal operations. The company plans complete dieselization by 1961.

Introduction for transcontinental service in 1955 of stainless steel passenger train units, including the popular Scenic-Dome Cars, was a large step forward in the company's policy of providing modern, fast, and efficient service to its travellers.

The Canadian Pacific's crack passenger train, The Canadian, an all-stainless steel streamliner, spans the nation in 70 hours, providing luxury service.

A $13,000,000 hump-retarder freight yard, the first of its kind in Canada, was built in Montreal as a major step in marshalling yard modernization. Automatic switching and braking enable the cars of a train to be sorted out swiftly and efficiently. A second such yard is planned for the Toronto area.

Canadian Pacific has experienced an increasing demand for its piggyback services by which highway trailers are carried from city to city on flat cars. This service was started originally for hauling company trailers but was extended in 1957 and made available to licensed "for hire" truck operators. Growing importance of this type of traffic was recognized in 1957 by creation of a separate piggyback department. In Western Canada, Canadian Pacific Transport Company has been operating an integrated piggyback service since 1954.

In 1958, Canadian Pacific acquired a controlling interest in Smithsons Holdings Limited, owners of Smith Transport Limited, largest trucking company in Canada, whose highway transport operations and affiliations extend in eastern Canada from Nova Scotia to Manitoba. In Western Canada, Canadian Pacific Transport Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the C.P.R has operated highway trucking services since 1947.

Automatic teletype recorder car tracing systems have been installed to record the flow and improve efficiency of freight train movements over busy sections of the line. Canadian Pacific's application of Integrated Data Processing (IDP), is more extensive than that of any other railway in the world, IDP involves collecting data from widely separated points and transmitting it to a central location where the large electronic processing units are installed, Canadian Pacific's unit, the IBM 705, began operation early in 1957.

Not only are great benefits and economies being derived from the simpler processing of paper work, but a vast amount of new information useful in managerial decisions is available at speeds hitherto impossible, all of which play an integral role in the more efficient and economic operation of business, and service to customers.

In ocean travel the company had its first Empresses operating on the Pacific travel lanes as early as 1891. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Canadian Pacific provided the British Admiralty with 18 ocean steamers, a total gross tonnage of 324,738, of which 10 were lost.

Since the war, Canadian Pacific has had constructed two 25,500 ton passenger liners for the Atlantic service and has ordered a third, 27,500 ton passenger liner for delivery in 1961.

The Empress of Britain was placed in service in the Spring of 1956, and her sister ship, the "Empress of England", entered trans-Atlantic service in April, 1957. Specially designed for the Canada-United Kingdom service, each has accommodation for 150 first class and 900 tourist passengers.

Since war's end four 10,000 ton Beaver class fast freight ships have been built. Two more vessels were purchased from the British Government, and one from another steamship company, to bring the total number of Beavers to seven. All vessels in service named "Beaver" operate between Canada, U.K., and continental ports. They are Beaverdell, Beavercove, Beaverburn, Beaverglen, Beaverford, Beaverlake, and Beaverlodge.

In anticipation of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the company started a transatlantic-Great Lakes freight service in 1957 and by 1959 had four vessels under charter.

Canadian Pacific's British Columbia Coast Steamship Service operates on the Pacific coast, bridging Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, Vancouver, and also serving Victoria, Seattle, and Alaska. Canadian Pacific also operates cargo and passenger ships on the Great Lakes and on the Bay of Fundy between Saint John, New Brunswick, and Digby, Nova Scotia.

Canadian Pacific Airlines was formed in 1942 through the amalgamation of 10 smaller Canadian airlines which were experiencing operational difficulty due to excessive competition and lack of capital.

Canadian Pacific now operates some 7,000 miles of domestic air routes, including the Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto-Montreal transcontinental service established in 1959, and a north-south network serving Canada's rapidly expanding northwest, and more than 36,000 miles of international routes.

CP Airlines commenced in 1942 with international service beginning in 1949 when Canadian Pacific aircraft started flying between Vancouver and Japan and China, Vancouver and Australia, and New Zealand via Hawaii.

The Orient service now connects with the airlines' South American service at Vancouver to Mexico City, Lima, Peru, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, Chile. Canadian Pacific also operates a direct service from Vancouver to Amsterdam, called the "Trans-Polar" route. Another CPA International route extends from Mexico City through Toronto and Montreal to Lisbon, Portugal, and Madrid, Spain, and in 1960 to Rome, Italy.

Canadian Pacific maintains a large chain of hotels and summer resorts across Canada. Largest is the Royal York in Toronto, the biggest hotel in the British Empire, An air-conditioned 400 room addition, completed in 1959, brings its capacity to 1,600 rooms, and adds outstanding convention facilities to provide for the needs of an expanding nation.

The Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City was the site of two wartime Roosevelt-Churchill conferences, and also played host to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during their Canadian tour in 1939, and to Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh during their Canadian visit in 1951.

Other hotels include the Cornwallis Inn, Lakeside Inn, Digby Pines in Nova Scotia, the Algonquin in New Brunswick, the Royal Alexandra in Winnipeg, the Saskatchewan at Regina, the Palliser at Calgary, famed Banff Springs, and beautiful Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, and the Empress Hotel at Victoria, B,C.

Canadian Pacific maintains its own communications branch. Telegraph lines were built at the same time as the railway itself was pushing across the nation and now world-wide connections are established. The growth of the communications facilities has kept pace with that of the railway and of the country itself, and the original telegraph service has been extended to include television, radio, teletype, telex, and telephone. The system comprises some 200,000 miles of facilities.

World-wide transportation and financial service is offered by the Canadian Pacific Express Company, which operates over land and sea for more than 33,000 miles. Its organization includes almost 9,000 offices and correspondents in Canada and abroad.

In January, 1958, the company announced the formation of Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas Limited with power to engage in all phases of the discovery, development, operation, and sale of oil, gas, and other mineral resources and their products on its 11.3 million acres of mineral lands in the Prairie Provinces.

Doc, 1959.