Vol. 12 Number 4 March 17, 1982

Along the CP Rail mainline, near Hawk Lake and close to the Ontario-Manitoba border, a large quarry provides first grade ballast for the railway's right-of-way. Although there are few visitors here, this isolated outcrop of pre-Cambrian rock has enjoyed a fair share of history. At the quarry's entrance, large enough to contain a town, stands a monument similar to those erected to mark Canadian historical sites. Bordered with a leafy design, the cairn's bronze inscription reads, "In Loving Memory of those who worked and died here. The Sons of Martha." In a different type-face below are two stanzas from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, though he is not credited. They begin:

"The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part; But the Sons of Martha favor their Mother of the careful and troubled heart. And because she lost her temper once and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest, Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

"The Sons of Martha" came into being when seven past presidents of the Engineering Society of Canada, all proud members of their profession, gathered in Toronto some 60 years ago with a common purpose, to provide young Canadian engineering graduates with a "ritual and obligation" somewhat similar to medicine's Hippocratic oath.

Two of the seven were Canadian Pacific civil engineers, J.M.R. Fairbairn chief engineer, and C.W. Ramsay, one-time chief engineer of construction. Also attending was a Professor Herbert Haultain.

Another important person in Toronto at the time, wasn't present at this conclave. Like an actor standing well back in the wings awaiting his cue to take the stage, Harry Falconer McLean emerges as one of Canada's most enigmatic and controversial figures.

Born the son of one of the pioneers of the Dakota Territory in the United States in 1883, Mr. McLean dominated Canadian engineering for half a century. He was a friend of Prof. Haultain and a personal friend of Britain's poet laureate Rudyard Kipling.

The consensus of the Toronto meeting was to call upon the services of Kipling to draw up the oath because "everyone concerned felt that no one could put it in better form, nor have a deeper insight into the meaning of such a thing to engineers."

By April, 1925, after a few modifications, the "Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer" became an established reality and the "Corporation of the Seven Wardens", as the engineers were now called, was its custodian.

The ritual is based upon the responsibility of an engineer for the safety of others, the bridge over which we all pass must surely be prepared for us by a man qualified technically and spiritually, and takes its roots from the Bible, of which Kipling was an authority.

More specifically, some of the basic allegory for the ritual came from Luke, Chapter 10, Verse 36 onward. The story goes that Jesus, in the course of his travels, arrives in a small village and is invited by two sisters, Martha and Mary, into their home for rest and refreshments.

Mary immediately settled down at the feet of Jesus, obviously spellbound by his magic personality. Bustling about the kitchen, poor Martha was doing all the work. Martha lost her temper, went to the doorway, and addressed Christ, "Don't you mind that my sister has left me to do everything by myself?" Further, she demanded that he tell sister Mary to come into the kitchen and give a hand.

According to scripture, "Jesus answered and said, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her."

The outcome of the exchange was that poor Martha had to continue doing the work by herself.

It follows then that all engineers must be "The Sons of Martha." They are forever doomed to be the servants of the "Sons of Mary."

Kipling wrote the poem about the "The Sons of Martha" in 1907. So, when called upon by the Corporation of the Seven Wardens to establish an oath for graduating engineers, he had most of his homework done.

The spirit of Kipling's ritual is considered a wholly personal affair, but two items deserve attention.

The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer reads:

"In the presence of my betters and equals in my calling, I will bind myself upon my honor and cold iron, that to the best of my knowledge and power, I will not henceforth suffer to pass, or be privy to the passing of bad workmanship, or faulty material..."

At the conclusion of this oath, the graduating engineer is presented a plain, iron ring which he wears on the little finger of his working hand for all time.

It is interesting to learn from some of those wearing these rings that at the outset they show appreciable rust deposits. After a few years they appear to take on a new consistency and the rusting ceases completely. (In later years wrought iron was replaced by stainless steel to avoid rusting.)

The cairn's inscription "In loving memory of those who worked and died here" tends to indicate that an engineer was killed at the site.

However, investigation by correspondence revealed that nobody connected with the Sons of Martha knew of such a fatality, many were unaware of the existence of the monument itself.

Parks Canada, which now handles historic sites, was also unaware of the cairn.

Charles Hyson, a retired electrical superintendent, now living in Etobicoke, Ontario, not only knows all the answers about the Hawk Lake cairn but tells of seven others around the country. One stands at the portal of the CP Rail tunnel leading to Wolfe's Cove from Quebec City.

All of these were the work of one Harry Falconer McLean.

✱ ✱ ✱

In our next issue we profile Harry McLean and his involvement with the Sons of Martha.