Schreiber Ontario - This is the stretch of steel that almost broke Canadian Pacific before it ever ran a train across the country.

Such were the engineering difficulties of building the current Schreiber Division that Alexander Mackenzie, prime minister in the 1870s, declared that it was "insane" even to attempt it. Mackenzie favored the easier and apparently more sensible course of diverting East-West rail traffic from Canada over American lines running south of the Great Lakes.

So did at least two of CP Rail's founders, the Canadian-born American railroad magnate James Hill and his colleague, J.S. Kennedy. But when in 1876 Sir John A. Macdonald came back to the office he had lost to Mackenzie five years before, he insisted that the transcontinental railway be built entirely on Canadian soil for reasons of national independence and security.

ROUTE CHANGE

Macdonald later found a staunch supporter in the railway's first general manager, W.C. Van Horne. As Van Horne's biographer, Walter Vaughan wrote, the idea of feeding C.P.R. business to American lines was "repellant to his railway sense".

The decision late in 1882 to go ahead with building the section north of Lake Superior caused Hill and Kennedy to leave the original C.P.R. syndicate. Van Horne had changed the projected route from one that would run north of Lake Nipigon to one that would hug the shore of Lake Superior, where construction supplies could be brought in by boat.

The rival Grand Trunk Railway sneered at the concept. It issued a pamphlet to investors describing the country through which the road would run as "a perfect blank, even on the maps of Canada. All that is known of the region is that it would be impossible to construct this one section for the whole cash subsidy provided by the Canadian Government for the whole scheme."

That turned out to be perilously close to that truth. As Vaughan put it, "The cost was appalling." As the 9,000 railway builders pushed across the rugged face of the Canadian Shield, they encountered construction problems that had never arisen before.

Where they had expected to dig up earth that could then be used to build embankments, they found a blank wall of the oldest and hardest rock in the world. Where the ground looked solid, it turned out to be underlain with muskeg which sucked in long stretches of track, cars, and hundreds of carloads of gravel fill.

Van Horne had decided to bridge the hollows in the line with wooden trestles which sometimes collapsed when the muskeg shifted beneath them. The work entailed constant blasting to carve out rock cuts and tunnels. Dynamite was manufactured on the spot at vast expense.

"When we came to the North Shore", Construction Chief John Ross wrote to Van Horne, "we thought that everything was solid and that good foundations would be found everywhere, we did not anticipate the treacherous bottom or the tremendous power of Lake Superior."

At one point, a long rock embankment which seemed as solid as the high hills around it was simply carried off by the waves crashing into it. A bridge over the Nipigon River took nearly two years to construct, the instability of the river bed kept shifting its masonry piers.

The work went ahead in the hardest of natural conditions. In the winter, track was laid at extremely cold temperatures, and heavy snowfalls and blizzards created delays. Spring brought floods, and summer plagues of mosquitos and black flies. There could be devastating storms on the lake at any time of year.

BRINK OF RUIN

It all added up to enormous cost overruns. By early 1885, the company was on the brink of financial ruin. Under fierce political pressure, Macdonald was reluctant to issue another government grant or loan to keep the project going. There was no cash to pay suppliers, and workers on the North Shore threatened to lynch a contractor who could not meet the payroll.

In March that year, the Northwest Rebellion broke out in Saskatchewan. Troops were sent west over the unfinished railway, riding in sleighs or marching across the ice of Lake Superior at gaps in the line. Having been convinced of the military importance of the link from East to West, the opposition in the House of Commons dropped its objection to a government guarantee for an emergency bank loan of $5 million. Shortly after, the company was able to raise a further $15 million in bonds.

With the corporate finance saved, the work went on. The last spike on the lake Superior section was driven in mid-May, 1885. (There is some dispute over the exact date of the ceremony.) Even then, though, the line was shaky. The muskeg caused the track to sink, and the trestles had to be strengthened. It was not until October, 1885, that regular trains began to run between Montreal and Winnipeg.

Alexander Mackenzie had called the building of the line "one of the most foolish things that could be imagined." But with the growth of the mining and pulp and paper industries in Northern Ontario, the Schreiber Division has paid for itself out of local traffic alone over the years.

"As to the character of the work", wrote John Egan, the first superintendent of that part of the system, "it will remain an everlasting monument to the builders." Even today, you can't help but marvel at how they ever got it built.

Robert Stewart.

This CP Rail News article is copyright 1983 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.