26 July 2010

The CPR After 25 Years

Sir Thomas Shaughnessy.

Calgary Alberta - In honour of Historic Calgary Week, the Herald is pleased to reprint an excerpt from an editorial, published 15 Oct 1909, which looked back 25 years on the building of the CPR.
 
The recent announcement of Sir Thomas Shaughnessy that the double tracking of the C.P.R. between Winnipeg and Brandon would be the next great work, and that the double tracking of the remainder of the main line would follow in the natural course of things, leads Saturday Night of Toronto to reflect.
 
The present period is not inopportune for a glance backward, back to the time when croakers said that the railway would not earn its keep, and back to the time when Sir George Stephen sat in a dingy little office in Montreal, trying to inquire how the bare necessities for the road's completion could be obtained without utterly ruining both himself and Donald Smith. It is yet less than a quarter of a century since Donald Smith pledged all he had in the world, his real estate, his furniture, everything of value he possessed, as security for the last million dollars necessary to make the C.P.R. a going concern.
 
The northwest was then a wilderness, untrodden for the most part, and practically unknown. The exodus of Canadians to the United States was then at its height, trade languished at home, industries were low.
 
Those were hard days, but there were men prepared to face them. The C.P.R. in the magnificence of its development and the more magnificent future that lies before it, is the result of the unfailing courage and indomitable perseverance those men showed.
 
There is no man having the spirit of the west in him who will deny their successes, a tribute of honest praise for the manner in which the work they started has been carried on.