12 October 2010

The Craigellachie Kid and the Last Spike

Driving the Last Spike at Craigellachie British Columbia on 7 November 1885.

Toronto Ontario - Boys used to quit school honourably, either to find work as apprentices and learn a profession by doing it, or to seek adventure, fortune, and fame.
 
Remarkably, these boys often achieved notable things.
 
Kingston author Ray Argyle tells the compelling story of one such lad in "The Boy in the Picture:  The Craigellachie Kid and the Driving of the Last Spike".
 
This is the story of Edward Mallandaine, the boy who stood behind CPR financier Donald Smith as the great man drove in the last spike, on 7 Nov 1885, of the legendary railway that joined Canada from coast to coast.
 
The night before the historic occasion, Edward, determined to be a part of history, caught a ride on a flatcar to Craigellachie, a settlement in the B.C. hinterland.
 
It snowed hard, then turned to sleet.
 
Through the pitch-black night, "Edward was stiff and half-frozen," as Mr. Argyle describes it.
 
He finally found shelter, near the site of the ceremony, in a boxcar.
 
When the ceremonial moment arrived early the next morning, he squeezed his way, chilled and wet, through the throng of assembled dignitaries.
 
"Can I get in?" he asked, moving closer to the action.
 
"Whadda yuh doin' here?" someone shouted.
 
"Get away, kid."
 
"Let him in," one of the railway managers shouted.
 
"Don't you know that's the Craigellachie Kid?"
 
Moments later, Edward Mallandaine made history.
 
Pierre Berton was the first historian to tell Edward's story ("The Last Spike:  The Great Railway 1881-1885"), but Mr. Argyle knew Edward Mallandaine.
 
"I had the privilege of knowing Edward when he was a very old man and I was a very young boy," Mr. Argyle says in introducing this inspiring tale.
 
His family rented a house from Mallandaine in Creston, B.C., a mountain town that Mallandaine helped to found.
 
Mallandaine collected the rent each month, and entertained young Argyle with stories of his life-and-death adventures as a pony-riding postman on a wild frontier.
 
"When Edward died," Mr. Argyle says, "I was close to the age he had been at Craigellachie."
 
Edward quit school to go fight for Queen Victoria during Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion, but, alas, got there too late.
 
He was 18 when Smith drove in the last spike.
 
Mr. Argyle celebrates the young Edward as an iconic figure himself, another boy with a burning ambition to share "in the building of a boisterous, confident, country."
 
Edward Mallandaine was born in Victoria on 1 Jun 1867, one month before Confederation.
 
He devoured Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", published when he was 9, and his conduct confirmed it.
 
His teacher at Victoria Central School, a certain Mr. Pleace, regarded him as a delinquent and called him "fleabag."
 
"Eddie, you bag of fleas, quit squirming," Pleace shouted one day.
 
"You will never set the harbour on fire."
 
Along with his younger brother, Edward "set the harbour on fire" the very next day, almost burning down the James Bay Bridge.
 
He reported his achievement to his teacher:  "I did set the harbour on fire, really and truly I did."
 
He took pride in his flogging, "the best I ever had."
 
He shared a certain zest with Tom Sawyer, and with Twain himself. (Twain quit school at 11 for a full-time job as a printer's appentice, a decision he later justified by noting that libraries have more books than schools do.)
 
In 1889, the 22-year-old Edward struck out on his own, staking a 180-acre site overlooking Kootenay Lake where he helped established Creston, married the town's first teacher, and lived happily ever after.
 
He died in 1949 at 82.
 
Mr. Argyle tells this Boy's Own tale superbly.
 
But then he lived a Tom Sawyer life himself, quitting school at 16 and roaming the country.
 
He ended up in Toronto with careers in newspapers and advertising. (He sold his own company, Argyle Communications, to Environics in 2001).
 
Now, at 81, he's a prolific author.
 
The Boy in the Picture is his third book in two years.
 
"It proves you're never too young to have a dream," he says, "or too old to fulfill it."
 
Neil Reynolds.