Bookshelf — The Last Spike

Berton, Pierre. The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885. Toronto, Ont.: 1971, McLelland and Stewart. Reissued in paperback: 2001, Doubleday Canada (ISBN 0385658419).  LC:  TF27.C3  B47.  Dewey:  385′.0971.

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

Gordon Lightfoot, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”

=====

Few Americans know much about Canadian history. (For that, few Americans know much about history, period., but that’s for another rant sometime….) This, to quote the Chronicler (and the record album), is an abomination, and a drag. While our mutual paths have not been inextricably tied together — like, say, those of the European countries — there has been quite a bit of intersection. Our two countries have shared events from the French and Indian Wars to peacekeeping for the United Nations, and will continue to do so. Besides, history can be just plain fun when it’s well related, despite what schoolchildren think.

This bit of Canadian history is not as tightly bound to the American aspect as others (though a number of Americans participated in the events, and and bound their lives to Canada). But for the reader interested in Canadian history, transportation history, how the railroads opened up “unsettled” lands, or simply a train buff, the late Pierre Berton’s classic The Last Spike will offer a depth of satisfaction. Mr. Berton, one of the Confederation’s most prolific authors (50 books at his retirement, as well as much work as a journalist) presents a detailed, well researched, and readable tale of the building of the rail line that broke Canada out of its traditional settlements along the Great Lakes, Saint Lawrence River and Atlantic Ocean.

Continuing from where he left off in The National Dream, Berton tells how, once Prime Minister Sir John Macdonald finally rammed the bill authorizing a subsidy for the Canadian Pacific Railway through Ottawa’s House of Commons, the syndicate of businessmen offering to build the line chose the route that would eventually shape the population patterns of Canada, and started the “navvies” to work laying rail. It was not necessarily easy going, as earlier attempts had proven. But Macdonald had promised the British Columbia region, as an enticement to join the Confederation, that they would get a railroad to link them to the east; and these men pledged their ability to pull off the trick. Later, as money repeatedly ran short, they would also pledge literally their personal fortunes — and, at least in one instance, their personal honor, that the job would be completed….

And when the young man’s fancy was turning to the spring
The railroad men grew restless for to hear the hammers ring
Their minds were overflowing with the visions of their day
And many a fortune lost and won and many a debt to pay

For they looked in the future and what did they see
They saw an iron road running from the sea to the sea
Bringing the goods to a young growing land
All up from the seaports and into their hands

It went down to the actual wire, several times. The work on the CPR can be viewed in three stages, and Berton does so. He begins with the relatively easy run across the prairies west of the Canadian (or Precambrian) Shield, when the miles flew by in comparative ease and land speculators gambled on where the line would run, making and losing fortunes in the process. The “middle work” — a relative thing, in consideration of the effort it took just to survey the route — was the passage through the Selkirk Range of the Rocky Mountains, when the hunt for a usable pass across this unexplored maze of rocks fell mainly on one man, A. B. Rogers and his teams. And last comes the hardest phase, the vital linkage of the prairies with the east by chopping and blasting a route through the harder-than-steel rock of the Shield lands — work that nearly foundered the Canadian Pacific.

In the end, history is created by people, and Berton introduces us to as wonderful a collection of individuals as have ever bestrode the events of a nation. We meet George Stephen, who, along with Donald Smith, fought banks, rumors and a government reluctant to risk more political liability and back the CPR further, all to keep the needed money flowing for construction and pay, even to the point of backing a note with every last penny of his personal worth. We learn about William Cornelius Van Horne, an American railroad executive who turned Canadian, kept the CPR work running and policy on track; at the end of the work, he received a knighthood for his efforts. Sam Steele, the North West Mounted Police’s face of justice during the Klondike gold rush, was just as important in the days of opening up the lands. And the line would probably not have been built — at least by private hands — if it were not, strangely, for the second uprising of the Métis, led by the charismatic Louis Riel and his lieutenant, Gabriel Dumont; the need to rush troops to the North West proved the worth of the CPR, and helped at its most critical juncture.

We are the navvies who work upon the railway
Swinging our hammers in the bright blazing sun
Laying down track and building the bridges
Bending our backs ’til the railroad is done

Never to be forgotten are the navvies, the workers who built the banks, leveled and graded the line, laid and ballasted the rails. They often had to cut their way through forests that had never known an axe, or blast a path across and through the living rock — some of the hardest, densest granite in the world. They put up with wages soon gone in drink and women, or gambled away in card dens; the immense isolation of distant landscapes; the dangers of dynamite blasts and snow or rock avalanches; and, especially in the Selkirks and the Shield country, the loneliness of wintertimes with little to do except count the days until work could begin again in earnest in the spring.

Just how well did they succeed? An easy answer, seen with the hindsight of Berton’s history. On a job begun in 1881, which was estimated by some to require ten years to complete, Van Horne and the CPR drove the rails through in four. The “last spike” was hammered down at Craigellachie, British Columbia in 1885; and though regular service between east and west Canada did not begin for some time after, the ability to travel directly between British Columbia and the eastern cities was there. Berton succeeds as well, telling a long and complex story without losing the drama and spark of the people involved. This is history as it should be written, factual and yet alive.

=====

Those interested in Gordon Lightfoot’s epic song about the CPR, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” which I have quoted from above, are urged strongly to obtain a copy of Gord’s Gold, which contains the song; or his earlier recording of it on the album The Way I Feel. An all-too-brief excerpt of its first performance — 30 seconds or so, on a CBC television program for the Canadian Centennial in 1967 — can be seen at the CBC Archives. A full performance from 1970, with archival pictures from the period, can be found at YouTube.
=====

Peace be to you.

Additional Technorati tag(s): Pierre Berton, Canadian Pacific Railway, Railroads