The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 by Pierre Berton Page A
Authors: Pierre Berton
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This so enraged the engineer that he seized an axe and threatened to chop away at the customers unless the covering were instantly replaced. It wasn’t, whereupon the engineer “out of sheer spite” held up the boat for five hours.
So eager were the contractors – W. H. Carpenter and Company – to “make the most of the $75,000 bonus” (to quote the Nor’wester) that they were criminally careless of human life. One boat was sooverloaded with freight, horses and forty passengers that its gunwales were within three inches of the water, which could be seen pouring in at several places. Even then the pilot wanted to proceed and could only be persuaded to turn around after a heated quarrel.
James Trow, an Ontario Member of Parliament who took a lively interest in the North West, reported that paid American agents of the Northern Pacific were on hand at Prince Arthur’s Landing to try to seduce immigrants away from the Dawson Route, saying that “if we persisted we might possibly get through before Christmas or New Year’s but in all probability our bones would be left to bleach on some portage or sunk beneath the waves.”
The Americans urged the travellers to give up any fancy of settling on the Canadian prairie and choose instead the more hospitable soil of Minnesota or Dakota. “These smooth-tongued interlopers succeeded in poisoning the minds of several,” Trow reported. The burly M.P . patriotically chose the all-Canadian route and on its corduroyed right of way encountered an Englishman who exclaimed that “he would sooner be hanged in England than die a natural death on the Dawson Route.”
Trow himself was forced to admit that the men stationed along the way seemed remarkably indifferent to the interests of the travelling community. Nevertheless, he retained his patriotism and wrote that “notwithstanding all its drawbacks, the Dawson Route affords one of the most enjoyable excursions on the continent of America.” The scenery, all agreed, was beautiful and the region was to become, decades later, a major tourist resort.
Still, many a passenger was on the edge of revolt as a result of conditions on the trail. Scores arrived in Winnipeg in a state of semi-starvation, obliged to subsist on fish they caught themselves, their effects destroyed by leaky boats. They were forced to work their own passage, sleep in dirty, neglected shanties and walk when no wagons were available – all the time subjected to a volley of insults and threats by the employees of the contractors.
Complaints began to pour into Ottawa. In July, 1874, an alarmed government sent Simon Dawson himself out to investigate. When the surveyor arrived at the North West Angle of the Lake of the Woods, he was nearly mobbed by a crowd of infuriated and starving passengers who were vainly awaiting transportation to Winnipeg. Dawson scrambled about and found some half-breeds with Red River carts who arranged to handle the job, but his smooth-bore temperamentmust have been sorely tried. That year he quit in disgust and disappointment as superintendent of the route and advised the government that no further work should be done on it.
The road continued to operate in a desultory kind of way. The Marchioness of Dufferin, the Governor General’s lady, went over it in 1877 and was knocked about so much on the corduroy that she preferred to get out and walk. Another traveller, Mary Fitzgibbon, wrote that she would never forget her own trip. The road by this time consisted of “round logs, loosely bound together, and thrown down upon a marsh, no two consecutive logs being of the same size.” Originally there had been some foundation, and there were still deep drains on each side but “the logs had given way at different ends in some parts and altogether in others. It was bump, bump, bang and squash and squash, bang and bump; now up now down, now all on one side, now all on the other. Cushions, rugs, everything that could slide, slid off the
So eager were the contractors – W. H. Carpenter and Company – to “make the most of the $75,000 bonus” (to quote the Nor’wester) that they were criminally careless of human life. One boat was sooverloaded with freight, horses and forty passengers that its gunwales were within three inches of the water, which could be seen pouring in at several places. Even then the pilot wanted to proceed and could only be persuaded to turn around after a heated quarrel.
James Trow, an Ontario Member of Parliament who took a lively interest in the North West, reported that paid American agents of the Northern Pacific were on hand at Prince Arthur’s Landing to try to seduce immigrants away from the Dawson Route, saying that “if we persisted we might possibly get through before Christmas or New Year’s but in all probability our bones would be left to bleach on some portage or sunk beneath the waves.”
The Americans urged the travellers to give up any fancy of settling on the Canadian prairie and choose instead the more hospitable soil of Minnesota or Dakota. “These smooth-tongued interlopers succeeded in poisoning the minds of several,” Trow reported. The burly M.P . patriotically chose the all-Canadian route and on its corduroyed right of way encountered an Englishman who exclaimed that “he would sooner be hanged in England than die a natural death on the Dawson Route.”
Trow himself was forced to admit that the men stationed along the way seemed remarkably indifferent to the interests of the travelling community. Nevertheless, he retained his patriotism and wrote that “notwithstanding all its drawbacks, the Dawson Route affords one of the most enjoyable excursions on the continent of America.” The scenery, all agreed, was beautiful and the region was to become, decades later, a major tourist resort.
Still, many a passenger was on the edge of revolt as a result of conditions on the trail. Scores arrived in Winnipeg in a state of semi-starvation, obliged to subsist on fish they caught themselves, their effects destroyed by leaky boats. They were forced to work their own passage, sleep in dirty, neglected shanties and walk when no wagons were available – all the time subjected to a volley of insults and threats by the employees of the contractors.
Complaints began to pour into Ottawa. In July, 1874, an alarmed government sent Simon Dawson himself out to investigate. When the surveyor arrived at the North West Angle of the Lake of the Woods, he was nearly mobbed by a crowd of infuriated and starving passengers who were vainly awaiting transportation to Winnipeg. Dawson scrambled about and found some half-breeds with Red River carts who arranged to handle the job, but his smooth-bore temperamentmust have been sorely tried. That year he quit in disgust and disappointment as superintendent of the route and advised the government that no further work should be done on it.
The road continued to operate in a desultory kind of way. The Marchioness of Dufferin, the Governor General’s lady, went over it in 1877 and was knocked about so much on the corduroy that she preferred to get out and walk. Another traveller, Mary Fitzgibbon, wrote that she would never forget her own trip. The road by this time consisted of “round logs, loosely bound together, and thrown down upon a marsh, no two consecutive logs being of the same size.” Originally there had been some foundation, and there were still deep drains on each side but “the logs had given way at different ends in some parts and altogether in others. It was bump, bump, bang and squash and squash, bang and bump; now up now down, now all on one side, now all on the other. Cushions, rugs, everything that could slide, slid off the
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