|
FOREWORD
By Sir George McLaren Brown, K.B.E.
[Sir George McLaren Brown, KBE (29
January 1865 – 28 June 1939) was a Canadian railway administrator. He
worked for Canadian
Pacific Railway from 1887 to 1936,
eventually becoming its European general manager. During the First
World War, Brown was Assistant
Director-General of Movements and Railways at the War
Office. For his service, in 1919 he was
appointed a Knight
Commander of the Order of the British Empire "For
valuable services rendered in connection with the War".]
IT was my proud and
fortunate privilege to have been familiar with the great work and great
career of Lord Mount Stephen from the days of my early youth. My father,
Mr. Adam Brown, was a fellow Scot in Canada, and for several years
represented the constituency of Hamilton, Ontario, in the Canadian House
of Commons. He was an intimate friend of George Stephen, and a great
admirer of his splendid qualities and dominating personality. Later,
when I joined the company of which Lord Mount Stephen was the leading
organiser and unbreakable mainstay during the period of inception and
construction—the now world-famed Canadian Pacific Railway Company—I got
a fuller realisation of the immense burden which he had shouldered and
carried, with the help and co-operation of his associates, including the
late Lord Strathcona and Mr. Richard B. Angus (who, happily, is still
with us), till the haven of prosperity was reached. As the years of my
service with the C.P.R. lengthened, so grew my admiration for the man
whose death is a loss to a whole Empire. Lord Shaughnessy, ex-President
and now Chairman of the company, has paid tribute to a true Builder of
Empire in words which all of us who knew him and his work will sincerely
echo: “Lord Mount Stephen was a man with imagination and initiative
coupled with, probity and courage. During the construction of the
Canadian Pacific Railway he had many anxious hours when his personal
fortune as well as Lord Strathcona’s was jeopardised in loans to the
company in the dark days. To Lord Mount Stephen, beyond all others, may
be attributed the successful completion of the railway.”
Much has been written since Lord Mount Stephen’s death of the stupendous
exploit which he and his associates in its financing and building
achieved on that ever memorable day in the history of Canada when the
last spike was driven at Craigellachie in the new transcontinental line
which linked the Atlantic and Pacific through all-British territory. But
however vivid the language of the writer may be, neither he nor the
eloquent orator can ever do full justice to the tremendous significance
of the achievement.
The inception of the Canadian Pacific Railway by Lord Mount Stephen and
his associates was regarded by all except those men of true vision as an
idle fancy, the dream of chimerical men, never to be realised. The
proposal to build a railway through uninhabited British North America,
over one of the great mountain ranges of the globe, across a roadless
continent, respecting much of which nothing was known, when looked at
soberly by the practical man, presented to him a project which passed at
a single leap from the plane of ordinary undertakings to the Olympic
sphere of enterprises. It surpassed in every element of magnitude, and
probably, also, in physical difficulties, any work ever previously
undertaken by man.
What were the purposes to be achieved? What the vision that inspired
George Stephen and his comrades in railway-building adventure? Wonderful
commercial results could be counted on, and it was felt that the
national, the Imperial advantages and possibilities were far beyond the
conception of the most sanguine of far-seeing men. The undertaking would
have an immediate effect in expanding Canada, then limited to two
provinces in the valley of the St. Lawrence; it would be of the greatest
advantage to the Mother Country in opening up new channels for the
enterprise of British merchants. The railway from the Atlantic to the
Pacific when completed would bring nearer to Great Britain her Eastern
Empire; it would unite with a new bond the interests and affections of
Britons in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and America; it would secure in
perpetuity British Dominion upon the continent of America; it would
promote the occupation and civilisation of half a continent, and lay the
foundation of a great Overseas nation which would be a buttress of
strength in the structure of Empire. This vision has been realised, and
the part played by Lord Mount Stephen in converting a great dream into a
great reality has given him a permanent place in the annals of world
history.
It is characteristic of the creators of the Canadian Pacific Railway,
the men who endured the travail of its birth, that the establishment of
a transcontinental line which linked up Canada from ocean to ocean and
bound the far-spread communities of the Dominions into one indissoluble
national family did not satisfy their ambitions. They were Empire
Builders in the biggest sense of the term, these men of the C.P.R They
had made a pathway across a continent. They now planned to bridge the
oceans. True to their traditions, they carried their plans into effect.
Two years after the completion of the railway the mighty Pacific was
spanned. A steamship service was inaugurated between Vancouver and
Japan, China, and Hong-Kong, and the new world Dominion was linked with
the ancient and mystic Orient, with its teeming millions of human
beings. Now the Canadian Pacific ships sail the Seven Seas.
It was fitting that the first President of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Company should have been the acknowledged leader of the enterprise, and
Lord Mount Stephen retained that position for some three years after the
completion of the line. Before he retired from the bridge, he had
steered the company through troublous waters to the calm waters of
assured success. Throughout his long residence in England, where the
one-time humble Highland laddie became the honoured friend of kings and
princes, he retained his stimulative interest in the affairs of the
corporation. Wealth, honours, and fame left no mark on the simplicity
which was a keynote of his character. He abhorred ostentation, and to
the day of his death he remained the simple-minded, great hearted
Highland Scottish gentleman and it is as such that he will pre-eminently
remain in my memory. In the C.P.R. station at Montreal there stands a
statue of Lord Mount Stephen. When the news of his death was flashed to
Canada, a wreath was placed at its base by the officials of the company.
The wreath will fade in course of time, the statue may crumble, but the
name of Lord Mount Stephen will endure through the ages.
The Story of Lord Mount Stephen
(1922) (pdf) |
