From Telegrapher to Titan by Valerie Knowles

Author:Valerie Knowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459714601
Publisher: Dundurn

Mrs. William Van Horne in 1889. The Canadian novelist William A. Fraser described her as “the most gracious woman I ever met in my life.”

When the offer was made for the third time, almost six years after he had become a naturalized British subject, Van Horne accepted it. As a result, the Queen’s birthday list of honours that spring announced his appointment as an Honorary Knight Commander of the order of St. Michael and St. George. The actual announcement was made on Saturday, May 26.599 Lord Aberdeen expressed the hope that it would be generally recognized in Washington and elsewhere that “this mark of distinction has reference to your career as a whole, & is in no sense an impulsive act or one prompted by any event or contemporaneous circumstances.”600

Van Horne was at first decidedly uncomfortable with his new title. Walking to his Windsor Station office on the morning that his knighthood was announced, he was repeatedly accosted by acquaintances and friends offering hearty congratulations. This could be tolerated, but it was the last straw when his elderly office attendant, who for years had greeted him with a friendly salute, now made a servile bow and intoned, “Good morning, Sir William!” Completely flummoxed, Van Horne muttered “Oh, Hell,” and beat a hasty retreat.601

Still, there was nothing Van Horne could do to prevent an avalanche of congratulations from the exalted and the humble. His friend John W. Mackay, the successful American business tycoon and railway director, telegraphed from New York, “Congratulations both to the order of St. Michael and St. George and yourself.”602 Far less trenchant was a congratulatory letter from Sir John A. Macdonald’s son, lawyer Hugh John Macdonald, who would be made a Knight Bachelor in 1913. From Winnipeg, he wrote:

It is gratifying to know that the people of England are beginning to realize the great advantage that the construction of the CPR has been not only to Canada but to the Empire at large and I must say that it would have been hard for the Government to have discovered a more graceful way of showing their appreciation of what has been done in this respect than the one they have chosen, by honouring the man who was mainly instrumental in carrying through this great work to a successful completion ...603

Van Horne was probably more moved by another letter that came from Winnipeg, that hotbed of anti-CPR agitation. It was penned by a Miss Esther Nichol, who recalled that eight years earlier, when she had written to Van Horne requesting a pass to travel east, he had very kindly issued her a very inexpensive ticket. This had enabled her to take a trip that gave her a new lease on life, and for this she would be eternally grateful to the CPR president. “No one,” she wrote, “wishes you more happiness, and prosperity than I.”604

Not surprisingly, Van Horne’s acceptance of a knighthood buttressed a widely held belief that he had lost all love for his native country, the United States, and had become one of its most intractable opponents.

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