The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 by Pierre Berton

Author:Pierre Berton [Berton, Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385673556
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2011-06-22T07:00:00+00:00

* Though the British Columbians blamed Blake for this smear, it was actually the British Colonist that first spoke of the route through which the railway would run as “a sea of mountains.”

Chapter Six

1

The first locomotive

2

Adam Oliver’s favourite game

3

The stonemason’s friends

4

“Mean, treacherous coward!”

1

The first locomotive

On the morning of October 9, 1877, the citizens of Winnipeg were awakened by an unaccustomed fanfare – the shriek of a locomotive whistle. For the generation to follow, this would become the authentic sound of the prairie, more familiar, more haunting, more nostalgic than the laugh of the loon or the whine of the wind in the wolf willow. But on this crisp October day, with the sere leaves of birch and aspen yellowing the ground, it was something totally new. There were many there that day who had never heard a train whistle in their lives and for some of these, the Indians and Métis, it was as symbolic in its sadness as it was for the white community in its promise.

George Ham, the western editor and raconteur who was there that day, recalled the scene:

“A lone, blanketed Indian standing on the upper bank of the river looked down rather disdainfully upon the strange iron thing and the interested crowd of spectators who hailed its coming. He evinced no enthusiasm but stoically gazed at the novel scene. What did it portend? To him it might be the dread thought of the passing of the old life of his race, the alienation of the stamping grounds of his forefathers, the early extinction of their God given provider, the buffalo, which for generations past had furnished the red man with all the necessities of life … whatever he may have thought, this iron horse actually meant that the wild, free, unrestrained life of the Indian was nearing its end.”

She was a Baldwin engine, built especially for the job, and she bore a noble name, The Countess of Dufferin. She came complete with six flat cars and a van; but she could not arrive under her own steam. She had to be floated down the river on a flag-decked barge, pushed by the stern-wheeler Selkirk, because the railway to the boundary, which Mackenzie had been promising since 1873, was not finished. Even if it had been, there was nothing yet on the other side of the American border with which it could connect.

But a locomotive, even without a railway, was still a marvel and the entire town was streaming to the dock with whistles, bells, banners and bunting to inspect it. They gave three cheers for the massive contractor, Joseph Whitehead, who was in charge; as a boy, he had worked on railways in the old country when they were drawn by horses. Then, as the barge touched the bank, they crowded aboard and began to crawl over the little black engine with the huge smokestack. Two hours later, the Selkirk steamed to a location below Douglas Point where a piece of track had been laid to

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