APPENDIX A XLVII 
from Montreal to Fort Garry. Perhaps a summer route by water, with 
railway from Fort William to Fort Garry might be maintained, but 
there were probably not six people in Canada who thought a through 
route a possibility. But first, after a terrific struggle with nature, the 
section of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Lake Superior to Red 
River was secured, and this was looked upon as a doubtful experiment, 
merely an engineering triumph accomplished by the explosives— 
dynamite and nitro-glycerine. The attempt to build a railway along 
the rugged shore of Lake Superior was plainly an afterthought. But 
Canadian pride and patriotism were rising; the journey to Manitoba by 
way of the western States was slow and tedious; the delays and draw- 
backs were annoying. Thus the American route became intolerable. 
A brave coterie of Canadians in Montreal came to the assistance of 
Sir John A. Macdonald and his cabinet, and undertook to build, not only 
the railway from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean, beginning at both 
ends, but also to complete it through the Laurentian tunnels of the 
North Shore, along the rocky cliffs and over bottomless muskegs to 
Montreal. 
The leading spirit of that work of Hercules was a man upwards of 
sixty years of age—Donald A. Smith—a man of vision and confidence, 
of conciliating and attractive manner, but a man who held fast to his 
purpose with the tenacity of steel, and the man who drove the last 
spike to complete the through line in 1886, five years before the time 
bargained for in the contract had transpired. The future Lord Strath- 
- cona did this at the station of Craigellachie—fitting name borrowed 
from “Stand fast Craigellachie,” the battle cry of his Highland kinsmen 
—the Grants. 
The following words were written in that year in commendation Of 
this example of Canadian pluck: “The explanation of this courage and 
determination of the Canadian people is that Confederation introduced 
a larger life; the continued rivalry of the United States awakened in 
Canadians the desire to ‘hold their own;’ the possession of wide terri- 
torial interests, the sense of their land bordering on three oceans, and 
the realization of the fact that nearly half of the continent is their 
heritage might well awaken dreams of national greatness in a people 
less emotional than Canadians.” 
No doubt Canada might have been deterred by the cry of the 
' pessimist, “So loyal is too costly,” but she was not. 
The first through railway train passed Winnipeg on its way from 
Montreal to Vancouver on Dominion Day, 1886, and the west felt that 
this Canadian Pacific Railway was the iron band that joined the con- 
federated provinces ‘into one great Dominion. 
