with his old colleague Lord Mount Stephen, an interview with the art dealer Stephan Bourgeois, and a visit to the theatre to see a play selected by Bennie.
No sooner had they returned to Montreal than the First World War broke out. The pugnacious Van Horne had always thought that wars were inevitable and, indeed, a good thing. In 1910, as tensions rose in Europe, his friend Samuel McClure, the American publisher, had raised the topic of war in a letter. In reply, Van Horne stated that he had no use for universal peace and nothing but praise for war as a promoter of man’s highest qualities. If worldwide peace reigned, he continued, “I feel sure that it would result in universal rottenness…. All the manliness of the civilized world is due to wars…. All the enterprise of the world has grown out of the aggressive, adventurous and warlike spirit engendered by centuries of war.” In 1914, however, he was certain there would not be any war. He had high regard for Kaiser William II and considered him the greatest emperor of all time — he particularly admired his business acumen and economic skills. Van Horne predicted, therefore, that there would be no war with Germany: “The great wars of the future will be in trade and commerce,” he declared. He was appalled when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria gave way to ultimatums, mobilizations, and declarations of war by major world powers. The aging mogul soon changed his attitude towards war, however, when he realized how awful was its destruction and how tragic was its annihilation of a generation of promising young men.
To escape from the shadow of war and Montreal’s harsh winter, he hurried off to Cuba in December 1914. The following year, he made two more visits, one in February and one in May. He also took his grandson, William, on a tour to New York. Other than these trips, he busied himself in Montreal, all the while regretting that he could not play an active role in the war effort. He did, however, put his fertile mind to work creating a detection device that would enhance the Allies’ ability to hunt German submarines. He forwarded his suggestion to the British Admiralty, which considered his proposal but then turned it down.
Fortunately, another avenue of service opened up to Van Horne — Prime Minister Robert Borden asked him to chair a federal commission that would examine agriculture, immigration, transportation, the borrowing of capital, and the marketing of food products. Van Horne accepted the invitation, but then hesitated, concerned that his deteriorating health would not allow him to take on two years of almost continuous work. But no other nationally known figure had more qualifications for the job or a deeper interest in the topics to be covered. Borden knew that Van Horne’s name would lend influence to the commission’s work and credibility to its report, and he responded that arrangements could be made to accommodate Van Horne’s absences during the winter months in Cuba. On July 9, 1915, Van Horne cabled the prime minister that he was willing “to take chances” if Borden thought that best.
Shortly after his return from Cuba in early June, however, Van Horne came down with a fever that baffled his physicians and forced periods of rest on him. When his activities were not sharply curtailed by the fever, he made several visits to Covenhoven and continued to manage his various business enterprises. Then, on the night of August 22, he was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where early the next morning he was operated on for a huge abdominal abscess. To the great relief of the family and anxious friends, the operation was judged a success. Once he rallied from the shock of the operation, he began receiving visitors, some of whom he entertained with plans for the new type of hospital he would build when he regained his health. On September 7, however, he took a turn for the worse and, four days later, he died. He was seventy-two years old.
Messages of sympathy poured in from around the world, while across the far-flung CPR system, from Montreal to London and Hong Kong, flags on company buildings drooped at half-mast. Across Cuba, church bells tolled for the passing of the man who, “in little more than one year had done greater work in Cuba than the Spanish government had accomplished in four hundred and fifty years.”
The funeral took place on the morning of Tuesday, September 14, from Van Horne’s Sherbrooke Street home, where the service was conducted in the great drawing room by the minister of the Church of the Messiah — the church Addie and his sister Mary attended. The funeral procession then set out for Windsor Station by way of Stanley Street, which was thronged with onlookers. Flower-laden carriages headed the procession, testimony to Van Horne’s great love of flowers, particularly lilies and roses. At the station, the coffin was transferred to a special train whose locomotive was draped in black crepe. The train then departed for Joliet, where Van Horne was to be buried in Oakwood cemetery, the place where other members of his family had been buried. The last car on the train was the official car, the Saskatchewan, which he had used since 1884. As the funeral train made its way across Canada, groups of men who revered Van Horne’s memory greeted it at station after station. In homage to him, all traffic on the CPR system was suspended at an appointed hour.
A year after Van Horne’s death, George Tate Blackstock of Toronto, his legal counsel during the frenetic years 1885 to 1892, wrote a fitting epitaph for his friend: “Canadians even today have no realization of the work he did or of what they owe him. He was a Napoleonic master of men, and the fertility of his genius and his resource were boundless, as were the skill and force with which he brought his conceptions to realities.”
Bibliography
Hart, E.J. The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism. Banff: Altitude Publishing, 1983.
Knowles, Valerie. From Telegrapher to Titan: The Life of William C. Van Horne. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2004.
Lamb, W. Kaye. History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. New York: Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1977.
Lavallée, Omer. Van Horne’s Road: An Illustrated Account of the Construction and the First Years of Operation of the Canadian Pacific Transcontinental Railway. Montreal: Railfare Enterprises, 1974.
MacKay, Donald. The Square Mile: The Merchant Princes of Montreal. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1987.
Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
McDonald, Donna. Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996.
McDowall, Duncan. Quick to the Frontier: Canada’s Royal Bank. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Thompson, Norman and Major J.H. Edgar. Canadian Railway Development from the Earliest Times. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1933.
Vance, Jr., James E. The North American Railroad: Its Origin, Evolution, and Geography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Vaughan, Walter. The Life and Work of Sir William Van Horne. New York: The Century Company, 1920.
Index
Agassiz, (Jean) Louis, 25, 31
Agassiz Club, 25, 32
Alaska boundary dispute, 123
Alger, Russell, 156, 173, 176
Allan, Sir Hugh, 69
Alton, Illinois, 35, 37, 200
American Civil War, 26, 28, 42, 199
Angus,
