They Routed the Rockies

The Province – Feb 3, 1945

They Routed the Rockies

Railway Pathfinders Forged Steel Links from East With West

By B.A. McKelvie

Canada does not yet appreciate the immensity of the task that the young Dominion undertook in constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway across the prairie wilderness and through the barrier ranges of the Rockies. This undertaking was especially daring and hazardous, demanding vision, courage and determination – not only on the part of individuals, but by financiers and the Government of Canada.

There was no known pass through the Rocky Mountains that might be utilized for a railway grade. Fur traders had used several passes in their travels, but this did not mean that such routes could be followed by rail transportation. Construction was actually well advanced from the east when a pass was located and adopted.

Those who today travel in ease from Winnipeg to Vancouver can hardly realize the heroic character of the work done by men who pioneered the way for them, fighting nature herself, risking life and suffering starvation and the perils of a wild land in order to find a feasible route for a transcontinental.

It is only from the modest narratives of those who actually took part in exploring the Rocky Mountains that the difficulties, the dangers and the hardships of these “Makers of Canada” may be glimpsed.

The last of the famous pathfinders is A.E. Tregent, well-known pioneer business man of Vancouver, who is spending the winter at the Empress Hotel, Victoria. Big of fame, straight in stature and direct in manner, Mr. Treget typifies the spirit of the men of his younger days who dared the unknown and made the unification of Canada possible. Like so many of his kind, he does not like talking about himself, and makes light of his own experiences.

He was living in Windsor, Ont., when he decided to go west in 1880. He went to Winnipeg. “A mudding place it was, not much like the great city of today,” he commented, and then digressed to lay tribute to Col. Garnet Wolseley (later Field Marshal Lord Wolseley) and his gallant men of the expedition from Canada n 1870 to put down the Red River rebellion.

“I don’t think that Canada has ever fully appreciated the enormous task that those men undertook in transporting an army from the head of the lakes to Winnipeg. They had to make their own roads. As an armed force they could not go by way of the United States. They had to go overland. It was an heroic feat, and the Dominion should always remember it.”

At Winnipeg Mr. Tregent engaged in engineering for a time. He was employed to help lay out a section of swampy land that later became part of the city. He had just completed this work when he was asked if he would like to join a party going to seek a pass through the Rocky Mountains. He agreed.

Mr. Tregent Tells His Story

“It was a party being organized under an engineer named Hyndman, who was working for the Dominion Government. He had been practicing in India and knew nothing of Western Canada. His party was to meet Major A.B. Rogers from B.C.,” Mr. Tregent related.

“Fifty of us volunteered to join the staff. We went by the United States, travelling by the Northern Pacific to Bismark and 600 miles by river steamer on the Missouri to Fort Benton. The boats were the same as those which Mark Twain used to navigate and from which he took his nom-de-plume.

“From Fort Benton we walked the Bow River, where Calgary is now, some 200 miles. I recall that there was a little place near Calgary named Moriville, a Methodist missionary and his wife and brother were the only inhabitants. At Morville we divided the staff of 48 into four parties of 12. Each party was to proceed independently to find a feasible pass. In October three of the parties arrived in Calgary, saying that they could find no means of getting through. Thus, it became the Kicking Horse Pass – or failure.

“My party started for the Kicking Horse Pass. My job was to push on ahead, to blaze a pack trail which the rest of the party and horses could use. I was young, active and enthusiastic, and when one day after we left Calgary an axeman fainted I took his axe.

“I did not know much about chopping. I made a swing at a tree, the axe rebounded and cut a piece out of my foot. This was serious. There were no facilities for carrying wounded men with the party and no medicines. So it was decided to leave me on an island in the Bow River. A gun was necessary was there were bears about; in fact, the day previous to my being hurt the cook at the camp lassoed one!

“I did not like being left alone, so after several hours I gathered balsam from the trees and plastered it over the would. Then I tied my socks around it and started after the others. I walked as much as I could in the water. Evidently this was the proper treatment, for after four or five days my foot healed.

“We pushed on up the Kicking Horse Pass and found it feasible. Back in Moriville we met Major Rogers who has found his way from B.C. to this point, and we told him of our work and the pass we had found; and on this information he went to Fort Benton in horseback and telegraphed to the C.P.R. at Montreal.

“At that time the C.P.R. syndicate was in financial difficulties. They were behind in pay to the men. George Stephen (later Lord Mount Stephen), W.C. Van Horne and others of the group went to ask for assistance from the government. They asked for $10,000,000. Sir John A. Macdonald answered that the government would not last ten minutes if it advanced ten million. After argument, however he agreed to advance one million. Van Horne left the meeting and sent the celebrated telegram: “Got a million, make it look like ten million and sent the pay-car out.”

One of those Days When C.P.R. Pressed for Cash

“I relate this to show the desperate straits that the company was in. They were trying at that time to get a loan of $50,000,000 in London. Financial advisers of the syndicate in London said that if a feasible pass could be found the money could be secured. Rogers’ telegram that the Kicking Horse could be used with a maximum 2 per cent grade secured the money. Actually the last few miles at the summit of the pass was nearer 4 per cent, and required pusher engines to each four cars. Later the spiral tunnels were made, and the Kicking Horse Pass is still being utilized.

“Rogers was a queer man; lots of bluff and bluster. He was a little fellow with side whiskers, and his idea of a fully equipped camp was to have a lot of beans. He would lake a handkerchief, fill it with beans, put a piece of bacon on top, tie the four corners and start off.

“He got a $5000 cheque as bonus for finding the pass, and he did not cash it. Several years later the company sent someone out to hunt him up and get him to cash it, as it was being carried on the books. He had it framed and it was only after argument and he had been promised a duplicate to frame that he agreed to do so.

“it was in September, 1881, that we finished our work. Then we started to walk back to Winnipeg. It was a terrible trip, sleeping in snow every night. The cold was intense, anything from 10 degrees below. We walked some 800 miles before we reached Winnipeg.

“The Marquis of Lorne, Governor-General had made a trip through the west the previous summer with an escort of mounted police, and we found some boats that had been made for him by the Hudson’s Bay Company. We took these thinking that we could go as far as we could with them, then portage them over to the Saskatchewan and so on down to Lake Winnipeg.

“It was getting late, however, and one night we froze in. We were still on the Bow. Unfortunately we had stopped where old Crowfoot the warrior chief was camped with about 2000 Blackfoot Indian braves. The old chief was hostile. He had met the Governor-General, who knew nothing about Indians, and Crowfoot had asked him for ‘a box that made music’ (a Piano) and for a buggy. And the Governor, probably without thinking, had promised them to him. When they did not come immediately Crowfoot was angry; the tribe was hostile.

“the following night we heard the whole Indian camp in turmoil. The tom-toms had been going for some hours, indicating that a big potlatch was being held. In the morning they appeared in a long line with painted faces, and pipe-clayed hair, and naked down to the waist although snow was on the ground. They started firing their rifles to intimidate us, but no one was hurt. They robbed us of food, and thus the day passed.

“The next morning we crept out a 4 o’clock and made for Fort Walsh, the Mounted Police post near the boundary line. The reason they did not follow us, we heard afterwards, was that their attention was diverted by the arrival of some government cattle. These they killed and ate raw. After seven days living on flour and tea and ploughing through snow, we reached the fort. Nothing further happened and we arrived in Winnipeg on December 23. It was a terrible journey, but we made it all right.”

And this pathfinder of Canada’s west concluded: “So you see I have not much of a story to tell. We just had a job to do and we did it.”