Priests and Passes: Father Lacombe, Chief Crowfoot, and their CPR lifetime passes

Father Albert Lacombe looms large in the early history of Western Canada. Born in St. Sulpiche, Lower Canada, he left for the West in 1850, when he took a posting in Pembina, joining the Metis on the buffalo hunt the following year.  In 1853, Lacombe was sent further into Rupert's Land, to assume a position at Lac St. Anne, and several years later he set up an mission at St. Albert for indigenous people in the Fort Edmonton area. While the evangelical efforts of religious orders have received their fair share of condemnation for their role in the colonial project of nation building, there are also a few connections between Lacombe and the actual construction of the iron road.

Lacombe's direct involvement with the railway may have begun in 1880, as the transcontinental line was just beginning to be extended across the prairies.  As Raymond Huel notes in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, "he assumed responsibility for ministering to railway workers along a section of the transcontinental line being built east of Winnipeg, and in the camps he found that blasphemy, drunkenness, and immorality were rife. 'My God, send me back to my old Indian mission,' he wrote in his diary."

File number: NA-4209-2
Title: Father Albert Lacombe en route to Calgary from Blackfoot reserve, Alberta.
Date: Autumn 1884

Lacombe's role as "railway worker" continued into 1883.  As surveyors plotted the location of the line near Blackfoot Crossing, Lacombe negotiated with the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) chiefs, giving them gifts of sugar, tobacco, tea, and flour, relaying that Lt. Gov. Edward Dewdney would hear their protests personally.

Pierre Berton's popular history The Last Spike recalls that the directors of the CPR were so pleased with Lacombe's ability to clear the grade of indigenous resistance that they made the priest president of the CPR for an hour.  Lacombe decided to immediately grant himself two lifetime passes on the railroad, and free transport of goods for Oblate missions.  Not stopping there, he also guaranteed himself free use of the telegraph for life.  The directors were reportedly more than happy to afford him the privileges.

Lacombe was said to loan his passes out rather frequently, and one humorous incident, recorded by Berton, is worth repeating:

"On one occasion the two passes, which became familiar along the line, were presented by two nuns, newly arrived in the west.  'May I ask,' the conductor politely inquired, 'which one of you is Father Lacombe?' He let the blushing sisters go on their way."

"Blackfeet at Earnscliffe." 1886  Father Lacombe at centre, standing.
"Front row", left to right: North Axe, Peigan Chief, One Spot, Blood sub-chief. "Middle row", left to right: Three Bulls, half brother of Crowfoot, Crowfoot, Blackfoot Chief, Red Cloud, Blood Chief. "Back row", left to right: Father Lacombe, John L'Heureux, interpreter. Credit: Canada. Dept. of the Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-045666

Interestingly enough, there was already a precedent for the gifting of a lifetime pass for negotiations surrounding this very territory. Chief Crowfoot's pass is among the interesting articles exhibited in the recently updated Canadian History Hall at Ottawa's Canadian Museum of History. Isapo-Muxika (Crowfoot) was granted this permanent ticket in 1877 for his help in the successful negotiation for the route of the main line through Blackfoot territory. These gifts suggest great trepidation on the part of the railway directors when it came to crossing the lands occupied by the Siksika (Blackfoot). That same year, the Siksika were granted their reserve at Blackfoot Crossing, which the CPR's main line crosses to this day.

These two lifetime passes seem to be the only ones recorded, but perhaps there were more? Crowfoot is said to have worn his around the neck for the rest of his life, suggesting it served as a symbol of his role as intermediary between the two cultures. It would be interesting to know if there are any other lifetime passes which still exist, or if Lacombe's pass has survived the years.

Brandon's First Restaurant...and Domestic Badger

Ken Storie. Winnipeg Times,Nov. 15, 1881

The tale of the founding of what Pierre Berton referred to as the first of the C.P.R. towns is that of a rustic backwater, soon flooded by profit-seeking speculators.  Like many other railway towns, the CPR's great powers of site location would decide who would get rich from the Brandon boom. In 1881, Brandon, Manitoba was little more than a tent city, but real estate fuelled expansion  would soon see the foundations laid for a major prairie grain hub.

Early Brandon is portrayed by Berton as the romantic epitome of the Old West.  The initial post office was reportedly quite austere.  This bastion of civilization and primary contact with the outside world was limited to a soap box with a hole in it, which sat outside the postman's tent.


Berton's characterization of fine dining in Brandon is worth quoting in full:

The first restaurant was a plank laid across two barrels on the trail that was to become Pacific Avenue.  The proprietor was an eccentric, white-bearded cockney named Tom Spence whose entire stock consisted of a keg of cider, a bottle of lime juice, a couple of pails of water, and two drinking glasses.  To attract trade, Spence had chained a live badger to a nearby post, 'just far enough from the counter to be unable to bite the customers.' (Berton, The Last Spike, p.30)

Title: Collection of small animal heads mounted on wall plaques.
Date: [ca. 1893]Photographer: Smyth, S.A., Calgary, Alberta

Early Brandon makes good fodder for the nostalgic lover of the bygone West.  Berton is in his element describing clap-board sidewalks, and rough frontier living.  While the bison and coyote usually take the spotlight in the western genre, it is good to see some other furry friends get their due.  In Berton's anecdote, and on a curious 1890s taxidermy display in Calgary, the noble badger is preeminent among the pantheon of prairie critters.

 

Sir William Cornelius Van Horne: Prankster, Builder, and Irreverant Pleasure Seeker

William Van Horne was a central figure in the development of the Canadian West.  An American that refused a knighthood three times, before finally accepting the title in 1894, Van Horne worked his way up from modest means. As his father passed away while the boy was young, Van Horne accepted a menial job with a telegraph company.  (Canadian Stories, Kevin Patterson)


One anecdote of these early years related by Kevin Patterson shows that Van Horne could be a bit of a prankster:

Once he ran a ground wire from his employer's office to a steel plate in the [] railway yards - which could be seen from the office he was working in. The wire being charged with electricity, would shock anyone who stepped on it. This was an amusing spectacle for William until his boss stepped on the plate and unlike William's other victims knew about electricity. William was given a serious reprimand for his actions and shown the door.  (Canadian Stories)

Van Horne seen to the left of hammerer Donald Smith.  Van Horne gazes casually down at the completion of the road.

The energetic Van Horne did not let his dismissal stop him from climbing the ranks in the railway business, and he was soon an acknowledged expert in organization and construction.  His role as General Manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway served to solidify his historical reputation, and he posed for the  the most recognized photograph in Canadian history as Donald Smith pounded in the last spike of the road.  As of June 2012, Van Horne's descendants have returned the ceremonial last spike to the public, and it will be held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Glenbow Museum Image No: NA-4432-1
Title: Portrait of W.C. Van Horne.
Date: June 1910

Pierre Berton notes in his popular work The Last Spike that the secret to Van Horne's incredible stamina was explained simply by the man who rose to the CPR's presidency:

"I eat all I can; I drink all I can; I smoke all I can; and I don't give a damn for anything."

Perhaps not an encouraging motto for youngsters.

Glenbow MuseumFile number: NA-2864-1771b-6a
Title: Van Horne students work on school mural, Calgary, Alberta.
Date: May 1967

As a final trivial tidbit, the song Van Horne, by Calgary rock band Chixdiggit!, has absolutely nothing to do with Van Horne himself, and probably refers to a teenage romance surrounding Van Horne high school in north-west Calgary.

Calgary City Development, Fun Facts from 1883-1914

Beverly A. Sandalack and Andrei Nicolai's The Calgary Project: urban form/ urban life (2006) plots the planning and development of Calgary from its beginnings to the present and even speculates on the future for the sprawling metropolis.  The initial stage of Calgarian development was shaped by the Canadian Pacific Railway's selection of the southern route through the new city, and the later placement of major mechanical shops in Ogden.  The fire of 1896 punctuates the early period of urban growth, which ended with the end of large-scale immigration at the outbreak of the Great War.

An interesting feature of Calgary's planning in the early days was the offsetting of Calgary's street grid from the dominion lands survey by three degrees.  As the authors note, the correction of these two grids at certain points in the city makes for interesting spaces. (Sandalack, p.8)  One such correction can be observed in 17th Avenue's Tomkins Park.  The City of Calgary's website notes, "Tomkins Park was established in 1915 on land donated by Henry & Elinor Tomkins."

This map of the streets binding Tomkins Park shows 17th Ave S as a correction line for the offset grid system. Google maps.

 Another interesting factoid of early Calgarian development was the lack of regard for the Bow riverfront as a valuable green space.  In 1886, Peter Prince set up his Eau Claire Lumber Company on what was to become Prince's Island park.  He excavated the head of the peninsula to divert water to a waterwheel which ran the sawmill.  This situation drew other manufacturing interests to nearby lots, and town council would grant remarkable control to the sawmill over the banks of the Bow.  As Sandalack and Nicolai write, "by the end of the century, this attitude of civic indifference to the river was reinforced by periodic floods, log jams, and the tendency of nearby residents to use the south bank of the Bow River as a dumping ground for refuse." (Sandalack, p.9)

Eau Claire lumber mill, Calgary, Alberta. 1880s. Glenbow Musuem and Archives. Image No: NA-1015-2

The Calgary Project provides an interesting overview of the city's development, and contains a number of interesting maps of the greater city and representative neighbourhoods.

A Bath of Bubbly in Brandon: Captain Vivian bathes in his Profits

Few writers can top the late Pierre Berton in the use of colourful anecdotes to add life and interest to the history books.  His work on the construction of the C.P.R.'s main line, The Last Spike, is one of the most readable books in Canadian history.  His account of a certain Captain Vivian, in the heady days of 1881, when the C.P.R. thrust its main line due west from Winnipeg, and real estate speculation was in its heyday, is worth re-telling.  Vivian was English gentry in bearing, sported a gleaming monocle, and spent a thousand pounds on a quarter section near Brandon.  As Berton recounted:

Rosser St. and 6th Ave. Brandon, 1882.   MHS Source: S. J. McKee Archives, Brandon University, Lawrence Stuckey Collection C1

"Vivian sank the entire sum into a quarter section homestead in the Brandon district, which he proceeded to sell at inflated prices.  By February he was said to be worth four hundred thousand dollars.  Unable to drink up all the champagne he had purchased, he filled a bathtub with it and invited his friends to watch him splash about.  The affair cost him seven hundred and fifty dollars."


Berton reports that the Brandon real estate boom was so sudden that no cemetery was planned and the dead had to be shipped back to Winnipeg.

James Jerome Hill: A Bit of a Pirate

JJ Hill, by Getty.  Inc.com

One of the founding members of the Canadian Pacific Railway is given a colourful introduction in Pierre Berton's classic popular history The Last Spike (1971).  Berton notes that Hill was, "a tougher and rougher specimen than his colleagues.  With his single, burning eye, his short, lion's beard and long mane, he looked like a bit of a pirate, which, in truth, he was."  As a child of nine Hill had lost his eye in an accident.  In his youth he had to work as a clerk in an Upper Canadian grocery store to help his impoverished family.  In 1856 Hill would begin to build his railway empire from scratch.  He moved to the booming city of St. Paul, and soon began his own shipping company.  This meagre start was the base for numerous railway interests.  In 1874, he teamed together with Donald Smith, Norman Kittson, and George Stephen to complete the St. Paul and Pacific railway to the Canadian border.  This partnership would lead to his eventual position on the board of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Berton attributes the decision-making of Hill, who had been convinced by naturalist John Macoun that the southern prairies were inhabitable, as instrumental in selecting the southern route through Calgary and the yet to be explored Kicking Horse Pass, instead of along the old settlements on the North Saskatchewan River.  The original route, surveyed by Sandford Fleming, bore northwest from Selkirk, Manitoba (near Winnipeg), and continued through Battleford and the Yellowhead pass.  Due to the selection of the southerly route, the nascent communities of Brandon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Calgary were all to flourish into metropolitan centres on the northern Great Plains.

The southern route was also more ideally located to curb competition from the closest American railway, the Northern Pacific, and any other Canadian railways that may have emerged when the CPR monopoly clause, which prohibited railways building within 15 miles of the international border, ran out.

MHS

A central tenant of Hill's railway philosophy was that the first railway through the frontier would generate its own business.  As Hill claimed, "if we build this road across the prairie, we will carry every pound of supplies that the settlers want and we will carry every pound of produce that the settlers wish to sell, so that we will have freight both ways."

Hill would leave the CPR in 1883, due to the mismanagement of the Manitoba line, which Hill felt was neglected due to the larger projects of the CPR.  In 1889 the Manitoba line would become the Great Northern railway, and grow to dominate the northern American plains to the Pacific.  Hill is regarded as one of the greatest empire builders of nineteenth century North American business.

Canadian Encyclopedia Article on Hill

Forming of Brandon: C.P.R Real Estate Control

Pierre Berton's The Last Spike contains numerous examples to prove that real estate speculation was a major facet in the development of Canada's prairie west.  The forming of the town of Brandon shows how the Canadian Pacific Railway shaped the region, and thwarted speculators and homesteaders alike in order to maximize its own profits on land sales.  In 1881, the decision to build the CPR's southern route towards the yet to be discovered Kicking Horse Pass had been made.  Those who were savvy to the needs of the railroad knew that a divisional point would be needed about one hundred and thirty miles west of Winnipeg, where a settlement on the Assiniboine river by the name of Grand Valley was already situated.

Settlement Stories from Manitoba.  Ken Storie.

Thomas Rosser. MHS.

The McVicar brothers were first settlers in the area, coming in 1879.  Farming the area for two years, the McVicar's were visited two years later by US Civil war veteran, General  Thomas L. Rosser, the engineer who was surveying the route.  Rosser offered the brothers a healthy sum of money (Pierre Berton notes in The Last Spike that the amount varies from $25,000 to $50,000), but John McVicar, despite being flabbergasted by the huge sum, was convinced by some neighbours to hold out for more money and perhaps even interests in future sales.  General Rosser reportedly replied to this counteroffer, "I'll be damned if a town of any kind is ever built here."

True to his word, no divisional point was set up at Grand Valley, and the town of Brandon emerged two miles further west.  Berton reports that it was later proven that Rosser and other CPR officials were in fact speculating in real estate themselves, making personal profit off inside knowledge of future station locations.

 Ken Storie's Settlement Stories from Manitoba. has great detail and further pictures, maps and newsclippings of Grand Valley and Brandon during the railway era.

Major Rogers Cusses a Blue Streak

Rogers.  Explorer and Cusser.  Train Web

Major Albert Bowman Rogers is deeply entrenched in Canadian history for the discovery of a railway route through the mountain pass that bears his name.  Pierre Berton's Last Spike characterizes Rogers as a hard travelling man who could survive on some hard tack and a plug of tobacco for long periods in the bush.  Rogers was no shrinking violet, and his demeanour could best be described as gruff.

An incident in 1881 serves to illuminate the colourful language spat when Rogers rode into a survey crew's Bow River camp. The top engineer, Hyndman, was the unfortunate recipient of Rogers' ire.  Rocky Mountain outfitter and guide Tom Wilson noted that he had the honour of leading Rogers, described as the "tattered creature on the scarecrow horse", to the man's tent.

"'What's your altitude?' [Rogers] shot at Hyndman.  The engineer stammered that he did not know. 'Blue Jesus!  Been here several days and don't know the altitude yet.  You _____!' There followed what Wilson described as 'wonderful exhibition of scientific cussing [which] busted wide all of Hyndman's 'Holy Commandments' and inspired delighted snickers and chuckles of admiration from the men who had quickly gathered around.'"

Buy your Own Blue Jesus at room322shop

Pierre Berton had to guess at what expletive came after the word "Blue", as Wilson had edited it out of his memoirs.  Berton explains that, "it is doubtful that he would have censored so mild a word as 'blazes' (and equally doubtful that the Major himself would have lapsed into such a euphemism), I have filled in the blank with the most obvious expletive." "Blue Jesus", seems to be a fitting 1880s epithet. One is left to wonder what term Rogers used to call Hyndman at the end of the statement.  There is so many options that Berton didn't even wager a guess and left the expletive blank.

"You _____!"

Harold Innis drops a footnote

 When Harold A. Innis wants to cite some evidence on the power relationships between late nineteenth capitalists, he does so with authority.  His 1923 work, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is a dense economic history which argues that the company brought civilization to the Canadian West at the cost of Westerners.  Note that not only does the single footnote on American railway interests run for three pages, the sentence which it provides evidence for, has a further two footnotes!

Four pages Professor Innis?! Your passion for the politico-economic background to the Pacific Scandal has no bounds!

The Coronation of George V and the Naming of Central Albertan Towns

A: Veteran, Alberta

The arbitrary nature of the names of numerous prairie towns is a topic considered here before.  The Canadian Pacific Railway could choose the names it liked for its stations, and the subsequent names of the towns that sprung up around its communications hubs seldom altered these epithets.  A series of towns in central Alberta display a patriotic impulse behind the naming of some stations.  The coronation of George V in 1911 was the occasion seized for the names of: Throne; Veteran; Loyalist; Consort; and Coronation.

George V Coronation PostCard. Nova Scotia Archives.

Frances Swyringa, in the work Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies (2010) notes that a handful of Manitoba settlements also found British inspiration for drawing their names.  Baden, Powell and Mafeking were all named in honour of that famous Imperial officer, and the site of his great victory in the Boer War.  In the Siege of Mafeking, Robert Baden-Powell used a number of young boys to send messages and fulfill other non-combat roles, which would later lend inspiration to the scouting movement.

Retlaw, Alberta, The C.P.R., and the Naming of Prairie Towns

A: Location of Retlaw Alberta

Due to the Canadian Pacific Railroad's massive influence on Canada's prairie West, there is no surprise that the company's station names can still be found on maps long after branch-lines have fallen into disuse and communities withered.

Retlaw, Alberta, is a prime example.  Until 1913, the area was referred to as "Barney", and that name graced the local post-office.  It was in that year that the iron road came to the area.  Apparently, "Barney" was just not dignified enough for railway executives.  The renaming of this town can be linked to a certain Walter R. Baker.  Walter was an official of the CPR, and had served as the private secretary to Canada's governor general.  Apparently Walter was an important enough personage to have his name granted to one of the CPR's railway station.  To further obscure the origins of this name, however, the powers that be flipped things on their head and named the station "Retlaw", which to the meanest intellect at the slightest reflection, is indeed Walter, spelled backwards.



To further prove the arbitrary nature of the names of a number of prairie towns, we only need to observe those headed north-west from Retlaw: Enchant, Travers, Lomond and Armada.  The first letters in these small grain hubs all lead us back(wards) to WALTER.  The last station, never built, was to be named Waldeck.

Retlaw NWMP 1916. Glenbow Archives

Retlaw had a fairly brief existence.  After the Great War, population numbers peaked at 250, which included the surrounding farmers.  In 1925 crops were especially poor, and the exodus from the area began.  Visitors to the town now will observe only a couple permanent residents.  What was once a bustling town with a bank, several cafes, grain elevators, hotel and North-West Mounted Police detachment, has now been all but eroded by the elements.

Retlaw Hotel 1914. Glenbow Archives.

A Local Historian has preserved  Retlaw's History

Retlaw is included in my online Ghost Towns of Alberta guidebook from Geotourism Canada.

“ALTAPOP: Alberta’s Annual Official Population List Publication (1960 to present).” Alberta Population. http://www.altapop.ca/opl.htm.

Aubrey, Merrily K. Concise Place Names of Alberta. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006.  

Fryer, Harold. Ghost Towns of Alberta. Langley: Stagecoach Publishing Co. Ltd., 1976.

“Walter spelled backwards | Forgotten Alberta.” http://forgottenalberta.com/2010/08/09/walter-spelled-backwards/.