Calgary & Southern Alberta

Historian Donald Creighton has portrayed the CPR as an instrument of nation building. This image has had a long history. It originated with those who witnessed the incredible feat of constructing the CPR and it is still visible in the works of recent writers. Certainly, this nation-building image has some validity. To a nineteenth century Canadian looking west, the CPR was a practical transportation link critical to the process of making Canada a truly independent, transcontinental nation. As important as the railway was as a mode of transportation and a carrier of "civilisation", it also served another important purpose. It was a source of profit for investors. To residents in Western Canada the railway's moneymaking strategies were often an obstacle to personal prosperity. Westerners thus tended to view the CPR as a symbol of exploitation and oppression.

CPR Locomotive Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection Lethbridge Promotional Poster Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

While the CPR had supporters in the West, they were often a distinct minority. An old prairie story tells of a western farmer who watched the district's bumper wheat crop ruined by hail, and realised that his dreams of paying his bills and buying new shoes for his children had vanished. Turning to the sky, he roared, "Damn the CPR". At one time or another, most Albertans complained about the railway. Cattlemen, who depended upon the railway to export their product, fumed about the lack of freight cars, the inefficiency of the stockyards, the poor handling of cattle, and, most of all, the high freight rates. For decades, wheat farmers also rallied against high freight rates, which they saw as unfair and exploitative. For most agrarian settlers, though, transport problems paled beside other difficulties. Farm immigrants often decided to come to the West on the basis of the CPR's promotional literature or colonisation schemes. Once they arrived, many discovered that their choices regarding homesteads were limited and controlled by the railway company. The CPR, moreover, sometimes expanded or rented its lands, forcing resident settlers to relocate. As historian Gerald Friesen points out, one source of the CPR's dual image has been the lack of understanding (or unwillingness to admit) that the railway company was both a private, profit-seeking corporation and a government enterprise. Financed and built with private money from a syndicate of Canadian and American entrepreneurs, but regulated by government, the CPR served two masters. Prime Minister Macdonald claimed publicly that the interests of the railway and the Dominion were synonymous. However, according to CPR manager William Cornelius Van Horne, the company's sole purpose was to make money for shareholders. Given this basic dualism in the CPR's structure, it is hardly surprising that among the general public the railway acquired symbolic status as both a nation builder and a regional exploiter.