Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Charles Melville Hays
[1]Prior to 1896, ranchers of western Canada claimed that if farmers tried to cultivate the soil in the Northwest, they would face being “frozen out, hailed out, or eaten out by grasshoppers."[1] [2] In fact, 300,000,000 acres of exceptionally fertile soil for growing grain was discovered there resulting in a phenomenal increase in migration to the Northwest of Canada between 1896 and 1906.
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In 1907, Charles Saunders tested a new frost resistant strain of wheat called Marquis at Indian Head, Saskatchewan. The variety was a sensation and caused the Canadian wheat harvest to grow in value from $6 million in 1900 to $45 million in 1915. Western Canada was advertised as “Britain’s granary“ and “The flour barrel of the world.”[2 [4]] [4]
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Charles M. Hays, an American working for the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, oversaw construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific's western line. He served as general manager and president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, and was elected president of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1909.
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway’s western route was set between the 50th and 55th parallels to take advantage of the near level configuration of land at that latitude. Hays determined from surveys done in the 1870s that the route would promote traffic of resources of timber, coal, and mineral deposits. The 1,743 mile route shaped trade and settlement patterns over a large portion of the Pacific Slope. The Western division was subdivided into two sections, the Prairie Section from Winnipeg to Wolf Creek and the Mountain Section from Wolf Creek to Prince Rupert at Kaien Island.
Hays chose Kaien Island as the Pacific terminus because it was 1,900 miles closer to Asia where he anticipated a growing and profitable trade. The terminus was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine following a naming competition.The trade did not come in that century even though the average freighter could make three more trans-Pacific crossings in a year from Prince Rupert than from Vancouver and five more than from San Francisco. The trouble with the plan was that little or no outward cargo existed.[3] [6]
Surveyor Norman Jacobs observed:
Thousands of men poured across the American border-without money or knowledge of the country swarmed out west of Edmonton along the located line of the GTP having heard across the line that work was to be had for the asking.Contractors have no funds to pay off the men.[4] [7]
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Jacobs continued:
Country is in a fearful state of excitement of the coming [1908] elections and we are in the middle of the bitterest fought political campaign the country ever had. It interests us very much owing to the fact that it is a railroad fight pure and simple all other issues sinking into insignificance beside the question of the Grand Trunk Pacific, The Yukon and Pacific, and the Hudson’s Bay Railway. It seems certain that whichever party gets in will build the Hudson’s Bay route and as this will cut the distance between Europe and the Orient by 1100 miles it will seriously affect the American transcontinentals which is a very satisfactory state of affairs.[5] [12]
Despite Jacobs's optimism at the level of interest in rail building, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway faced untenable economic pressures. Legal entanglements, labor issues, cost overruns, and persistent mismanagement plagued the company. Construction delays allowed competitors to consolidate their hold on prairie traffic and the Grand Trunk Pacific did not attract the volume of freight needed for profitable operations. The outbreak of the First World War, compounding internal disruption caused by Hays's death, placed further stress upon the company.[6] [13]Having been bankrupt since 1919, the Grand Trunk Pacific was forced in 1923 to merge with the Grand Trunk Railway, the National Transcontinental Railway, and the Canadian Northern Railway to form the new Canadian National Railway.
Charles Hays died on the Titanic in 1912, however his vision of opening Prince Rupert, BC as a terminus for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was finally realized in 2005. The Financial Times reported, “Asia Trade Boom Offers Canadian Town Chance to Realise Founder’s Vision.”[7] [14] What was nicknamed “Hays’ Orphan” is now a thriving container terminal owned by Maher Terminals Holding Co. and functioning as Hays imagined: a deep ice free natural port with ships using the Great Circle routes towards the North pole, making Prince Rupert nineteen hours sailing time closer to Asia than Los Angeles. Asian goods are off-loaded from ships on to Canadian National rail cars that travel the rails built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to markets in the mid-west.
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