The Great Plains from Texas to Canada, where many ranchers raised cattle in the late 1800s, became known as the Cattle Kingdom.Ī railroad that would cross the continent and connect the East to the West.Ĭongress required the two completed rail lines to connect at Promontory, Utah. This made settlers move west since they all wanted to get GOLD. In 1859 miner Henry Comstock discovered a huge deposit of gold and silver in Nevada. If the argument is accepted that the railway created Canada by spanning the continent, the Last Spike was the symbolic moment of the country’s completion.Click here to study/print these flashcards.Ĭreate your own flash cards! Sign up here. Of the transcontinental line, Pierre Berton coined the phrase “national dream” to describe the railway, which he portrayed as a heroic endeavour without which Canada would In his two-volume history of the construction Which won a Governor General’s Award in 1952 and which depicts the railway as a force for national unity. Pratt wrote a book-length poem about the railway, Towards the Last Spike, Even though William Van Horne insisted that the CPR “was built for the purpose of making money for the shareholders,” and was not a nation-building exercise, the idea that the railway made Canada possible by joining the two ends of the country has been an enduring one. The hammering of the Last Spike is regarded as one of Canada’s most symbolic events. Arriving too late to join the conflict, he headed back west, where he started his own business in the summer ofġ885, delivering newspapers and supplies by pony between Eagle Pass and Farwell,Ī few years after the Last Spike was driven, Mallandaine helped establish the town of Creston, BC, on Kootenay Lake. He had just arrived atĬraigellachie the night before and pushed his way to the front of the crowd during the ceremony, appearing at the centre of the iconic photographs.īefore the Last Spike ceremony, Mallandaine had quit school in Victoria, BC, to join Canadianįorces fighting to put down the North-West Rebellion. Mallandaine was 18 years old when the photo was taken. The famous photographs of the Last Spike ceremony depict such historic figures as CPR director Donald Smith (driving the spike), CPR general manager William Van Horne (behind Smith’s right shoulder) and Sandford Fleming (with white beard and wearing a top hat). Standing directly behind Smith is a young man named Edward Mallandaine, who is sometimes referred to as the Craigellachie Kid. No Chinese labourer is present in any of the iconic photographs of the Last Spike ceremony. Some 15,000 Chinese labourers helped build the CPR - in particular the section in British Columbia - working in harsh conditions and for half the pay of their White co-workers. MacBeth, in his book about the railway, was suggesting that there should be a copy of a Last Spike photograph on the wall of every schoolroom in the country because it captured “the The CPR disseminated reproductions of them widely, and by 1924, historian R.G. The photographs became almost instant classics. They were taken by Alexander Ross, a Calgary photographer, who happened to be on site and was pressed into action when the expected photographer, Cornelius Soule, did not arrive. It is sometimes said that the photographs of the event are the most famous or iconic in Canadian history. You just can’t be 100 per cent sure and that is very often the case.” It seems like a reasonable conclusion to make. David Morrison, director of archeology and history at the Canadian Museum of Civilization told the Globe and Mail in 2012: “There is a plausible line of provenance. At some point, it was fashioned as a silver-plated handle to a carving knife and is said to be stored in a safety depositīox in Winnipeg. Some believe that the missing spike fell into the hands of a Canadian patent officer in Ottawa, who passed it down to his children. It was exchanged for a fourth spike, which remained in place. It eventually ended up in the CPR president’s office in Montréal,įrom where it disappeared in the 1940s. The iron spike that Smith successfully drove into place was pulled out following the ceremony to discourage souvenir hunters. Remained in Smith’s family until 1985, when his great-grandson donated it to Canadian Pacific, which in turn presented it to the National Museum of Science and Technology (now the Canada Science and Technology Museum). Horne's heirs donated the relic to the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History).ĭonald Smith received the bent spike as a memento and later had pieces of it fashioned into decorative pins. Lansdowne later mounted the ceremonial spike on a granite base. Governor General Lord Lansdowne had planned to attend the Last Spike ceremony, bringing with him a silver spike prepared for the occasion, but he was called back to Ottawa.
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