William Cornelius Van Horne
| Sir William Cornelius Van Horne | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1843-02-03 Frankfort (near Chelsea), Illinois |
| Died | 1915-09-11 Montreal, Quebec (buried Joliet, Illinois) |
| Occupation | Railway builder and general manager; capitalist; artist |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Partner | |
Sir William Cornelius Van Horne (3 February 1843 – 11 September 1915 (aged 72)) was an American-born railway builder and capitalist who served as general manager and later president of the Canadian Pacific Railway during the construction and early operation of Canada's first transcontinental railway.
Early life
Van Horne was born on 3 February 1843 near Chelsea (Frankfort), Illinois, the son of Cornelius Covenhoven Van Horne, a lawyer and farmer, and Mary Minier Richards, who was of German and French-Pennsylvanian descent. The family carried Dutch ancestry tracing back to North America in the 1630s. They relocated to Joliet, Illinois, in 1851. His father died when Van Horne was about eleven years old, and he subsequently took on work to support himself, learning telegraphy as a messenger with a telegraph company.[1]
At about fourteen, Van Horne was expelled from school after creating unflattering caricatures of his principal and never returned to formal education. He secured employment at the Illinois Central Railroad's telegraph office, beginning a lifelong career in railways.[1]
Railway career in the United States
Van Horne advanced rapidly through various positions in American railways. While working for the Michigan Central Railroad, the sight of a superintendent's private railway car spurred his ambition to rise to that rank. A notable incident — rigging a metal plate in freight yards to deliver electric shocks, stunning the shop foreman — earned him a dismissal. By 1862 he was ticket agent at the Chicago and Alton Railroad's Joliet office, eventually rising to divisional superintendent.[1]
In 1872, the Chicago and Alton acquired the struggling St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern railway, and Van Horne became its general superintendent, substantially improving its profitability before its 1874 sale. He was subsequently appointed general manager of the Chicago and Alton, and in 1877 became president of the Southern Minnesota Railway, transforming it into a productive operation. By 1878 he had returned to oversee the parent Chicago and Alton line as superintendent.[1]
Van Horne married Lucy Adaline Hurd of Joliet, Illinois, in March 1867. They had two sons (one of whom died in childhood) and one daughter.
Canadian Pacific Railway
General Manager, 1882–1888
In 1880, James J. Hill and a Montreal-based syndicate including George Stephen signed a contract with the Canadian government to build the transcontinental Pacific railway. Construction began on 2 May 1881. The early American managers — Alpheus Beede Stickney as general superintendent of western construction and Thomas Lafayette Rosser as chief engineer — proved inadequate, and Hill discovered both were engaged in private land speculation that damaged company interests. Stickney retired in October 1881.[1]
Hill recommended Van Horne to replace him, writing to Stephen: "I have never met anyone who is better informed in the various departments: Machinery, Cars, Operations, Train Service, Construction and general policy." Van Horne arrived in Winnipeg on 31 December 1881 and assumed the general manager's duties on 2 January 1882. He immediately pledged to lay 500 miles of prairie track that year — a rate unprecedented in railway history. The target was driven by the CPR's financing structure: government subsidies were earned only upon inspection and opening of completed sections, meaning speed was essential to fund the costly mountain work ahead.[1]
Van Horne transferred his office and residence to Montreal in 1882. He organized a mobile labour corps under his direct control for rapid deployment and supervised construction through a network of trusted managers he personally selected, granting them considerable autonomy while holding them strictly accountable.[1]
Within a month of arriving, Van Horne dismissed Rosser upon gathering sufficient evidence of land speculation. Contractors whose performance disappointed him were replaced; in Ontario, he substituted Harry Braithwaite Abbott for the Canada Central contractor when progress was inadequate. John Egan, a former associate from the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, received superintendence of the western division.[1]
Construction financing for the main line was routed through a CPR shell company, the North American Railway Contracting Company, incorporated in New Jersey, which exchanged unissued CPR stocks and bonds for construction work. When it failed financially in 1883, the CPR became its own contractor. James Ross managed mountain section construction from Calgary to the western contractor's terminus; John Ross (unrelated) oversaw the Lake Superior north section.[1]
The Lake Superior north section
One of the most consequential decisions of the CPR's construction period concerned the Lake Superior north shore line — approximately one thousand miles of Canadian Shield terrain that generated virtually no local traffic and whose profitability depended entirely on large through-traffic volumes from the rest of the system. James J. Hill and other directors favoured postponing this all-Canadian route and renegotiating its contractual requirement. Van Horne strongly opposed delay, insisting the government's requirement for an all-Canadian connection be met and recognizing the strategic necessity of independence from Hill's St. Paul, over which virtually all CPR western construction materials moved until the Lake Superior line was complete.[1]
John Ross managed the Superior western portion but never fully earned Van Horne's confidence. James Worthington, who oversaw the eastern Superior section (formerly Canada Central construction), resigned in May 1884 following a disagreement. John Ross resigned in spring 1885. Harry Abbott replaced both and took charge of the eastern Superior section, working closely with Van Horne during the critical final push.[1]
During the North-West Resistance of spring 1885, Van Horne organized troop and supply movements over the partially completed Lake Superior line with precision and speed that astonished military observers, earning the government's gratitude and securing the subsidies and loan guarantees needed to complete the main line. The final rail on the Superior section was laid on 16 May 1885. Six months later, on 7 November 1885, Donald Alexander Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia. Van Horne was elected to the board on 14 May 1885 and appointed vice-president alongside his general manager duties.[1]
Route decisions
Two major route decisions shaped the CPR's character. The first was a southerly route change across the prairies and through the Rocky Mountains via the Kicking Horse Pass — located by Albert Bowman Rogers — rather than the originally recommended Yellowhead Pass. This was primarily Hill's decision and was intended to guard against Canadian traffic diversion to the rival Northern Pacific Railroad. The second was Van Horne's insistence on completing the Lake Superior north line without delay, as described above.[1]
Presidency, 1888–1899
Van Horne assumed the CPR presidency on 7 August 1888 following George Stephen's retirement. The monopoly charter provision that had been a persistent grievance for Manitoba was repealed federally that year, and Van Horne used the compensation funds to acquire two southern border railways: the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste Marie and the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic. These gave the CPR alternative routes south of Lake Superior during freight-rate wars with American carriers, allowing it to contest traffic to and from the Canadian west and American northwest. Hill viewed these acquisitions as an invasion of his territory, and tensions between the two men persisted throughout Van Horne's presidency.[1]
During his presidency Van Horne directed the completion of CPR branches linking the northern prairies, western Manitoba, southwestern Ontario, and the Atlantic provinces. He also led negotiations in 1896–97 with Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's new Liberal government over a subsidized line through the Crowsnest Pass into British Columbia's Kootenay mining region, countering James J. Hill's competing lines. These negotiations produced construction and the historic Crowsnest Pass Agreement of 1897, which lowered CPR prairie freight rates and contributed to agricultural expansion in the west.[1]
Van Horne received an honorary KCMG in 1894. He resigned the CPR presidency on 12 June 1899 at the age of fifty-six, citing the diminishing challenge of managing an established railway versus building one. He retained a seat on the board until 1910.[1]
Cuba and later business interests
After leaving the CPR presidency Van Horne pursued a large railway project in Cuba, where Spanish colonial rule had ended following American intervention in 1898. He incorporated the Cuba Company in New Jersey in 1900 and began constructing a trunk line across the island, acquiring land and circumventing the military government's charter restrictions by building across privately owned plantation tracts. The Cuba Company (renamed Cuba Railroad Company in 1902) invested in sugar mills, hotels, harbour facilities, town sites, and colonization programs modelled on CPR development patterns, establishing headquarters at Camagüey.[1]
Van Horne also participated in a range of other enterprises during this period, including urban electric tramway projects in several Canadian cities and various ventures in Britain, the Caribbean, and South America, often in partnership with capitalists Benjamin Franklin Pearson and Frederick Stark Pearson. He served as director of at least forty companies over his career and invested in many more, becoming one of Canada's wealthiest individuals. Business interests included Canadian Salt, Laurentide Paper, Dominion Iron and Steel, and western flour-milling and elevator companies.[1]
Personal life and collections
Van Horne was physically imposing — tall, heavily built, and possessed of exceptional energy. He built a large home on Rue Sherbrooke in Montreal, maintained a summer estate at Ministers Island, New Brunswick (which he called Covenhoven), kept a hacienda and experimental farm near Camagüey in Cuba, and earlier operated a 7,000-acre stock-breeding farm at East Selkirk, Manitoba.[1]
An avid collector since relocating to Montreal, Van Horne assembled what several critics regarded as one of Canada's finest private art collections, strong in old Dutch and Flemish masters and in French, English, Spanish, and American painters. He also accumulated one of North America's most significant collections of ancient Asian — particularly Japanese — ceramics, donating a substantial portion to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. His interest in Japanese art, combined with CPR efforts promoting Pacific trade, earned him special invitations from the Japanese emperor.[1]
Van Horne was himself an artist of note: a competent violinist and a prolific painter who worked quickly in his Montreal studio, typically at night. He began drawing as a child by copying a geological textbook he could not afford to purchase, and the caricature skill that ended his formal schooling found lifelong expression in technical sketches and illustrations accompanying his correspondence.[1]
Death
Van Horne was stricken by rheumatism in late 1913 and by early 1914 required crutches. He died on 11 September 1915 in Montreal. A Unitarian service was held at his Sherbrooke Street home, and a special Canadian Pacific Railway train transported his body to Joliet, Illinois, for burial at Oakwood Cemetery.[1]
In Papers and Records (1967)
A plaque to Van Horne, who as CPR general manager (from 1881) had Prince Arthur's Landing renamed Port Arthur, was unveiled in Port Arthur on 4 August 1961 by Mayor Norman Wilson and 96-year-old retired CPR employee John A. Walker.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 Theodore D. Regehr."Theodore D. Regehr, "Van Horne, William Cornelius," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).1998.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)
- ↑ "Unveiling of Historic Plaques", Papers to 1967, Centennial issue (Thunder Bay Historical Society, 1967), p. 35. Archived: datum.locker.