The creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway was undertaken as the National Dream by the
Conservative government of
John A. Macdonald, together with mining magnate
Alexander Tilloch Galt. As a condition for joining the
Canadian Confederation,
British Columbia had insisted on a transport link to the East, with the rest of the Confederation. In 1873, Macdonald, among other high-ranking politicians, bribed in the
Pacific Scandal, granted contracts to the Canada Pacific Railway Company, which was unrelated to the current company, as opposed to the Inter-Ocean Railway Company, which was thought to have connections to the
Northern Pacific Railway Company in the United States. In 1867, the year of Canada's
Confederation,
US Secretary of State William H. Seward surmised that the whole North American continent "shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American Union." After this scandal, the Conservatives were removed from power, and
Alexander Mackenzie, the new
Liberal prime minister, ordered construction of the railway under the supervision of the Department of Public Works. Enabled by the CPR Act of 1874, work began in 1875 on the Lake Superior to Manitoba section of the CPR. The ceremonial sod-turning at Westfort on June 1, 1875, was prominently reported in the June 10 edition of the Toronto
Globe. It noted that a crowd of "upwards of 500 ladies and gentlemen" gathered to celebrate the event on the left bank of the Kaministiquia River in the District of Thunder Bay, about four miles upriver from Fort William. Macdonald would later return as prime minister in 1878 and adopt a more aggressive construction policy. Bonds were floated in
London and called for tenders to complete sections of the railway in British Columbia. American contractor
Andrew Onderdonk was selected, and his men began construction on May 15, 1880. In October 1880, a new consortium signed a contract with the Macdonald government, agreeing to build the railway for $25 million in credit and of land. In addition, the government defrayed surveying costs and exempted the railway from property taxes for 20 years. Once completed in 1882 with a last spike at Feist Lake, near
Vermilion Bay, Ontario, the line was turned over to the newly minted private Canadian Pacific Railway company. In 1883, the first wheat shipment from Manitoba was transported over this line to the Lakehead (Fort William and Port Arthur) on Lake Superior. A
beaver was chosen as the railway's logo in honour of
Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, who had risen from factor to governor of the
Hudson's Bay Company over a lengthy career in the beaver fur trade.
Building the railway, 1881–1886 , 1883 Building the railway took over four years. The Canadian Pacific Railway began its westward expansion from
Bonfield, Ontario, where the first spike was driven into a sunken railway tie. That was the point where the
Canada Central Railway (CCR) extension ended. The CCR started in Brockville and extended to Pembroke. It then followed a westward route along the
Ottawa River and continued to Mattawa at the confluence of the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers. It then proceeded to Bonfield. It was presumed that the railway would travel through the rich "fertile belt" of the
North Saskatchewan River Valley and cross the
Rocky Mountains via the
Yellowhead Pass. However, a more southerly route across the arid
Palliser's Triangle in the
District of Assiniboia and via
Kicking Horse Pass and down the
Field Hill to the
Rocky Mountain Trench was chosen. In 1881, construction progressed at a pace too slow for the railway's officials who, in 1882, hired the renowned railway executive
William Cornelius Van Horne to oversee construction. Van Horne stated that he would have of main line built in 1882. Floods delayed the start of the construction season, but over of main line, as well as sidings and branch lines, were built that year. The Thunder Bay branch (west from
Fort William) was completed in June 1882 by the Department of Railways and Canals and turned over to the company in May 1883. Construction reached Calgary in the North-West Territories'
District of Alberta by August 1883, and regular service to Winnipeg, Manitoba, was established by December 1883. By the end of 1883, the railway had reached the Rocky Mountains, just east of Kicking Horse Pass. The treacherous of railway west of Fort William was completed by Purcell & Company, headed by "Canada's wealthiest and greatest railroad contractor," industrialist
Hugh Ryan. Many thousands of
navvies worked on the railway. Many were
European immigrants. An unknown number of
Stoney Nakoda also assisted in track laying and construction work in the Kicking Horse Pass region. In British Columbia, government contractors eventually hired 17,000 workers from China, known as "
coolies". After months of hard labour, they could net as little as $16 ($ in adjusted for inflation) Chinese labourers in British Columbia made only between 75¢ and $1.25 a day, paid in rice mats, and not including expenses, leaving barely anything to send home. They did the most dangerous construction jobs, such as working with
explosives to clear tunnels through rock. The exact number of Chinese workers who died is unknown, but historians estimate the number is between 600 and 800. By 1883, railway construction was progressing rapidly, but the CPR was in danger of running out of funds. In response, on January 31, 1884, the government passed the Railway Relief Bill, providing a further $22.5 million in loans to the CPR. The bill received royal assent on March 6, 1884. In March 1885, the
North-West Rebellion broke out in the
District of Saskatchewan. Van Horne, in
Ottawa at the time, suggested to the government that the CPR could transport troops to
Qu'Appelle in the
District of Assiniboia in 10 days. Some sections of track were incomplete or had not been used before, but the trip to Winnipeg was made in nine days and the rebellion quickly suppressed. Controversially, the government subsequently reorganized the CPR's debt and provided a further $5 million loan. This money was desperately needed by the CPR. Even with Van Horne's support with moving troops to Qu'Appelle, the government still delayed in giving its support to CPR, due to Macdonald pressuring George Stephen for additional benefits. On November 7, 1885, the
last spike was driven at
Craigellachie, British Columbia by one of the CPR directors, Donald Smith. In Eastern Canada, the CPR had created a network of lines reaching from
Quebec City to
St. Thomas, Ontario, by 1885 mainly by buying the
Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa & Occidental Railway from the Quebec government and by creating a new railway company, the
Ontario and Quebec Railway (O&Q). It also launched a fleet of Great Lakes ships to link its terminals. Through the O&Q, the CPR had effected purchases and long-term leases of several railways, and built a line between
Perth, Ontario, and
Toronto (completed on May 5, 1884) to connect these acquisitions. The CPR obtained a
999-year lease on the O&Q on January 4, 1884. In 1895, it acquired a minority interest in the
Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway, giving it a link to New York and the Northeast United States. , later known as
Lord Strathcona, drives the last spike of the CPR, at
Craigellachie, November 7, 1885. Completion of the transcontinental railway was a condition of BC's entry into
Confederation.
1886–1900 The first transcontinental passenger train departed from
Montreal's
Dalhousie Station, at Berri Street and Notre Dame Street, at 8 pm on June 28, 1886, and arrived at
Port Moody at noon on July 4. This train consisted of two baggage cars, a mail car, one second-class coach, two immigrant sleepers, two first-class coaches, two sleeping cars and a diner (several dining cars were used throughout the journey, as they were removed from the train during the night, with another one added the next morning). By that time, however, the CPR had decided to move its western terminus from Port Moody to
Granville, which was renamed "Vancouver" later that year. The first official train destined for Vancouver arrived on May 23, 1887, although the line had already been in use for three months. The CPR quickly became profitable, and all loans from the federal government were repaid years ahead of time. In 1888, a branch line was opened between
Sudbury and
Sault Ste. Marie where the CPR connected with the American railway system and its own steamships. That same year, work was started on a line from
London, Ontario, to the Canada–US border at
Windsor, Ontario. That line opened on June 12, 1890. The CPR also leased the
New Brunswick Railway in 1891 for 991 years, and built the
International Railway of Maine, connecting Montreal with
Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1889. The connection with Saint John on the Atlantic coast made the CPR the first truly transcontinental railway company in Canada and permitted trans-Atlantic cargo and passenger services to continue year-round when
sea ice in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence closed the port of Montreal during the winter months. By 1896, competition with the
Great Northern Railway for traffic in southern British Columbia forced the CPR to construct a second line across the province, south of the original line. Van Horne, now president of the CPR, asked for government aid, and the government agreed to provide around $3.6 million to construct a railway from
Lethbridge, Alberta, through
Crowsnest Pass to the south shore of
Kootenay Lake, in exchange for the CPR agreeing to reduce freight rates in perpetuity for key commodities shipped in Western Canada. on June 30, 1886 The controversial Crowsnest Pass Agreement effectively locked the eastbound rate on grain products and westbound rates on certain "settlers' effects" at the 1897 level. Although temporarily suspended during the
First World War, it was not until 1983 that the "
Crow Rate" was permanently replaced by the
Western Grain Transportation Act, which allowed the gradual increase of
grain shipping prices. The Crowsnest Pass line opened on June 18, 1898, and followed a complicated route through the maze of valleys and passes in southern British Columbia, rejoining the original mainline at
Hope after crossing the
Cascade Mountains via
Coquihalla Pass. The Southern Mainline, generally known as the
Kettle Valley Railway in British Columbia, was built in response to the booming mining and smelting economy in southern British Columbia, and the tendency of the local geography to encourage and enable easier access from neighbouring US states than from Vancouver or the rest of Canada, which was viewed to be as much of a threat to national security as it was to the province's control of its own resources. The local passenger service was re-routed to this new southerly line, which connected numerous emergent small cities across the region. Independent railways and subsidiaries that were eventually merged into the CPR in connection with this route were the
Shuswap and Okanagan Railway, the
Kaslo and Slocan Railway, the
Columbia and Kootenay Railway, the
Columbia and Western Railway and various others. To transport immigrants, Canadian Pacific developed a fleet of over a thousand
Colonist cars, low-budget sleeper cars designed to transport immigrant families from eastern Canadian seaports to the west.
1901–1914 During the first decade of the 20th century, the CPR continued to build more lines. In 1908, the CPR opened a line connecting Toronto with
Sudbury. Several operational improvements were also made to the railway in Western Canada. On November 3, 1909, the
Lethbridge Viaduct over the
Oldman River valley at
Lethbridge, Alberta, was opened. It is long and, at its maximum, high, making it one of the longest railway bridges in Canada. In 1916, the CPR replaced its line through
Rogers Pass, which was prone to
avalanches (the
most serious of which killed 62 men in 1910) with the
Connaught Tunnel, an eight-kilometre-long (5-mile) tunnel under
Mount Macdonald that was, at the time of its opening, the longest railway tunnel in the
Western Hemisphere. On January 21, 1910, a
passenger train derailed on the CPR line at the
Spanish River bridge at
Nairn, Ontario (near
Sudbury), killing at least 43. On January 3, 1912, the CPR acquired the
Dominion Atlantic Railway, a railway that ran in western
Nova Scotia. This acquisition gave the CPR a connection to
Halifax, a significant port on the Atlantic Ocean. The CPR acquired the
Quebec Central Railway on December 14, 1912.
First World War During the First World War, CPR put the entire resources of the "world's greatest travel system" at the disposal of the
British Empire, not only trains and tracks, but also its ships, shops, hotels, telegraphs and, above all, its people. Aiding the war effort meant transporting and billeting troops; building and supplying arms and munitions; arming, lending and selling ships. Fifty-two CPR ships were pressed into service during World War I, carrying more than a million troops and passengers and four million tons of cargo. Twenty seven survived and returned to CPR. CPR also helped the war effort with money and jobs. CPR made loans and guarantees to the Allies of some $100 million. As a lasting tribute, CPR commissioned three statues and 23 memorial tablets to commemorate the efforts of those who fought and those who died in the war. After the war, the Federal government created
Canadian National Railways (CNR, later CN) out of several bankrupt railways that fell into government hands during and after the war. CNR would become the main competitor to the CPR in Canada. In 1923,
Henry Worth Thornton replaced
David Blyth Hanna becoming the second president of the CNR, and his competition spurred
Edward Wentworth Beatty, the first Canadian-born president of the CPR, to action. During this time the railway land grants were formalized.
Great Depression and the Second World War, 1929–1945 , 1935 The
Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until 1939, hit many companies heavily. While the CPR was affected, it was not affected to the extent of its rival CNR because it, unlike the CNR, was debt-free. The CPR scaled back on some of its passenger and freight services and stopped issuing dividends to its shareholders after 1932. Hard times led to the creation of new political parties such as the
Social Credit movement and the
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, as well as popular protest in the form of the
On-to-Ottawa Trek. One highlight of the late 1930s, both for the railway and for Canada, was the visit of
King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth during their
1939 royal tour of Canada, the first time that the reigning monarch had visited the country. The CPR and the CNR shared the honours of pulling the royal train across the country, with the CPR undertaking the westbound journey from Quebec City to Vancouver. Later that year, the Second World War began. As it had done in World War I, the CPR devoted much of its resources to the war effort. It retooled its
Angus Shops in Montreal to produce
Valentine tanks and other armoured vehicles, and transported troops and resources across the country. Additionally, 22 of the CPR's ships went to war, 12 of which were sunk.
1946–1978 logo was used from 1968 to 1987, when it fell out of favour. It was sometimes referred to as the '
Pac-Man' logo, after the popular 1980s video game of the same name. After the Second World War, the transportation industry in Canada changed. Where railways had previously provided almost universal freight and passenger services, cars, trucks and
airplanes started to take traffic away from railways. This naturally helped the CPR's air and trucking operations, and the railway's freight operations continued to thrive hauling resource traffic and bulk commodities. However, passenger trains quickly became unprofitable. During the 1950s, the railway introduced new innovations in passenger service. In 1955, it introduced
The Canadian, a new luxury transcontinental train. However, in the 1960s, the company started to pull out of passenger services, ending services on many of its branch lines. It also discontinued its secondary transcontinental train
The Dominion in 1966, and in 1970, unsuccessfully applied to discontinue
The Canadian. For the next eight years, it continued to apply to discontinue the service, and service on
The Canadian declined markedly. On October 29, 1978, CP Rail transferred its passenger services to
Via Rail, a new federal
Crown corporation that is responsible for managing all intercity passenger service formerly handled by both CP Rail and CN. Via eventually took almost all of its passenger trains, including
The Canadian, off CP's lines. In 1968, as part of a corporate reorganization, each of the major operations, including its rail operations, were organized as separate subsidiaries. The name of the railway was changed to CP Rail, and the parent company changed its name to
Canadian Pacific Limited in 1971. Its air, express, telecommunications, hotel and real estate holdings were spun off, and ownership of all of the companies transferred to Canadian Pacific Investments. The slogan was: "TO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD". The company discarded its beaver logo, adopting the new
Multimark (which, when mirrored by an adjacent "multi-mark" creates a diamond appearance on a globe) that was used – with a different colour background – for each of its operations.
1979–2001 The 1979 Mississauga train derailment On November 10, 1979, a
derailment of a hazardous materials train in
Mississauga, Ontario, led to the evacuation of 200,000 people; there were no fatalities. Mississauga Mayor
Hazel McCallion threatened to sue Canadian Pacific for the derailment. Part of the compromise was to accept GO Transit commuter rail service along the Galt Subdivision corridor up to
Milton, Ontario. Limited trains ran along the Milton line on weekdays only. Expansions to
Cambridge, Ontario may be coming in the future. In 1984, CP Rail commenced construction of the
Mount Macdonald Tunnel to augment the
Connaught Tunnel under the
Selkirk Mountains. The first revenue train passed through the tunnel in 1988. At 14.7 km (nine miles), it is the longest tunnel in the Americas. During the 1980s, the
Soo Line Railroad, in which CP Rail still owned a controlling interest, underwent several changes. It acquired the
Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway in 1982. Then on February 21, 1985, the Soo Line obtained a controlling interest in the bankrupt
Milwaukee Road, merging it into its system on January 1, 1986. Also in 1980, Canadian Pacific bought out the controlling interests of the
Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway (TH&B) from
Conrail and molded it into the Canadian Pacific System, dissolving the TH&B's name from the books in 1985. In 1987, most of CPR's trackage in the
Great Lakes region, including much of the original Soo Line, were spun off into a new railway, the
Wisconsin Central, which was subsequently purchased by
CN. Influenced by the
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989, which liberalized trade between the two nations, the CPR's expansion continued during the early 1990s: CP Rail gained full control of the Soo Line in 1990, adding the "System" to the former's name, and bought the
Delaware and Hudson Railway in 1991. These two acquisitions gave CP Rail routes to the major American cities of
Chicago (via the Soo Line and Milwaukee Road as part of its historically logical route) and
New York City (via the D&H). During the 1990s, both CP Rail and CN attempted unsuccessfully to buy out the eastern assets of the other, so as to permit further rationalization. In 1996, CP Rail moved its head office from Windsor Station in Montreal to Gulf Canada Square in Calgary and changed its name back to Canadian Pacific Railway. A new subsidiary company, the
St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway, was created to operate its money-losing lines in eastern North America, covering
Quebec, Southern and
Eastern Ontario, trackage rights to
Chicago, Illinois, (on
Norfolk Southern lines from
Detroit) as well as the
Delaware and Hudson Railway in the northeastern United States. However, the new subsidiary, threatened with being sold off and free to innovate, quickly spun off money-losing track to short lines, instituted scheduled freight service, and produced an unexpected turn-around in profitability. On 1 January 2001 the StL&H was formally amalgamated with the CP Rail system.
2001 to 2023 In 2001, the CPR's parent company,
Canadian Pacific Limited, spun off its five subsidiaries, including the CPR, into independent companies. In September 2007, CPR announced it was acquiring the
Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad from London-based
Electra Private Equity. The merger was completed as of October 31, 2008. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. trains resumed regular operations on June 1, 2012, after a nine-day strike by some 4,800 locomotive engineers, conductors and traffic controllers who walked off the job on May 23, stalling Canadian freight traffic and costing the economy an estimated (). The strike ended with a government back-to-work bill forcing both sides to come to a
binding agreement. On July 6, 2013, a unit train of
crude oil which CP had subcontracted to short-line operator
Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway derailed in Lac-Mégantic, killing 47. On August 14, 2013, the Quebec government added the CPR, along with lessor
World Fuel Services (WFS), to the list of corporate entities from which it seeks reimbursement for the environmental cleanup of the Lac-Mégantic derailment. On October 12, 2014, it was reported that Canadian Pacific had tried to enter into a merger with American railway
CSX, but was unsuccessful. In 2015–16 Canadian Pacific sought to merge with American railway
Norfolk Southern. and wanted to have a shareholder vote on it. CP ultimately terminated its efforts to merge on April 11, 2016. On February 4, 2019, a loaded grain train ran away from the siding at Partridge just above the Upper Spiral Tunnel in
Kicking Horse Pass. The 112-car grain train with three locomotives derailed into the Kicking Horse River just after the Trans Canada Highway overpass. The three crew members on the lead locomotive were killed. The
Canadian Pacific Police Service (CPPS) investigated the fatal derailment. It later came to light that, although Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel said that the
RCMP "retain jurisdiction" over the investigation, the RCMP wrote that "it never had jurisdiction because the crash happened on CP property". On January 26, 2020, Canadian current affairs program
The Fifth Estate broadcast an episode on the derailment, and the next day the Canadian
Transportation Safety Board (TSB) called for the RCMP to investigate as lead investigator Don Crawford said, "There is enough to suspect there's negligence here and it needs to be investigated by the proper authority". On February 4, 2020, the TSB demoted its lead investigator in the crash probe after his superiors decided these comments were "completely inappropriate". The TSB stated that it "does not share the view of the lead safety investigator". The CPPS say they did a thorough investigation into the actions of the crew, which is now closed and resulted in no charges, while the
Alberta Federation of Labour and the
Teamsters Canada Rail Conference called for an independent police probe. On November 20, 2019, it was announced that Canadian Pacific would purchase the
Central Maine and Quebec Railway from
Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors. The line has had a series of different owners since being spun off of the Canadian Pacific in 1995. The first operator was the
Canadian American Railroad a division of
Iron Road Railways. In 2002 the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic took over operations after CDAC declared bankruptcy. The Central, Maine and Quebec Railway started operations in 2014 after the MMA declared bankruptcy due to the Lac-Mégantic derailment. On this new acquisition, CP CEO Keith Creel remarked that this gives CP a true coast-to-coast network across Canada and an increased presence in New England. On June 4, 2020; Canadian Pacific bought the Central Maine and Quebec.
Merger with Kansas City Southern (2021–2023) On March 21, 2021, CP announced that it was planning to purchase the
Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) for US$29 billion. The US
Surface Transportation Board (STB) would first have to approve the purchase, which was expected to be completed by the middle of 2022. However, a competing cash and stock offer was later made by Canadian National Railway (CN) on April 20 at $33.7 billion. On 13 May, KCS announced that they planned to accept the merger offer from CN, but would give CP until May 21 to come up with a higher bid. On May 21, KCS and CN agreed to a merger. However, CN's merger attempt was blocked by a STB ruling in August that the company could not use a voting trust to assume control of KCS, due to concerns about potentially reduced competition in the railroad industry. On September 12, KCS accepted a new $31 billion offer from CP. Though CP's offer was lower than the offer made by CN, the STB permitted CP to use a voting trust to take control of KCS. That approval came on March 15, 2023, which permitted the railroads to merge as soon as April 14. On April 14, 2023, KCS officially became a subsidiary of CPR, and CPR with its subsidiaries began conducting business under the name of its parent company,
Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC). ==Freight trains==