On August 25, 1899, Karl arrived in Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba.
Manitoba was Canada’s fifth province, but at that time, it was one-eighteenth of its current area — a mere 100 square miles and was known as the “postage stamp province”. It was the starting place for the expansion of Canada’s western provinces due to the economic prosperity from the production of grains and the arrival of the railway.
The railway was the backbone that ultimately led to the Confederation of Canada uniting the Dominion of Canada with the Territories. The railway was called the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), led by General Manager William Van Horne*, and the first train arrived in Winnipeg over the Red River Bridge in 1881. The politicians believed if a railway could be constructed from the east coast of Canada to the west coast, it could unify the country. By the end of the summer of 1882, Van Horne succeeded in laying 673 kilometres of track across the Prairies. In November 1885, the last spike was placed at Craigellachie, B.C.
The railway ignited Canada’s economy, providing an efficient mode of transport for goods and people and promoting travel across this newly formed country. Additionally, the railway led to an influx of new workers and citizens. Labourers were needed to construct the railway and settlers were required to live and work in the Prairie provinces.
In 1899, the Immigration Branch of the Federal government and the railway companies created promotional publications to attract people to relocate to western Canada. The materials had photographs of idyllic farms with happy families, advertising that “living is cheap, the climate is good; education and land are free.” Between 1896 and 1914, more than two million immigrants arrived from Europe and the United States. Roughly 15% of Canada’s population was immigrants. The majority of immigrants (57%) were from Great Britain, 19% from America, 4% from Germany, and 2.5% from China.
Upon arriving in Canada, many of these immigrants were exploited by their employers and experienced impoverished living conditions. In particular, this was the case for 17,000 Chinese labourers from the province of Kwangtung who were employed to help build Canada’s railway. The Chinese workers completed the construction on a 400km section of track in British Columbia. They received less money than their white counterparts and also had to pay for their food and gear. Before laying any of the track, this section of the railway required breaking up the rock through the mountains. The Chinese workers were tasked with this job and had to handle nitroglycerin, needed to blast the tunnels. It’s said that one Chinese worker died for every mile of track laid. But in total, it’s estimated that 4,000 died from the blasts, landslides, disease, cold, and malnutrition while working in those unsafe conditions.
When Karl arrived in Winnipeg, the rights of those Chinese workers and expectations of safe working conditions would have been an unheard of. The privileges in Canada afforded to white men and the systemic discriminatory practices, let alone the notion of Human Rights was, unfamiliar. This dark part of our Canadian history is one of many ugly truths of how we have adversely impacted other human beings in this country.
*Oh, Mr Van Horne, we meet again! Do you recall, dear reader, that we met Sir William Van Horne, President of the Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R). in Karl Chronicles #19, Horsepower and Megawatts, I shared an excerpt from the Truro Daily News where Karl described a construction project at Grand Falls attributed to a company that included Mr. Van Horne. Then, in Karl Chronicles #21 Sidetracked at Minister’s Island, we learned more about Mr. Van Horne and his estate in New Brunswick that applied his experience in the design of Château Lake Louise in Alberta and Château Frontenac in Quebec City. Also, in Karl Chronicles #35, Behind the Scenes at Château Frontenac where we learned that Van Horne chose the hotel’s location to entice elite travellers to stay at the lavish hotel, then venture on the C.P.R. rail across Canada to another city and hopefully another C.P.R. hotel.
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