DO YOU see that rough man with a key in his hand? It looks like a spade, you say—and so it is; but it is doing the work of a key. He strikes it into the soil; he digs up a sod. That is all you observe, till your imagination awakes—and then you see that he is opening the door of the West. He has turned the first sod of a railway line from the East.
The saving of the West from destruction, the swift suppression of revolt when delay might have rallied all the Indians to the rebel flag, was only made possible by the railway. But when the railway was planned there was no idea that it would be needed for such a purpose. It was not built for its military value.
True, the safeguarding of our country and our Empire in case of war had always been one aim of those far-sighted men who looked forward to a transcontinental railway on British soil. Such a line, enabling troops and munitions to be carried from Atlantic to Pacific in a few days, would clearly be a priceless advantage, and might even be the deciding factor in a life and death struggle; we know the immense help it gave in the life and death struggle we were plunged into a few years ago.
Yet the reasons which decided Canada to carry out this tremendous railway scheme were wholly peaceful—to open up a land of homes for loyal people on the plains, and to join the East and Centre with the farthest West; to unite our scattered little communities in one great Dominion.
There was only one thing uniting these three regions—a sentiment. They all knew and felt that they were members of one great brotherhood, the royal republic known as the British Empire. The British Columbians could have “paddled their own canoe” and remained separate from the Canadians if they had wanted; but they did not want. Their legislature unanimously and wisely voted in favor of federating with the newly formed Dominion of Canada in 1871—on condition that within ten years a railway should be built connecting that far western province with the railway system of Eastern Canada.
The colony on the Pacific, with a small population, hemmed in both north and south, would have found it hard to maintain an independent existence if she had not joined forces with her fellow-countrymen in the East.