Free The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 by Pierre Berton Page A

Begg, a journalist and CPR employee, charged in a pamphlet of his own that the periodical had lent its columns for the purpose of enabling the Grand Trunk “to make a violent attack upon a new corporation, the Canadian Pacific, which it insists upon regarding as its deadly enemy, and dangerous rival.”
    There was no doubt in George Stephen’s mind about who was behind the press attack. “The G.T.R . is bound to do all the harm they can,” he wrote to Macdonald. “They are now a through line to Chicago and interestedin drawing the traffic of the North West to that city and will do all they can to that end.…” Stephen was seriously contemplating going to England himself to educate English investors regarding the land grant bonds: “I mean to make ‘John Bull’ buy these bonds by sending orders to this side for them at a premium.”
    Stephen, as his letters to the Prime Minister reveal, was a far more complicated man than his outward appearance suggested. To the world he presented the picture of suave good manners – a flawlessly tailored executive, courtly in bearing and rather solemn. But he was also an emotional man, and temperamental to boot; those who were not passionately devoted to the cause of the railway were seen to be enemies, traitors, blackguards, and cowards. Such terms cropped up constantly in his astonishingly garrulous correspondence with Macdonald, almost all of it scrawled in Stephen’s own sloping hand.
    Galt, the High Commissioner, who had been angling unsuccessfully that spring for a post with the railway, was in the enemy’s camp as far as Stephen was concerned. “The Diogenes pamphlet has evidently scared him,” the CPR president advised Macdonald that winter. “We have had it here in these two weeks and no one cares a cent for it and Galt’s simulated anxiety lest we should find ourselves short is wasted. The disreputable method adopted by the subsidized Grand Trunk scribblers to discredit the country, the Governor General and the CPR company, will end in nothing but mischief to the GTR . Galt having done his friends, Barings [and] Glyn, a service and placed himself under obligation to them and the GTR , it is not to be expected he would be mildly agitated if we get into trouble. As to his judgment in our financial arrangements … it is simply an impertinence for him to write to you and say that he forsooth, thinks we are mistaken if we do not need to come to London for money. What does he know about it? … It makes me mad to have a fellow pretending to advise us for our good who would gladly see us both busted.”
    Stephen urged Macdonald to write to the High Commissioner to tell him that “we have seen all that has been written by the tools of his G.T.R . friends, and have not thought it worth while noticing any of the attacks that have been made … and that so far as you can learn, we are confident of our ability to carry out the contract of the Government in half the stipulated time, without asking London for a cent.…”
    Macdonald, who did not care greatly for Galt, felt it necessary to defend him from these attacks. Stephen, however, would have none of it. “I agree with you in what you say about Galt,” he replied, “but in regard to us, individually, he is controlled by an other element of his character … envy. … He would like to see the C.P.R . a success for the sake of the venture he has embarked in.” Stephen was referring to Galt’s attempt to raise money to exploit the coal-fields which his son had helped discover in the foothills of the Rockies near the site of the future city of Lethbridge.
    Galt was, however, a minor worry. Stephen saw himself beset on all sides by more formidable forces intent on crushing the CPR . One of these was the Northern Pacific, whose dynamic new president, Henry Villard, seemed determined to thrust his rapidly expanding railway into the Canadian North West. Villard was one of those phenomenal business successes thrown