On the track of historical heroes
It reads like the opening line to a joke: what do you get if you put two Scots, a Canadian and an American together in a room full of politicians? The answer is anything but funny; it's inspiring and somehow wonderful.
Scotsman Donald Smith, who made his reputation with the Hudson's Bay Company, his financier cousin George Stephen, Canadian transport baron James Hill and later US railroad engineer William Cornelius Van Horne were foremost among the creators of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Company to link western Canada with the east in the face of a divided Canadian Parliament.
These men built the transcontinental rail line through the Rocky Mountains, opening up spectacular mountain scenery and uniting, and for ever changing, the young nation of Canada. And they did it in just five years, quite a feat considering the railway's early construction was so dogged by political controversy it took twice as long to take a decision about building the railway than it did to construct it.
Ultimately agreement was reached and the Canadian Railway Bill was passed in 1881. In all, the track from Bonfield in Ontario, where the first spike was driven in 1881, to Craigellachie in British Columbia, where the last spike was hammered in 1885, stretches about 5000km.
It was Hill who decided the track should go through the spectacular Selkirk Mountains' Kicking Horse Pass.
By the time the railway was built, tourism had already begun to make its mark on the world, with the affluent classes of Europe and North America exploring wilderness areas such as the Alps and the American Rockies. In 1872, the US had established the world's first national park, Yellowstone. And in England as early as 1863, Thomas Cook began offering the first package tours to the Alps. Hotels, lodges and villages were built to meet the demand.
Van Horne and his cohorts were not far behind, with the Canadian government at last in full agreement. Plans were drawn up to reserve the still-virgin expanses of the Canadian Rockies while also developing recreational facilities. Canada's first national park, Banff, was established in 1885 and was expanded two years later to become Rocky Mountains Park.
Canada's prime minister Sir John Macdonald supported development in and around the park, authorising the development of town sites and leasing of lots for developers. The CPR led the development with its Banff Springs Hotel in 1888 and Lake Louise Chalet in 1890, which later grew into Chateau Lake Louise. These were the most magnificent of all the CPR hotel developments and even now, when you first see them in their mountain settings, they take your breath away. The two hotels underwent a number of changes over the years, due mainly to a series of devastating fires, but the CPR chose its subsequent architects well and maintained the integrity of the original designs.
These hotels are now all owned by the Fairmont group, which has maintained them as the last word in style and luxury. The cost compares well with prestige Australian hotels and they are understandably popular, so you'll need to book ahead even for the posh rooms. However, finding a table for lunch or dinner doesn't seem to be a problem, even if you're staying somewhere else.
The CPR built many other lodges, including Emerald Lake and Lake O'Hara but the best of them all, Jasper Park lodge, was just an idea until the CPR merged with the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern railways to become the Canadian National Railway (CNR).
The new CNR became a Crown entity, which allowed it to circumvent red tape. Eschewing the great hotels, the CNR's visionary new chief, Sir Henry Thornton (sadly no relation), began building smaller lodges for a new class of tourists - the artists, trampers, riders, climbers and paddlers. He built places like Jasper Park with great style, following the designs of the English Arts and Crafts Movement. While the hotels of Banff Springs and Lake Louise stand out spectacularly in their surroundings, the lodges blend more discreetly into the forests.
Now three million people a year visit the Rocky Mountains parks. In the spirit of the pioneering role of rail, an appropriate way to see the parks is on the CNR's Rocky Mountaineer, or its luxury Royal Canadian Pacific.
Either way, part of the marvel of such a tour is realising the feat of surveying and engineering that made it possible - tens of thousands of men, many of them Chinese labourers, chiselled, drilled and blasted out the mountain passes to make them level enough to take the rail line.
