Just west of Revelstoke 140 years ago, Sir Donald A. Smith made history at the small settlement of Craigellachie, driving the final spike into the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR)’s tracks on Nov. 7, 1885.
That moment — after four years of construction, 20,000 kilometres of track and six years ahead of schedule — marked the uniting of Canada coast to coast in its early days as a nation.
According to local historian Doug Mayer, who’s heavily involved with the Revelstoke Railway Museum and Revelstoke Model Train Club, “the completion of the railway was a big deal for the City of Revelstoke.”
Not only might the town not still exist today if it weren’t for the CPR, Revelstoke benefitted as an instrumental hub for maintenance, repair and dispatch for a 250-mile division from Kamloops to Field.
“Revelstoke is considered to be a very important location on the railway by upper management,” Mayer wrote by email. “Many times over the years, special events were organized to take place here.”
Tom Parkin, who grew up in Revelstoke and worked for the CPR in his summers before becoming a Parks Canada biologist and Canadian railway historian, emphasized that “the railway’s significance is still national.”
Shortly after the driving of the last spike, “they did carry the dignitaries in an official train all the way to the coast,” he said, adding military supplies were also delivered from Halifax to Esquimalt via the new CPR.
One painting by C.W. Jeffreys depicts Prime Minister John A. Macdonald standing on the exterior platform of a train in 1886, passing through the Rockies and Columbia Mountains with a peak penetrating the background. Parkin identified this as Mount Sir Donald in Glacier National Park.
However, the CPR experienced closures early on in areas such as Rogers Pass, due to a lack of infrastructure for excavating deep snow, he noted.
Parkin recently became the first Canadian to earn the David P. Morgan Article Award from the U.S. Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, for a series he wrote about a forgotten quarry that supplied stone for CPR construction and memorials.
One site he researched, a sturdy stone archway at Cascade Creek in Glacier’s east end, became a point of fascination when Parkin collected an engineer’s notebook detailing the construction process over seven or eight years.
“It’s withstood avalanches for 127 years,” he remarked of the archway, which today is difficult to access due to the original trail no longer being maintained.
While Revelstoke’s railway-scape is nearly unrecognizable now from a century ago, Parkin said the city remains a prime site for enthusiasts to admire trains.
“The way the town has evolved is a pleasure for me to see, even as a rail fan,” he said. “The significance of our two national railways (CPKC and CN Rail), I think, is diminished in the public domain. Railways are critically important to the economy of the country.”
Moreover, Rogers Pass — one of the CPR’s most challenging stretches for locomotives to traverse — remains decorated with names of key railroaders.
The pass itself was named for railway surveyor Major Albert Bowman Rogers, who helped first find it, while the one-mile Mount Shaughnessy Tunnel took the name of Thomas Shaughnessy, a mastermind behind the railway. Railway general manager William Cornelius Van Horne, an early proponent for forging a direct route through the Selkirk Mountains, is commemorated today by the Van Horne Range not far away near Field.
“Many of the engineers who built the railway have locations on the railway that are named for them,” Mayer said. “There are far too many to list.”
Fifty kilometres west at Craigellachie, where the Last Spike monument was expanded and moved slightly following the CPR’s centennial celebration in 1985, the site today displays a large plinth with rocks from every Canadian province, Mayer described. The monument continues to be restored in partnership with the Revelstoke Railway Museum.
Ten years from now, Mayer said it’s quite likely CPKC will throw a special 150th anniversary celebration at Craigellachie for the Last Spike.