by Ray Argyle
It had been four years since he had joined the six thousand Chinese coolies — as their White bosses called them — who were brought to Canada to build the railway.
“As soon as they heard I could speak some English, they hired me. My countrymen asked me to speak for them. But that did not relieve me of my share of the work. Whether it was carrying nitroglycerine packed in straw or drilling holes in the rock or hauling away the rock after the blasts, I always did my share.”
Dukesang was slight of build, with black hair and dark eyes. He had a lively look about him, and was quick to make a joke or laugh.
“I have written it all down in my journal, in Mandarin. I want my children and my grandchildren, when they come into the world, to have this record of all the important things that have happened to me here on Gold Mountain.”
Dukesang explained that, as his father’s only son, he had enjoyed many privileges but had also carried many responsibilities back home in China. It was up to him to absorb his lessons in writing, astronomy, and geography, and to learn the ways of peace and harmony that were being passed on to him. Most of all, he had to maintain the family honour, which was important above all else.
When he was still a boy, disaster befell his family. Dukesang’s father was a government official, a judge who settled disputes over land ownership. In the last case he handled, he rendered a decision that cost a family some of its land, and the family took revenge by bribing a servant to poison him at a banquet.
“My mother was beside herself with grief. She committed suicide. It was a great dishonour to our family. She couldn’t be buried in the family cemetery and had to be put to rest in common ground, along with peasants and homeless wanderers. But she left a note for me, which told me to present a good face to the world and to make wise use of my learning.”
Dukesang told Edward how he had travelled to the great capital Peking and on to a city on the North China seacoast. There he got a job tutoring the eldest son of the warlord Sen Yutseng.
“One day while I was meditating in the garden, my eyes fell on a beautiful young girl whose name was Lin. She was the daughter of the neighbour, Yin-Ling. She was too young to marry, but Yin-Ling promised me that this girl would some day be my wife.”
First, however, Dukesang had to wait for Lin to grow up. This would give him time to gain enough wealth to buy land and a home for his bride. So it was that he decided to travel to North America.
In the summer of 1880, Dukesang boarded a small three-masted wooden ship to sail to Portland, Oregon, along with several dozen peasants who were fleeing famine in the south of China. The voyage cost forty dollars each, and many of the poor, landless peasants had raised the money by signing over their children to wealthy farmers for years as servants.
Tea was served once a day, with a hundred grams of rice per person. Once they’d arrived in Portland, everybody was kept on board for another three weeks until they could be given a clean bill of health.
“One of my countrymen wrote a poem about that time, I will recite it for you:
Destitute, no fuel or food,
We borrow money to go abroad.
No matter what we say or do,
The customs men won’t let us through,
Like convicts, locked up in some island cell,
We rail against this unjust hell.”
They were finally allowed onshore to take their first look at this strange, foreign land. Dukesang soon discovered that life on Gold Mountain was nothing like he had expected.
After a damp and chilly winter working odd jobs, relying on what fish he could catch in the Columbia River for food, Dukesang heard about the new railway being built further north. He moved to New Westminster and became a navvy on the Fraser River section of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
“I did all the rough jobs, like breaking rock and helping to drill tunnels through the canyon walls over the river.”
Edward had seen many Chinese workers moving great piles of rock clad only in sandals and thin cotton pants and blouse, and asked Dukesang why they had such poor clothing.
“We have no money to buy anything better. Sometimes, in winter, we wrap burlap bags around our feet. We work twelve hours a day, six days a week and we’re paid seventy-five cents a day. Just half what the White workers get. And we have to provide our own clothing, food, and tools. I had the sad duty of watching many of my friends die. They were just a small number among the hundreds killed by disease and accident.”
Dukesang admitted that he often wondered if this huge project to build a railway across Gold Mountain was not just a wild dream, something that would never be accomplished. But he believed that a civilized man could be distinguished from a barbarian by his quiet acceptance of life’s misfortunes.
Chinese workers, seen in this photo from 1881, faced injury or death every day because of their very dangerous work.
“All the lighter types of work — surveying, supervising the labourers, driving the locomotives — is kept for the Whites. The heavy, dangerous work is left to the Chinese.”
Edward asked Dukesang about the rumours of riots he had heard.
“Yes, there have been riots. One day, a foreman refused to pay the wages owed to two workers he had fired. My countrymen hurled rocks at the foreman and his timekeeper and they both showed blood. That night, our camp was attacked by twenty White men. One Chinese man was killed and many hurt. The White doctor refused to treat them.”
Picking up his journal, Dukesang translated for Edward an entry he had written.
So many of us Chinese have suffered and died here recently, I cannot recount them all. But the Western people will not allow any more of us to land here now, although they scold us for not working enough. How these things wear my soul down to nothing. But my words are meaningless, and my speech now falls upon deaf ears and closed eyes. These mighty lands are great to gaze upon, but the laws made are so small.
“The men in my camp all come from remote villages,” Dukesang continued, putting his journal down. “They cling to their old ways, keeping their pigtails as a symbol of loyalty to the emperor. They wear their loose coolie jackets, cotton trousers, and flimsy slippers. And most don’t even attempt to learn English. Why bother? They think that they will soon have enough money to return to China, to live in comfort on their Gold Mountain dollars. But very few ever will. Most just grow sicker and weaker each year.
“We thought we would never see spring: no rice shipments had come for months.”
Finally, a boat from China docked in Saltwater City just in time, bringing with it twelve hundred portions of rice, a month’s supply for each man. Soon, the first asparagus shoots made their appearance, and before long Chinese cooks were putting the first green vegetables they had seen in months into their cooking pots.
By the time Edward sat listening to this tale, Dukesang was counting the days until his work would come to an end. He had buried his friend Wing Sun’s bones and apologized to his spirit that there wasn’t enough money to send his body to Saltwater City. Many of the labourers who worked with Dukesang planned to go to Victoria. There were many Chinese people there already, and they would be able to live among their countrymen, dreaming of the day when their wives and families could join them. Others had already left the work gangs and had started panning for gold in the Fraser River. So many of Dukesang’s countrymen gathered at one place on the river that it came to be known as Chinaman’s Bar. But Dukesang told Edward he had other ideas: he had decided that his future lay in Saltwater City. That was where he would go once the railway was finished.
“Maybe I’ll be able to marry Lin and bring here to Gold Mountain,” Dukesang said. There was a catch in his throat as he spoke.
A Voice for the Voiceless
Dukesang Wong survived the terrible ordeals the Chinese workers suffered during the building of the CPR and, in his journal, left one of the very few written records by those who had come to Gold Mountain to find their fortune. Through his words, he has giv
en a voice to the voiceless.
He fulfilled his ambition to become a tailor in New Westminster and returned to China to marry his childhood sweetheart Lin and bring her to Canada. He had to pay a fifty dollar head tax before she was allowed into the country. The tax was later increased to five hundred dollars, and further Chinese immigration was prohibited. The head tax was abolished in 1947, and in 2006 the Canadian government apologized for the tax and for mistreatment of early Chinese immigrants.
Dukesang Wong died in 1918. His descendants live on today in British Columbia.
Edward left Dukesang’s tent late that night. As he wandered back to where he had left Blackie safely tethered beside his sleeping bag, he thought about what he had just heard.
They’re just people like us. They want to get this railway built, and then they want to live with their families.
The thought of family made Edward a little sad. But he knew that it wouldn’t be long before the Last Spike was driven. There’d be time enough for family after that.
CHAPTER 10
EDWARD RIDES
THE RAILS
The days were beginning to cool and nightfall was coming on early, signalling the approach of autumn in the mountains. Edward felt the chill of a stiff breeze on his face. He buttoned up his jacket as he rode along the tote road from Farwell to Eagle Landing; he had only a few packages of mail and parcels crammed into his saddlebag. A strange stillness had settled over the forest. Construction camps and gambling halls, where the sounds of cursing and carousing had once filled the air, were now silent and abandoned.
Dukesang Wong and his countrymen were finished building the most difficult part of the rail line. They had pushed beyond Summit Lake and were approaching Eagle Pass. It wouldn’t be long before they’d meet up with the crews working their way from the East. Those gangs, mostly labourers from eastern Europe, had conquered Rogers Pass and were now almost in Farwell.
As he looked around on his last ride on that late October day, it seemed to Edward as if some scourge had swept through the mountains. Wayside houses were shut up and deserted. He saw dozens of men, laid off by the railway, trudging on foot with all their belongings, headed back to Eagle Landing. Their abandoned camps looked ghostlike at night. The sight gave Edward the shivers as he opened his bedroll and settled down to sleep under a large fir tree.
The thing that stood out the most on this last trip was the way the silence was broken only by the hideous shrieking of construction locomotive whistles as they hurried along, their flatcars loaded with steel rails. The rails fell with a dull clang as they were dropped onto ties, ready for the spikes that would hold them in place.
Edward felt overcome by feelings of sadness and loneliness. Where there had once been the laughter of the gamblers and the shouts of “Stand to!” and “Look out below!” as nitroglycerine blasts threw tonnes of rock through the air, all was quiet. Edward lay awake for a long time, thinking about everything he had seen and done. He decided it was time to pack things in. He’d made a few dollars and he would have no shortage of stories to tell when he got back to Victoria.
A few days later, Edward returned Blackie to the Farwell Stables. He felt like he was abandoning the best friend of his life. He wrapped one arm around the horse’s neck, patted him on the rump, and told him he would never forget him.
There was time for one last walkabout around Farwell. At the post office, he said goodbye to Mr. Gordon and thanked him for the chance he’d given him to carry the mail.
While he was there, the famous Albert S. Farwell wandered in. Mr. Gordon introduced him, but Mr. Farwell didn’t seem much interested in young Edward.
Edward knew that Mr. Farwell was fighting with the CPR over where the railway would build its station. He wanted it on his land, but the CPR had other ideas: it had all kinds of property of its own, farther up the hillside from the river. Mr. Farwell said he was going to sue the CPR. Mr. Gordon wished him luck, but warned him that the CPR usually got its way. None of this made much sense to Edward and he slipped quietly out the door while the two men continued to argue.
Walking along Front Street, Edward was amazed at how quickly the town was growing. There was a store selling wine and liquor, and another offering various kinds of jewellery. There were Chinese joss houses, where the railway labourers gathered to burn incense and pray to their gods and ancestors. And, of course, there were the hostess houses, quiet in mid-afternoon. Edward knew they’d be busy that night because it was payday in Farwell.
This CPR main line chart shows how the railway line scaled mountain heights and plunged into valleys as it made its way into British Columbia.
There was one thing that always lifted Edward’s spirits, and that was the beauty of the mountains around him. He was glad of that that afternoon, as he raised his eyes to the vast glacier that covered most of the great peak towering over the horizon. He was looking at one of Canada’s last great glaciers. Unknown to Edward or anyone else at the time, the climate was getting milder after many years of cold weather. In another century, the great glacier Edward was looking at would shrink to one-third its size.
There was one thing Edward was determined to do before he returned home to Victoria: see the completion of the railway. Constable Ruddick had told him there would a ceremonial driving of the Last Spike, and that it would take place in a few days at Craigellachie. Edward decided he would be there.
Trains crossed many trestles similar to this one in Eagle Pass near Craigellachie.
Edward’s spirits lifted again when he saw his old friend.
“Why Mr. Ferguson, I haven’t seen you since you got off the boat in Kamloops!”
“That’s right, lad, and here we meet up in Farwell.”
Edward had all kinds of questions for Mr. Ferguson. “Did you cut all the ties for the railway? How are things at your sawmill? Did you know they’re going to drive the Last Spike in a few days?”
Mr. Ferguson chuckled when he heard Edward’s questions.
“We delivered the last load of ties yesterday,” Mr. Ferguson said. “Dumped them off in Craigellachie. That’s where they’ll be driving the Last Spike. I’ve come along for the ceremony.”
Edward wondered why the place where the railway was coming together was called Craigellachie. He’d heard people in Farwell throwing around that name, but what was so special about it? There was nothing there but a collection of bunk houses and a pile of steel rails and equipment. He decided to ask Mr. Ferguson if he knew what the name meant.
“Famous place in Scotland, mentioned in a Scottish poem. It’s a favourite of George Stephen, the president of the CPR. He likes to quote it. Says the railway, like Craigellachie, will never be moved. Get on with it! Raise the money! Get the line built! Don’t be moved! Craigellachie!”
As Edward and Mr. Ferguson were talking, CPR locomotive No. 148 was chugging its way across the prairie, its diamond-shaped smokestack belching puffs of black smoke that vanished into a clear blue sky. It was pulling a cordwood tender, two fancy parlour cars named the Saskatchewan and the Matapedia, a dining car, and a caboose. Aboard were some of the highest officials of the CPR.
The train had set out nearly a week before, from Montreal, for its date with destiny. After years of struggle, political infighting, and financial high wire antics, the railway was only days from being finished.
“They’ll all be on that train,” Mr. Ferguson told Edward. “I imagine Mr. Smith — that’s Donald Smith — will be enjoying a nice bottle of Scotch. There’s a man who started out as a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Worked his way up. One of the big investors in the railway.”
Mr. Ferguson asked Edward if he’d ever heard of Sandford Fleming.
Sandford Fleming drew up the first plan for a railway across Canada. For a time he served as chief engineer of the CPR.
He Dreamt the “National Dream”
Sandford Fleming is known as the “father of Standard Time.” He is less well-known as the man who first dreamt the
dream of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Even before Confederation, Canada was a country wild about building railways. It was the only way to span the vast distances of this great new land. Fleming had come to Canada from Scotland at the age of eighteen and took up work as a surveyor. He became the chief engineer of three different railways, one in Ontario, the Intercolonial from Montreal to Halifax, and the Canadian Pacific Railway.
In 1862, Fleming had set out a scheme for a “highway to the Pacific.” His estimate of the cost, one hundred million dollars, turned out to be right on the mark. Many thought it would be cheaper to go through the United States, but Sir John A. Macdonald felt otherwise.
Macdonald gave the contract to the Canada Pacific Railway Company, organized by Hugh Allan, a Montreal financier, in 1871. Macdonald was forced to resign when it came out that he had taken money from Allan to finance an election campaign in what became known as the Pacific Scandal. After returning to power in the 1879 election, Macdonald pushed ahead with the railway through a new syndicate formed by George Stephen. The first spike was driven at Bonfield, Ontario, a village near North Bay, in 1881.
When Sandford Fleming arrived in Craigellachie for the Last Spike, he was no longer chief engineer. He lost that job when a royal commission blamed him for delay and confusion in the railway’s construction. It didn’t bother Fleming, though: his idea for standard time around the world had caught on. No longer would every town set its clocks by its own reckoning. The world was divided into twenty-four time zones, with Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian.
“He’ll be on the train, too. First man to get the idea of building a railway from coast to coast. Invented standard time, so each little village isn’t running its clocks on its own time. A great man.”
About the only important person not on the train, Mr. Ferguson said, would be the president of the railway, George Stephen.