880 Macdonald decided to turn the railroad over to a private syndicate headed by Sir Donald Smith and George Stephen. In 1882, the now privately owned company hired a new manager, William Cornelius Van Horne. Van Horne promised that the railroad would be completed quickly and efficiently. At the same time the CPR hired another experienced railway man, Andrew Onderdonk, to lead the BC part of the project.
Van Horne quickly took control. He knew a major problem was that his men had to cut down hills, fill in swamps, blast tunnels through the granite of the Canadian Shield, and build bridges across steep gorges and mighty rivers. As part of his plan, Van Horne divided the railway into three sections and sent teams of workers to start construction in each region. The first section was from northern Ontario to Winnipeg. The next section was from Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains. The final section was from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
With Van Horne's vision and determination to guide them, 30,000 workers began building the CPR in 1882. In three short years and many backbreaking hours of labour they completed construction of the railway.
All in all the CPR took 14 years to survey and build. When it was completed it was over 3,200 kilometres long and had cost $150 million.
- View the photograph of the Last Spike.
- Divide your class into pairs to represent each character in the photo.
- Each person should have a speaking or directing role. Everybody needs to do some research about their person. Your students will find most of the information they need by clicking on the highlighted people in the photo. In many cases we have discovered the identity of the person and provide actual information that we believe to be true according to our sources. There are lots of other good sources in the Bibliography.
- When the students complete their research, have them write a script for a conversation their character might have had with other people in the photograph. They need to be conscious of who is standing near to their character in the actual photograph and think about how they would respond to their points of view. They should incorporate as much of the factual information as possible into their conversation without making it sound like they are giving a prepared speech.
- When your students are ready with their scripts to recreate the photo, you may need to conscript a few extra actors to create a crowd effect. These students do not need to speak in their roles as extras. They are just filling in the crowd scene. They should remain absolutely frozen and listen as the others conduct their conversations.
- Now have the students re-enact the scene. When they are set in position, tableau or frozen-picture style, ask them to bring the scene alive by recreating the conversations that might have taken place using their prepared scripts but not reading them.
- When they have exhausted themselves of conversation, probably 5 to 10 minutes, tell them to freeze and snap a photograph.
- Immediately after they have recreated the scene ask them to write a one page reflection paper on what they have learned about the building of the CPR. Encourage them to include factual information and some opinion. When this is completed and collected for assessment have a full class discussion about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. On the board create with your students a mind map or board note showing all that they have learned.
- To assess the students make observations during the preparation, collect their research notes and their script, and finally make observations during the final presentation.
- Study the photograph selected (photos with multiple people against a busy background work best as they provide more details for discussion).
- Ask students what eveidence about the past this photo tells us. Brainstorm and list ideas on chart paper for future reference. Draw attention to the buildings, the hillside, the street, the businesses, the residents, the mode of dress, etc.
- If possible, share some primary documents relating to th