On the morning of 7 Nov 1885 a small but eclectic group braved a damp, chilly, morning deep in the mountains of British Columbia to witness an occasion that had been nothing more than a dream for over a decade prior, the completion of a railway line to the Pacific Ocean, uniting the young country of Canada from coast to coast.
 
The road had not been easy.
 
Indeed, it was nothing short of a miracle that the CPR had been successfully finished at all.
 
The company and its directors had come dangerously close to ruin on multiple occasions, the enormous stress and sheer difficulty of building the railway often threatening the entire endeavor.
 
The now-iconic photograph taken that morning tells the rest of the story.
 
CPR's General Manager William Cornelius Van Horne, his face an inscrutable mask during what would have been an incredibly emotional moment, looking on as his labours came to final fruition.
 
Famed surveyor Sandford Fleming, likely still smarting at being dismissed as Chief Engineer as his proposed route for the railway was rejected, watching the final rail being laid in a location he would never have recommended.
 
And perhaps most telling of all, the man actually driving the Last Spike.
 
Normally that great honour would have been given to either a prominent politician (in this case, the Governor General) or the President of the Company.
 
Donald Smith, later to become Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, was neither of those things.
 
With the Governor General unable to attend, Smith was standing in for his cousin, CPR's first President, George Stephen, for whom the building of the railway had proven so traumatic that he had retreated to England to recuperate.
 
It is likely that when the spike was driven home and cheers of joy and relief erupted from all those present, that the elation of the moment may have temporarily eclipsed the memory of the hardships endured by those who had worked so tirelessly to bring it about.
 
133 years later, with the echoes of Van Horne's famous 15 word speech still ringing just as true today as they did then, we both remember and celebrate the work, vision, and sacrifice, of not only those who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, but those who have continued its legacy of innovation and perseverance ever since.
 
"All I can say is that the work has been done well in every way", W.C. Van Horne, Craigellachie, 7 Nov 1885.
 
Author unknown.

OKthePK Joint Bar Editor:  Learn more about the Last Spike in this article.