A Thousand Blunders: The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and Northern British Columbia

Frank Leonard

UBC Press, 1996 - History - 344 pages

During the first two decades of this century, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway played an important part in the development of the north-central corridor of British Columbia. The GTP, which ran from Winnipeg via the Yellowhead Pass and Edmonton to Prince Rupert on the northwest coast, was built to supplant the Canadian Pacific line to Vancouver. The B.C. line was the most expensive and least remunerative of its sections and contributed ultimately to the company's collapse in 1919.

In A Thousand Blunders, Frank Leonard looks at why the 'Road of a Thousand Wonders' failed to live up to the expectations forecast by company president Charles M. Hays and other senior managers. Not only was the railway built through a sparsely settled region, which generated little immediate traffic, but its economic difficulties were also compounded by the numerous mistakes made by managers at all levels: for example, their failure to respond adequately to labour shortages caused serious delays and prevented the company from proving Prince Rupert as an effective alternative harbour before World War I broke out.

For this book, Frank Leonard had access to a wealth of original documents, among them the GTP legal department files, providing him with insights into the decisions that formed the basis for policies in townsites and on Indian reserves. A Thousand Blunders is a provocative account of one of the greatest failures in Canadian entrepreneurial history. Richly detailed and thoroughly documented, it makes an important contribution to the fields of railway and business history, as well as to the study of the history of northern British Columbia.

Contents

• Entry into British Columbia 190212: 18
• Construction: 51
• Labour Relations: 92
• Prince Rupert: 127
• Acquisition of Indian Lands: 165
• Prince George: 186
• Hazelton District: 218
• Operations 191419: 244
• The Tenderloin and the Hook: 269

Popular passages

Page 280 - J. Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management. (Baltimore, 1989),‎

Page 280 - or to the detriment of long-range planning, appraisal, and co-ordination, they have failed to carry out effectively their role?‎

Page 56 - to a standard not inferior to the main line of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada between Montreal and Toronto, so far as may be practicable in the case of a newly constructed line of railway?‎

Page 90 - The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad: Recent History of the Last Transcontinental? Journal of Economic and Business History 3,‎

Page 62 - by way of either the Peace River Pass, or the Pine River Pass, or such other Pass in the Rocky Mountains as is found most convenient and practicable.‎

Page 35 - so soon as the progress of the surveys in British Columbia will permit, construction will be commenced from the Pacific Coast to the end of the road and be carried on continuously in an easterly direction.‎

Page 8 - It is not to be supposed that railroad corporations surpass all men in disinterested benevolence, but it is beyond question that they know their own interest, and so will take some pains to help‎

Page 21 - There are many of you here today who will live to see the Grand Trunk Pacific hauling as much of its grain towards the Pacific for consumption in China, Japan, and that‎

About the author

Frank Leonard teaches in the Department of History at Douglas College, New Westminster, B.C.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Thousand Blunders: The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and Northern British Columbia
• Author: Frank Leonard
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: UBC Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0774805528, 9780774805520
• Length: 344 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)