Gentlemen Engineers: The Careers of Frank and Walter Shanly 9781442675247

Table of contents :
Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MAPS
Part One
1. The Shanly Boys Leave Home
2. Learning on the Job
3. A Rough Ride on the Grand Trunk Railway
Part Two
4. Boldness and Weakness: Frank Shanly, 1855–1882
5. Honour and Pride: Walter Shanly, 1855–1899
Part Three
6. Gentlemen Engineers
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PICTURE CREDITS
INDEX

Citation preview

GENTLEMEN ENGINEERS

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RICHARD WHITE

Gentlemen Engineers: The Working Lives of Frank and Walter Shanly

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1999 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-0887-9

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data White, Richard, 1952Gentlemen engineers Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-8020-0887-9 1. Shanly, Francis, 1820-1882. 2. Shanly, Walter, 1819-1899. 3. Civil engineers - Ontario - Biography. I. Title. TA140.S52W44 1999

624'.092'2713

C98-932363-3

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

To the memory of my father, Frank A. White, Architect, and his brother Dick

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Contents

PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS MAPS XVii

XV

Part One 1 The Shanly Boys Leave Home 3 2 Learning on the Job 28 3 A Rough Ride on the Grand Trunk Railway 62 Part Two 4 Boldness and Weakness: Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 103 5 Honour and Pride: Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 140 Part Three 6 Gentlemen Engineers NOTES

195

BIBLIOGRAPHY 237 PICTURE CREDITS 255 INDEX

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Preface

I first met the Shanly brothers in the pages of Daylight through the Mountain, a book of letters between them compiled by the Toronto amateur historian Frank Norman Walker in the 1950s. There I learned the basic story of their lives: that Frank and Walter Shanly were Irish immigrants who came to Upper Canada as grown boys with their family in 1836, that they entered and mastered the new profession of civil engineering during the canal-building era of the 1840s, that they went on to engineer, among many other things, the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada and the Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachussets, and that they had become by the 1860s two of Canada's most successful railway engineers. But something drew me deeper into this apparently commonplace story of immigration and business success. There were undercurrents of frustration and dissatisfaction in the letters that beckoned a curious historian. And Walter Shanly's sharp eye and penetrating intelligence - together with hisfluidpen - made his letters vivid historical sources for the business world of the time. These printed letters, I soon discovered, were only a small portion of a large collection of Shanly papers that had been in the hands of the Ontario government since the 1940s and now rested, fully catalogued and carefully preserved, at the Archives of Ontario. Finding also that this collection had never been exhaustively studied (although parts had been used by historians many times), I resolved to undertake such a study. The papers were rich and diverse. They included official government reports, business account books and invoices, surveyors' field notebooks, crude hand-written receipts, and personal letters, as well as a selection of engineering sketches and drawings. Studying all this promised to be fruitful, for these documents surely would shed light on

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a previously unexplored aspect of Canada's modernization and industrial development - the role of the professional engineer. What I found in the papers was something of a surprise. There was indeed much more to the story than what first met the eye. Frank and Walter Shanly turned out to be not at all what Victorian engineers are supposed to be; they were two conservative gentlemen who, in many ways, lived in a culture more closely tied to the old Irish rural gentry than to anything modern or technical. What began to captivate me was not what was going on around Frank and Walter Shanly from 1840 to 1890, but what was going on inside them. As a result, this study took on a different and, by the conventions of today, rather unorthodox form. Begun as an analysis of economic and social change, it evolved into a narrative of two men's lives. It took the form it did, I suppose, partly from humanistic inclinations but mostly because the sources just asked for it. The story seemed to be there for the telling. The narrative style, in other words, was not chosen at the outset as a deliberate step backward or as a conscious affront to social science methodology. Yet by the time I had completed the book, I had come to believe quite firmly that the approach I had taken - both the narrative form and, perhaps more important, the focus on individual lives - had valuable merits. While the experiences of two men are not on their own enough to prove or disprove anything, they are certainly enough to make one think - and on that foundation the book rests. It is not a social scientific 'case study' but a 'miniature,' a small portrait which, while it may prove nothing, reveals many things. The decision to study individual lives pays its greatest dividend in reminding us of the variety in human experience. Following the conventions of today's social history, historians can be too quick to categorize the people of the past. We want to know which 'group' individuals belong to - Irish, male, businessman, elite - so that we may truly understand who these individuals are and where their 'interests' lie. But individuals, of course, rarely fit snugly into their proper uniforms, and Frank and Walter Shanly repeatedly remind us of this fact. Consider, for instance, their ethnicity. Often the first question asked about these men is whether they were Anglo- or Catholic Irish. But they were not truly either. The Shanlys were in fact an old Celtic Catholic family whose lands had been confiscated by the English after 1688 and who converted to the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Outwardly they were Anglo-Irish by the time of their emigration, but a deep resentment of the English lingered on in their family lore for the

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loss of their ancient lands. So they were, in this way, more Irish than Anglo. Upon first settling in Canada, they seem to have been distinctly Anglo-Irish, that is to say neither English nor Irish, but before long their ethnicity ceased to have any real importance in their lives. As grown men Frank and Walter, if they were anything, were part of the 'British' ethnicity of nineteenth-century Canada, rather than Irish. This was partly because a new kind of 'Irishness' - Catholic, poor, and rowdy - had been constructed in Canada by mid-century which they both found repellant. But they were not at all attracted to Protestant Orangeism, probably for class reasons. In Walter Shanly's final years he developed two historical interests - the old United Empire Loyalist families of Upper Canada and their English military connection, and his own Catholic Irish origins. All of this is fascinating and might be of interest to historians of ethnicity, but it leaves one uncertain how to answer the simple question of which ethnic group Frank and Walter Shanly belonged to. Such an approach has also led to a more sympathetic view of these men than is customary in studies of their 'type.' In much of the recent social history of business, studies of elite nineteenth-century businessmen have concentrated on power and status: how these men, as a group or class, acquired power, created a 'state' to solidify it, transmitted it over the generations, and so on. Their personal trials and tribulations have not drawn much attention or many tears. But when one does step inside the careers of two such elite men - and Frank and Walter would be considered elite by most historians, although they were fairly ordinary elite - one finds great sums of money being lost, families being forced to move about, an inability to gain benefit from inside connections, plenty of alienation and disappointment, and overall a vast amount of fretful, enervating work. Other historians have challenged me more than once about my findings, and in general they have been very dubious that Frank and Walter could have lived as uncharmed lives as I claim they did. All I can say is that it is on my sources, not my opinions, that I believe this story rests. Thus, studying individual lives - or, more correctly in this case, two intertwined lives - has indeed brought benefits by allowing me to reach beyond stereotypical group qualities to discover the unexpected. But the fact that Frank and Walter Shanly were fairly ordinary men has been equally important to this study. They were not ordinary in the sense of being common, but they were certainly not 'great men': not statesmen whose decisions shaped the lives of nations, or brilliant

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engineers who devised new machines or novel techniques that transformed the economics of industrial production. So the story of their careers can be just that - the story of their careers - without any interference from grander purposes. This has allowed for a truer and likely more representative picture to be drawn of the working world of a nineteenth-century engineer. Although a story of two men's careers is not enough to base any real conclusions on, there are two themes in this narrative that stand out as probably having some greater significance. One is tempted to call these noteworthy themes 'conclusions/ but perhaps the limited nature of the research makes 'observations' a more appropriate word. The first is that the early civil-engineering profession of the union period in Canadian history (1841-67) was a much more mature and respectable profession than historians have heretofore recognized. Most historians, in truth, have not given this much concentrated thought one way or another, but there does exist a general understanding that the profession emerged from the artisanal bourgeoisie during the later nineteenth century as industrialization progressed. After studying the careers of Frank and Walter Shanly, this explanation of engineering professionalization is just not tenable. One gets a clear message from their thoughts and actions in the 1840s and 1850s that, although not yet formally organized, a distinct, self-conscious profession of civil engineering already existed in Canada. Furthermore, it was a fairly high-status profession, more closely related to the traditional gentlemanly professions of law, medicine, and the church than historians have recognized. If this is true, our understanding of engineering professionalization needs a thorough revision. The matter is raised occasionally in chapters 2 and 3, and discussed at length in chapter 6. The other observation is how much of a struggle it was for members of the old landed gentry to make the transition to the culture of modern industrial capitalism. The Shanlys were not truly 'landed' when they immigrated to Canada, but they had been in the past, and the family had retained many of the customs of the rural gentry. Both Frank and Walter were raised in a large country house in Ireland. One cannot help but see, time and again, how they struggled because their gentry culture was not compatible with the modern world that was being built around them. Some may think this observation does not warrant much attention. We all know the stories of the Strickland sisters in the backwoods and of other gentry pioneers who failed to make

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the transition from the old world to the new. But the story of the maladaptation of the Shanly brothers is different, for outwardly they succeeded in making the transition to both the new and the modern world (this distinction is explored in chapter 1); yet still the struggles continued, especially in the second half of the century (part 2 of the book) as the business and professional worlds they inhabited modernized into forms they barely recognized. The strains found here are of a different type and in a different realm from those of other misplaced gentry. So it is as both engineers and gentlemen, and thus as gentlemen engineers, that Frank and Walter Shanly can best be understood. Yet is there not something of a contradiction here? Were not gentlemen and engineers the antithesis of each other in the nineteenth century? On one hand, Frank and Walter Shanly show this contradiction to be fictitious, merely a product of an inadequate understanding of the early engineering profession. On the other hand, they show it to be quite real, for reconciling the contradiction between these two attributions one given and the other attained, one from the old world and one from the new - is the very heart of their story.

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Acknowledgments

This study began life as an academic thesis, and I would like to thank the many fine professors in the Department of History at the University of Toronto who helped me along. Professor Michael Bliss, my thesis supervisor, was a constant source of advice and inspiration, yet he never once dictated either the form or the content of my work. Professor Carl Berger gave me far more time than was required of him as a member of my thesis committee; his interest in this study, both in its thesis form and in its subsequent development into this book was priceless encouragement, and his modest but direct advice was always right. Professor Janis Langins of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology also gave me valuable support, especially at the outset, for only through him did I learn that such a thing as the 'social history of engineering' even existed. I am also grateful to Professor H.V. Nelles of York University, whose presence I have felt from start to finish; he, more than anyone, helped me see what this study was not. My research at all stages was helped immeasurably by the kind assistance of two Archives of Ontario reference archivists, Karen Bergsteinsson and Leon Warmski, and by Guy St Denis at the J.J. Talman Regiona Collection of the D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario. Professor R.V.V. Nicholls of McGill University and Professor Fred Armstrong of the University of Western Ontario kindly shared valuable information about the Shanlys, as did Mrs Lucy Little of Thorndale and Mr Guy Saunders and Mr Jack Shanly of Toronto. Several aspects of this book developed through the presentation of papers at academic conferences. I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the Fourth Canadian Business History Conference

xvi Acknowledgments in Peterborough, Ontario, and the 1994 and 1996 conferences of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) for providing me with the opportunity to present my ideas. I would especially like to thank SHOT for providing me with financial assistance to attend its 1996 conference in London, England. I also extend my thanks to Professor Terry Reynolds (Michigan Technological University) and Mr Larry McNally (National Archives of Canada) for reading portions of the manuscript. I would like to thank Gerry Hallowell and Emily Andrew at University of Toronto Press, Gerry for taking an interest in my work at an early stage and Emily for carrying the manuscript through to publication with admirable efficiency; my thanks also go to Carlotta Lemieux for her excellent editing of the final manuscript. I am grateful for financial support from the Ontario Government Scholarship program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Department of History at the University of Toronto, all of which allowed me to research and write the thesis from which this book developed. My deepest thanks go to my wife, Trevelee Goodwin, for her support while I wrote and rewrote this book. Without her support, shown in so many ways, it could never have been accomplished.

Map 1. Eastern Great Lakes Region showing selected railways and canals, c. 1856

Map 2. Toronto and Guelph Railway

Map 3. Selected Ontario Railways, c. 1873

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Part One

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1

The Shanly Boys Leave Home

As James Shanly and his family took ship in April 1836 to cross the Irish Sea to Liverpool, whence they would set sail for the New World, they were leaving behind generations, even centuries, of struggle. But it was with decline, not starvation, that this Irish family had been struggling. For the Shanlys were a 'family/ an old family, whose distant ancestors had for centuries lived and died on lands of their own, and who strove not just to live but to live well. Now, although the Shanlys were still stationed well above the common people and still stocked with diligence and pride, their land was gone and their hopes were fading as a new political and social order dawned upon them. So like thousands of other Irish, they were setting out for a new land that, while certainly not greener, might at least prove kinder than their home. Yet even the mature folk, heavily laden with memories and deeply attached to the land, would have found it hard to reflect or to drift too far into melancholia as the shore slowly faded from view, for the family group - babies, teens, and grown young men - must have bustled with excitement. There were two families really, one from lames Shanly's deceased first wife, and a new young family from his second. The older family consisted of five fully grown boys, three still in their teens and two in their twenties. The younger family had two little boys, age seven and four, and a two-year-old girl, the only girl in the whole brood. James, the father, was about fifty-seven; his wife, Ellen, was probably much younger, for she was the youngest sister of his first wife. They were accompanied by one servant, Mary Hicky, who had 'prayed not to be left behind' when the family decided to leave. So, with the bittersweet blend of remorse and relief that we know so well from emigrant poetry and song, these eleven Irish emigrants sailed into the future.

4 Gentlemen Engineers Not one knew where this long, hazardous, and uncertain journey would lead. I

The Shanly family's ancestral lands had been in County Leitrim, in the northwest of Ireland. There, since at least the twelfth century, the MacSheanlaoich clan had dwelt at a place known to this day as Dromod.1 In the sixteenth century the family, by then in genealogical records as MacShanly, began to encounter the notorious English plantations of the late-Elizabethan period. Family members had apparently accommodated some Spanish ships taking refuge in Donegal Bay, an action which, when discovered, provoked English confiscation of their land. Modern-day historians believe that most of the English plantations outside Ulster were not very successful in Elizabethan times - that the English landlords given the confiscated lands did not fulfil their obligation to bring settlers, and that in counties such as Leitrim much land technically given to Englishmen in fact remained in the hands of Irish Catholic landlords.2 This seems to have been the case with the MacShanlys, because up to and through the Cromwellian confiscations and invasions a century later, they still held much of their land at Dromod. At the time of the Revolution of 1688, a Captain William Shanly still owned a sizable estate. Nor did the members of the family have to abandon their Catholic faith (even though they had at some point further anglicized their name), unlike many other Catholic landowners, who converted to keep their land secure; Captain Shanly is on record as a loyal lacobite - a supporter of the Catholic King James II of England and he sat as a member of James's predominantly Catholic 'Patriot Parliament' of 1689. But when the the Protestant King William III defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne and the ascendancy of the Protestant minority in Ireland was secured, the Shanlys paid severely for their resistance to English ways. Their lands were confiscated in entirety.3 The Shanly domain was given to an Englishman by the name of Montgomery who, not wanting to live on the land, offered to sell it back to Shanly for a considerable sum. Captain Shanly could not meet the Englishman's price, but a wealthy local man named Nisbitt, whose family had come to dwell in the district a generation back and who apparently had some sympathy for the old family, offered to settle with Montgomery and provide Shanly with some relief. Nisbitt bought the land from Montgomery and allowed Shanly to maintain possession of

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 5 six separate townlands on the estate; Captain Shanly then settled his family at Fearnaught, a house on one of the lands Nisbitt had let him keep.4 Upon Captain Shanly's death, his eldest son, James, inherited Fearnaught and at least some of the other lands his father had retained. So in turn did James's son William. This William Shanly, the captain's grandson, did not fare so well, being compelled through shortage of money to sell the land piece by piece until at last, in 1764, he sold the final two lots to a Dublin man named Kelly. The Shanlys were landed no longer. Fortunately, William Shanly's eldest son, also named William, had acquired by this time some means of his own, perhaps through a partnership, and he was able to arrange a lease with Fearnaught's new owner that kept his father residing there for the remaining twenty years of his life. After his father died, this younger William gave up the lease at Fearnaught and bought some land elsewhere in County Leitrim. There he lived, unmarried and in good gentlemanly fashion, as a magistrate and at one time as high sheriff of the county. The Shanlys' patrimony was gone, as was their religion, but one family member had at least regained some land.5 The elder William had had three other sons. One, named James, never married and disappeared from family records; another, named Tobias, married but his family 'dropped down into the dregs of the people'; a third, Michael, the youngest, became a commissioned officer in the Drogheda Dragoons, a Protestant regiment commanded for many years by Charles, marquis of Drogheda. This youngest son, the grandfather of Frank and Walter Shanly, did very well for himself; he married a wealthy widow from Tipperary while stationed there and rose to the rank of captain before retiring from his regiment in 1787. Having done his part to keep the family afloat, Michael Shanly expected the same from his three sons. Robert, his first, did his father's bidding. He obtained a commission in his father's regiment while still a young boy, married a daughter of another Drogheda man from a good County Cork family, and then left the military for a successful career in the church. William, his next born, also must have pleased his father by marrying the daughter of a Leitrim gentleman and taking up the life of a country squire. James, his youngest, chose the law, a respectable enough profession. He obtained his MA from Trinity College, Dublin, and after a period at the Temple in London was called to the Irish Bar. Then, in 1809, he married Frances Mulvany, the daughter of a Dublin merchant. At this, Captain Michael Shanly had to draw the line. If

6 Gentlemen Engineers young James was going to tie himself to a merchant's family, he was evidently not fit to carry on family obligations. Three years after James and Frances married, and only two years before he himself died, Michael Shanly had his will altered to exclude James and his heirs from any of his property; the will specified that if Michael's other sons died childless, his estate was be given to 'the Female Orphan school on the Circular Road.'6 At first young James and Frances lived in Dublin. James established a law practice in the city and its environs, with the army as one of his main clients, and here their first five children were born, a daughter and four sons, in a little over five years. In 1815 their lives were suddenly transformed by the death of James's unmarried Uncle William, his father's oldest brother, the man who some years back had maintained his father at Fearnaught and regained land in County Leitrim. This Uncle William seems not to have shared his brother's opinion of young James's marriage. Having no children of his own, he left his property to be divided equally among his brother's three sons.7 James chose not to live on any of this inherited land and sold his share to his oldest brother. What he did choose to keep from the inheritance was a prosperous estate-management business that his Uncle William had built up during his later years. It carried the responsibility of managing three large estates owned by English (or 'absentee') landlords. At least one of these was in County Leitrim, and another seems to have been in the extreme south, around Waterford.8 James Shanly evidently felt that managing these rural estates would provide a better life than working as a city lawyer, and in 1816 he abandoned his practice and moved his family to Queen's County, where he leased a magnificent old country house known as the Abbey. Living there and working as an estate manager, Shanly could make some use of his law training and obtain an income, yet still live the life to which he had been born and bred - that of a country gentleman, or at least the closest thing to it that circumstances would allow. Shanly was not alone in this turn from law to estate management. The profession of estate management was starting to take shape in many parts of the British Isles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Land enclosures and farm improvements of the Napoleonic War years called for managers who were conversant with modern business practices, legal aspects of land ownership, and technical matters such as draining or embanking land. Traditional land agents were not up to this; new specialized professional men were needed who understood

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 7 such matters and could be employed with confidence by landlords investing money into improvements. Lawyers and land surveyors, both of which had provided services to landowners for centuries, found the profession attractive, and many were drawn into it. Although it did not carry true status in country society, it usually provided a good income, and for a professional man who wanted a rural life it was ideal, since it often came with an opportunity to lease a country house on one of the estates being managed. It let a nineteenth-century man live an eighteenth-century life.9 Here at the Abbey, Frances Shanly gave birth to three more sons: Walter in 1817, Coote-Nisbitt in 1819, and Francis (Frank) in 1820. This was as large as the family was to be, for these births were soon followed by two deaths. Mrs Shanly died giving birth to Francis, her eighth child, and in 1823 their only daughter, Frances, the first-born, died at the age of thirteen. The motherless family stayed on at the Abbey just two more years, until 1825, at which time James Shanly moved with his seven sons to a house close to Dublin, where the boys would have a better chance of a good education. Their years at the Abbey, brief though they were in the history of the Shanly family, were the foundation of much that followed. Walter Shanly, born and raised to age nine in that grand old country house, never forgot it. At the end of his long life, he recalled, amid the clouds of melancholy that surrounded him in his final years, that the Abbey had 'created impressions on the mind of him who now writes that have had no uncertain influence on his seventy subsequent years and which still make the place of his birth a bright oasis in a dull colourless laborious and unsuccessful life.'10 Their new home was Norman's Grove, on the estate of Thomas Norman, Esq., at Dunboyne in County Meath, about ten miles northwest of Dublin.11 James, the father, now well into his forties, undertook several improvements on the farm he leased at Norman's Grove and also continued his estate-management work. The family must have been financially secure, for the boys had a private tutor most of the time and the oldest son Charles was sent to Trinity College about 1830. Free from material wants though they may have been, from emotional trials they surely were not. One of the boys died in 1826 at the age of nine, and the next year James married his deceased wife's youngest sister, Ellen, whom the boys had grown up knowing as their aunt. Both of these occurrences unsettled the family. Then in 1831 one of the older boys, William, was stricken with consumption. He was a brilliant

8 Gentlemen Engineers lad, talented both artistically and mechanically, and his father had had great expectations for him. William had been articled to a civil engineer in Liverpool by the name of Nimmo, but his illness never permitted him to practise. He was sent to Penzance and then to Cork to rest and recuperate; he painted, fished, read classics, and received visits from his brothers, but all for naught. He died in 1833 aged twenty.12 There was trouble for the Shanlys outside the family too, as there was for all of Protestant Ireland. Roman Catholics, who for centuries had had limited rights in Ireland, had been partly emancipated in 1829. This had followed years of intense and often violent protest which, though it may have been justified in the grand scheme of things, deeply shook the Protestant ascendancy. The emancipation of 1829 only served to make matters worse for Protestants, as expectations among the Catholic peasantry ran high and trust grew in the efficacy of violent action. In the early 1830s rural crime was widespread and in places beyond the control of the authorities; rents and tithes were withheld in some regions, and chaos and anarchy seemed imminent. The government in London responded in 1835 with a new policy of tolerance towards Irish Catholics, which in the eyes of the Irish Protestant minority was shameless capitulation. Historians can now see that they were right to feel wronged, for this did indeed signal the end of their dominance: 'The protestant Ireland of the enlightenment was ... in its death throes.'13 How much this turmoil affected the Shanly family we do not know. Nothing in the family papers suggests that they themselves were the victims of violence at Norman's Grove, though the Leitrim estate which lames Shanly managed was the scene of some sort of priest-led insubordination, and James was ordered by the English attorney of the landowner to put it down.14 Surely, given the depth of bitterness that modern historians can perceive within the disappointed Protestant minority, it was no accident that in the autumn of 1835 the family decided to emigrate. Not that they were without other reasons.15 Shanly's standard of living as an estate manager was decent, but a professional income did not provide security for retirement; and taking orders from Englishmen week after week must have vexed a proud man like James Shanly. If he had even a little of his forebears' irascibility, he must have been coming to the end of his well of patience.16 More important probably were the prospects for his five nearly grown sons. What future did they have in Ireland? It is also possible that the family deaths had taken their toll on

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 9 Shanly's vitality and perhaps left him wanting to break away from old associations. One suspects, as well, that the marriage to his deceased wife's sister would not have been smiled on by either the Shanlys or the Mulvanys. There were, in short, plenty of reasons for them to leave. They auctioned off their family belongings, farm implements, and a good deal of produce and stock at Norman's Grove on 25 October 1835, netting just under £450.17 Leaving the farm, they moved to a small resort on the sea coast to pass the winter months and make final preparations for departure. The boys' education was not neglected despite the uprooting: they all attended French lessons, drawing classes, and chemistry lectures in Dublin that winter. The family was not pinching pennies in those final months at home, though perhaps it should have been. When the Shanlys finally departed in the spring of 1836, they left much behind, as all emigrants must. But they were also taking much with them, probably more than they knew. For not only did they have their drawing-room furniture, fine china, books, and old family pistols and swords; they also took along the habits and values attached to such things - their passion for sincere conversation, their love of good dining, their reverence for learning and literature, and their admiration of the military life. Above all, they brought an 'old confidence and pride* that came from having lived for centuries above the common people.18 They were, in short, gentry, and with them they brought their gentry culture.19 It was not going to be easy fitting this culture into the frontier life of Upper Canada. Susanna Moodie, as well as many whose lives have passed unrecorded, were at this very time struggling, and failing, to make the fit. For it was not just the challenges of the 'new' world of North America they were going to face; the 'modern' world, with its urban business and industry and its new social order stood waiting for them too. They were sailing into a doubly alien world. II

New York in June was not to the Shanlys' taste. The noise, the smells, the disorder - all were an affront to their genteel sensibilities. 'Abominable' was the word Walter chose to describe the city in a letter home just after their arrival. The finest streets in New York were like the filthiest streets in Dublin, he exclaimed, and the pigs were 'quite at home on the foot paths of Broadway.' The family had no choice but to stay for a few days at least, because the ship carrying their furniture and baggage

10 Gentlemen Engineers had not yet arrived. The first few hotels they tried were full, but they managed to get rooms at the Washington Hotel in Broadway, where they eventually stayed more than two weeks while waiting for their cargo.20 With their belongings safely received, the Shanlys embarked on the remainder of their journey to Upper Canada. First they went by steamboat up the Hudson River to Albany, and then by chartered canal boat along the Erie Canal to the New York State port of Oswego on Lake Ontario. Here the family settled for a few weeks to allow James to go ahead to Upper Canada to find a suitable farm. They had no intention of starting from scratch in the bush; they planned to begin their pioneer life on an already established farm. Shanly found a suitable property quickly enough in the newly settled western part of the province near the town of London, and he then rejoined his waiting family in New York State.21 From Oswego they travelled the length of the lake by steamboat, first to Toronto and then to Hamilton, where they halted again, renting a 'scantily furnished house' for three months while their new home, some seventy miles farther west, was brought up to a livable condition. Walter later remembered their first night in Hamilton, probably the first time in their travels that they were staying in a household of their own. The first night was passed as if "in camp" - a scrambling evening meal and beds upon the floor - trials not unwelcome in their newness to the young majority of the party.'22 Days passed uneventfully in Hamilton. It was not a time or place that left memorable impressions on any of the boys. Coote-Nisbitt wrote home shortly after they had settled there, commenting on the large number of 'negroes' and Indians in the town and on the great wealth and social prestige of the shopkeepers - so Hamilton appeared to a young Irish gentleman. But much of his letter was taken up with questions about friends and relatives left behind, and hearsay about the 'elegant farm at a place called London' which they would soon call home.23 James made several trips to London attending to the business of setting up the house, usually taking one or more of the boys with him, until finally, in mid-November, everything was ready. Francis and Walter, who were then seventeen and twenty years old, respectively, stayed behind to repack the heavy baggage (Walter had a 'handy turn' for this type of work, he recalled) while the rest of the family went ahead. Then the father and stepmother came back and made the trip again, along with Walter and Francis and the 'cavalcade' of loaded wagons.24

The Shanly Boys Leave Home

11

Their new 'elegant farm' was lot 8, concession 4, London Township hardly a name redolent of history like the Abbey and 'Norman's Grove.'25 Not surprisingly, the house was rather primitive; it was built mainly of logs, with some newer framed rooms added on. Less than fifty acres of the two-hundred-acre lot had been cleared, and stumps still stood in the cleared fields. Yet such a farm was in fact rather substantial for western Upper Canada at that time; permanent settlement had not begun in London Township until 1817, so the previous owners (Shanly was the third) must have put considerable labour into clearing the land. Fifty acres in under twenty years was well above average.26 For the boys, this new experience called pioneering was nothing less than heavenly. They took to the farming and building with enthusiasm and found great joy in the plentiful fish and game, which seemed to be there just for the taking. Novelties such as sleighing and sugar making were especially thrilling in that first year or two. With five keen and able sons and an ample purse of old-country money, this pioneer family must have looked set to succeed. Nor were they as lonely as such better-known gentry pioneers in Upper Canada as the Langtons and the Strickland sisters. As soon as James Shanly had bought the land, he had made sure that there were several families in the district with which his family could socialize. Their first close friends were the Killalys, the family of Hamilton Killaly, a Dublin-born civil engineer who went on to prominence in the Board of Works of the United Canadas. He had arrived in Canada only the year before and was establishing a farm on the lot next to theirs. James Shanly had met Killaly on one of his earlier visits to the region, and the acquaintance probably led him to select the land he did.27 Also in the area, just one concession south, were the Monsarrats, another Irish gentry family from the Dublin area who had been on their Belfield Farm for some ten years. Then there was a retired officer from County Kilkenny, Colonel Thomas Ball, and his family who had recently built a fine country house called Bellevue about a mile to the west. These families, Protestant Irish gentry all, formed a social circle of which the Shanlys quickly became part.28 Nevertheless, the shine of pioneer life soon tarnished. Enthusiastic though they may have been, the Shanly boys were by no means prepared for the drudgery of farm life. Country life was what they wanted, not farm life. They were not going to be fulfilled, like the 'unlettered boors' around them, by the grand achievement of 'a hundred acres of clearing with the stumps out.' This was not what they had come to Upper Canada for. They were willing to work, certainly, but they

12 Gentlemen Engineers needed their 'pleasant but useless hours' too. Before long, thoughts of moving on began to form in the minds of the young gentlemen.29 It was in the cities and towns that a more appealing life seemed to be taking shape. The rebellion of December 1837 brought a brief burst of excitement to their lives. Born Tories, and no strangers to military life, the boys readily joined armed scouting parties combing the countryside in search of rebels. They never met their quarry; nor were they at all involved in putting down the small rising that did take place in the western district. However, for the eldest son, Charles, the rebellion brought a more substantial change. He received a commission as lieutenant in one of the many militia corps which the British army organized in the months after the rebellion when war with the United States seemed probable. He served under Colonel John Askin, a retired British officer and a veteran of the War of 1812, who had been appointed to the Board of Education for the London District in 1832 and was very much part of the local elite. Charles was dispatched to Amherstburg on the Detroit frontier in June 1838.30 Here was a possible escape from homesteading. A military officership, even in the colonial militia, was a worthy enough occupation, and there was probably more chance of advancement there than on their primitive farm. There was at this time a large mobilization of local militias, at British expense, and Charles thought that something permanent might result. That summer, he wrote to his younger brother, Walter, telling of a letter from their friend Hamilton Killaly (who had just been appointed engineer of the Welland Canal Company and was sidling close to the inner circle of the colonial administration); Killaly had said that if Charles's corps was disbanded, he could probably get him another commission in one of the new corps, and Charles suggested that Walter apply to Killaly as well.31 Their father had other ideas. What he thought his boys needed was more land. Then they could begin establishing themselves on their own farms. As Walter later explained it, 'Impressed with the old country idea, common to the gentleman settler of the time that land and revenue were convertible terms the father believed that his sons had only to be provided with farms to become at once independent and content.'32 With this in mind, James Shanly bought a substantial parcel of land several miles northeast of their current farm. Land close to the town had become too dear for the quantity he needed, so he bought farther out - lots 16, 17, and 18 of concession 2, Nissouri Township (a

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 13 total of six hundred acres), on the east bank of the Thames River. Old Shanly had found a lovely site: well-drained level land, giving way to mature mixed woodland, rich with walnut and oak, that gradually descended to the river bank. Along the exposed areas of the bank grew an abundance of hawthorn trees that were in full, spectacular bloom when Shanly first saw the land in June. Here they would build a proper home, and it would have a proper name - Thorndale.33 Thorndale was indeed a proper home. Carefully sited on the river bank and obliquely facing the river, it was a grand country cottage with an intriguing, tasteful mix of grandeur and simplicity. Set upon a deep, stone-walled basement, where the servants would live and cook, the house was of a large square plan with spacious well-lit rooms, high ceilings, and broad verandahs front and back. The drawing room and dining room, the principal main-floor rooms, had matching French windows and fireplaces, the latter being identically proportioned but differently sized to match the slightly different sizes of the rooms.34 There is no known record of who built the house or of how the materials were procured and brought in, but presumably James and his family were responsible for the general design. They moved in late in the summer of 1838, when the house was little more than a shell. Plenty of work remained, and Walter, at least, took an active part in the ongoing building.35 Splendid though it was, Thorndale was not going to keep the boys at home. No sooner had they moved than the family started to come apart. Perhaps the more isolated location made matters worse, or perhaps their two years of pioneer life had been enough to convince the older boys of their distaste for it, regardless of where it occurred. Whatever the reason, the move to Thorndale was followed by the departure of the three oldest boys. In fact, Charles had already gone when the family moved to Thorndale in 1838. He was stationed in Amherstburg with the militia at the time, and although he returned briefly the following year, his intention to leave was already openly acknowledged. The next oldest, James Jr, who was then twenty-five years of age, left permanently that summer to begin apprenticing with a law firm in London. Although he stayed close to the family all his life, Thorndale was never again his home.36 Walter resolved to leave that summer too but stayed on another two years, helping to build the house and establish the farm. He could not have lived with himself if he, the handyman of the family, had left with the home unfinished. In spite of his deep obligation, or perhaps

14 Gentlemen Engineers because of it, Walter was growing more and more alienated from his family. Always a lonely, taciturn, and sensitive boy, convinced that he lacked the artistic gifts his father so valued in his brothers, and with a father who seems to have been falling ineluctably into the cold and unforgiving temperament of his forebears, Walter was now permanently distancing himself. For companionship he turned to the neighbouring Killaly family. During those few years at Thorndale, Walter grew quite intimate with both Killaly and his wife, and Killaly responded generously, treating him 'as a kind father might the son he loved,' Walter later wrote.37 By this time Killaly, too, had given up farming. After just two years, he had fallen back on the civil-engineering profession he had learned in Ireland. Late in 1837, the Welland Canal Company had engaged him to resurvey the canal, and the next year it had appointed him its permanent engineer. So while young Walter Shanly was building his family's home and spending much of his spare time at the Killaly household, Killaly was beginning his Canadian civil-engineering career. Perhaps, Walter thought, this profession might have room for him too, 'a young fellow with a fairly logical mind and a fair amount of mathematical teaching.'38 In the spring of 1840 Killaly was appointed chairman of the new Board of Works for the soon to be united Province of Canada, and he moved to Montreal to take the new job. Walter's wishes had by this time been openly discussed, and Killaly promised that he would soon find Walter an engineering position with the board. On the strength of Killaly's promise, Walter left home in June 1840. He drifted about the area that summer, doing odd jobs for newly arrived settlers, and waited. Killaly returned in October, picked up Walter, and took him back to Montreal. Walter, now twenty-three, did not see Thorndale again for eight years.39 By the end of that year, Charles was permanently gone too. His militia commission had not led to anything, in spite of Killaly's promise, so he had returned to Thorndale. But of all the boys he seems to have had the least interest in the farm. He was in fact a young man of literary and artistic talent, inclinations that had been cultivated during his years at Trinity College in Dublin, and although they had begun to wither, they had not lost all their vitality in the woods of Upper Canada. Charles hankered after a more cosmopolitan life. He was now nearly thirty, and with James and Walter gone, he was ten years older than the boys still at home. Again it was Killaly who made the break possible. Sometime during the fall of 1840, after Killaly had taken

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 15 Walter to Montreal, Charles was led to think that Killaly would be able to find him an administrative post with the board in Montreal. By midDecember, not having yet received word, he was growing anxious and suspicious, 'I fear that he has overrated his own powers of patronage,' Charles wrote of Killaly, but he left anyway, trusting he was wrong and that something would come up. But his earlier doubts were close to the mark, for he did not secure a permanent position for several years. He managed to get by on temporary clerkships, however, and that was enough to keep him in Montreal, where he soon became a notable political journalist.40 What must old Mr Shanly have felt that winter? He was well over sixty and unable to do much outdoor work. His three oldest boys were gone after only four years in the New World. Walter's departure had been the worst blow, wounding and embittering old Shanly so deeply that he refused to read Walter's letters home for years.41 How would he get by without his most capable son? All that was left of his grown family were the two youngest, Francis and Coote, now aged twenty and twenty-one. They were probably the least useful of the lot. Although Francis was strong and bold, and commanded respect in society, he had an undisciplined and even disrespectful nature that made him unreliable. And Coote, while well endowed with intelligence and diligence, was weakened by an extreme lack of vigour and confidence. They were not the best pair to be left with. It was true that Shanly had a fine home by this time, one at which he could without shame receive a visit from the Monsarrats or the Balls, and the value of his six hundred acres would surely increase as the district filled up. But this was not enough to let the old gentleman sleep easily, for he knew one thing nobody else in the family did. He knew the money was all gone. Ill

James Shanly was no fool. Although a refined gentleman he was by no means a naive, white-gloved aristocrat. He was in fact a competent man of affairs, skilled in conducting business and handling accounts and contracts. One might well ask, as did one of his sons, 'how my father, who ought to have known something of the ways of the world, could ever have squandered a princely capital, in the way he has done, but I have had my presentiments long ago how all this absurd extravagance would end.'42 The simplest answer is that although Shanly knew the ways of his world, he did not know the ways of Upper Canada. The

16 Gentlemen Engineers vagaries of the pioneer economy, with its limited roads, undeveloped farms, and short supply of labour were unknown to him. The farm was yielding very little, mostly because of the lack of labour to work it. Shanly must have known what to do to make it yield more, for he had spent years in Ireland improving and managing farms; but the shortage of farm labour, fully recognized by contemporaries in Upper Canada and by historians since, meant that his own boys had to do most of the work, and with three of them gone there was not much of a labour force left or much chance of a profitable crop.43 Not only were there fewer working hands in the family now, but there was more work to be done. Very little land had been cleared on their new Thorndale farm. The immediate solution was to lease what little land had been cleared so that at least they would have a small income. Accordingly, in the spring of 1841 they leased their cultivable land and their sugar bush for the season to a nearby farmer for a share of his produce. 'It is a sin to let so fine a farm,' Coote bemoaned in a letter to Walter.44 But they really had no choice. They had not yet given up entirely With the help of one or two hired men they built some fine hog pens that fall, with stone yards and picket fences. The next spring they tried farming for themselves again, putting in some wheat, oats, potatoes, and turnips - a little over twenty acres in total. They also grubbed and burned out many of the stumps. All this they were able to accomplish because they had found and held onto an experienced farmhand that year, a man by the name of Henderson who was especially skilled with the plough. They began preparing an orchard that summer, planning to transplant the grafted trees into some newly cleared land the following year. The outcome of that season's labour, although not described anywhere, could not have been all bad because they tried again the next year, the spring of 1843. But this crop must have been a miserable failure. T will never farm again if I get out of this,' Coote wrote to Walter at harvest time. Except for the lower classes, who were content with so little reward, he reasoned, a man should not even think about farming here without an income of a hundred pounds a year. The farm was let to one of their hired hands at the end of the 1843 season, and that was the end of it.45 Farming was not their only venture at Thorndale. The winter Walter and Charles left (1840-1), their father had decided that small-scale industry might be something to try, and had had a mill and small distillery built near an excellent spring a few hundred yards upstream from the house. Unlike farming, about which Shanly knew a great deal,

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 17 distilling appears to have been entirely new to him and the rest of the family. But this did not daunt them. With Francis working the mill, and Coote the distillery, their new enterprise was in full operation by early 1841. By May, Coote was 'making whiskey at a great rate.' The mill seems not to have been so productive; it was not strong enough to grind quantities of grain from other farmers - although this seems to have been their intent - but it did serve the distillery well by chopping the grain and working the mash. Coote's enthusiasm for his distillery glows in his letters. 'I am almost as good a distiller as old Deane himself,' he declared. It was well built too, he boasted, 'the admiration of the country all around,' and with plastered walls inside it was 'as clean as a drawing room.'46 The whiskey was reported to be excellent. They started with a small local trade, and by the end of November a storekeeper in Woodstock was buying from them in larger quantities. But there was more to successful business, Coote and his father were about to learn, than clean facilities and a tasty product. With demand running high that November and the whiskey's reputation growing, Coote found himself without any grain with which to make the liquor. The farmers in the area were not in the habit of harvesting their grain until the frost set in, which had not happened even by late November that year. So just when there was a chance for profit, Coote had to shut down. The frost came, the local wheat was harvested and threshed, but the weather continued fairly mild well into January. What little snow fell came mixed with rain and did not stay on the ground. Without snow there was no sleighing, so they still could not bring in any grain. And by the time the sleighing season began in February, the price of grain had risen, and they found that the demand for whiskey had disappeared. Here was the Upper Canadian economy at work, confounding the Old Country gentlemen. They seem to have begun operating anyway, probably at a loss, trying some rye and corn instead of wheat. But in June they had to shut down again. By then they had no money to buy grain.47 So it continued for another year or so, on and off, with Coote (his father had stepped aside almost entirely after a year) resorting to buying his grain on credit or trading grain for whiskey. Finding this still not sufficient, he took to borrowing small amounts of money from friends to pay incidental expenses. This was a disaster. Any money that came in had to go immediately to pay one debt or another, and Coote could never get free. He thought he might finally get a respite when his father sold their original London Township farm in the summer of 1843, but

18 Gentlemen Engineers the bank would not allow them to touch any of the money from the sale. His father had obviously built the distillery with money borrowed on the security of that land. Coote sold his watch. He sold his militia uniform. He borrowed from one friend to pay off another. By the fall of 1843 he could not show his face on the streets of London for fear of being harassed for a debt. He even had to resort to hiding in the woods to avoid being found by an irate creditor.48 He had a profitable winter in 1843-4, having procured a good supply of grain that fall. But an arrangement he made for more grain fell through the following spring, and again he had to shut down. This time it was for good. As Coote reported it, a farmer who had promised him four hundred bushels backed out at the last minute, selling his grain for a higher price to some new settlers. 'I have been shamefully used by some Yankee rascals,' Coote complained. By now he was personally in debt by about one hundred pounds and was being hounded even at Thorndale. No longer able to bear the humiliation, he resolved to leave home to find work for wages. At least that might allow him to start repaying his debts.49 Could it get any worse than this - the farm let to hired hands, the distillery shut down, and the whole family encumbered by debt? The true state of their finances had started to show in mid-1842 when Coote had learned that there was not enough money to buy grain for the distillery. He had passed this news on to Walter, adding that their father was suffering from an illness that had been 'brought on in a great measure by fretting himself about pecuniary affairs, which I greatly fear are in a sad disorder.' By the end of that year their father had revealed the depths of his debt to his son James, the lawyer in London, who in turn had informed Walter in Montreal. Walter responded that although he had known things were bad, he was 'shocked at how badly off they were.'50 The family was nearly ruined. IV

Through all these trials the Shanlys continued to live as they always had. How could a shortage of money prohibit them from being who they were? They kept up their visits with the Balls and Monsarrats, sometimes for several days or even a week at a time. In winter, when conditions allowed, they often went on sleigh rides with another family or two. They did their best to stay informed by reading newspapers and books. Coote regularly gave the two younger children lessons in arith-

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 19 metic, reading, and writing; he thought it better to keep the youngest boy Robert, at home rather than send him to the public schools, where there was 'such a mixture of boys of every rank that he would not improve very much.' And of course they occasionally found time to write the long letters that describe their thoughts and affairs so well.51 Meanwhile, the older boys were building a social life outside the family, centred around the British garrison that was set up in London after the rebellion. This garrison, comprising around five hundred military personnel through the early 1840s, greatly affected the society and economy of London.52 One of its most important effects was to change the character of the town 'from an American frontier community to a British outpost.'53 For the Shanlys, the garrison's Britishness was most welcome, but what made it especially appealing was the large complement of gentlemen officers stationed there. James, the son who lived in London, seems to have been the key to this connection. He made friends with several young officers and for a time roomed with an officer from the commissariat, James Lundy. Francis and Coote also took part, attending the garrison balls and theatricals, and chumming with some of the young Englishmen. Francis competed in a steeplechase in May 1843 and won the civilian competition. This endeared him to the garrison fellows, who all 'came up and shook hands with him after he won.' They later took Coote and Francis out to dine, and their party of sixteen, enlivened by plentiful champagne, carried on the revels until 3 a.m.54 The social pleasures of these garrison years must have been a welcome leaven in an otherwise troubled life. They certainly left lasting memories. Coote, Francis, and their friends recalled their antics in letters to one another for years afterwards. With the passage of time, having by then gained some financial security, they tended to remember the pleasure more than the pain, to recall 'ramblings through those same woods' much more vividly than hiding from creditors in those dear old woods. Pondering his worries about debt only six years after he had lived through them, Coote wrote to Francis, 'What mountains those molehills seemed... I don't think I have one unpleasant recollection connected with those days.'55 Reminiscences are often rosier than experiences, especially when of youthful times, so the colour of their recollections is not in itself remarkable. But it is worth noting how often the rosiness of these memories is tied to nature, to the outdoor life that had always been one of the gentry's great pleasures:

20 Gentlemen Engineers Poor Thorndale! What pleasant times we had there. Every day something occurs to call up some remembrance or other, today for instance has been one of those lovely Indian summer days such as we used to have there about this time, and last week was cold, wet, and gloomy just like the potato digging time. Will you ever forget the day whilst engaged in that honest occupation you and I got so infernally drunk and Geo. Fitzgerald came into the field.56

Another unmistakable aspect of the young gentleman's life in these memories is its gaiety, one might even say licentiousness, not tempered by the slightest taint of Victorian prudery: Do you remember the night he gave me the black eye? It seems but yesterday since those glorious old times ... and when poor Johnny Monsarrat employed his Sunday mornings making hot punch for our especial drinking, going to and coming from church. I often wonder at the quantities we could stand, and actually conduct ourselves decently in church afterwards.57

James Lundy, the commissariat officer with whom young James Shanly lived in London for a time, was transferred to Niagara and then to Quebec in 1845, and he kept up a correspondence with several of the Shanly boys. Once, when admonishing Francis for not writing often enough, he recalled: So no more laziness Master Francis, but a long letter if you please. Why, man, have we not drank, whored, smoked, walked, talked, and finally puttered virtuously together? And shall we... who sat on the hill above Houghey's with a flask full of whiskey, when walking to Nissouri, shall we suffer a paltry 600 miles or thereabouts to put a stop to our intercourse.58

Where gaiety begins to shade into debauchery brings us to Francis Shanly. Frank, as he was beginning to be known, was a fun-loving young man. He wrote few letters in these years, so his affairs are not as well documented as his brother Coote's. One detail of his life can be safely surmised: he did not shoulder the family responsibilities as much as his older brothers did. The family plan of putting him in charge of the mill came to nothing. Perhaps this was the mill's fault, as Coote believed, but one has to wonder. In describing the difficulties with the distillery, Coote never once mentions Frank giving him any help (although years later Coote did recall Frank chasing a creditor away from Thorndale).59

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 21 If Lundy's recollections are to be believed, Frank was busy with less worrisome and more pleasurable matters. One of the few letters Frank wrote to Walter in these years is from March 1841. He says little about Thorndale, except that it was so dull, but comments fully about political and social affairs. He also describes, rather obliquely, an incident in London the previous week, when he was 'spotted by Mrs. R's servant' doing some unnamed thing that prompted 'the widow' to inform the police, which led to a warrant being taken out for his arrest. Frank was advised to visit her and apologize, which he did, and 'when I made known the nature of my visit she was all smiles.' Just what he had been doing is left to the imagination; but whatever it was, it was not honourable. Frank did not write to Walter again for two years, when he was prompted to do so by his victory in the steeplechase, which he described at length in the letter.60 That Frank won the competition suggests how he may have been passing his time: one does not win a steeplechase without spending much of one's leisure hours on a horse. The Shanlys lived, in short, the life of the gentry: the grand country home, the joys of nature, the excitement of equestrian sports, the pleasures (and duty) of dispensing and receiving hospitality, the dabbling in literary and artistic pursuits, and the responsibility of social and military leadership. Of course, one should not make too much of this, for the Shanlys did not follow primogeniture or engage in duels, and they did do physical work at times. Nevertheless, their life clearly revolved around many of the conventional habits and values of the gentry.61 Such a life was fine for the officers with their military salaries, or for the truly wealthy, but for Coote and Frank and their family it could not last long. Exhilarating sleigh rides, fragrant autumn strolls, and amorous midnight tip-toeing simply did not pay. By the spring of 1844, with the farm let, the distillery shut down, and Coote now resolved to leave home to find work, old Shanly's plan of a new life for his family drew closer to its end. V

Before the hawthorns bloomed that year, Coote was gone. He had managed to find work as a distillery manager for a small mill and distillery owned by the Mills family, whom he knew well, near the village of Delaware, a few miles the other side of London. For the summer months his situation was insecure - they too had grain supply problems - but by the fall he was fully employed at a salary of seventy-five

22 Gentlemen Engineers pounds per year.62 Frank also decided to leave home that summer of 1844 but did not know where to turn. For a time he and Coote had a notion to move to Tennessee, where they thought they might establish a more profitable distillery, but once Coote secured employment in Delaware this ill-advised plan disappeared. Frank had to satisfy himself with living at his brother's home in London for a time. He got some sort of work in St Thomas, a town south of London, the following February, working for a Mr Van Buskirk, but this lasted little more than a month. He was back at Thorndale in the spring of 1845.63 Then came an odd turn of events. Coote fell ill that summer and was unable to continue at the distillery - 'The great heat and confinement of the distillery disagreeing with me,' he wrote. He came back to Thorndale to recuperate for a few weeks, and Frank went to Delaware to work in his place. Poor Coote never got his job back. Frank became Mills's distillery operator and Coote was set up again, against his wishes, on the family distillery at Thorndale, this time with a partner (whose name was never recorded).64 Not much remained of their social life by now. The gay years of the early 1840s were coming to a close as the British army reduced its garrison, and with the garrison went the balls, the theatricals, and Frank's and Lundy's favourite female companion, Buffy. Nearly all of their circle were moving on. Lundy was transferred away, another friend went to Goderich and another to Kingston, and several went to Lake Superior in search of work at the new mines there (without any success). Later, some travelled farther afield - to New Orleans, California, and even Port Natal on the African coast. There were few opportunities for such young men in Canada West at this time.65 The few years of fun had been but a fortuitous co-occurrence of their early adulthood with the presence of British officers at the London garrison; it could never have lasted long. 'A venerable remnant of an antediluvian world,' their clever friend Lundy later described it. As much as Frank Shanly wanted and needed to escape, his chances did not look promising. Frank had an imprudent streak that was to be his downfall more than once. He seems to have been unable to control himself when pleasure was within his grasp. His friend Lundy, who had seen evidence of this trait more than anyone, wrote to Frank when he lost his job in St Thomas, cautioning him to restrain himself: 'Meanwhile live on the square and if you can do without your 23rd tumbler, do, and stop at your 22nd - it will require great self-denial at first, but you will experience the sweet reward of an improving conscience.

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 23 Moreover, I would hint at not more than 9 pipes a day.'66 But Frank had other sweet rewards on his mind. By the end of July, with a monthly wage of about seven pounds, Frank had begun to run up accounts at two local tailors. He also started to think about marriage, despite his meagre pay, and his romantic enthusiasms kept pace with his sartorial extravagance. In August he was on the verge of becoming engaged to one of Colonel Ball's daughters, but the affair did not last. In October he was considering an engagement to a sixteen-year-old girl, but backed away. Unfortunately for him, the girl's family must have been close friends of the Mills, Frank's employer, because in early February 1846 he was forced to leave his job on account of the affair. Back he went to his brother's in London, with his tailors' accounts standing unpaid at some twelve pounds.67 Frank now had to find some other way of earning a living. Should he consider engineering? Walter seemed to be doing well at the profession in Montreal. People were talking about railways in London, and everyone knew that railways needed engineers to build them. Nevertheless, Frank had not been tempted to follow Walter. Not until June 1846, four months after losing his job at the distillery, is there evidence that he was seriously considering the profession. He wrote to Walter at Beauharnois, Canada East (where Walter was working on a canal for the Board of Works), asking how changes in the upper levels of the board would affect engineering job prospects, what the likelihood was of the Great Western Railway being built soon, and what he might read to begin developing a knowledge of engineering basics.68 The idea probably had not come to Frank on his own; he had, after all, needed work for years without showing the slightest interest in the engineering profession. Quite likely, Walter had put the idea in his head. Walter had recently visited the Niagara region of Canada West on Board of Works business and had spent some time travelling around the area with Frank. They would have had plenty of opportunity to talk about such things. It was not going to be as simple as it had been for Walter. Someone of Killaly's stature was not there to take Frank under his wing. Walter would have liked to do so but he did not have such power, and it was a time of retrenchment at the Board of Works. So Frank had to find his own way. He put his mind to it, however, and by the end of 1846 he had obtained a temporary position on one of the preliminary surveys of the Great Western Railway, working out of Hamilton. It was not secure or very well paid, but it seemed to be the start of something he could

24 Gentlemen Engineers build on. Frank left home for good in November 1846, determined, as Walter had been six years before, to become a civil engineer.69 Meanwhile, Coote fell into a melancholy that time never erased. He had always doubted himself, and now, the only one of the grown boys still at home, he had no reason to think himself capable of anything. As he later told Frank, 'From the time you left (now just four years) until my departure is a period I never look back on without many, many bitter regrets. The winter you went away was the most miserable I have ever passed - no one knew the extent of my mental sufferings then but myself.'70 He was back at Thorndale against his wishes, involved in a business partnership he abhorred, though he never explained why. He wanted out badly but had nowhere to go. In the summer of 1847, business at the distillery having gone bad, the partnership broke up and Coote briefly went back to work at the Mills's distillery in Delaware. 'I wish Coote had something to do, better than making whiskey,' brother James wrote to Frank that summer. No doubt Coote would have agreed. Finally, in March 1848, he broke away. In the middle of the night, drunk, on horseback, in the company of a disreputable friend, Coote Shanly left home. They 'mauled' the keeper at the toll-booth on the Sarnia Road and galloped away to the west. A few weeks later, Coote wrote to Frank from the village of Sandwich. Totally destitute, he was freeloading off some French-Canadian families he had met there. 'I don't know what to do. I'm on the verge of insanity,' he wrote.71 A month or so later, Coote had found his way to Walter's in Port Robinson. The details are not recorded, but by September he was settled there and had come to know some of Walter's friends. Secure under Walter's more experienced hand and Walter's ample income, Coote managed to put himself back together. He met a woman he would later marry, and through a business associate of Walter's got a lead on a post as a bookkeeper for a merchant house in Ohio, a job that was the start of a fairly successful career as an accountant in the United States. All the adult Shanly boys had now left home.72 VI

The Shanly family emigration, needless to say, had not worked out as old Mr Shanly had planned. Confronted by the twin challenges of an American environment and a modernizing society, the Shanlys had been thwarted. It is an oft-told tale, one Susanna Moodie was coming to know at this same time: 'Nor can I recall a single family of the higher

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 25 class ... that ever realized an independence, or bettered their condition, by taking up wild lands in remote localities, while volumes might be filled with failures.'73 Why should this have been so? This is a complex question, but the Shanly family experience reveals some part of the answer. After only ten years in Upper Canada the Shanly family lay crippled by, in the words of James Shanly Jr, 'the hereditary complaint of debt.'74 This was an apt description, for the continuity from the old country to the new in this regard is remarkable. The complaint, clearly enough, derived from that quintessentially upper-class habit of spending more than one makes.75 As the story recounted above reveals - from the day he auctioned off his belongings at Norman's Grove to the night his son Coote took flight - living within his means was a vague, rather alien notion to James Shanly. A man who, when building his home, matches the scale of his fireplaces but does not match the home's cost to his income will indeed end up in debt. The Shanly family's social background, however, is not enough to explain their fate. While their values and customs were unmistakably of the gentry, they were, one must recall, fallen gentry. The days when Shanlys had lived from the rents of their peasants were long past. Shanly and his sons knew something of the ways of the world and were not averse to hard work to get what they needed. Digging their own potatoes might have prompted some light-hearted derision, but they did pick up the spade when they needed to. Furthermore, it is well known that many emigrating gentlemen of Shanly's type - practical gentlemen - did not meet Shanly's fate. Being a gentleman did not necessarily lead one into debt. What did lead one into debt was trying to be a country gentleman. This was the heart of the matter. The economic basis of a rural gentry was not going to be established in Upper Canada, and the sooner a gentleman realized this the better off he was. There were alternatives, as Susanna Moodie knew: 'There are a thousand more advantageous ways in which a man of property may invest his capital than by burying himself and his family in the woods.'76 Shanly, although well on in years, could have settled his family in the town of London and established a legal practice to carry him through his final years. But he had not come to Upper Canada to be a town-dwelling professional; he had tried that in Dublin and found it wanting. Shanly came to Upper Canada to be a country gentleman, and he never changed his course. That was his mistake.

26 Gentlemen Engineers Shanly was not alone in choosing to bury himself in the woods. The well-known gentlemen immigrants of Susanna Moodie's circle all did the same: her husband Dunbar Moodie, her brother-in-law Thomas Traill, her brother Samuel Strickland, and Anne Langton's brother John Langton.77 And they met the same obstacles. Moodie escaped from the woods to Belleville and was able to make a meagre living as a sheriff. Traill never escaped; he died in 1859, in debt and depressed. Strickland managed to maintain a country life, but he appears to have made most of his living from his private agricultural school rather than from farming. Langton, of course, became a prominent politician; he moved to Toronto in 1855. In short, the gentlemen who survived were those who abandoned rural life. Fortunately for James Shanly Sr, his sons were not so set in their ways. One by one they recognized the futility of the rural life, and one by one they left. The boys' departure from home was, in a way, a greater break from tradition than the family's emigration from Ireland had been. It was left to them to do what their father never did - to leave the familiar rural world their family had known for centuries and travel to a land of cities, a land of capital and labour, businesses and government, and work that demanded all one's time. The Shanly boys were destined to be troubled and restive in their new roles. Although in time they did adjust, their 'cultural emigration' was not achieved without wounds and scars. In the early 1850s they were all complaining about how little time they had for themselves. And as to reading and keeping up any little stock of information I ever possessed,' Coote bemoaned in 1851, 'it is out of the question. I fear I am fast degenerating into a mere machine.' At about the same time, James Jr described for Frank the few acres he had bought on the outskirts of town, where he tried to find time, he said, to 'indulge my tastes for planting and improving.'78 The boys found incomes, however, and by doing so were able to keep their father supported and, eventually, out of debt. Walter had begun sending money to Coote in 1843, when the distillery venture was failing, and he had supported Frank for a time before and just after Frank left home. James Jr had a house of his own in London by 1847, and after his brothers had left, the Thorndale family (his father, stepmother, aunt, and half-siblings) often stayed with him for long periods. In 1851 four of the boys began contributing monthly to an account to pay their father's debts. In 1853, with the debts gone, they (mostly Frank and Walter) paid for a substantial renovation to Thorndale House and its

The Shanly Boys Leave Home 27 grounds. Old Shanly may have cursed their departure, but he did eventually accept their money.79 James Shanly Sr almost disappears from the historical record after Coote left home. The boys all kept up a correspondence with each other, but their letters contain only occasional, passing references to their father. What little they say of him suggests a bitter, temperamental old man, someone from whom they preferred to keep their distance. Thorndale, when renovated, was at last the splendid Canadian country house old Shanly had wanted, but it never appeased him. After all, he knew full well that it had been paid for with money from his sons' urban professions. In any case, he had few years to enjoy it. James Shanly Sr died in 1857. One wonders whether he ever realized that in the end his main purpose for emigrating had been fulfilled. His five grown boys now all stood on their own.

2

Learning on the Job

The new generation of Shanlys would be urban professionals, not country gentlemen. This was unmistakable by the late 1840s. James had settled nearby, in London, as a lawyer. Charles was in Montreal, supporting himself as a clerk while devoting much of his time to journalism and poetry (he later moved to New York to follow his literary inclinations, with mixed success). Coote was in Masillon, Ohio, employed as an accountant, an occupation that eventually took him to Chicago. Frank and Walter, meanwhile, were working at a series of jobs in Canada and the United States, developing their skills as civil engineers. Not until 1852 did they return to Canada West. Established civil engineers they were by then - their professional apprenticeships complete - and they moved not to Thorndale or even London but to Toronto to take on the job of engineering the Toronto and Guelph Railway. Thorndale never became the Shanly home it was built to be. The word 'apprenticeship' as a label for what they did in their years away, while useful, is in fact a little misleading, for it was an unregulated and self-directed process of learning, with no formal accreditation to symbolize its completion or certify one's competence.1 What they did have when the process was over was enough experience and credibility to present themselves to the businessmen and government officials they worked with, and also to other engineers, as bona fide professional civil engineers. Their peers, in other words, saw them as civil engineers, so that is what they were, though they had no formal professional standing. As for the process of acquiring their knowledge and skills, 'learning on the job' probably describes it best, for they did learn as they worked; but that label has its shortcomings too, for it belies the variety that

Learning on the Job 29 such a process entailed and the initiative on which it depended. There was plenty to learn, both on and off the job, and the aspiring engineer seems to have been expected to carry out this learning with little formal guidance. The path to professional status might not have been as regulated as it would become by the end of the century, but it was by no means an easy path to follow. I

That Frank and Walter Shanly chose to become engineers might seem surprising. Insofar as there is supposed to be any connection between gentlemen and engineers in the early nineteenth century, engineers sought to be gentlemen, but gentlemen did not seek to be engineers. The engineering profession, according to this view, was still too artisanal to attract gentlemen into its ranks. It was not a common choice among the younger sons of British landowners who were compelled (by the custom of primogeniture) to turn to a profession to make a living. It did offer an opportunity for upward mobility, and some successful engineers in the nineteenth century did finish their careers with the wealth and status of gentlemen, though they had not been born to that position.2 The experience of the Shanly brothers does not fit this interpretation. They were gentlemen before they were engineers. It is true that by the time Frank and Walter embarked on their engineering careers, the family had fallen about as far as a gentleman's family can fall, save for ending up in jail. Frank's and Walter's choice of profession must be seen in this light; their options were few and their need for income urgent. Nevertheless, they chose this career unapologetically, without any family disapprobation. One may recall that the promising son, William, had entered the profession in Ireland in the 1820s when the family was still quite comfortable. Civil engineering was evidently an acceptable profession for the young men of this family. In fact, James Shanly Jr, the lawyer, once referred to it as 'the most deservedly respectable of the lay professions.'3 On further examination, one finds an unexpected number of features of the family's life that led the boys into or at least facilitated their pursuit of an engineering career. For although they were brought up as young gentlemen, their father, as an estate manager, had never been far from practical matters. He did not till fields or sink fence posts himself, but he did have to know enough about such work to ensure that it

30 Gentlemen Engineers was done properly. As the overseer of improvements on estates, he had to be familiar with the technical aspects of such things as drainage tiles, timber bridges, and road improvements. One can even go so far as to say that since his role was essentially to ensure that the owner's investments were well spent, Shanly's job as an estate manager was remarkably similar to that of a civil engineer. The following letter, written to James Shanly by the attorney representing the owner of an estate Shanly managed, is startlingly similar to the engineering correspondence his sons would write and receive a generation later: 'I am much pleased with your account of the sod embankment, and the wooden bridge, as it proves they took pains to execute the work properly - the banks will not now sink much more, if any, and I hope the timber will not sway or bend much, especially when the side rails are put up. Pray did Mr. Kell show you the sketch or plan of the side rails.'4 How much the boys knew of or took part in their father's affairs is hard to say, but they must have been exposed to at least some of what he did, perhaps even acquiring a little of his knowledge and methods. All the boys seem to have been inveterate account keepers right from the start of their careers; this they quite likely learned from their father. At the very least they would have learned, whether they knew it or not, that such work was part of the ways of the world and that for a gentleman to do it was acceptable. Furthermore, is there not a basic similarity between the values of a gentleman and the professional ideals of an engineer? That is to say, their gentry culture, far from deterring the boys from professional engineering, might actually have predisposed them to pursue it. Like a gentleman, an engineer was expected to be honourable and fair; he was not a businessman who made his living by exploiting labour or risking capital, but an impartial professional who sold his useful knowledge and sound judgment. He acted not in self-interest but in the interests of science and logic, remaining above the competing interests of the projects he worked on. The engineer, in other words, had a 'professional interest in disinterestedness' that is somewhat akin to gentlemanly chivalry.5 Nor was their gentleman's education as useless or inappropriate as one might think. 'Horace and Homer, Euclid and Algebra, Lessons in French and Lectures on Chemistry,' as Walter somewhat disparagingly recalled his schooling, gave them knowledge that in fact served them rather well.6 Their geometry and algebra were sufficient to enable them to pick up the trigonometric techniques used in surveying and mea-

Learning on the Job 31 suring excavation quantities; and their study of classical literature gave them, Walter in particular, considerable rhetorical skill. Walter's reports played a big part in establishing his reputation as an engineer. All in all, there was really nothing in their social background that made civil engineering an undesirable choice, and there were some features of their family culture that aided and even encouraged their entry into the profession. So it should not be surprising that two boys brought up as gentlemen would, when faced with the need to make a living in a modern economy, choose to be professional civil engineers. Family traditions are only a part of an individual's decision. What of the boys' personal inclination towards engineering? Here there is a rather striking difference between the two. Whereas Walter showed a strong interest in mechanical matters (at least he saw himself this way in his memoir) and chose to pursue engineering at the earliest opportunity, Frank most certainly did not.7 He spent years at Thorndale and around London looking and hoping for work before he took an interest in civil engineering. Indeed, it seems to have been almost his last choice. He did have some sensitivity to building techniques - in a letter to Walter in 1843, he remarked on the quality of workmanship in a new bridge built near London by the Board of Works - but this was evidently not enough to attract him to the profession.8 One motive for entering the profession that neither brother showed at this early stage - or even later, for that matter - was the belief that by becoming engineers they could contribute to the material progress of the age. This celebrated aspect of Victorian culture is entirely absent from their comments to one another about their chosen career. It is indeed difficult to see these men as the 'advance guard of the Industrial Revolution,' as L.T.C. Rolt has characterized Victorian engineers.9 Strange as it may seem, it makes more sense to see the Shanly brothers as entering this nascent profession, the very embodiment of a new age of iron, steam, and progress, as a way of using their old values to protect their family's obsolete way of life. II

The profession Frank and Walter chose to enter was still rather inchoate in Canada in the 1840s. This was not the case in Britain, however, where the civil-engineering profession had been well established since the late eighteenth century. A flurry of canal building in Britain after 1760, along with a growing number of harbour improvement schemes,

32 Gentlemen Engineers had demanded the services of a new kind of man who knew his building trades as well as he knew his contract management. In a short time, a fairly self-conscious civil-engineering profession had arisen to take on these jobs. Under the leadership of John Smeaton, the son of a lawyer, the Society of Civil Engineers was formed in 1771.10 Several engineers, such as James Brindley and later Thomas Telford and John Rennie, began to develop what might be called 'professional' standards and practices in this era, but it appears to have been Smeaton who had the greatest influence in setting the engineering profession on a solid foundation. Due perhaps to his family background in law, Smeaton clearly saw the need for civil engineers to be recognized as being fully independent of clients and contractors, and for their opinions to be accepted as 'professional' in courts of law; these two principles he established immediately in his own practice, and he maintained them rigorously. The status and authority of the 'Smeatonian' engineer thus became a professional ideal to which future engineers could strive. Equally important were the precedents Smeaton set for the working arrangements of civil engineers. In his work as engineer of the Forth and Clyde Navigation in 1786, he created an organizational structure that became the standard for all large engineering projects. This consisted of a chief engineer (often not exclusively employed on the project), who set all standards and specifications; resident engineers (full-time employees), each of whom managed a designated section of the work; and assistant engineers, several reporting to each resident, who spent their time actually on the work sites observing and measuring work done by contractors. These conventions were all well established by the time Smeaton died in 1792.11 His ideas lived on into the railway age of the nineteenth century, but the greater scale, larger investments, and more complex technical demands of railways necessitated some changes. On the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Britain's first significant railway line, in the late 1820s, Chief Engineer George Stephenson completely lost control of construction costs; unexpected expenses repeatedly bankrupted the small local contractors, and the railway company itself had to take on the construction, hiring its own men and even buying its own wheelbarrows. Stricter specifications and larger, more experienced contractors with greater financial resources were needed. Among several engineers who adopted such methods were Joseph Locke, one of Stephenson's assistants on the Liverpool and Manchester, and Stephenson's son, Robert.12 This change somewhat weakened the

Learning on the Job 33 engineer's authority, for it brought him into the contractor's sphere of influence. Nevertheless, by this time the professional engineer was a prominent and firmly established fixture on all large railway construction jobs. 'By 1830,' one authority has written, 'a mature profession existed in the British Isles with proven methods of organizing the construction of large projects, and an international reputation for technological innovation. It was a profession which would be recognized by the civil engineer of today'13 All of this had happened before Frank and Walter Shanly left Ireland. In the United States the profession had not developed nearly as far.14 Not until after the War of 1812, in fact, was there an American civilengineering profession. The reasons for this are not hard to find. There had been no canal age in the 1760s, for one thing; nor were there as many skilled artisans, as much investment capital, or an intensification of land use that called for new drainage systems. In short, the economy and society of Britain were very different from those of the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the civil-engineering profession in the two countries was correspondingly different. Although there were American men who called themselves engineers and did what was called engineering, there was not yet a clearly defined profession of engineering. Engineers had not fully differentiated themselves from the owners of the works being built or the contractors who undertook to build them. They were, in the words of one historian, 'proprietor-engineers' rather than true independent professionals.15 With the great number of internal improvements built after about 1816, both by the states and by private companies, an engineering profession of sorts began to form in the United States. The Erie Canal, which demanded dozens of engineers to plan and supervise construction over its 350 miles from Albany to Buffalo, is the largest and bestknown project of the era; but there were other substantial works, such as the Union Canal in Pennsylvania and countless lesser road and canal improvements throughout the northern and southern states. A good many of these engineers were trained at such institutions as West Point Academy (whose military-engineering graduates often turned to civil employment) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but, even so, the profession remained different from the British profession in its close ties to proprietorship.16 There were likely some true independent professionals in these years, such as Benjamin H. Latrobe Jr and Laommi Baldwin, but as Frank and Walter would learn, the engineer

34 Gentlemen Engineers and the contractor were often very close allies on American construction jobs.17 While the usual 'frontier' reasons can explain some of this difference - the absence of strong artisanal traditions, the near consensus in support of the improvements, and the craving for hasty construction there is an ideological factor at work here too which explains the enduring nature of this aspect of American engineering. 'Americans seem to have regarded proprietorship as a guarantee of trustworthiness and of one's readiness to conform to the interests of an enterprise,' Daniel Calhoun has written. 'Ownership and economic involvement were guarantees the mere professional could not offer.' Which is to say that the engineering profession felt the hand of that powerful and quintessentially American myth of the dignity of the independent businessman, a myth that flourished with such lasting effect throughout antebellum America.18 It is hard to write with much certainty about the civil engineering profession in Canada at this time. There were no engineering schools, and since the profession was not organized or recognized in any official way, there was no such thing as a truly accredited engineer; nor are there any membership records to reveal who the engineering practitioners of the day were or how they came to be engineers. However, Killaly's appointment to the Board of Works in early 1840 does suggest that there was some recognition of the value of a professional engineer; before his appointment, the board had been led by 'lawyers and merchants.'19 One gets the impression that there were probably a few dozen experienced engineers in the colony, although outside of canal construction circles nobody would have known who they were. The Welland Canal, where construction had begun in 1824, had drawn several experienced American engineers (most of whom were not formally educated) from the Erie Canal which, conveniently, was finished in 1825. Among them were John B. Mills and Alfred Barrett, both of whom became senior engineers with the Board of Works. The Welland had also provided experience for Canadian men such as Samuel (b. 1811) and Thomas (b. 1821) Keefer, who learned their engineering there under the authority of their father, George, who also called himself an engineer; there were a few men, like Killaly and Nicol Hugh Baird, who had come from Britain or Ireland with some engineering experience;20 and there were also a few British military Royal Engineers in Canada. The latter, because of their work on the Rideau Canal, are often

Learning on the Job 35 assumed to have influenced the development of early Canadian civil engineering, but they could not have been very numerous by the 1840s, for they rarely appear in the records of the early public works projects around which the Canadian profession grew.21 There were, however, enough skilled men (though whether they were true engineers or not is arguable) to fill the ranks of the engineering corps of the board when word got around that there was £1.5 million about to be spent on public works. Fill the ranks they did. Within three years, the board was using the services of more than fifty men who called themselves engineers.22 One of them was Walter Shanly, who in 1843 was listed as assistant engineer on the Beauharnois Canal, with a salary of £250 per annum. Ill

As young Walter Shanly and his 'professional godfather' Hamilton Killaly bounced along atop a stagecoach on their way to Montreal in October 1840, they were being given a vivid demonstration of the colony's transportation needs.23 It would have taken them about a week to make the trip, combining travel by stage and steamer. Proper commercial development could never take place with such clumsy transportation. As chairman of the new Board of Works, Killaly would now work to improve this. A large loan from Britain was likely, and once it was secured he and his board would build the roads, bridges, harbours, and canals needed to lay the foundation for Canada's future commercial growth. If all went well, his young protege would contribute too. Walter's position did not come as easily as one might think. Killaly is notorious for having used his powers of patronage to excess, but it took some time to get Walter into a secure position with the board. Prospects looked good at first. Immediately upon arrival in October 1840, Walter was put on the board's temporary payroll and dispatched to the Chambly Canal, a substantial canal twelve miles long with nine locks, on the Richelieu River route east of Montreal. Work had just started that summer. After little more than a month, however, the chief engineer, N.H. Baird, took ill and the project was halted. Being only a temporary employee, Walter was not reassigned. He was suddenly out of work.24 By the middle of January 1841 he was in employment again, not with the Board of Works but with the Trustees of the Montreal Roads as their inspector. One can suppose Killaly had a hand in securing this posi-

36 Gentlemen Engineers tion; Walter had no road-building experience, so somebody must have called in a favour to get him the job. This work lasted through the summer but not much beyond. In November 1841 Walter was again 'on the look out for an eligible contract/ as his brother kindly worded it.25 By this time the imperial loan had been secured, and engineering work on the big St Lawrence canals was imminent. Walter was still close to Killaly, living with his family at least part of the time, and stood a good chance of getting taken on with one of these jobs.26 All winter he waited, expecting to be appointed to the Cornwall Canal, but nothing came. In June, although his family at Thorndale was writing to him at the office of the Cornwall Canal in Moulinette, he was in fact still in Montreal. Then at last in July he was appointed subassistant engineer on the Beauharnois Canal, not the Cornwall as he had expected, with an annual salary of £175.27 The Beauharnois Canal was one of four major St Lawrence canals which the Board of Works undertook, the others being the Cornwall, Lachine, and Williamsburg. It was to run a distance of just under twelve miles, from Lake St Francis to Lake St Louis, through the seigneury of Beauharnois along the south shore of the river; in doing so it would bypass three sets of rapids - the Coteau, Cedars, and Cascades and descend some eighty-two feet. Its downstream terminus was and still is about twenty-five miles above (west of) Montreal.28 The engineering staff on the canal was to consist of five men: one engineer in charge and two assistant engineers, each of whom had one subassistant. Walter reported to an assistant named C.M. Tate, who in turn reported to J.B. Mills, the engineer in charge.29 Tate had been working on the canal since early in 1842, and by the time Walter was appointed he had finished a detailed survey and determined the route of the canal. But Tate's new survey had uncovered a huge error. He had found that the earlier surveys on which rough designs had been based were off by twenty vertical feet; so the canal would have to descend one hundred feet over its length and would need two more locks. This startling news brought Killaly himself and the board's engineer, Samuel Keefer, out to conduct their own survey to confirm Tate's findings. They found that Tate was wrong. The original surveys had been correct. Having so blackened his reputation, Tate began to disgrace himself further by revealing his ignorance of conventional contracting procedures. He was, in fact, incompetent, and although he was 'a gentleman with strong letters of recommendation,' he could obviously not continue in a position of responsibility.30 Thus it was that Walter, only a

Learning on the Job 37 few months after his appointment, began reporting directly to Mills. Tate stayed on the payroll, and Walter still held the position and received the pay of a subassistant, but by this break he gained the opportunity to prove himself capable of working as a full assistant. From the start, Walter saw his appointment on the Beauharnois not just as an income but as a chance to learn the profession. The knowledge and reputation of Mills, the variety and complexity of the work, and the unexpected opportunity to work at a fairly responsible level all made Walter feel confident that the job would launch him into the profession. ' [I] am fast acquiring a knowledge of engineering,' he wrote to one of his brothers at Thorndale after he had been on the job about six months; 'by the time that this canal will be finished I hope that I will be fully competent to direct the progress of the general run of work and withal to style myself "civil engineer" -1 could not have got into a better school.'31 By mid-October, the engineers had prepared plans and specifications, and the board advertised a call for tenders. Bids came in promptly, and the successful contractors were selected by early December. There were to be eight different contractors for thirteen separate excavation sites, and five masonry contractors for the nine locks (three of which also had one of the excavation contracts). One of the lock contractors was to do all the stone culverts as well. The few men already employed directly by the board would be kept on 'in view of the hardships they would face if let go.'32 Walter's job as assistant engineer was to work closely with the contractors, ensuring their that work was done according to the plans and specifications, and measuring the quantity of finished work to determine their progress payments. He was probably on the site every day, for he lived in a house on the river bank at the Cascades Rapids.33 He reported what he saw and did to Mills, who, as engineer in charge, reported to the board. As the pace of work began to pick up in the spring of 1843 and as men seeking jobs began arriving at the canal, Walter's duties took an unexpected turn. Suddenly he was in the midst of a riot. With the plentiful supply of labour and the increasing number of daylight hours, the contractors had cut wages and lengthened the work day. Since word had spread that the men still working for the board were not subjected to this squeeze, the labourers struck - two or three thousand of them were on the site by early May - to get all the work put into the hands of the board. Many were armed, the authorities said, so the military was dispatched. A bloody confrontation

38 Gentlemen Engineers occurred and fifteen or twenty labourers were killed.34 During this affair, Walter Shanly did not shy away from the action. As a gentleman should, he took his social responsibilities seriously. He personally disarmed many of the strikers, and in the minds of many of the officials he was responsible for mitigating what could have been a much more violent confrontation. The governor general wrote him a personal letter of commendation after the worst of the affair. Walter was proving himself, though in the most unlikely circumstances.35 As an engineer, too, Walter was drawing the attention and respect of his superiors. Having shown himself able to do the work of an assistant engineer, he was promoted that autumn and his salary raised to £250.36 As the months passed, more and more correspondence took place between Walter and the board; Mills, who by then was also in charge of the Williamsburg Canal, was leaving him much of the responsibility. In February 1844 the other active assistant, a Polish immigrant named Kierzkowski, resigned, leaving Walter as the only assistant on the canal. He swallowed up the extra duties and work progressed as quickly as ever. His scope of work grew very broad. He dealt with the questionable quality of a certain contractor's cement, the intemperate drinking habits of a pair of foremen, the problem of contractors who were not paying their men, an improper measurement of the land needed for a culvert, and petitions for damages from adjacent landowners, among many other things. All this he seems to have done virtually without mistakes.37 By the spring of 1845, with work nearly completed and Walter now fully proven, the board announced that the canal was scheduled to be open by 1 July and that Mills was being assigned to full-time supervision of the Williamsburg Canal. The final push to get the canal bringing in tolls before that summer's navigation season closed was now in Walter's hands.38 He had it open before the season ended - but by 15 August, not 1 July. Yet even this was an achievement for a young engineer in charge of his first job. Walter had shown an immense capacity for work, both technical and administrative, and that he could be a ruthless taskmaster. He had learned what an engineer had to do to finish a job on time.39 Although the canal was open, Walter's work as engineer in charge was by no means over. There were countless unfinished details to be dealt with all along the route, and he had to keep up a hectic pace right through the fall. There were also claims for extra work (beyond the original plans and specifications) from all the contractors, and for

Learning on the Job 39 damages (due to flooding or improper original measurements of the amount of land needed) from several of the local landowners. By the end of November, when the navigation season ended, the board deemed the work completed and Walter was reassigned. With the Beauharnois Canal behind him, Walter Shanly had done precisely what he had set out to do; he could now call himself a civil engineer. Walter's steady rise in his job with the Board of Works is an intriguing counterpoint to his family's decline over the same period. He received his promotion to assistant engineer just as the Shanlys were letting their farm to hired hands and Coote was hiding from his creditors in the Thorndale woods. And as the ice formed on the newly opened canal and Walter was savouring the pleasure of his first professional accomplishment, Frank was being fired from his distillery job in Delaware. No doubt Walter saw some irony in this. His father had disapproved strongly when Walter left, yet it was Walter who was succeeding while his family failed. Walter Shanly was not the sort of man to find pleasure or vindication in this; only by bringing his family with him on this road to financial health could he fully atone for abandoning them. IV

Walter was now a valued member of the inner circle of public works engineers, and the board had abundant uses for him. It put him in charge of finishing the St Ours Lock, a critical work on the northern end of the Richelieu waterway connecting the St Lawrence with New York State canals. The board also had him make an estimate of the cost of a new survey of Lake St Louis (probably for a shipping channel) and sent him to Canada West to investigate the ongoing work on the Welland Canal. At the same time, Walter seems to have kept some duties on the Beauharnois, where he still made his home.40 All of this carried him through the spring and summer of 1846, when suddenly the engineering corps was completely rearranged in a restructuring of the whole board. The Board of Works was in fact abolished and was replaced by the Department of Public Works, over which the increasingly powerful legislative assembly would have more control. Killaly's domineering methods and lavish overspending - nearly everything was over budget - had long drawn the scorn of the assembly, and under this new arrangement he was completely stripped of his power. The new commissioner of the department was William B. Robinson. Fortunately,

40 Gentlemen Engineers Walter and Robinson thought well of each other, so Walter lost little in this exchange, though Robinson's regime did stop work on the St Ours Lock, Walter's main job at the time. But Walter was reassigned to the Welland Canal, where Samuel Keefer was now to be in charge. Robinson had first offered Walter a position in charge of road improvements in the Eastern Townships of Canada East, but Walter thought the canal experience more valuable. He believed he would have been put in charge of the Welland - the engineer there had resigned, and it was a natural step up for him after his completion of the Beauharnois - had there not been a need to find a position for the deposed Killaly. The assembly had given Killaly the chief engineership of the new department (at his chairman's salary of £800, but with nothing to do), which had dislodged Keefer, who was chief engineer at the time, making his appointment to the Welland necessary.41 It was a step down for Walter, this new post, but the lesser responsibility had its benefits: 'Tho' I shall have my hands full of business I will have little or no responsibility compared to what I have had heretofore and I hope also to be relieved of a hitherto unceasing correspondence with the Board.' Anyway, Walter saw his situation on the Welland as temporary: 'If I can only be kept going until some of the railroads are fairly started.'42 He would have to wait some time for that. Meanwhile, he was back doing the familiar job of assistant engineer supervising construction of a canal. The Welland Canal had been already built and in use, in a manner of speaking, when the government acquired it in 1841, but it had been badly in need of reconstruction. This the government had begun immediately, realigning the canal in several places, replacing the timber locks with stone, and widening and deepening it throughout.43 Much of this new work had been done by the time Walter arrived in the late summer of 1846, but there was still plenty to do. Walter was put in charge of the upper sections of the canal, from Thorold to Lake Erie, where he took over three major tasks: deepening and widening a 21/2-mile-long cutting between Allanburg and Port Robinson, completing a stone aqueduct to carry the canal over the Welland River (and the composite lock associated with the crossing), and generally reconstructing the feeder canal from the Grand River to the junction with the main canal. The work was already under contract, and Walter's job was essentially just routine supervision and preparation of the contractors' monthly payments.44 Soon he had another job: getting his brother Frank into the engi-

Learning on the Job 41 neering profession. This was the time, the summer of 1846, that Frank Shanly was suddenly looking for a way in and had written Walter asking for help. Walter took Frank's inquiry seriously. 'I would advise you to touch up on your knowledge of figures, mathematics, and c.,' he replied; 'read Gregory's Practical Mechanics and anything else in that line you can lay hold of.' Was there any hope of a position with Public Works, Frank wondered. Walter thought not. In his new position on the Welland he was powerless. 'I have long wished to throw some employment in your way but seem myself just now to be at a standstill when hardly half way up the hill,' he lamented. 'In coming here I merely stepped into another man's shoes and found every situation occupied! - and even should any vacancy occur it would be certain to be filled up by some lubberly fellow with political influence to back him.'45 The Great Western Railway, which had been chartered in the legislature early in 1845, was Frank's best hope, Walter believed, and he himself had plans to get on that railway project once it was underway.46 By the end of October, still without work, Frank was desperate. He considered setting off to the western United States to find a job, but he had no concrete plan and Walter thought the idea too rash without one. Walter invited him to Port Robinson to talk it over. If Frank could offer him a definite plan and convince him of its likely success, Walter was prepared to give him money to carry him through, but Walter had no mind to support Frank if he was just chasing adventure.47 So Frank stayed around London, and he soon got his break: he was hired as a leveller (a very junior position) in December 1846 with one of the preliminary survey parties of the Great Western.48 Walter does not appear to have had a direct hand in the appointment, though the American engineers in charge knew Walter, so the family name must have helped.49 Based first in Hamilton and then St Catharines, Frank worked on and off that winter, both in the field and at the company offices in town. He did well enough to receive one promotion, to compassman in June 1847, and had reason to think he might obtain a permanent position.50 It was insecure work, but it was a start. Walter was hopeful for himself too. He expected to get charge of a section of the railway once construction began and to be able at last to set himself free from the Department of Public Works. Tf it goes on I must have a share of the loaves and fishes,' he wrote to Frank in midFebruary. Their brother James, in touch with business circles in London (Canada), was more cautious; he had heard rumours that English capitalists were not forthcoming and that the line might not be able to

42 Gentlemen Engineers go ahead.51 Of far more concern to Frank and Walter, who were still confident despite James's views, was a loss of professional territory to the American engineers who would be coming in with the American contractors scouting for work. As the months passed, the situation grew worse. Walter was in Montreal for part of the summer to conduct canal inspections for the department, and while there he talked to men in government and financial circles, hoping to get some inside information. The Great Western would soon go ahead, he wrote to Frank, 'and were it not that there are a host of Yankees in the field I would endeavour while here to secure a berth on it.'52 Their optimism about the railway was ill-founded. The company had indeed failed to raise the necessary capital, and when it appealed to the legislature for financial aid it was rebuffed.53 Frank's survey party was paid out for good in early August 1847. Momentum and wishful thinking carried the project a little farther along - the engineer's report on the surveys was published on 1 September, and a sod-turning ceremony was held in London on 23 October - but this soon petered out. By the time Walter returned to Port Robinson from Montreal that autumn, both he and Frank had given up on the Great Western. Frank's prospects once again looked bleak. He went to Buffalo, then Chicago, then back to Buffalo for a time. In mid-December he wrote to Walter from New York (where he had vainly been trying to get on the York and Erie Railroad) to say that he was about to sail to England. Walter wrote back immediately to try and halt him: 'Just come back to Canada and stop with me until prospects begin to brighten, as I am convinced they will before very long.'54 He offered to let Frank help him with his own office work so that they would have more time to spend at the Ten,' a nearby hotel (with some friendly female residents), where they had become regular visitors the previous winter. This was irresistible bait to Frank Shanly. He was back at Walter's by Christmas. Walter's proposition about the office work was extremely sensible. He was sending Frank money anyway; he might as well get some of his work done for him and give Frank more engineering experience. It was better than having his money end up in the hands of American boarding-house keepers. So, for a time, Frank and Walter lived together in Port Robinson and worked on the Welland Canal. At some point that spring, Frank was put on the department's temporary payroll as Walter's office assistant.55 He used the situation well, no doubt at Walter's urging. He recorded in a notebook such things as structural details of the locks being built, the right proportions of gravel and lime

Learning on the Job 43 for making concrete, and the price of materials at certain locations. He also made an effort to teach himself some practical mathematics; he wrote several formulae in his notebook, apparently copied from books, for deducing static forces and calculating areas and volumes.56 That this arrangement was going to be short-lived they both knew well. Although the work would not run out - and indeed the Welland Canal remained under construction for another forty years - the money would. In December 1847 a sudden panic struck when the Commercial Bank stopped honouring the Department's payment certificates. The department, which had overspent during Killaly's time, had been assuming that it could borrow more money in England to pay for its ongoing work; but in late 1847 the department (and its bank, no doubt) learned that it could not. Switching banks brought temporary relief, but in May 1848 even the new bank would extend itself no further, and once again the contractors were not able to cash their certificates. Major reductions were required. The department had to 'lighten the public burden,' which meant that the work would have to wait and the engineers would have to go. The end, for Frank and Walter, came in July 1848.57 Frank knew what he was going to do. Several American contractors on the Welland had spoken promisingly about railway work in New England. They, too, had left when the money dried up, but as they did so they offered to help Frank find a position on one of these lines if he came their way. Frank bought a new carpet bag on 22 August from a merchant in Port Robinson and was off to Buffalo to catch the next morning's train to Boston.58 He soon learned that offers of help come more readily than offers of work. Once in Boston he sought out his acquaintances, and they readily took him out to visit their railroad construction sites, but nobody offered him a job. 'Your account of matters at Boston is certainly very dreary/ Walter wrote on receiving a letter from Frank. Walter was staying with brother James in London and thought it unlikely he would join Frank.59 After about two weeks, one of Frank's contractor friends offered to take him to a construction site in northern Vermont. Frank took up the offer and settled in with this man, Pritchard by name, at his shanty in the Green Mountains near the town of Ludlow. He stayed for nearly a month, walking about the low mountains, reading novels, and writing letters of application to any engineer or contractor he heard of. By early October he had had enough and resolved to move on to Ogdensburg, New York, where he had heard that a railway would soon be built

44 Gentlemen Engineers and where Hamilton Killaly's brother John was employed as an engineer. He had written to John Killaly but had received no reply. Frank recorded the events of the next few days in his diary: October 12th Arrived at Ogdensburg this morning at 81A. Saw Messrs. Chamberlain and Worrall - the latter gives me some encouragement - crossed over to Prescott this afternoon - felt myself at home once more on British ground returned to Ogdensburg in dark October 13th ... Prescott this morning - received a letter from Worrall to Col. Schlatter - saw Col. S. this evening - received from him rather a favourable answer to call on Mr. Kneass in the morning - wrote to Walter October 14th Called on Mr. Kneass - set to work at once - no mention about pay - I suppose will be all right. Making a profile of the line from here to Malone60

So after two months of pursuit, Frank was employed again. He later learned that it was Alfred Barrett, an American engineer with the Department of Public Works well acquainted with Walter, who had urged the railroad to hire him.61 Walter, meanwhile, had spent September in London, waiting for some work to turn up. He was not quite as desperate or as reckless as Frank - a month without work was not going to bankrupt him - but he could not last out forever. He had been planning to go to Cleveland, where a number of contracts were to be awarded for a railroad to Cincinnati, until he heard from Frank, who not only reported his own employment but said that the railway wanted Walter on the line too. Walter sold his horse to get some cash, finished up some business in St Catharines, and was in Ogdensburg on 15 November.62 Walter's prudent nature had served them well in the past, but this time it was Frank's adventurousness that brought them through. V

The railway they were suddenly working on was the Northern Railroad of New York, a line from Ogdensburg (on the St Lawrence River) to Rouses Point (on Lake Champlain). At first glance this remote location seems an unlikely place for an early railroad. But its raison d'etre lay in its being part of a larger network: at Rouses Point it connected with a

Learning on the Job 45 line to Boston, so this 118 miles of railway skirting the Adirondacks served the greater purpose of bringing the St Lawrence valley into the commercial hinterland of Boston. Not surprisingly, much of the capital in the enterprise came from Boston.63 The company had let contracts for construction in 1847, but progress had been halting because of the ever-present problem of raising capital. The whole affair was by no means assured when Frank and Walter arrived in the autumn of 1848. This was revealed to them by the vagueness of their appointments. Frank was retained in Ogdensburg as office assistant to Resident Engineer Sam Kneass. Very little construction was underway, and Frank was completely in the dark about what the company planned to do with him. When Walter arrived, he was straightway taken under the wing of the line's chief engineer, a man they always referred to as Colonel Schlatter, and without any explanation was put to work as Schlatter's assistant in the Eastern Division office at Malone. After a few weeks, Schlatter assigned Walter the job of designing a great 2,000-foot bridge to carry the line over Lake Champlain into Vermont. Walter, who had never done anything of the sort, went to Rouses Point to survey the shore and, once the lake froze over, to take soundings. Frank was kept busy tracing and lettering drawings, and for a time in January was sent along the line to make a detailed table of all the private road crossings they would need. The company was biding its time. Frank and Walter, as newcomers and outsiders, had only rumours to go on. Walter heard that Kneass was fully satisfied with Frank's work and that Frank's future was secure, but he feared for his own position when he heard that the Lake Champlain bridge might be stopped. All they could do was work hard and wait; Walter was in the habit of working to ten o'clock every night.64 Through the late winter and early spring of 1849 a flurry of changes turned the whole project upside down: new contracts were let for the eastern section of the line, the State of Vermont refused permission to build the Lake Champlain bridge, some new investment capital from Boston led to a change in the Board of Directors, and Kneass and several other engineers resigned or were released.65 Frank and Walter survived the turmoil, however, and when it was over they found themselves in good, secure jobs; one can suppose that they had arrived on the job recently enough that the company's new princes had no need to purge them with the rest of the old regime. Walter would now work in Ogdensburg as resident engineer for the Western Division,

46 Gentlemen Engineers about sixty miles, and receive an annual salary of $1,200. Frank was appointed one of Walter's assistant engineers at a salary of $1,000 and was put in charge of about twenty miles of Walter's division. Since his work was mostly out on the line, he settled in a boarding house in the little village of Columbia. Frank's pay was enough for him to keep a 'boy' to look after his horse and equipment, to send his clothes to a washerwoman every few days, and to order a selection of engineering books through the local bookseller.66 With these arrangements in place, the two brothers immediately set to work. But Walter had never done this before. He had never worked as a railway engineer. How was he going to step into such a position and carry it out with confidence and authority? For that matter, why had he been given the job? As resident engineer, he would have to manage all the construction on his division. His scope of responsibility would be extremely broad; contracts, procurement of materials, design details, and personnel all fell within his purview. One begins to find the answer to these questions in the fact that for a civil engineer, who has no responsibility for manufacturing the locomotives and cars, building a railway was remarkably similar to building a canal. Whether it was for a canal or a railway, the civil engineer's principal job was to guide and supervise the construction of the right of way - a long, narrow strip of land that had to be as level and straight as circumstances allowed. To do this, the engineer had to know his soil mechanics, masonry, and carpentry, and he had to know how to manage the contractors and tradesmen who were doing the work. Whether one was going to lay gravel, cross ties, and iron rails (a railway) or a water-tight channel (a canal) on this narrow strip of land was comparatively unimportant. In other words, Walter's years of canal experience made him better prepared for railway engineering than one might think. He certainly possessed a good knowledge of the building trades, particulary masonry and carpentry, most of which he must have learned under Mills on the Beauharnois locks. Within his first year on the railway he was issuing orders such as, 'I don't at all like the notion of building Daly's [bridge abutments] dry, but if it must be done the backing must all come from Columbia, as none but the very best stone will answer from back to front - the wall is if anything too thin as it is, even with mortar.'67 And he could confidently instruct Frank about timber piling being built to carry the track through swamp: 'Take all the levels yourself- the proper level of the shoulder of the pile is I'lO" [below]

Learning on the Job 47 grade - but as the timber for caps will probably prove undersized it should be cut one inch higher - put your level nails in exactly at the I'lO" however - and upon every 2d pile - then let the pile be cut off 1 foot above that point to allow for the tenon - and instruct the framer to leave the shoulder an inch higher than the plan.'68 Construction management, the heart of the resident engineer's job, was another skill Walter had already mastered and could readily transfer from canal to railway. Urging contractors to keep on schedule, coordinating work at a multitude of sites, monitoring and controlling costs, and reporting to the chief engineer - all this Walter had done on the Beauharnois and Welland canals, and he now did it again on the Northern Railroad of New York. A simple admonition to Frank reveals his wealth of experience: 'You show that under the most favourable circumstances the one machine could finish by the first July - we shall want it finished by that time and the way to ensure it - as well as all other work - is to base one's calculations on unfavorable circumstances - Remember also that the cost will be less if we can complete it in half the time.'69 On another occasion, at the end of a letter instructing Frank how to arrange provisions for a gang of men put up in a shanty, Walter closed: 'Make Wicks keep a good look out during the thaw to see that ditches and culverts are sufficient and mark the places where they are not.'70 A quick afterthought on a warm March day likely saved the need for another inspection trip. And he was absolutely perspicacious in his ability to sense a saving: 'I shan't add any masonry at Grasse River [bridge piers] as I think there is enough over-estimated elsewhere to pay for these hoods.' Or: The system of having accounts for the same articles at half a dozen places is both annoying and expensive.'71 These are the orders of an experienced construction engineer. One notable feature of the management style Walter had developed was the distance he kept between the contractors and his engineering corps. Influenced by his experiences with contractors who did not pay their men or who scamped on their work, as well as by his own deeply held social superiority, he felt little kinship with them. Once, when sending Frank a contractor's payment, he cautioned Frank against signing on the contractor's behalf. Word would get out 'in all the barrooms of the county that we are in partnership with the contractors,' he wrote. He took a heavy hand with contractors who would not work fast or well enough, or did not pay their men. His letters often urged Frank to insist on an agreed-upon price, or to refuse to pay a contractor whose work was inadequate: 'G— D— Brush & Ware - they have a hard

48 Gentlemen Engineers job and they ought to have known it before taking the contract.' Walter had a running battle with the contracting firm of Chamberlain and Worrall, who were tardy in their work and unreliable in paying their men. For a time he held back a portion of their payments and paid their men directly from the railway company; occasionally, when contractors were not performing, he even hired men on the railway company's behalf.72 So Walter's previous canal work served him well. But even though the differences between railways and canals were not as great as one might think, they did exist. Yet Walter showed no weakness even in these new aspects of the work. As the roadbed neared completion in the early summer of 1850, he was issuing instructions about wooden ties, gravel and sand ballast, and iron chairs to hold down the rails; and he did so as freely and confidently as he had earlier done about timber piling. Where and how he acquired this knowledge is not so obvious. Perhaps he received instructions from his superior (although there is almost no evidence of this). More likely, he was teaching himself from books.73 Unlike Walter, Frank Shanly came to his first railway job with little engineering knowledge. His brief time as a surveyor with the Great Western Railway had provided no construction experience. All he knew about construction was what he had learned from Walter during his brief time on the Welland Canal. With Walter as his superior on this new job, the pattern naturally continued. In truth, Frank was only marginally competent when he first took on this assistantship. Without his older brother keeping him afloat, he likely would have sunk. Walter had to reprimand and correct him on three separate occasions during July 1849, their first full month under the new working arrangement. Frank's estimate for the quantity of stone to go in a bridge foundation at Daly's Brook was four times what Walter thought it should be; then Frank requested some equipment to aid in constructing bridge piers that Walter deemed completely unnecessary; and when Frank sent in his monthly excavation estimate for one of his sections at the end of July, his figures so far exceeded his previous month's that they used up almost all of Walter's contingency for the whole division.74 Mistakes like these were not confined to the beginning of the job; every month or so Walter wrote a sharp criticism for one thing or another. His most blatant reprimand came later that year: 'I believe I must have a printed placard of "Rules and Regulations" hung up in your office - What on earth made you let that poor

Learning on the Job 49 Devil Fletcher trudge up here all the way in the belief that I could pay him his estimates?'75 Yet Walter was not always the bossy older brother. At times he simply instructed Frank, without Frank having done anything wrong. 'I would advise you to lay by tracings of all the plans you can lay hold of such as bridges, station houses, roofs, etc.,' Walter wrote when Frank was first assigned to the Ogdensburg office. 'Such things are invaluable to an engineer, and tracings make no lumbering baggage.' And when Walter first heard of Frank's promotion to assistant engineer, he wrote, 'If you should want any hints that I can give you touching on cofferdams or foundations, &c. let me know.' Walter also offered the following gem of advice, which Frank never did take to heart: 'Remember what I said before - the little things will catch you.'76 While Frank and Walter were learning their railway engineering, the railway itself was being built. Frank's inexperience did not hinder the speed or quality of the work; everything progressed without major delays. The pace grew increasingly frantic in the early summer of 1850 as they strove to have the line ready for trains before winter set in. On one of the rock cuts in Frank's subdivision, Walter had gangs working at night that May, against the contractor's wishes. Short of men to work these double shifts, he sent Frank over the border into Canada to recruit labourers. He thought highly of the French Canadians he had employed on the Beauharnois: 'I have strong faith in getting up a good gang of French carters who will render us independent of those Irish ruffians,' he wrote to Frank. Dozens of men, many with horses and carts, were brought in from Vaudreuil, Coteau du Lac, and Cedars, all places Walter knew from his work on the Beauharnois, and Walter had the men hired directly by the railway, not by a contractor.77 It was an impressive display of whip cracking. Trains were running by the end of September. At the end of July, with the track-laying nearly finished, the engineering corps received a circular alerting it to the imminent end of the work: 'It is deemed advisable to give this timely notice to the members of the corps to enable them to look out for other employment, as those retained in the service of the company will remain at reduced pay.'78 This came as no surprise. Both Frank and Walter knew as well as anyone how long the work was going to last, and they had been giving thought to what to do next. One of the contractors on the railway, the most negligent in Walter's eyes, had recently been appointed chief engineer on a canal in Pennsylvania, and he had offered Frank and

50 Gentlemen Engineers Walter positions as his assistants. Walter scoffed at this: The best joke yet - A letter from Worrall offering me a berth as principal assistant at $1200 (a year) and you a minor berth at $60 a month!!!!!!'79 Walter clearly had his sights set higher. But Frank was not inclined to be so disdainful. He took Worrall's offer and in September moved to Pennsylvania, where he was given the position of principal assistant that had originally been offered to Walter, but with a starting salary of just $1,000.80 Walter elected to stay behind in Ogdensburg to oversee the remaining construction and to wait for something better to turn up. Before parting, they celebrated the job's completion with some fine champagne at an inn in Champlain, New York.81 The Shanly brothers had come far in the two years since Frank had set out, rather foolhardily it had appeared at the time, to find work. Both had taken big steps forward in their professional careers. Walter now had two years of railway engineering to add to his years of canal work with the Department of Public Works; none of the other Public Works engineers could claim such experience. He was poised to return to Canada to take a prominent role in railway building. Frank, too, had proved himself, or so it appeared. He had done well enough to get another job and at a higher level of authority, but it remained to be seen whether he knew his lines without having Walter there to prompt him. VI

The Union Canal, on which Frank Shanly worked for the next fourteen months, had originally been built more than twenty years earlier. Philadelphia interests had promoted it in the 1820s with the belief that by joining the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers, goods coming down the former could be diverted to the latter, whence they would continue downstream to the port of Philadelphia. The canal had met with little success in this regard, for it was too small to handle the big boats descending the Susquehanna, so the company had resolved to enlarge it, and this was the work, begun in 1849, that drew Frank to Pennsylvania.82 He was to supervise about twenty miles of the enlargement, from the village of Pine Grove (about seventy-five miles northeast of Philadelphia) to the canal's waterworks at the summit, and to see to the construction of a few miles of rail line extending beyond the canal's terminus at Pine Grove into the anthracite coal region beyond. The section under his charge was to cost about $200,000, and the work was

Learning on the Job 51 all to be done in one season.83 As principal assistant, his job was close to that of a resident engineer: he worked in the office administering contracts and carrying out correspondence, while his two assistants did most of the fieldwork. He lived and worked in Pine Grove for the duration of the job. Frank had little time to settle into this new work; by November he and his men were conducting a precise survey of the existing canal and notifying local contractors of their intention to begin work that winter. No construction was to be done until ice had made the canal unnavigable, at which time they would drain it and begin their work. The president hoped the canal would remain ice-free and able to carry paying freight until the end of the year, and indeed it did.84 In mid-December it was time for Frank to turn his attention to designing the bridges and other new structures for the enlarged canal. Poor Frank hardly knew where to begin. He had nowhere to turn but to Walter, who responded to his query with a detailed description of how to build mitre sills and hollow quoins in lock compounds, and a rough sketch of the locks built on the Welland Canal. Frank was especially stumped by the design of a new aqueduct that was needed to carry the enlarged canal over the Swatara Creek. Again he called for Walter's help: 'I... send you a plan of an aqueduct I design for spans of 20 feet. I have made it altogether from my own ideas and as I have never seen anything of the kind and am sure that it must have a dozen faults ... >85 Frank was right in this final comment. Walter wrote back a little over a week later with two pages of explanation and sketches showing the shortcomings of Frank's design. The mistakes lay mostly in the timber underframe supporting the aqueduct.86 Frank was clearly over his head in this job and was quite open about it, to Walter at least: 'I am working completely in the dark - and have no one to ask an opinion of - however I hold my head high - as if I knew all about it. It won't do to let them know how little I know - I hope with what assistance I get from you to get through this with credit - in rock bottom do you let the mitre sill timbers run all the way under the walls?'87 Frank managed to do it too, amazingly enough; he accomplished the job with credit. Work progressed just as if a knowledgeable engineer were in charge. The successful contractors were announced at the end of January, and Frank was soon busy urging on the work, negotiating with suppliers, and struggling to keep costs under control. There was a certain amount of deceit in this. Frank seems to have been carried a long way, as indeed one still can be in a large corporate structure, by

52 Gentlemen Engineers competent people above and below him. At the same time, he was learning fast: he incorporated Walter's instructions into new designs of the locks and the aqueduct, and prepared a fine set of tinted drawings of these structures. He already had a fair knowledge of construction management, so when the design stage passed he became more capable of handling the work. His payrolls, estimates, contracts, and other such administrative matters, were all professionally done.88 Meanwhile, Walter was still in Ogdensburg, restless and depressed. He regretted having stayed. With the excitement of the big push to completion gone, the work no longer appealed to him. After a day out on the finished line he wrote to Frank: 'Nothing has a more dreary aspect for me than a large work, upon which I have been engaged, just after completion, when the bustle and excitement of urging it forward has subsided. The change was so sudden that I felt as though someone was dead.' On another occasion he wrote, 'I am heartily sick of the whole concern/ an in desperation he asked, 'Can't you get me something to do out your way. I will take anything to get away from here.'89 Frank made some inquiries and found that the chief engineership of the Schuylkill Navigation Company was vacant. He passed this on to Walter, who immediately applied for the position.90 Nothing came of it. In truth, Walter did not want such a job. His heart was set on returning to Canada and stepping into a senior position on one of the railways still being talked about. There was by now good reason to be hopeful. The Nothern Railroad of New York had not only provided Walter with valuable experience, making him probably the bestqualified Canadian railway engineer, but it had quickened interest in railways in Canada. The line had, quite deliberately, tapped the 'Commercial Empire of the St Lawrence' in its trunk, and it would continue to sap the empire until Canadians provided an alternative.91 The Great Western Railway appeared to be underway at last, and Walter had heard from his brother Charles that the main contractor on the line, Sam Zimmerman, wanted Walter to take charge of the western half. Walter would not work for a contractor though, especially Zimmerman, and he wrote to the directors of the company offering himself for the western portion. But he stipulated that he would not consider any position on the line if 'Roswell Benedict, alias Sam Zimmerman' was the chief. Walter knew from earlier work that Benedict, an American engineer, was Zimmerman's engineer of choice, and Walter was not prepared to work under such an engineer, he said, 'so long as I could obtain a rodman's berth anywhere else.'92 The Bytown and Pres-

Learning on the Job 53 cott was another line that looked imminent. It was being promoted by businessmen from those two towns who thought that, rather than fight this leak in the St Lawrence at Ogdensburg, just across the river from Prescott, they might as well join in and profit from it. Walter had met these men, and although he found them disturbingly naive about railway matters, he was pleased they wished to retain him as their chief engineer.93 There was also the long-talked-about trunk line from Montreal to Toronto. Walter heard that a group of Montreal businessmen had chartered a portion of it from Montreal to Prescott and had hired Casimir Gzowski as their chief.94 As the year 1850 drew to an end, Walter endured his boredom and loneliness at Ogdensburg with these promising prospects on his mind. Nothing came of his offer to the Great Western. He never heard from the directors. In fact, Zimmerman and Benedict already had control of the engineering, so the company could not have met Walter's terms. The Canadians are such d—d fools. They won't believe that one of them can do anything/ he wrote to Frank.95 The Bytown and Prescott did come through, however. Walter was engaged as its chief engineer at £600 per annum, beginning in January 1851, and was at last able to resign his position at Ogdensburg. Moving across the river to Prescott, he immediately started organizing the preliminary survey parties, and by mid-March, having been out in the bush on snowshoes for a time, he had determined the route and set about writing his report on the surveys.96 As chief engineer, he was now an independent consulting professional and was elated to be free from the drudgery of routine employment: T am doing gentleman altogether since I returned - no bloody office to go to and £600 a year at that.'97 At the same time he was starting to hear more about the trunk line. His brother Charles wrote that Hamilton Killaly, while drunk, had lately revealed that the government intended to become involved in the Toronto-to-Montreal line and was considering Walter as the engineer in charge.98 What was he to make of such news? The rumours were hard to trust. He had heard that Thomas Keefer had been hired by a group intending to build the Montreal-to-Kingston section, and then he heard that it was the Toronto-to-Kingston section. If the government was planning to build the whole line, this was discouraging. The government's new leader, Francis Hincks, was a political opponent of Walter, so Walter's prospects would be bad. Yet a contractor also had heard that Walter would soon be appointed government engineer in charge of the whole line. Meanwhile, Walter stayed in close

54 Gentlemen Engineers touch with Frank in Pennsylvania. They both coveted work on this trunk line." Frank's canal work would soon be completed. As the summer passed into fall, he was under great pressure to finish, for the company wanted toll revenue to pay the final construction costs. Most of the work was done by the end of October, but leaks in the aqueduct needed attention and some of the bridges and towpath banks still needed work before water could be let in.100 By mid-November 1851 the canal was back in service; the enlargement had been essentially completed, as planned, in just one season. All things considered, Frank had done rather well on this job. Certainly, he had needed plenty of help from Walter at the outset and had continued to need occasional help as the construction passed through its stages. Walter had sent him full descriptions of how to puddle a canal on an embankment, how to lay a concrete bed for the aqueduct's timber underframe, and how a cast-iron 'frog' was to be used in a rail line intersection. But Frank learned well. He never had to ask twice. And what he lacked in technical matters, he made up for as a taskmaster and manager. In May he had had a conflict with Chief Engineer Worrall over a contractor who was not keeping to schedule and who seemed to have Worrall on his side. And that summer, Frank had handled a very touchy affair with a mason who wanted to improve the quality of the work he was doing, for extra pay. Frank had stood his ground in these conflicts and seems to have brought them to satisfactory conclusions.101 Most telling, he had completed the work on time and close to the estimated costs. His chief engineer thought he had been a little too liberal with some of the contractors but stood by him when the directors complained. Both his chief and the company president gave him strong letters of commendation when he left.102 Frank Shanly had proved himself. He too could now call himself a civil engineer. With the end of his work on the Union Canal in sight, Frank had to choose his next step. There were further prospects in Pennsylvania, but there was also the possibility of going back to Canada to work with Walter. He had had to pass up the possibility of working on the Bytown and Prescott surveys early that spring, since his work on the canal was not close enough to completion for him to leave. But his uncertainty about the future suddenly came to an end in November with two events. First, Walter got a second job. On the strength of his report on the Bytown and Prescott surveys, which had been published that July, Walter was asked by the directors of the Toronto and Guelph Railway to

Learning on the Job 55 be their chief engineer. This line had been incorporated for several years, but the City of Toronto had just chosen to invest, so the line now seemed sure to be built. Walter was pleased to have been asked - he thought it a much better business proposition than the Bytown and Prescott - but took a proud stance at first and made himself hard to get. He demanded £600 per annum and full authority to appoint his corps. The company balked and tried to insist that Walter only be paid when in Toronto on their job, but he stood firm and the company reluctantly agreed to his terms.103 Walter needed Frank immediately to take charge of the surveys. Frank hesitated at first. To his credit, he had become conscientious enough not to leave a job with the final few details unfinished; and it would be a shame to leave behind the contacts he had made on this job. Then a second wholly unexpected event spurred him on. Conscientious he may have become, but licentious he remained. Frank's sexual affairs in Pennsylvania were so limitless that he had bragged to Walter of there being so many willing women in the vicinity of Pine Grove that he might try to have some sent up to Prescott. But this rather tasteless fun came to a sudden end when Frank learned he had fathered a child. Worse still, the father of the teenage mother-to-be was going to leave no stone unturned until justice was done. Fortunately for Frank, the girl's father was not quite sure where Canada was. Frank knew, and he was soon on his way there.104 VII

Looking back over Frank's and Walter's apprenticeships, one thing that stands out immediately is the importance of personal connections. Whom one knew was critical. Without Killaly, it is hard to see how Walter could ever have got started in the profession. Without Walter introducing Frank to the contractors on the Welland Canal and without Walter's former superiors at the Board of Works putting in a good word for the family name, Frank would never have made the leap from occasional compassman on the Great Western surveys to full-time assistant engineer on the Northern Railroad of New York (NRRNY). Civil engineering was a profession most accessible to young men who already knew an established professional engineer. While Frank and Walter had been let in, other men without their connections and social position would surely have found it next to impossible. Yet although personal connections were necessary, they were not sufficient. Even in

56 Gentlemen Engineers Walter's case, with the influential Hamilton Killaly helping him get started, two years passed before he could get an appointment. And when Frank was trying to get on the Great Western Railway surveys, or with one of the new railways in the eastern United States, personal associations brought little immediate benefit. He succeeded only after assiduous pursuit. Once begun, the process became no easier. Engineering projects could vanish when investors (or governments) did not follow through on promises. Work days were long, and the pressure to complete a job within the schedule that the investors demanded was enormous. Then, when one job was completed, the aspiring engineer was on his own to find another position where he could practise again and learn more.105 He had to keep a strategy in mind too and try to decide for himself what experience would serve him best. It had probably been wise, for example, for Frank and Walter to go to the United States to get railway experience while their peers were still working on canals, but it had been risky to forsake their Canadian contacts. Taking on the Bytown and Prescott, on the other hand, proved to be ill-advised; although Walter's report for that line served him well, the company was desperately short of capital, and the job brought him countless headaches and little respect in the years ahead.106 All in all, it was an unpredictable and uncertain process that Frank and Walter had to follow to become engineers. Unregulated the profession may have been, but easily accessible it definitely was not. In fact, seeing how precarious the process was for Frank and Walter, as well as how completely the profession was controlled by established engineers, one is tempted to think that gaining entry to it in those unregulated years was harder than it would become later in the century after formal education and strict professional accreditation had been established. To acquire the technical skills of the profession, Frank and Walter drew from several sources. Frank's main source is not hard to see. Almost everything he knew he learned from Walter. It began with office work and field inspections on the Welland Canal; then it continued with countless hints and instructions on the NRRNY and the Union Canal.107 This was probably not a typical situation. Through a sense of obligation to his family, abetted no doubt by a feeling of superiority towards his younger brother, Walter helped and commanded Frank more than a senior engineer would normally do. And since Walter was responsible for Frank holding positions well beyond his capability, he

Learning on the Job 57 had to accept the responsibility for educating Frank to the level he already should have reached. That is not to say that senior engineers did not normally instruct their charges. James Worrall, Frank's chief on the Union Canal, gave Frank instructions from time to time, but they were of a different type, more pertinent to the particular task at hand. Where Walter would instruct Frank about the necessary thickness of puddling or how to construct a timber foundation, Worrall would give instructions such as the following when some lock gates were about to be installed: The gates should be hung and the wickets set in their places which will make it much easier & shorten work for him to adjust the jacks.'108 On another occasion, he gave a series of brief suggestions in a memo: 'Cannot a straight line be obtained all the way from Lock 4 to Lock 5 at least with not more than one curve'; and 'Recollect the 3 inch curve in the chamber walls of the lock in laying out the masonry.'109 Specific instructions such as these, may can suppose, were more typical of those given by a chief (or resident) to an assistant. Of how Walter learned the profession we know much less. Any letters he received from John B. Mills while on the Beauharnois Canal have been lost, so we do not know how much, if any, written instruction he received. But it is clear that Walter learned from Mills on that canal, though whether simply by observing him or by being shown or taught by him we do not know. Walter himself spoke of the Beauharnois as a school and Mills as a good master. The workplace offered other opportunities. Frank's field notes from his first trip down the line as an assistant engineer on the NRRNY show him doing his own research: Wheeler. Brick maker at Columbia, tells me that his brick cost him $2.75 per m. he gets from $4 to 5 In fair weather, one can make 1000 a day - three men can work a yard profitably. It takes about 35 cords of wood to burn a kiln of 100,000 bricks - he considers it a lucky burn if he gets 50,000 hard bricks from the 100,000 - two thirds of the remainder are fair brick for common uses - in selling they give hard and soft together, the hard brick alone are worth 5/ - a hundred110

While on the Union Canal, Frank occasionally received technical explanations from contractors or suppliers; and he received guidance for applying a new cement for a gutta percha lining from both the cement supplier and the company president.111 So the supervis-

58 Gentlemen Engineers ing engineer was not the only source of on-site engineering knowhow. Books were another source of engineering knowledge for both brothers. Coming from an educated family, where books were a part of their life from an early age, it is not unexpected that Frank and Walter would have turned to them as a way of learning. When younger, both had read for pleasure, and they kept up with current literature. In a diary Frank kept while looking for work in Vermont in the fall of 1848, he mentioned reading Emilia Wyndham and Jane Eyre; these novels were published in 1846 and 1847, respectively. Walter referred to Major Pendennis, a character from Thackeray's 1850 novel, The History of Pendennis, in a letter he wrote to Frank in April 1851.112 Allusions and references such as these were not common, but they were frequent enough to show that the brothers were readers. After working for one month on the NRRNY, Frank bought three engineering books from the local stationer: Cummer's Surveying (and its 'key'), Mohan's Engineering, and Scribner's Engineer's and Mechanic's Guide. These had all been recommended to him a few months before, probably by Walter, while he was on the Welland Canal.113 The last of them, published in New York in 1847, is a book of reference facts tables of weights and measures, square and cube roots, specific gravity of certain materials - and rules for calculating areas and volumes according to basic geometry and trigonometry. The author's intention, according to the book's preface, was 'to prepare a concise and practical treatise, with a view to facilitate the daily calculations of Engineers, Mill-wrights, and Artisans in general.' It is not so much an engineering book as a book for 'practical men' of all types. The next month Frank ordered four more books from the same local merchant: Baker's Rail Road Engineering, Castle's Engineering Field Notes, The Assistant Engineer's Railway Guide, and A Treatise on Practical Colonial Surveying. These books, published in London, dealt more specifically with railway engineering. The middle two titles were in fact 'how to' books for the beginning railway engineer.114 Frank appears not to have used any of the books very much. He occasionally studied his Scribner's Companion (and possibly some of the others) by copying out rules and calculations, word for word, into his notebook. But all of the books' pages are remarkably clean and flat. He would not have been the first person to find buying a book much easier than studying it. That Walter knew of these books, and probably had read or used parts of them, can be surmised from the fact that their titles were writ-

Learning on the Job 59 ten in Frank's notebooks. But there is more evidence of Walter's use of books than this. During his first few months on the NRRNY he was called upon to design some station houses and car sheds, and he promptly wrote asking Frank to send him his copy of 'Architecture' in order that he might do the designs. At about the same time, during the months when Frank was in Ogdensburg acquiring the books mentioned above, Walter wrote: 'Long's Book on Curvature was never to be had but in Baltimore, and it is doubtful if it is to be got even there now. It never went thro' but one edition, which is most extraordinary seeing that it is the best thing of its kind ever published - and some half dozen others of half its merit are being everlastingly republished.'115 These are the thoughts of someone who knew engineering literature rather well. It is clear that a number of recently published books were available to the aspiring engineer in the 1840s. Intended for practical men rather than men with scientific education, they were not very sophisticated in their mathematics or physics. How much Frank and Walter used these books to help them become engineers is hard to say. Probably Walter did so more than Frank. Books, however, certainly were a part of their engineering education.116 So Frank and Walter became engineers by learning on the job. That is not to say that they learned by 'trial and error' or 'from experience.' They did not build a culvert foundation in a way they thought might work and then learn 'on the job' by watching the culvert collapse. They worked according to the accepted engineering and building practices of the time, and these practices they learned on the job under the authority of someone who knew them well. The anomaly uncovered by Assistant Engineer Tate on the Beauharnois survey was immediately investigated by his experienced superiors, and when it revealed his incompetence he was effectively removed from a position of responsibility. When Frank, not yet a competent engineer, was hired by the NRRNY he was put under the authority of his experienced older brother. When Frank had to design his first aqueduct, he went to Walter for advice; when Walter had to design his first large bridge, he went to an authoritative book. There is no evidence here that on-thejob learning, risky as it may now seem, led to untried designs or unsafe structures. The process of learning on the job was in fact much more varied than the term suggests. From their family history, Frank and Walter Shanly had learned to see themselves as responsible leaders of men;

60 Gentlemen Engineers from their father, they had learned something of accounts, contracts, and the ways of business; from their classical education, they had learned rhetoric and mathematics; and from books, they had learned anything else they needed to know. Learning on the job meant plenty of off-the-job learning too.117 One general point that emerges from this study of Frank's and Walter's professional apprenticeships is that a profession of civil engineering did exist in Canada in the 1840s. The course of Walter's early career makes this quite clear. When he went to work for the Board of Works in 1841, he was placed in a junior position and carefully watched by his superiors, being allowed to gain responsibility only as he proved himself. He encountered a recognized body of international literature for the profession. The knowledge he gained in one job was transferable to another - working methods were evidently standardized. He built a reputation, verified by the opinions of his established colleagues, which was meaningful to professional confreres elsewhere. And most important of all, he soon came to see himself as a member of a distinct profession, his work clearly separate from that of the clients who employed him and the contractors whom he supervised. So despite the fact that Canada's first professional engineering society, the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, was not formally organized until 1887, the profession evidently existed well before then. It is interesting to note that Walter had developed a much deeper commitment to professional independence than Frank. In fact, it had become something of an obsession. With a very low opinion of contractors' ethics, and of company directors' technical knowledge, Walter earnestly believed that the only hope for these men and their undertakings was for the professional engineer to sit between the contractor and the owner, independent of both, advising the latter and policing the former. Frank had not espoused this ideal to the same extent as Walter. He seems to have found such principles rather remote; he had had the ideas offered to him, and he would have said he believed them, but they had not lodged deep in his mind. That a contractor he had supervised on the NRRNY became his chief engineer on the Union Canal did not even elicit a comment. In explanation for this difference in the brothers' attitudes, one might note that Frank had not shown himself to be overly principled in his personal life either; perhaps this is part of the reason. As well, Walter had been working for several years longer than Frank, and his professional ideals were thus more mature. But there is more to it than

Learning on the Job 61 this. The two brothers had served very different apprenticeships. Walter's extra six years had been spent with the Canadian Board (and Department) of Works, where the British tradition of a well-paid, authoritative, Smeatonian engineer had been strong and the influence of private proprietors nil. His first two professional mentors, Killaly and Baird, were very much of this tradition; Baird, in fact, had been a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in England.118 This form of civil engineer was already out of date in Britain by the 1840s, having been superseded by a more practical type of man; but these professional ideals seem to have found temporarily fertile ground when a 'fragment' from the British profession found its way to the early Canadian Board of Works at this time of strong metropolitan dominance.119 It was in this environment that Walter learned his professional principles. Frank, on the other hand, had none of this grounding. Although he had worked under Walter's personal influence, he had done so entirely in the American system, where the proprietor, contractor, and engineer all worked together without rigidly delineated fields of responsibility. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frank had not acquired Walter's extreme disdain for contractors or his obsession with professional independence. Frank had developed into a different type of civil engineer. These differences, so apparent in retrospect, were barely noticeable to Frank and Walter at the time. What mattered to them was that they were both engineers now and were about to take on the big job of engineering the Toronto and Guelph Railway. Before settling in Toronto, however, they returned to London, Canada West, at the beginning of 1852 for some New Year's celebrating. So much had changed since they had left - some twelve years ago in Walter's case, and for Frank nearly six. They had departed as declining young gentleman, and they now returned as rising engineers. They played it up, too, staying at the finest hotel and travelling about in a hired carriage to visit their family at Thorndale and their few remaining friends in the countryside. Established, wordly men they were now. They could tell stories about the halls of power in Montreal, about great railroad balls in Boston and dinners at Delmonico's in New York.120 How petty their old life must have looked. And how envious their old friends must have been.

3

A Rough Ride on the Grand Trunk Railway

For the next four years, from 1852 to 1856, Frank and Walter Shanly engineered a railway that began life as the humble Toronto and Guelph but became, in 1853, the Western Division of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. By far the largest, costliest, and most conspicuous project they had yet worked on, it became their greatest and most lasting accomplishment. Its successful completion set them up for the rest of their professional careers. If there was any doubt before this job whether Frank and Walter Shanly were capable, trustworthy civil engineers, there was none after it. By 1856 all signs said they had made it. Walter, older and much more experienced, was chief engineer of the division, while Frank worked one step below him as the resident engineer. Because of this, and to some extent because of their different abilities and styles, the job served them in different ways. For Walter it could be called his masterwork; he put to use all he had learned in the previous twelve years and proved himself capable of handling anything his profession might demand. For Frank, it could be seen as the final stage of his professional apprenticeship, for although already proven he was still learning. The historical papers from this project are exceptionally rich, and they allow a historian to draw an uncommonly detailed picture of railway engineers going about their work - laying out the route, designing the structures, and supervising the construction. Looking closely at this picture, especially at Frank's and Walter's relations with company directors and construction contractors, one sees the mid-nineteenthcentury civil engineering profession in microcosm, trying desperately to keep itself alive. This struggle was particularly impassioned for Walter Shanly, whose extreme and, one must admit, increasingly out-

The Grand Trunk Railway 63 dated version of pure Smeatonian professionalism - gentlemanly authority and strict independence - was quite remarkable. It also appears to have been exceptional, for most of the other engineers on the railway did not work by such lofty professional ideals. They did, nevertheless, believe in them. Walter was their leader, their standard bearer, and they supported him as best they could in his battles over professional integrity. It would be a tough fight. Walter and his principles were in for a rough ride on the Grand Trunk Railway. I

Ellah's Hotel stood on the northeast corner of Front and Bay streets in a newly fashionable district of downtown Toronto, a few blocks west of the old city. Of the more than hundred hotels in Toronto in 1852, Ellah's was one of the finest. And it was here, warmed by the ample fires and fine claret of this quality establishment, that Frank and Walter Shanly settled for a few days in late January to plan their imminent work on the Toronto and Guelph Railway.1 Walter had already done some preliminary work. After their New Year's socializing in and around London, Frank had returned to Pennsylvania and Walter had gone out to examine the terrain along the line from Toronto to Guelph. Two weeks of exploring allowed him to conclude that the engineering difficulties they faced were 'much more formidable than I had been led to suppose.'2 The line surveyed for the Toronto and Goderich Railway Company by the engineer Allan Brough in 1847, which the Toronto and Guelph had inherited and planned to use, was simply unacceptable: the grades at the escarpment and the Credit River crossing were too steep. A different point was needed for ascending the escarpment (or mountain, as it then was and still is colloquially called), and all other work would have to wait until Walter found it.3 This much Walter knew when he and Frank, who was back from Pennsylvania, checked into Ellah's. A few days later, after talking everything over with Frank, Walter reported his conclusions to the Board of Directors of the Toronto and Guelph Railway. His news could not have pleased the eager but inexperienced men promoting the line, but his authority carried, and the board agreed to allow the expense and delay of further surveys. Walter promptly appointed Frank principal assistant engineer in charge of these surveys at a salary of £400 a year. With these formalities settled, Frank returned one last time to Pennsylvania to wrap up his affairs, and Walter set out to do a final reconnaissance of the escarpment.4

64 Gentlemen Engineers This further exploration led him to conclude that there were only two possible routes up the escarpment within the limit of gradient he had set for the line - fifty feet to the mile. These were up the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek, running northwest from the town of Milton, and up the valley of the West Credit River, running roughly west from Georgetown to Acton. Those two streams, or their valleys, presenting the only breaks in the face of the precipice, through which a direct rail communication between Toronto and Guelph, can in my judgment ever be effected,' wrote Walter.5 (See map 2.) So with Frank still away, he engaged two survey parties to examine the terrain in these valleys and then immediately sped off to Prescott, where Bytown and Prescott affairs needed his attention. In less than two weeks Frank was back in Toronto, this time to stay. He bought a new field notebook, had the stationer inscribe it 'Resident Engineer - Toronto and Guelph Railway/ and set off to Georgetown, twenty miles west, where operations were to be based for the escarpment surveys already underway.6 Frank was indeed trying to start a new book, to begin again on a clean page. His experience fathering the illegitimate child in Pine Grove and abandoning it to its mother had clearly shaken him. Not that he was remorseful. There is no indication that he felt any responsibility towards his child or that he wanted to lessen the burden on its mother. But fun was supposed to be fun. If sowing wild oats was going to lead to this, then no more wild oats would be sown.7 He was in charge of this survey. It was time to set the past behind him. The two parties hired by Walter had already been in the field a few days when Frank arrived at Georgetown. Each comprised about ten men: an assistant engineer, a subassistant, a rodman, a picketman, three chainmen to carry the heavy iron surveyor's chain, and from two to four axemen (hired by the day) to clear away the trees along the sight lines. Frank spent his first day with Charles L. Davies's party as it worked along Brough's old line from the village of Norval to Georgetown, and the next day he travelled to Milton to make contact with the other party, headed by Arthur G. Robinson, which was starting to work along the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek. Then he returned to the small field office they were setting up in rented rooms at Georgetown.8 Frank's job was just to keep an eye on the work and report progress to Walter, something he did weekly by letter. His role was not critical. Davies and Robinson were both experienced survey engineers, and having received explicit directions from Walter, they could carry on

The Grand Trunk Railway 65 without much supervision. Walter had put Frank in this position for him to gain experience - and, of course, to make a salary - as much as to supervise the surveys. Frank did make the odd suggestion, though. After being in Georgetown only a few days, he had a notion to improve the line based on what he had heard from some locals. 'I am recommended by persons acquainted with the country to examine the Valley of Silver Creek with a view to ascending the mountain,' he wrote in his notebook.9 Silver Creek was a small stream running down the escarpment, northeast of both Brough's old line and Walter's new one. Frank wrote about this to Walter in his first weekly report and asked if Robinson could be put on this promising new route. (The directors had unexpectedly changed their minds about the desirability of the Milton route, freeing up Robinson's party - much to Walter's annoyance.) But a week later, Frank wrote that the route was not feasible.10 Such an episode was rare and probably occurred because of Frank's initial enthusiasm for the work. His job as principal assistant engineer was to take directions from the more experienced chief, who was, after all, his older brother. It had been an accepted convention among railway engineers for a generation that, to be profitable, railways had to run wherever possible in straight, level lines.11 Grades, especially upward grades along the direction heavy freight was carried, put strict limits on the amount of paying freight which the early, relatively weak, steam engines could haul; and curves, by causing wear on the soft iron used for wheels and rails, increased operating costs considerably. An engineer's challenge, therefore, was to find a line that, as much as possible, avoided obstacles without having to curve around or climb over them. This necessitated numerous compromises, all of which impinged on each other. Shifting a line slightly to avoid crossing a river might mean encountering a rock ridge. Which would cost more - bridging the river or cutting through the rock? Or might a curve, which would increase construction costs somewhat as well as raise future operating costs, be a better solution if it permitted the line to avoid them both? Running the line over the ridge would surely reduce construction costs, but would the saving be enough to make up for the lower freight revenue? Answers to questions of this sort, the very essence of engineering in their mix of technical and financial matters, were often sought by Walter and Frank Shanly in the months ahead. To start this process, the survey parties took to the field to examine 'trial lines' - lines devised on the basis of a map (not topographic) and

66 Gentlemen Engineers some knowledge of the terrain - which were conveyed to the party's leader in written instructions giving bearings to follow and features on the land to be guided by.12 As they worked along the line, keeping their bearings with either a compass or a theodolite, they noted and sketched the topography in one field book and recorded the land elevations, taken with the theodolite, in another. They travelled at the rate of a few miles a day, depending on a great many factors. Their object was simply to ascertain what a line that appeared feasible on paper really looked like. Sometimes, a trial line proved to be impracticable; this was to be expected where the terrain was irregular and not well mapped. Working this way was, after all, literally working by trial and error. Through the last week of February and the first week of March, Frank worked with the Robinson party running several short trial lines (of their own devising) up the West Credit valley until they found one that was acceptable. The Davies party, meanwhile, continued all the way to Guelph along a trial line of Walter's in order to find the summit of the line.13 On 6 March, Frank wrote to Walter that they had found an acceptable line up the West Credit, though he was still not satisfied that it was the best: 'More than one route along that valley is possible, so I am now spending much time getting the very best possible route.'14 Nevertheless, after three weeks of fieldwork, they had a satisfactory line up the escarpment. Walter reported this to the directors on 15 March and was subsequently given authority to survey east from Georgetown and to find a suitable crossing point on the Credit River. Brough's line had crossed the river at the village of Norval, and for a week or so Frank ran several trial lines from Georgetown to Norval, but none was satisfactory. By now Walter was back in Toronto, and he went into the field himself for a few days to determine where the crossing should be made.15 As was his style, he fixed on a solution quickly and resolutely, and promptly instructed Frank to run a new trial line that crossed the river several miles farther downstream, where the banks were less precipitous. His instructions to Frank are like many other of his trial line directives: Deflecting from the line as at present laid down, at or near the 19th mile post you will take a direction about S 63. E - intersecting the West Credit at some desirable point on or about Lot No. ? [sic] and continue on same course until you reach the Chinguacousy Line - which will probably be on Lot No.— of

The Grand Trunk Railway 67 Esquesing - You will then resume nearly the original direction so as to reach the Main Credit River a little north of Silverthorn's Mills.16

Walter went on to instruct Frank to continue the line into Toronto, 'seeking the most direct route that the ground will admit of, and giving special attention to the crossings of the Etobicoke and Mimico Creeks and that of the Humber River.' Here Frank was being given some freedom, although in truth there was not much to decide on this level terrain.17 With the difficult parts of the line out of the way, work progressed quickly. By the end of March, they had found acceptable trial lines on all sections from Toronto to Guelph; by joining them all, they would have a preliminary line for the whole route. Walter again related his progress to the directors, but this time they proved capricious. The line was made public at the same time as Walter presented it to the directors, and he immediately found that 'considerable diversity of opinion existed ... as to whether the one line examined was certainly the best one.' Which is to say that the businessmen of the many towns not on the line made known their dismay and clamoured for a change of route. Only five days after reporting to the directors, Walter was instructed by them to consider other possible routes. Outwardly obedient but with a tone of impatience, Walter wrote that he 'pursued the course usually taken by Engineers under similar circumstances, namely, - that of providing myself with facts, wherewith to sustain whichever route it might become my duty to advocate.'18 To gather these facts, Walter once again dispatched his two assistants and their men into the field, as well as a third party. A.G. Robinson went back to run the trial line he had been supposed to run in the first place, from Milton up Sixteen Mile Creek and thence all the way to Guelph along an entirely new route; other parties ran lines into and through the towns of Brampton, Georgetown, and Weston, and they tried a line south of Acton, even though the engineer in charge at once reported it to be 'indubitably bad ... something like running up the Catholic Hill in Guelph and down again for a dozen times,' but which he kept running 'under the supposition that this survey is done for political purposes to assist in getting a right of way elsewhere.' Another engineering party was engaged for a time digging test pits to determine the nature of the ground so that a better estimate could be made of the costs of the various lines.19 The directors' decision to survey alternative routes added some £350 to the cost of the surveys, but it was a price

68 Gentlemen Engineers they chose to pay in order to ensure that they had the most desirable route and, of course, to arm themselves for the inevitable attacks from the citizens of bypassed towns when the route was finally determined.20 By the end of April, the field crews had the information they needed and work moved from field to office. For several weeks, Frank and his assistants plotted the routes on maps, calculated precise grades and curves, and estimated the cost of excavation and bridging. Frank was based in Toronto, at Elian's once again, but made frequent trips out to the field.21 These several months of work culminated in Walter's Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, dated 21 May 1852 and printed in Toronto as a thirty-page pamphlet. Walter had determined that there were in fact four possible routes for the Toronto and Guelph Railway. Three of them crossed the Humber at Fishers Mills, as both Walter and Frank (and probably everybody else) had always assumed the line would. Of these three, one continued west, crossing the Credit at Streetsville and carrying straight on to Milton, where it veered northward, ascended the escarpment through the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek, and then continued on to Guelph. Another ran from the Humber crossing slightly north of west, crossed the Credit at Silverthorn's Mills, and went through Georgetown before ascending the mountain in the valley of the West Credit, where the survey parties had done their initial exploring. This was closest to the line Walter had earlier proposed. The third ran even more north of west, taking in Brampton before going on to Georgetown and the West Credit. This route crossed the Credit north of the village of Norval, where the river valley was wide and its banks very high. The fourth route - the one that had not been anticipated - ran northwest from Toronto, keeping east of the Humber until just beyond the village of Weston, where the line turned west, crossed the Humber and headed to Brampton, to the high crossing of the Credit above Norval; it then went on to the village of Georgetown and the West Credit ascent of the Mountain like the other nothern routes.22 Walter's Report is an impressive display of rhetorical skill. He analyses and compares the lines, section by section, according to grades and costs for earthwork and bridge construction, and he does this with so many facts and figures of distances, bearings, and grades that it must have left the boards of trade along the route afraid to ask questions. In the end, when he surprisingly comes out in favour of the Weston route after disarming the reader by readily admitting its shortcomings, one is

The Grand Trunk Railway 69 convinced, plain and simple. The critical points in its favour were a longer but lower crossing of the Humber, requiring less masonry than the Fisher's Mills crossing, and generally more level terrain and therefore less excavation. The directors evidently were all convinced. There is no record of any further disagreement. Walter Shanly's facts had settled the argument.23 The route had been decided, but the 'line' was not yet 'located.' This small distinction made by the engineers of the time reveals that the precise t figures of costs and excavation quantities in the preliminary report were a bit of a sham. True, the line would go through Weston and Brampton, but exactly where it would cross the Humber still had to be determined. A contractor could not yet be told precisely where to start digging dirt. So the next job for the members of the engineering corps was to 'locate the line' - to conduct a complete and more careful survey - and they lost no time in getting on with it. Frank wrote to Davies on 26 May and to Robinson on the twenty-seventh giving them explicit instructions for locating from the west side of the Credit to Guelph. Davies was told to 'run the centre line,' while Robinson was instructed to 'take charge of the levels over the line which will be run for you by Mr. Davies.' They were to be dead on with all their instrumental readings and were to mark the route with 'good stout station stakes at intervals of 100 feet.' They were also instructed to determine exact curves (the preliminary line had only shown a point of intersection between two straight lines) by choosing a radius of curvature that best suited the terrain. They were to take cross-sectional profiles in certain places, to note 'the lot lines, fences and buildings, and the location and nature of all woodlands,' and, as a precaution, to keep duplicate books.24 The work went smoothly. The only major error in the preliminary line was around Brampton, where it was found to be some two hundred feet off, but this must not have been unexpected for it caused little concern. The main parties reached Guelph one month after they had started, then returned to the Credit and ran east, reaching Lake Ontario on the western edge of Toronto on 9 August to complete the survey.25 In the meantime, plenty of other fieldwork was underway. Three gangs of five labourers and a foreman, under the superintendence of one engineer, were digging test pits at numerous places along the line, searching especially for hidden rock that might later hinder the excavation. Other parties of engineers and labourers were studying the flow of the main rivers and streams, and boring all the main stream beds in

70 Gentlemen Engineers preparation for bridge foundation design. Men were hired to gather information about the population along the route and about agricultural and industrial production and potential.26 As well, two new surveyors, not railroad engineers but certified provincial land surveyors, were contracted to survey and stake out all the land the railway would need for its right of way. Walter made the contractual arrangements, but it was Frank who issued their instructions and received their weekly reports. They worked along the centre line marked by the locating party, staking out forty-three feet on the south and fifty-six feet on the north for a right of way ninety-nine feet wide. From this, in preparation for purchases, they plotted and calculated the areas of land for each landowner through whose land the line passed.27 Frank wrote the report on the final location of the line in the form of a letter to Walter, dated 11 August 1852. Like his brother's earlier report, it is an impressive piece of writing, though not so much for its rhetorical cunning (which it did not need because it was not being published) as for its thoroughness and clarity. In twenty-three handwritten foolscap pages and seven pages of tables, it covers all aspects of the railway - grades, curves, location of station grounds, nature of streams and valleys, recommended methods of bridging, lands needed for right of way, required widths of cuttings and embankments, and precise estimates of costs (£276, 328.15) - in a pleasing, well-organized manner. Compiling and writing this report occupied Frank for the better part of a month.28 The preliminary engineering of the line was now finished. Stakes stood in the ground all the way from Toronto to Guelph, marking off the earth that picks and shovels would soon pierce. It was an exceptionally straight line they had devised; to this day, it stands out on a map for its few and gentle curves. They had done a fine job and wasted no time in doing it. All they awaited now was a contractor to agree to terms and take on the construction. With this initial stage completed, it is worth pausing briefly to analyse Frank's and Walter's experience in selecting this railway line. In the first place, it is not the story of an engineer doing 'an armchair survey of the district' upon which is written a report of 'supposedly objective facts,' as one Canadian historian has characterized much of the early railway engineering work.29 Both Frank and Walter spent as much time in the saddle as in an armchair while this survey was being done. Second, and more important, is what their experience reveals about the

The Grand Trunk Railway 71 role of the professional engineer in the process of railway development. Were Frank and Walter Shanly working as truly disinterested professionals as they located this line, or were they just doing what their employers bid? The current view is that those with a financial interest in the railway - the investors, landowners, and merchants had the last word in the choice of route and that engineers simply 'functioned as enforcers of the board's will.'30 How apt is this as a description of the Shanly brothers' experiences on the Toronto and Guelph Railway? One does see unmistakable evidence of Walter being told to include certain towns in the route and of his considering future business prospects in his analysis of the advantages of the various lines. But equally unmistakable is the fact that, to Walter, this was not interference with the 'engineering' of the line. He wanted fixed points and constraints to work with. He asked which towns he should run the line through.31 Devising the best line - the straightest, flattest, safest, and cheapest between Toronto and Guelph without any predetermined stops along the way was no purer an engineering exercise than doing the same thing through half a dozen fixed points. Nor did considering future business prospects, or the cost of land, vitiate the exercise for him. Costs and future revenue were obviously factors to consider; he did not feel less of an engineer for having done so. For Walter, professional independence did not necessarily mean having the last word. He was not an investor in this railway. The decision on where the line should go was not his. He knew that. His job was to sell the directors his knowledge and judgment so that they could make an informed decision. In the end, Walter's recommendation was followed, and he no doubt felt pleased that his judgment had been respected. But one gets the sense that even if the directors had chosen another route, concluding, say, that future business prospects along the southern route would make up for the higher costs of excavation, Walter would not have felt put out. What he would have objected to, and in fact did at times, was a board that would not pay him or give him sufficient time to study the facts, or one that refused to believe that a certain amount of excavation was needed to build the line properly. It is true that Frank and Walter did not have the authority to determine the precise route of this railway, but neither were they simply enforcing the board's will. They were giving the board the information it needed to enforce its own will. Their professional domain was not being threatened, at least not at this stage of the work.

72 Gentlemen Engineers II

By the end of the summer of 1852, with the final location completed, the Toronto and Guelph was beginning to look like a real railway company. The Engineering Department now had an office in downtown Toronto, appointed with some of the finest furnishings that the Toronto cabinetmakers and upholsterers Jacques and Hay could supply, and Frank and Walter now wrote their correspondence on printed departmental stationery. Walter had prepared all the construction specifications for the right of way and had advertised a call for tenders with a deadline of 31 August. It must have seemed just a matter of time until track was laid and trains were running.32 The cost of creating this image of solidity was certainly real. The company's Jacques and Hay account stood, unpaid, at £130 at the end of July. The Engineering Department's payroll, swollen by a decision that summer to survey an extension of the line to Goderich, stood at £719 for the month of July and could not be lowered for several months.33 There was money to pay these bills, but barely. The directors and Walter all knew there was not nearly enough money to begin paying contractors to start construction. The fact of the matter was that, despite appearances, the railway was still far from being built. Like most railway companies at this stage of the work, the Toronto and Guelph did not have much ready money. The principal and really only asset it held was the legal right to build a railway, which presumably at some time in the future would be profitable. That alone was generally regarded as enough bait for the directors to embark on a successful fishing expedition in the capital-rich rivers of some foreign land. With the recent growth of Toronto, and the general prospects of the area, the Toronto and Guelph was a fairly promising line and probably would attract capital, but this could by no means be taken for granted. Municipalities along the route were the only substantial investors so far; they had bought some £145,000 of stock (two-thirds being bought by the City of Toronto). Yet this stock was going to be paid for with municipal bonds which, to be turned into cash, would themselves have to be sold. The Canada Company, the British land company that held title to the huge Huron Tract in southwestern Canada West, had agreed to sell Toronto and Guelph Company bonds in England but it had not yet done so.34 As things stood, the railway company had raised less than £10,000 cash, and it was about to build a railway that would cost some £300,000.

The Grand Trunk Railway 73 Nevertheless, the call for tenders had gone out, and bids from contractors had come in. The company claimed to have received (an astonishing) 110 tenders in response to Walter's call in June; of these, 48 were for the entire road, the rest being for sections or divisions.35 The tendering contractors, of course, wanted to be paid in cash for their work, but in the current financial circumstances the company could not possibly do this. It needed contractors who would work for bonds in the railway, men who would tie their financial fate to the fate of the company. This excluded all but the most foolish or most financially flush. The directors advised the tenderers of this requirement and after twice extending the deadline for new bids, they ended up in late November with two possible contractors - James Cotton and Company of Port Credit, who had bid £336,000, and C.S. Gzowski and Company of Montreal, who had bid £355,000 - both of which were well over the original budget. But this was the price the directors would have to pay for contractors to work with such financial risks. After some negotiations, Gzowski and Company were selected, and they signed a contract with the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company on 26 November 1852.36 Although it had made the higher bid, the Gzowski firm offered just the terms the company wanted: it would, for all intents and purposes, pay to construct the road. Its partners agreed to take as payment £145,000 of municipal bonds and £210,000 in Toronto and Guelph Railway Company bonds (all of which they would have to sell themselves); on top of this they would advance the company £15,000 to permit it to get on with purchasing land for the right of way. The partners - Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski, Alexander Tilloch Gait, Luther Hamilton Holton, and David Lewis Macpherson - brought political connections, financial expertise, capital, and railroad construction experience to a fledgling company that was short on all four counts. Gait, the son of Canada Company founder John Gait, was the leading force of the British America Land Company in the Eastern Townships of Canada East and the key promoter of the St Lawrence and Atlantic Railway, which had just been completed from Montreal to the coast of Maine. Gzowski was a capable and highly regarded civil engineer, in fact probably the only Canadian engineer at the time with as much railway experience as Walter Shanly. After learning the profession on canal jobs in the United States in the late 1830s, he had worked for the Canadian Board of Works until 1848, supervising road construction and harbour improvements, and then with Gait on the St Lawrence and Atlantic Railway.

74 Gentlemen Engineers Holton and Macpherson were both successful and influential Montreal merchants diversifying into industrial development. In addition, the firm brought possible connections with the future trunk line being planned from Montreal; all four partners were associated with that scheme. The contract with this firm was a godsend to the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company.37 Through the month of November, while tendering and contract negotiating had occupied Walter and the board, Frank and his assistants had been busy plotting and writing reports and generally preparing for the start of construction. They dug more test pits, checked levels on parts of the line, mapped, calculated, and waited.38 Then, on 1 December, Frank received word from Gzowski that his subcontractors were on their way to the work sites.39 Construction was finally underway. Frank and Walter now had to gear up for this new phase of the work. This meant deciding who would man their engineering corps and how the construction supervision would be managed. They already had a scheme in mind and had made some preliminary appointments, so they were able to finalize arrangements quite quickly. Frank, now officially resident engineer in charge of the line, wrote a score of appointment letters dated 31 December to the assistant and subassistant engineers, and the following day he issued a seven-page 'Instructions for the Guidance of the assistant engineers - T and G Rly,' setting forth the basic specifications and the proper procedures for department payrolls, contractors' estimates, and internal reporting.40 There were to be four divisions with headquarters at Guelph, Georgetown (the Mountain Division), Brampton, and Weston (the Humber Division), while the head office of the Engineering Department would remain at Toronto. In charge of each division was an assistant engineer, aided by a staff of anywhere from six to ten men. The names for these subordinate positions were the same as those used for the survey parties - rodman, tapeman, etc. - even though they were no longer surveying.41 The four field offices were set up in rented rooms and equipped with tables and chairs, drawing tables, draughting equipment (such as curves, protractors and T-squares), and a few housekeeping items (candlesticks, basins, and plates).42 At least one 'inspector' was appointed in each division too - a skilled tradesman, usually a mason or a carpenter, who inspected the work in his trade and reported what he saw to the assistant in charge. Evidently the engineers knew that on their own they could not judge the quality of skilled

The Grand Trunk Railway 75 work. These inspectors were well paid, their salaries usually being between that of the assistant and the subassistant.43 Within a few months, most of the contractors had made a good start. The Mountain Division was the most difficult stretch; some ten miles long, it included the largest and highest bridge (over the Credit, north of Norval) and the long ascent up the mountain which, owing to the broken terrain, called for several culverts and one long deep cutting through solid rock. At the end of February, Charles L. Davies, the engineer in charge, reported thirty acres of bush cleared, with the area west of the river almost fully cleared. Excavation gangs were working at fourteen different places; a total of 26,000 cubic yards had been removed, of which 1,500 were rock (paid more per unit than earth). Six box culverts (small culverts, maybe a foot or two across, roofed by large flat stones rather than stone arches) had been started, and with the recent arrival of several competent masons, work on the foundations of the larger culverts was underway.44 The main task of the engineering corps was now essentially to ensure that the contractors built correctly - in the right place, at the right level, and to the required specification. The field engineers were out on the sites nearly every day to see to this. As well, the Engineering Department had to prepare monthly estimates of work done by each subcontractor. The Gzowski firm's contract was for prices per unit of work - say, per cubic yard of earth moved or masonry laid not for a fixed sum. So the engineers' monthly measurements of work done were critical. (Contractors' monthly payments were called 'estimates' because they were based on the engineers' estimates of work done.)45 The working relationship between the Engineering Department and the contractor was as it was supposed to be: C.S. Gzowski and Co. took its instructions from Walter or his agent, Frank. Requests for changes to specifications or design were made to the assistant or, if they were significant, to Frank or Walter. This relationship can be seen at work in a proposal, just as work was getting underway, to change the design of the culvert at Black Creek, a fair-sized stream flowing west into the Humber River a few miles northwest of Toronto. The general specification called for all such structures to be of stone, but procuring good building stone along the Humber was proving difficult so Gzowski and his subcontractor, Hewett, requested permission to build the arched culvert of brick instead. Frank wrote to ask Walter, who was in Prescott, and received a telegram in reply: 'Ring stone can be had some where -

76 Gentlemen Engineers brick not to be trusted under such a bank.' Frank conveyed Walter's opinion to Gzowski in a letter two days later, saying, 'He will not consent to it until it is fully ascertained that stone cannot be obtained in time.' Hewett brought in some stone, probably from a few miles down the Humber at Lambton Mills, but the assistant in charge of the division told Frank that the stone would not withstand frost and could not be allowed in exposed facework. Some ten days later, probably after receiving at least one other letter from Frank, Walter telegraphed him, 'Raise Black Creek walls and put in brick arch.' Only by reducing the weight of earth on the arch would Walter permit it to be of brick. Walter was in charge.46 The Engineering Department, or at least Frank as the resident engineer, also played a central role at this stage in the railway company's acquisition of land. The exact amount of land needed from each landowner along the route had been established by a provincial land surveyor during the final location of the line. Then, in December, just as Gzowski's subcontractors were preparing to start work and Frank and Walter were putting the engineering corps in place, acquisitions began. The Board of Directors engaged a land commissioner and assistant to negotiate purchases with all the owners, but this commissioner, J. Webster, was placed under the authority not of the board but of the Engineering Department. It was to Frank that Webster wrote his progress reports and with Frank that he discussed possible strategies for dealing with owners holding out for unreasonably high prices. In such cases the disputing parties often had to agree to an arbitration process to establish a fair value. This Frank took part in as well. The acquisitions moved along quickly, and as they did, Frank had the added task of informing or consulting the board and registering changes in ownership with the county clerks. This work appears to have taken up a fair amount of his time during the first few months of construction.47 While matters such as these were on the minds of the engineers and subcontractors, Alexander Tilloch Gait was in England on behalf of his contracting partnership trying to find investors for the still capitalshort railway. The railway company had successfully passed on the job of selling the bonds to Gzowski and Co., but there was still no money until some bonds were sold. In early February word came from Gait that he had met with success; it was now certain 'that capitalists in London could be induced to undertake the charge of finding funds for the construction of the entire line from Toronto to Sarnia.' Gzowski

The Grand Trunk Railway 77 and Co. had always wanted to extend the line west to Sarnia (some 125 miles west of Guelph) and had in fact already entered into a provisional agreement with the Toronto and Guelph to construct the extension and aid in raising capital for it. With this news from Gait, the provisional deal was made final and a new contract for the additional mileage was signed into force on 18 February 1853.48 The effect of this new contract was immediately felt in the Engineering Department, where crews were sent out to the field for more surveys. Once again they followed the familiar routine. Walter put Frank in charge of the survey, selected the men to head the parties, and fixed upon the trial lines they were to run. This survey would be rather different, however, in that the land they were examining was not well known or well settled. In Frank's letter of instruction to the head of the party running from Sarnia to Stratford, he wrote: The above course and directions being taken from the general map of the country which is not always to be relied on, you may have to deflect occasionally, and recover your former course - but this will altogether depend on circumstances as it is impossible to give any directions as to where it should be done.'49 Since there were not many farmers along their route, the parties often had to camp instead of board. The few settlers they could find were not always easy to communicate with; one engineer had to obtain the services of a local guide 'for the purposes of interpreting for him with the Highland settlers & showing him where he can best get accommodation at nights.'50 Gait was not yet finished doing business in London, and his activities there led to even greater changes. He arranged, much to everyone's surprise it appears, to have the Toronto and Guelph become the western section of the great new Grand Trunk Railway - the railway that Walter and Frank had hoped to work on two years earlier while still in the United States.51 This unexpected turn of events came about when Gait stepped into the Grand Trunk negotiations, which also were underway in London at the time. The Grand Trunk had all along hoped to make the Great Western, already built from Niagara Falls to Windsor, the western leg of its line. But the two big railways, meeting in London, had not been able to agree on terms. Having heard of this impasse, Gait, as he later reported, 'believed the opportunity had arisen for me, in the execution of my mission on behalf of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, to enlist the good offices of the friends of the Grand Trunk on its behalf.'52 And he had done just that. He had arranged for the Toronto and Guelph to be taken over by the Grand Trunk, an English com-

78 Gentlemen Engineers pany whose stock and bonds would be sold to English capitalists by the most prestigious financial houses in Britain (Baring Brothers and Glyn Mills), and in doing so he had put this fledgling Canadian railway on as solid a footing as possible. Whether this was the best thing for the Grand Trunk is questionable, but there is no doubt it was advantageous for the Toronto and Guelph. The directors of the small company reported to their shareholders that they had 'no ordinary feelings of pride and gratification at the commanding position and future importance which... this infant enterprise has secured.'53 All of this Walter knew by late March, and it did not please him. Although he had at one time coveted work on the trunk line, he had never liked the idea once he knew that the government would play such a prominent role; 'an unenviable look out for a legitimate engineer,' he had described it.54 Nor did he like the prospect of having his authority drowned in an inundation of British capital and engineers. How would he, chief engineer of the Toronto and Guelph, fit into the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada? As fate would have it, at that very moment Walter was offered a choice. An American railway contractor by the name of Chamberlain, who had been a close associate of Walter's a few years earlier on the Northern Railroad of New York, had just written to offer him the chief engineership of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, a line of 185 miles from Pittsburgh to Olean, Pennsylvania. Although a contractor, Chamberlain was a good man in Walter's eyes, and it was a 'magnificent offer,' Walter declared, 'right across the mountains and a 6 foot gauge ... a fine road to have charge of.' Then within days, Gzowski showed him a letter from Gait in London announcing that Walter would be appointed engineer in charge of the whole Toronto-to-Sarnia section of the trunk line. Gzowski urged him to stay. Faced with what was probably the most critical decision of his engineering career, Walter stayed on with the new Grand Trunk. 'I feel however as if I had done wrong, and am sure I will be sorry for it/ he wrote to Frank.55 Yet Walter had no obvious cause for alarm. He learned that there would be new engineering standards, but not the sort he objected to. The greatest alteration was that all the bridges, planned by Walter as wooden trestles or trusses, were to be replaced with either iron girders or stone arches spanning stone piers, or with earth embankments over arched stone culverts.56 The Grand Trunk had money to spend to make its works more permanent, and that was fine with Walter. There was, however, a slight twist in the new contract that Gzowski

The Grand Trunk Railway 79 and Company signed with the Grand Trunk Railway, and when Walter learned of it he must have had some second thoughts. No longer would the contractor be paid according to the engineers' estimates of work done, as the Toronto and Guelph contract had stated. Instead, Gzowski and Company was to be paid a fixed sum per mile (a total fixed sum really, since the length was known). The engineers would still inspect the work to determine the contractor's progress payments, but their valuation of the contractor's work would now be based, not on what they saw and measured at the site but 'according to a schedule of apportioned amounts to be agreed and settled between the Contractors and the Engineers when and as soon as the location of the line will permit.' The value of the work, in other words, was to be determined at the outset, on paper, rather than after it was built.57 Furthermore, payments to the contractor were not to be made monthly based on the engineers' assessment of work done to date, but were to be made each time the total value of their work done, according to the above schedule, reached £25,000. The authority of the work-site engineer was clearly, and no doubt deliberately, being undermined. It is true, in principle, that the engineers still had the power to force Gzowski to meet the design and specification agreed to at the start of the job, but the reality was (and still is) that no matter how exact the specifications, successful construction depends on frequent improvisation and compromise. Under this new arrangement, if Gzowski were to use lower-quality materials or workmanship in a structure, yet deem the work equivalent to the original specification, what could the engineer do when the 'value' of all structures had already been determined? Nothing much changed at first. Gzowski's relationship with Frank and Walter remained just as it had been, in spite of the new contract. Arrangements were working reasonably well on the original part of the line, and Gzowski evidently had no reason to rock the boat. Construction picked up through the months of April, May, and June, spurred as much by the availability of cash to pay the sub-contractors, no doubt, as by the spring weather.58 By the end of April, some 1,200 men were at work all along the line from Toronto to Guelph.59 And as construction reached these new levels, Frank, as Walter's deputy on the job, still gave the orders. In mid-April he informed Gzowski that his subcontractors were behind in their fence construction, reminding him that his firm would be fully responsible for any damage done on unfenced land. Frank and his men continued to issue the design and specifications for

80 Gentlemen Engineers culverts, and Gzowski continued to apply for permission to carry out any changes to the plans.60 Such deference to the engineers would not last much longer, however. Luther Holton had given Gait his opinion of the cost of Walter's well-staffed engineering corps a few days before the amalgamation: 'One of the first things we have to do after the amalgamation is to reduce the Engineering expenses of our road, which have been and are fearfully extravagant. Shanly has had a lot of useless fellows at high salaries thrust upon him by the favouritism of the Board.'61 This letter Gzowski had not shown to Walter.

Ill True to Holton's wishes, when the firm's contract with the Grand Trunk was amended a few months later to incorporate an extension west from Guelph to St Marys, a whole new engineering regime was established. Not only did it reduce engineering expenses, but it completely undermined the engineers' professional authority. First, there was a reduction in the number of men at each divisional office. Then, as three new divisions were brought in, only two new assistants were hired; one of the original assistants was to take on two divisions. These small changes were bad enough, but, much more serious, the entire engineering corps was put under the authority of C.S. Gzowski and Company.62 No longer would the engineers be independent of the contractors whose work they were inspecting; they had lost all supervisory power. The contract in March had weakened the engineers' authority. This new arrangement ended it. Here was Walter Shanly's nightmare. Through the years of his apprenticeship he had come to the firm conviction that such a situation could not be tolerated. Engineers had to be employed by owners. An engineer employed by a contractor was powerless to exact proper work; if ordered to approve inferior work, he would, under fear of dismissal, have to follow the orders of his employer. To Walter, an engineer employed by or even under the influence of a contractor was just not a professional engineer. Such a scenario was not unknown at the time. How engineers fitted into large construction projects was still an unsettled question in the middle of the nineteenth century. The 'independent professional' system that Walter had learned at the Board of Works was not the only one in use. Engaging a contractor with the necessary engineering skill was another quite acceptable way of getting a job done.63 Many of the early

The Grand Trunk Railway 81 public works in the United States had been built in this manner, and most railways there still were, as Walter and Frank knew well. In England, on the big railway jobs of the previous decade, large general contractors had arisen who, although not necessarily employers of engineers, usually did have influence over the engineering establishment.64 The English contracting firm building the Grand Trunk - Jackson, Peto, Brassey and Betts - worked this way. They had brought their own engineer, Alexander McKenzie Ross, from England with them and had, in fact, only taken the Grand Trunk contract on condition that Ross be employed as chief engineer.65 Under such a system an owner lacked control over his contractor, but with a skilled, trustworthy contractor this was not necessarily a bad thing. To Walter Shanly, however, devout in his professional faith, all this was close to heresy. So what was Walter to do now that a contractor was in charge of the engineering corps? He continued to stand his ground and forced a rather unorthodox, one might even say unrealistic, compromise. Walter was allowed to remain chief engineer for the Toronto and Sarnia section, reporting to Ross, and thus stayed in the employ of the railway company. But the whole corps of Frank and his assistants, the men who would actually be inspecting the work, began reporting to and receiving their pay from their new employer, C.S. Gzowski and Company, not Walter. In fact nobody reported to Walter anymore. He was a chief without anyone to command. In Walter's mind, however, the whole arrangement was saved by his having successfully insisted that all his corps be retained. He put great store in this. He believed, he said, that 'no matter where their pay came from they had been employed by me, and felt themselves in my interest.'66 How much of this was faith in professional brotherhood and how much was wishful thinking is hard to say. Walter must have known that if one of 'his' inspecting engineers found fault with some piece of work that Gzowski deemed acceptable, surely Gzowski's opinion would prevail. Gzowski asserted his new authority immediately. Without consulting the engineers, he arranged for a surveyor to calculate the land needed for the line from Guelph to Stratford and instructed Frank to supply this surveyor with all he needed to do his work. He set up a new monthly schedule for preparing and submitting subcontractors' estimates and told Frank to ensure that his assistants adhered to it. Gzowski also sent some new specifications which Frank had had no part in preparing.67 All of this occurred in the first month of the new regime.

82 Gentlemen Engineers Then, on 30 July, Gzowski wrote to Frank about some 'arrangements connected with the construction,' explaining that 'as they required immediate action I directed them to be carried out at once and now beg inform you of them.' These arrangements were nothing less than a substantial change in the design of the Speed River bridge in Guelph. Gzowski had elected to add an additional sixty-foot span at each end of the bridge and to change the wing walls from curved to straight. He had gone so far as to obtain approval for the change from the City Corporation of Guelph and to tell the assistant in charge to 'lay out the work' and the subcontractor to 'commence immediately.'68 Only then did he see fit to inform Frank, the resident engineer in charge. This must have been galling enough to Frank; to Walter it would have been intolerable. But Walter was in Bytown and knew nothing of it. A few days later, however, Walter entered the affair when a conflict with Gzowski flared up that nearly brought the whole precarious arrangement to an end. There was trouble in the piers of the Humber River bridge. This bridge, the second largest on the line, was going to carry the railway high across the 600-foot-wide Humber valley. It was to consist of eight free-standing brick piers on stone foundations, bridged by nine horizontal iron girders sixty feet long.69 At this early stage the subcontractor was building the foundations of the piers and abutments. On 29 July, A.G. Robinson, the assistant in charge of the division, inspected the foundation of one of the piers and found that the first course of stone was being laid 'in a most shamefull manner.' He condemned the work and ordered the foreman, first verbally and then in writing, to remove it. The foreman refused, uttering some disrespectful language to Robinson and his masonry inspector. Robinson was incredulous. He wrote to Frank asking what to do, noting that such disregard of his orders had never occurred before on any job he had done. The subcontractor turned to Gzowski, while Frank wrote to Walter for advice.70 When Gzowski heard of the incident he was not alarmed. After seeing a report from one of his own inspectors and then examining the work himself, he concluded that the small stones available at the site made proper regular courses of masonry impossible. When building irregularly this way, 'there are scarcely two men who will lay it in the same manner,' he wrote to Frank on 2 August, but 'the material will make substantial strong work,' he assured him. Gzowski spoke to everyone involved, and they all agreed to return to work. The cussing foreman was reprimanded and forgiven. Subsequent courses of stone

The Grand Trunk Railway 83 would be more carefully laid, Growski told Frank, but the inspecting engineer must be prepared to be more pragmatic. For Walter, the matter could not be put to rest so easily. To him it was a matter of the most fundamental principle. While Gzowski was counselling pragmatism, Walter was aflame. He wrote back to Frank: The collision between you and the contractors is just what I always dreaded would occur, and now that it has come to pass I see no possible way by which you can continue in their employment; and as it proves to me the utter hopelessness of getting the work properly done, it is equally impossible that I can continue to hold a situation where I can be of no use to anybody.'71 He carried on in this tone for several pages, complaining of A.M. Ross's uselessness and mulling over what property they would have to sell to cover their loss of income. There was no choice but to resign, said Walter, for 'once the sub-contractors have achieved a victory the authority of all engineers is at an end.' Next day he wrote again, this time criticizing Frank for having accepted A.G. Robinson's word on the matter, saying that Robinson was well known for being unfair to contractors. There was more criticism of Ross too: 'If the thing is brought to an issue you may be very certain that Ross will support them through thick and thin, because he will never set so bad an example as disapproving work done by Gzowski & Co. which he will admit under Jackson & Co.' He wrote again the following day, now spilling his bile on Gzowski - 'so great a scoundrel that it is utterly impossible we could carry on long together without coming to a rupture.' By the time Walter next wrote to Frank, he had spent a few days travelling to Quebec and back and had cooled down, retreating to: The masonry must be done right if we have to fight C.S.G. & Co. every day in the week - and if more moral force is wanting I will give it by visiting every piece of work every week in the season if necessary.' He no longer spoke of resigning. Then his next letter, five days later, asked Frank to make sure his room in their new office, in the same building as Gzowski's, was properly fitted up in his absence. His fit of rage had passed. There is no evidence that any of the stone foundation was torn up and rebuilt, but Walter relented nevertheless. And by no means did he inspect the work every week as he had threatened. Perhaps he decided the structure was strong enough as it was. If so, he was right. It stands to this day.72 So ended the first big dispute between engineer and contractor. It was not the last, but it was by far the most heated. Disagreements such

84 Gentlemen Engineers as this came along every month or so throughout the next two years of construction, but never again would Walter's passion be so aroused. There were no more threats of resignation. Not that Walter regained his authority. Disputes continued to be resolved by Gzowski getting his way. Gzowski had become the de facto chief engineer and freely instructed Frank to carry out his wishes. This could not be openly admitted, of course, because the engineering corps was still supposed to be independent in some vaguely defined way. This led to occasional double-talk. After a dispute over whether to cut and dress the building stone on a certain culvert, Gzowski wrote to Frank admitting that he had ordered the assistant engineer not to insist on dressed stone, even though the specifications called for it. But in a small personal letter, slipped into the envelope with the official letter and marked 'private,' Gzowski assured Frank, 'No step will be taken by me which will in the least diminish your authority ... except in very special cases, and then (like at present) you shall be placed in possession of what has been done.' Frank responded by claimimg that Gzowski's agents were not to interfere with the 'engineering' of the line: 'I look upon that as being exclusively my department - subject to your supervision only.'73 How Frank could be in charge and at the same time be subject to Gzowski's supervision was never explained. Nor could it have been. The result, overall, was a slightly lower quality of work. Gzowski was especially opposed to top-quality masonry; he found the time and cost of selecting, cutting, and hauling good building stone too great, so he frequently had it replaced with lower-quality stonework or with embankment or iron girder spans. He changed the Speed River bridge, the last large bridge for which masonry arches were planned, to iron girders in November 1853, and he did the same for the smaller Eramosa bridge in December, citing difficulties in getting stone. Late in 1854 he abandoned quarried stone for the piers of the Nith River bridge in favour of boulders and bricks, and he cut out two stone piers on the Grand River bridge by extending the earth embankment out into the valley (Frank was reluctant to accept this because his assistant, H. Munro Mackenzie, had been warned by local farmers of underestimating the size of the spring floods, but he did accept it). Gzowski actually wrote to Frank, after an inspection trip with some of his colleagues, complaining that 'at Grand River the dressings on the abutments and cutwater were pronounced too good - Mackenzie has made them dress that rather nicer than necessary.'74 The more experienced assistant engineers in the corps were dis-

The Grand Trunk Railway 85 mayed at this loss of authority and reduction of quality - the two, in their minds, going hand in hand. James Stewart, the assistant in charge of the Berlin Division, a Scotsman with considerable canal-building experience, wrote to Frank listing eight distinct ways in which Gzowski was reducing the quality of work; this knowledge he had gathered directly from Gzowski when the latter had been inspecting Stewart's division. Gzowski was calling for the use of boulders instead of cut stone and for the abandonment of stone foundations under culverts, and was ordering that 'the capacity of culverts may be increased by adding to height of walls rather than to radius of arch.' Stewart signed the letter: 'In pain and general disgust with Railways, Ever Yours, James Stewart.' H.M. Mackenzie, the Scotsman in charge of both Guelph divisions, regretted that Gzowski had ordered a stop to chamfering the quoins and making them a uniform length, claiming that Gzowski overestimated the cost of doing so. Mackenzie never fully accepted the new arrangment with Gzowski, and after a series of conflicts he resigned in protest in the summer of 1855. Bad feelings towards Gzowski lingered among some of the field engineers for years.75 To be fair to Gzowski, he did not ignore all complaints of inferior work. In a conflict with a contractor over the quality of brick in the Humber River piers, Frank reported to the contractor and to Gzowski that the bricks were unacceptable, whereupon Gzowski ordered the contractor to use Yorkville white bricks for the outside of the piers, for which he agreed to pay him an extra £200.76 Even where Gzowski did lower the quality of the work, the structures he built were far from unsafe; most of what he built on this job is still standing. But it is true that he and his partners were not willing to pay for the style of work that the original specifications demanded. This, together with the fact that they had the power to decide not to do so, irked the engineers again and again. Frank seems to have been less offended by all this than his more experienced assistants. For the most part, he accepted the new terms of employment. In response to a long list of instructions from Gzowski in which he was told to avoid costly features in future, Frank was contrite and dutiful. Regarding a stone underpass at Georgetown which Gzowski felt had been overbuilt, Frank wrote: 'I shall look to and take care that no unnecessary labour be expended on such works. I have already forbidden the use of more than two courses of timber in the Credit Bridge foundations - and shall again impress this on Mr. Davies.' And in answer to Gzowski's orders to simplify his culvert

86 Gentlemen Engineers design: The culverts I have planned with steps under the impression that in this country it is the strongest plan and most likely to resist the frost - in using plain coping great care must be used in dressing the beds level - if this precaution is not taken they will be sure to slide however since hearing that Mr. Ross approved of that plan I have had all the drawings made that way.'77 Occasionally Frank blustered about the lower quality of work or his weakened authority, but he did so perfunctorily and with little effect. The arrangement simply did not seem that bad to him. Rather surprisingly, Walter soon came to accept this new working relationship with Gzowski, and he did so without much more pain. By 1854 he was spending most of his time in Montreal at the head office of the Grand Trunk, content that the work on his division was being done well enough. Occasionally he offered his opinion about the quality of work, sensing that Gzowski was going far in his cost cutting, but all in all he too had come to terms with the new arrangement. When he was let in on a standing conflict between Assistant Engineer Mackenzie and Gzowski's agent over the method of excavation, he wrote to Frank to remind him that under the terms of the revised contract 'the engineers have no call whatsoever to meddle with contractors' affairs ... where we are not paying by the yard.' It was Mackenzie who was in the wrong, Walter said.78 Walter's extreme principles about professional authority and independence were never voiced again in his correspondence on this job. He may not have liked the new regime, but he could live with it. He had decided to get on with the job. IV

These struggles between engineers and contractors were not what most people knew or cared about as they watched the Grand Trunk Railway taking shape in 1854. Much more visible were the piers of the Humber and Credit bridges, rising one by one as the months and seasons passed, and the dozens of work sites along the line where clusters of men and horses were hauling earth and rock under the eyes of watchful foremen. It was happening, but not fast enough as far as C.S. Gzowski and Company was concerned. Until the railway was in operation, the company was paying interest on the money spent on construction. Progress reports from the end of June 1854 show that a great deal of work did indeed remain to be done. On the Mountain Division, three of

The Grand Trunk Railway 87 the four arched stone culverts west of the Credit River were near completion, but only about one-quarter of the masonry in the Credit River bridge piers had been laid, the work having been held up for more than a month that summer by a strike of quarrymen and masons. Excavation was not much better; only about half of the rock and three-quarters of the earth in that division had been moved. On the Stratford Division, the most westerly, land clearing was nearly completed but not much else; only about 10 per cent of the excavation was done, and none of the masonry.79 One need not look far to find the reason for this tardiness. There were not enough men to do the work. The shortage of money, which figures so prominently in the histories of the company, seems not to have been the limiting factor. Not once is it even mentioned by the engineers as a reason to slow the work. Instead what is always spoken of is the need to push the work farther and faster, with never a fear expressed that the work could not be paid for. Even after November 1853, when C.S. Gzowski and Company was forced to limit its monthly expenditures to £10,000 per month because of a shortage of capital, there is no sign of work being slowed down. Gait later made a great deal of the inconvenience this caused, saying that it had forced them to suspend work west of Guelph and that the delay had been 'exceedingly embarassing for the contractors.' This must have been an exaggeration. The need to curtail expenses was never mentioned in the engineering correspondence that winter; work by the subcontractors continued at full speed all the way to St Marys.80 What the assistant engineers did mention in their reports and letters, time and again, was a shortage of men. Sometimes harvest drew labourers away; at times another employer might offer higher wages; other times, especially at the onset of winter, the assistants spoke of the men leaving work to go home - suggesting that these workers were still tied to a family, and perhaps an agricultural livelihood somewhere. The two assistants with English railway experience, R.P. Cook on the Stratford Division and H.M. Mackenzie on the Guelph Division, commented on this scarcity of men most often,81 as did Chief Engineer A.M. Ross in his first report to the shareholders: 'I find in the reports furnished to me by Mr. Walter Shanly ... that there are one thousand nine hundred and thirty men employed upon the work, this gives an average of about 22 men to the mile, and considering the amount of earthwork yet to do upon this section, I deem an increase of the forces employed in that district advisable.' Well might Chief

88 Gentlemen Engineers Engineer Ross deem it advisable, for the minimum standard at the time was thirty men per mile.82 But increasing the workforce was easier said than done. There were simply not enough men willing to do the back-breaking work of the railroad navvy. Under strong pressure from Gzowski, however, the subcontractors were able to keep the total force near 2,000 men (with 500 horses) through the winter of 1854-5, and that made the difference. They even kept close to twenty skilled masons on the Credit River bridge piers from November right through to July. By the summer of 1855, the line was at last ready to receive ties, ballast, and track on some of the original sections.83 Gzowski told Frank he wanted to have thirty miles of track laid that summer, and they probably succeeded in doing so. Ties were delivered at designated places along the line beginning in the spring of 1855, and gangs of track-layers, supervised by a subassistant engineer, began work in June on several divisions at once. Gravel ballast was put down on the roadbed that summer too, carried in cars after the track had been laid. The station buildings also were underway by this time, being built by local contractors to a design and specification that seem to have come from an architect working for the Grand Trunk. Wells were dug at the depot grounds and a supply of cordwood laid in for the steam engines that would soon be running.84 Still, the bridges had to be finished, and that was accomplished through the winter of 1855-6. The large iron girders for the major bridges were all supplied by the Grand Trunk to the Gzowski firm, so the purchase of these was not a concern of Frank or the Engineering Department. But before the girders could be installed, a large number of iron plates, brackets, and bolts had to be procured, and this did require Frank's attention. He corresponded with several American ironworks in the summer of 1855 before the order was settled. He also had to procure the heavy timbers to be fixed crossways on the iron girders, rather like a plank road, upon which the track would be laid. All of this was accomplished by the end of 1855, and the last of the huge girders was rolled into place late that winter.85 Through it all, day after day, month after month, the engineers had kept busy inspecting the work, calculating quantities, and writing reports. There was an immense amount of engineering work on a railway project as large as the Grand Trunk. A close look at the day-to-day activities of the engineers reveals what was involved in engineering a railway in this period and how the roles of the chief, resident, and assistant engineers differed from one another.

The Grand Trunk Railway 89 Throughout the building of the line Walter was still, technically, chief engineer of the Western Division, and once he got over his pique, he settled in and kept himself useful. He settled in at a fairly high level; within a few weeks of his row with Gzowski over the Humber foundations, he was among the dozen notables accompanying the great English engineer Robert Stephenson, hired by the company as a consultant for the Victoria Bridge, along the route of the railway to the west.86 Walter still had authority over the engineering of the whole Toronto to Sarnia section, and he had told Frank that he intended to continue using this power 'for the benefit of the works'; but in fact once Gzowski took over, Walter no longer kept a close eye on the design and construction. But he still had some influence. In September 1853, in a letter to Frank at the end of the Stephenson tour, Walter commented on the piers of the Speed River bridge at Guelph which, he had heard while in Toronto, Gzowski intended to make too light. He would not approve them, he told Frank, unless they were of sufficient size.87 This may have influenced Gzowski in his decision to alter the design from stone arches to iron girders (and thus to change the structural demands on the piers), but it was not the only reason. Gzowski had several other factors to consider and was making most such decisions without the benefit of Walter's opinion. Sometimes Walter went out on the line to inspect work, but only once or twice a year. On one occasion he prepared some specifications for a piled foundation under one of the piers of the Grand River bridge, but this seems to have been at Gzowski's request. His eye for detail was as acute as ever. After a trip along the line in April 1854, he wrote to Frank to say that the sand being used in the mortar at the Humber was ruining the lime because it was not sharp enough, and that he recalled seeing a sharper sand being excavated at a nearby culvert. But his capacious mind was not filled with job details as it had been on earlier works.88 What was happening, in fact, was that Walter's affairs were becoming more connected with the management of the Grand Trunk Railway and less with the engineering of the Toronto-to-Sarnia section. He was in close contact with Chief Engineer A.M. Ross and often did work assigned by him. He conducted a preliminary survey in the fall of 1853 for a possible extension of the line into Michigan; this was a Grand Trunk affair. It was Walter who, in the spring of 1854, calculated the portion of the contracted fee that the Grand Trunk would pay Gzowski and Company after construction of the line west of St Marys was post-

90 Gentlemen Engineers poned. He was responsible for verifying and submitting all of C.S. Gzowski and Company's estimates to the Grand Trunk for payment. He wrote the report to the City of Toronto proposing an esplanade for the railways along the waterfront. And he took great care to ensure that all the details about the large iron girders for the bridges, supplied by the company to Gzowski for installation, were properly understood. It is fitting that Walter's salary of £1,000 per annum and those of own his assistant and clerk came directly from the Grand Trunk, not from Gzowski as did Frank's and those of all the assistants.89 Walter was not obliged to give all his time to the Grand Trunk Railways; he was, in modern usage, a consulting engineer rather than an employee. He continued his work for the Bytown and Prescott; he oversaw preliminary surveys of railway lines from Ottawa to Arnprior and from Whitby to Port Perry; and he conducted a feasibility study of a lateral extension of the Welland Canal. Whether or not an engineer should be an employee was another aspect of professional practice that did not yet have conventions firmly set.90 Walter, proud and haughty as he was, knew what was right. He balked at the very thought of being someone's employee and held fast to this aspect of his independence. So although he had given in to a contractor's authority on the job, he still maintained something of the old professional ideal he had learned and espoused at the Board of Works; freedom to undertake multiple jobs was a key element in the Smeatonian tradition. Walter's chief engineership was, all in all, a position quite distant from the chipping of stone and the packing of earth. In the early stages of the job, while it was still the Toronto and Guelph Railway, he had set specifications and proposed trial lines, but once the amalgamation with the Grand Trunk had occurred, he probably spent more time reviewing estimates, travelling, and attending meetings than he did thinking about construction details. This was no doubt due to the size of the newly created Grand Trunk Railway. Had the Toronto and Guelph stayed independent, Walter likely would have kept involved with the engineering and day-to-day construction as the line was built; but with the amalgamation, even without Gzowski taking over the engineering, Walter's job had to change. It was probably typical of a chief engineership for a large railway company at the time. Frank's job as resident engineer was everything Walter's was not. His salary was £600 per annum; his work centred around the Engineering Department office in Toronto; his field of responsibility was the construction of the line; and his day-to-day contacts were more with his

The Grand Trunk Railway 91 subordinates than his superiors. Frank did not travel with Robert Stephenson. The only other work he did while on this job was extra work for C.S. Gzowski and Company (at the rate of £200 per year) locating the line from Stratford to Port Sarnia and supervising construction of the Toronto lakefront esplanade.91 First among Frank's duties was managing the assistant engineers and their staffs, a total of maybe fifty men on the seven divisions under his charge. He made all appointments, including the inspectors and lower-level assistants on all the divisions (though Walter had had some say in this when the corps was first formed). He kept letters of application and referral on file, to be drawn on when needed, although few if any men making unsolicited applications were ever hired. From time to time he moved men from one division to another to suit their skills or the needs of the department; sometimes this coincided with a promotion and increase in pay, which he had decided on. He reprimanded his men from time to time, and on one occasion chose to write a twopage list of regulations for the men in the Toronto office.92 Another part of managing the Engineering Department was looking after the accounts. Towards the end of each month, every assistant engineer sent Frank an 'abstract of vouchers.' This was an estimate of what the total monthly expenses for that divisional office would be the monthly payroll for the assistant's staff, together with any miscellaneous expenses such as horse hire, telegraph, or repair of equipment. When he had received all seven of these (perhaps £100 each), Frank added in the expenses for the Toronto head office, including his own salary and expenses, and submitted a statement to Gzowski and Company, requesting an advance for the total amount. Upon receiving a cheque from Gzowski, Frank sent a cheque to each of the seven assistants in the field for the amount they had requested. Accompanying each of these cheques were vouchers, in triplicate, which the assistants had to return to Frank signed by everyone who received money. The total amount the assistants paid out was never exactly the same as what they had requested in their earlier estimate; in the intervening weeks expenses had changed, and the charge for cashing the cheque was not known until the time of cashing. So when the assistants returned the signed vouchers, they included a precise 'statement of account' indicating exactly how much they had spent and where they stood with Frank - usually just a pound or two either way. This balance was then carried forward to the next month's accounts. When Frank received the signed vouchers from the assistants showing exactly how

92 Gentlemen Engineers much had been disbursed, he summed them up and sent them to Gzowski, along with a statement of his department's account with the Gzowski company, which for one reason or another was sometimes £100 or more either way. In the absence of any accounting or payroll clerks in the Engineering Department, this was a key responsibility of the resident engineer.93 Handling the estimates of work done by the subcontractors was another of Frank's jobs. This, too, had a monthly schedule, but it was not as complicated. The assistants estimated the amount of work each subcontractor had done on their division every month, assembled this information into tables, and sent it on to Frank. These estimates had to be in the head office by a set date every month, and Frank was quick to reprimand assistants who were late. He then simply endorsed them and gave them to Gzowski, who paid the subcontractors himself.94 At some point Gzowski requested payment from the Grand Trunk Railway to cover his payments to the subcontractors, but that process (which did involve Walter) was beyond the concern of the Engineering Department. Frank's involvement with the technical details of construction was not great. A few specifications from 1853 and 1854 bear his signature: one for a timber bridge over Dundas Street, one for gates in the fence along the right of way, and one for wooden cross-ties, but it is hard to believe he made these himself.95 Frank still did not know enough about construction to make his own decisions on such matters. On the few documented occasions when he made design suggestions, they were not taken seriously. Walter's response to Frank's proposal to alter the bridge piers at the Nith River was: T saw Gzowski about it and he says you have settled the matter by a new suggestion, which I suppose is nothing more or less than substituting brick for stone, as stated in your note to me.' Walter then finds it necessary to tell Frank how to ensure that the brick is started high enough on the stone foundation that it stays out of the running water. On another occasion Frank received a rather embarrassing letter from the masonry inspector at the Grand River bridge explaining that the brick arch Frank had told the masonry contractor to make was physically impossible.96 Unlike Walter, Frank frequently inspected work that was being done on the line, as often as once a week at times.97 To do this effectively, which indeed he did - there are no complaints about how he did this work - he had to know something about construction. But it was not the finer points of construction that Frank was obliged to notice on

The Grand Trunk Railway 93 these inspections. To get a sense of what he did notice, one need only consider a sample of entries in his field notebook, probably from late 1853: 'bad culvert at...'; 'cattle pass too low - must not have received info on change of grade'; 'excavation still remaining on ... about 2 months work'; '2 gangs at work, about 40 men, making brick at Brampton'; 'Hewett doing very little'; 'I find 20 foot sticks for cribs - these cannot be allowed'; 'Gooding says some fencing let at 8/9 per 100 rods.'98 Frank was watching the construction carefully, but not with an eye for the secrets of materials and construction. It is one thing to notice that a stone wall is collapsing; it is another to be able to tell why. Frank's job, or perhaps his style, as resident engineer was to be concerned with the former and to instruct men who did have building skills to do the necessary repairs. Frank also made arrangements directly with Gzowski's sub-contractors from time to time. One especially well-documented task of Frank's was procuring cross-ties, a surprisingly complex and challenging administrative job. Rather than deal with a wood merchant, Frank made contracts for the supply of ties with individual owners of woodlots along the route; this was the easiest and cheapest source because it did away with the need for long hauling. The various suppliers were paid different prices, since their hauling distances varied. Frank worked throughout the summer of 1854 on this, and by October he reported to Gzowski that he had concluded arrangements for all the ties from Toronto to several miles west of Guelph. He had arranged for six suppliers to deliver different numbers of ties to nine divisions." Another job Frank did directly for Gzowski was arrangeing for cash advances to subcontractors whose cash flow problems had brought them to a standstill, something Gzowski was quite willing to provide, and often had to. One subcontractor wrote to Frank from jail to ask for an advance to pay bail (a request they did not grant). By the time the track-laying began in 1855, all nine of Gzowski's subcontractors had received more in advances than Gzowski held as holdbacks on the contracts.100 These jobs for Gzowski were a large part of Frank's responsibilities at times, but it is doubtful that they would have been part of a resident engineer's duties on a line where the engineers were not employed by the contractor. Overall, it is hard to know how good an indicator Frank Shanly's job is of the work of a typical resident engineer. There were two anomalies in his situation: he did not have the experience which an engineer in that position should have had, and he worked a large part of the time

94 Gentlemen Engineers under the authority of a contractor. Nevertheless, a few things are clear. The resident was the man in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the engineering corps; the chief engineer may have had some say in its make-up and organization, but the resident was its manager. And the resident engineer was much closer to the constuction; he handled all the subcontractors' monthly estimates, and (although Frank did not do so in this case, he probably should have) he ensured that the chief engineer's specifications were maintained. The assistant engineers' work is perhaps the most interesting of the lot. Being at the work sites put the assistants right at the border between labour and capital, and between workingman and businessman. An assistant had to have a foot in both worlds to survive. At various times he was accountant, reporter, draughtsman, artisan, mathematician, foreman, and surveyor, a most unusual combination of skills. Very little documentation survives to show how the work in a divisional office was arranged - what was done by the assistant himself and what he assigned to his staff - but taken all together, the work done in these offices seems nothing short of prodigious. One good description of divisional office work is a letter from Frank to R.P Cooke in late April 1853. Cooke had just completed work in one of the western survey parties, and Frank instructed him to return to his position as subassistant in Weston, where the office work had fallen behind and needed attention. By 'office work' Frank meant ascertaining the number and capacity of all culverts on the division, determining their necessary foundations, making drawings of each, calculating the quantity of masonry and timber foundations that each of them needed, and completing an accurate plan, section, and profile of the division.101 This was no simple job. Frank probably could not have done it himself. On a later occasion he described the tapeman's job, a lower position than subassistant, telling the tapeman he was to be 'generally useful in the field and also in the office where you will be called upon to assist at calculations, copy documents, and drawings ...' It was the assistants who did much of the design of bridges and culverts. One might expect such an important task to be kept in the hands of the chief, but it was not so. Walter set the specifications and determined what sort of structure would be built - timber trestle, wooden truss, or stone arch, for example - but the detailed design, including the exact location of the structure and its precise dimensions, came from the Assistant's office. One should not make too much of this, however. Once the specifications and the type of structure had been

The Grand Trunk Railway 95 set, there was not much 'design,' in the modern sense of the word, left to do, for convention and structural requirements dictated how most structures would be built; contractors and inspectors on site also had something to say about the details. Nevertheless, detailed design drawings did not 'come down' from the chief; they were 'sent up' from the assistants.102 Once construction was underway, the assistants wrote to Frank almost every day, sometimes more than once, often with reports several pages long. All problems of any significance - that the foundatio in the swamp was sinking, that the Irish and Germans were fighting on section 14, or that the cement from the rock ridge lime was taking too long to set - were reported, so there must have been somebody from the divisional office inspecting the work sites every day. Any changes to grade or structures, and they were quite common, had to be documented and properly mapped or drawn. At month-end, measurements and estimates were made of the amount of work done, and this information was then carefully compiled into tables with ruled lines and multiple totals, often in two colours of ink.103 When action was needed, the assistants sometimes asked for guidance, but just as often they simply reported what they had decided to do; there was not always time for an exchange of letters (although letters were usually delivered from office to office in one day). One illustration of such an action is C.L. Davies's letter to Frank explaining a decision he had made about a culvert, a fine example of the kind of improvisation that an assistant engineer on site often had to do: 'Where stone is used as a flooring for culverts, I have given directions to lay large flat bedded blocks under the side walls instead of pavement, which will only be resorted to in the waterway. This mode of commencing the masonry will be followed for the future, provided it meets with your approval.'104 Once the contractor reached the stage of building bridge superstructures, the assistants played another key role in design. They drew up long lists, called 'bills of materials,' of the exact components needed for these structures. A bill of timber for a wooden truss bridge, for example, would state the exact number and dimensions of every piece of lumber required. These bills were given to the contractor, who then appears to have been legally bound to purchase every item at his own expense. The assistant engineers' authority over the contractor ended, of course, when Gzowski took over the engineering corps; but as Gzowski's agents they exercised a different sort of authority over the

96 Gentlemen Engineers subcontractors and appear to have occasionally prepared bills of materials for them.105 The assistant engineers' work was most demanding when construction neared completion and they had to draw up final estimates for every subcontractor on their division. All structures had to be precisely measured and the volume of stone or brick calculated (no simple puzzle for an irregular or curved structure) as the basis for the final payment. All excavation had to be measured and calculated too. This information was assembled into large, perfectly penned tables and drawings, which were bound and sent to Frank. Then all the 'extra work' - work that was agreed to be beyond the original contract, such as extra embankment, deeper foundations, and so on (and which all the main subcontractors claimed) - had to be measured and calculated. This final stage took months.106 Taken altogether, it was here in the divisional offices that what one usually thinks of as 'railway engineering' occurred. And there was plenty of it. By the summer of 1855, with the roadbed nearly completed and some track-laying underway, work in the Engineering Department began to wind down. Gzowski instructed Frank in July that engineering expenses had to be cut in half as soon as possible. 'Works are in such an advanced state of progress not to require the same extent of supervision,' he wrote. Lest Frank should think this might apply to himself, Gzowski enclosed a separate personal letter giving him assurance that he would be kept on 'until our works on your division are completed.' So there would probably be about another year of work for Frank, wrapping things up. This concurred with what Walter had heard in Grand Trunk circles.107 One by one the assistants resigned or were dismissed through the second half of 1855, leaving the remaining work in the hands of their lower-paid staff, and they moved on to other jobs or back to their family homes. Month by month the engineering payroll shrank. By the spring of 1856, with construction essentially complete and the big bridge girders in place, there was no longer need for a resident engineer. Walter stayed on, but Frank was gone by May. V

It was messy but it was finished. The line opened for business from Toronto to Guelph on 14 June, and to Berlin on 23 June. From that day on, every morning at 8:00 and every afternoon at 4:00 the little locomotives pulled out of the Toronto Depot at the foot of Bathurst Street,

The Grand Trunk Railway 97 hauling a few passenger cars on the SVfe-hour trip to Berlin. The roadbed, tracks, and bridges were all safe and solid, but it was hardly a pretty sight; to modern eyes it would have looked half-finished. The embankments were all still raw earth, awaiting the wind-blown weed seeds that might lodge and germinate in their rutted, muddy sides. Dead, weathered stumps protruded everywhere along the right of way, looking very much like the recent source of the rough rail fence that wormed along beside the line. The stone culverts and bridge piers, for all their solidity and magnificence, rose from ground that was littered with stone chippings and disused timbers.108 In the months and years ahead, the Grand Trunk Railway would become a scandal. Nearly everyone in Canada grew to hate it. It sapped government finances for years yet was unable to turn a profit for its shareholders. One of the many reasons for its failure, as several inquiries into its affairs found, was the fact that it was poorly built; ballast was insufficient, rails were poor quality, and the route was not sensibly chosen. Overall, this has not been disputed, at the time or since. However, as those who have considered the matter more closely have observed, the western section of the line, from Toronto to Sarnia, was much better built than the rest.109 Why was this so? In support of the opinion that it was better built there is no shortage of evidence. The definitive report of Charles Hutton Gregory, an English engineer engaged by the English board in April 1857 to study the quality of construction, makes this point quite clearly. Although he observed places where embankments were slipping, where rock cuttings needed retaining walls, and where station grounds needed to be expanded, he declared that the western section was 'a work of which both Engineer and Contractor may be justly proud.' He especially praised the large bridges and viaducts which, he said, showed 'an excellence of workmanship far beyond the requirements of the contract'; and he said he had 'rarely seen a work of finer design or execution than the Credit Valley Viaduct.'110 Perhaps an even clearer demonstration of the quality of the work on this division comes from some figures in the managing director's report of 1861. From 1857 to 1859, rail replacement either done or planned was as follows:111 Portland Division Eastern Division Central Division Western Division

9,300 tons 4,400 2,930 253

98 Gentlemen Engineers This indicates not a better quality of iron (which was probably the same on all but the older Portland Division) but a more stable right of way and better ballasting. It also might indicate a straighter line. The Grand Trunk engineers from England had adopted the newer practice of allowing steeper grades and sharper curves - a technique that was known to raise operating costs - on the central and eastern divisions. Walter had been rather surprised at this when he first saw the line west of Montreal. 'It is quite plain/ he commented, 'that all the engineers who have "come out" look upon a curve as quite as good as a straight line.'112 On its own, this could not have caused the need for such massive rail replacement. Neither Walter nor any other inspecting engineers raised it as a possible explanation. But it might have been a factor. O.D. Skelton thought the higher quality of the Western Division was proof that Canadians were more suited than Englishmen to do the work. The Grand Trunk would have been better served if Gait and his associates had built the whole thing, he concluded. Recent authors are inclined to find Skelton's views a little fanciful.113 As a Canadian, Gzowski did have some advantages: he knew the terrain, the business methods, and the contractors of Canada West, because of the five years he had spent as engineer in charge of the London district for the Board of Works. So he probably was better prepared than the English contractors to engage reputable subcontractors and manage the work. But the capital needed for such a huge undertaking could never have been found in Canada, and being dependent on English capital meant almost certainly sharing the work with English contractors (who would have a connection with the capitalists). In other words, if through some different course of events Gzowski and Company had been engaged to build the whole line, there would have been no capital to build it with. Probably the most significant reason why Gzowski was able to build better and to make a profit on the work was that he was paid in cash rather than in stock, whereas the English contractors - closely tied to the Grand Trunk Railway Company - were paid one-quarter in Grand Trunk stock.114 The Gzowski firm had insisted on this arrangement right from the beginning. It was written into the contract. The advantage of this should not be underestimated. Once the value of Grand Trunk stock fell below par, which it did soon after construction began, the English contractors were in effect being underpaid for the work their subcontractors were doing. How could they afford to exact top-quality

The Grand Trunk Railway 99 work from their subcontractors, and pay them for it, when they knew of the diminished value of their own receipts? The answer is that they did not exact top-quality work. Instead, as A.W. Currie has observed, 'It reported that it had done £100 of work when in reality it had done no more than the market value of the securities which it would receive for every £100 of work.' Gzowski and Company had no such problem.115 This tactic of the English contractors was fraud, plain and simple, and it was only possible because 'Ross and his brother swindlers,' to use Walter's epithet, were the engineers in charge of the Eastern Division. Walter had inspecting engineers every ten miles, not every 'sixty or seventy' as Ross had,116 and Walter and Frank's assistants did their best to remain independent and free from the interests of the contractor. A corps such as Ross's, Walter maintained, was 'merely meant as a blind to the stockholders, to show that there is some care taken of their interests,' and was 'wholly powerless to exact proper work.' Yet it must be said that the English contractors building the line were not conducting the swindle to swell their profits; they were doing so to avoid bankruptcy. They were so closely connected to the interests of the railway company that they were gaining no real advantage by building a poorquality line. If Walter had had charge of the eastern parts of the line, with contractors being paid in below-par stock, who knows what would have happened? He likely would have resigned rather than insist on better-quality work and bankrupt the contractors, but he would never have allowed inferior work on his division, as Ross had been obliged to do. So it is true that the Gzowski firm had some advantages over its English counterpart, with its greater experience and better terms of payment, and this put it in a position to be able to build the works well and still profit.117 But these advantages did not compel the company to build well. Canadians, whether of Polish, Scottish, or English origin, can be as greedy as any Englishmen. Without Walter and his men to interfere, Gzowski and Company almost certainly would have built a little less well and would have profited a little bit more. As one travels along the Grand Trunk route west of Toronto today (it is still used in the 1990s by VIA Rail), all the main bridges on the route to St Marys - ove the Humber, Credit, Eramosa, Speed, and Grand rivers - still stand on the piers that Frank and Walter's engineering corps strove to supervise so carefully. West of St Marys, on the line Gzowski built in 1858-9 without their supervision, one finds no notable or lasting structures. Frank and Walter Shanly deserve much of the credit for the superb quality of

100 Gentlemen Engineers the line from Toronto to St Marys. It was they who forced Gzowski to reach the standards he did.118 While the splendid stone piers endured, the engineering ideal that raised them did not. Such close engineering supervision, as Holton and Gzowski had seen from the outset, was an expensive investment. Like high construction standards, it was a British idea that belonged in a more densely populated country, where heavily used railways could sustain capital-intensive construction. It made little sense in Canada West in the 1850s. Nor did it make sense to give an engineer full authority over the works in such an environment. Labour supply was unpredictable; the quality and accessibility of building materials was not known; the depth and nature of swamps and stream beds had often not been determined; and transportation times and costs varied with the weather. It was, is short, an industrializing pioneer society, not far removed from frontier life. To try to set and then demand that a contractor meet strict specifications was absurd. Proud though he may have been, Walter Shanly was a sensible man, and he learned quickly enough that in these circumstances it was better to leave a contractor of Gzowski's calibre free to improvise to suit the conditions. But in allowing pragmatism to overcome principle, Walter Shanly's idea of the professional engineer was shattered. His professional ideals, rooted in a more developed land, harboured in the old-fashioned canal-building world of the Board of Works, and strengthened by his own patrician values had proved untenable in the world of North American railway construction. Frank and Walter had enjoyed their taste of professional authority, but they would never have such an experience again.

Part Two

By the end of the Grand Trunk Railway construction, Frank and Walter Shanly were two established, successful civil engineers. Walter had risen about as far as he could go. Along with Samuel Keefer (A.M. Ross's assistant on the Grand Trunk), Frederic Cumberland (of the Northern Railway), George Lowe Reid (of the Great Western Railway), and John Page (of the Department of Public Works), Walter was probably at the pinnacle of the Canadian engineering profession. Frank had not climbed so high, but he was not far behind. Resident engineer on a long section of the Grand Trunk was a prestigious enough position. Such men as Keefer, Cumberland, Reid, and Page would have included Frank among their peers. Having reached this level of success in their profession, Frank and Walter proceeded to give it all up. Over the next few years, both gradually moved away from the practice of engineering. They would return to it from time to time, and they always tended to see themselves more than anything else as civil engineers, but they never again worked full time as professional engineers and never again 'engineered' a big project like the Grand Trunk Railway. This change of direction was not planned. They do not even seem to have known they were doing it, so they never stated why they did it. Perhaps their experiences on the Grand Trunk left them feeling a little hesitant, dismayed at how hard it was to maintain professional independence and uncertain about just what the role of a professional engineer was supposed to be. It was also a matter of staying employed, of taking what was available, and with fewer new railways and more engineers to build them, opportunities were scarce. Frank and Walter also wanted more money and more success. They were ambitious young men who saw themselves naturally

102 Gentlemen Engineers atop the social order; they sought a life of complete independence, free from the need to work for others. Engineering, even at the level they had attained, could not provide this. So it was on to greater challenges, harder work, and riskier ventures. It was also on to struggle, strain, and in the end bitter disappointment, for the successes of their early careers were not matched in their years of maturity. Not that their careers were utter failures. They both accomplished many things; and by some standards, as well as by reputation among those who today know of Frank's and Walter's work, they were successful. But as the remainder of their stories will reveal, they had their share of troubles, and the overall drift of the second half of their careers was unmistakably towards disappointment. Why this happened is an intriguing and perhaps unanswerable question. In some cases, they seem to have brought their woes upon themselves; in others, to have truly been victims of circumstance. One sure thing is that Frank and Walter were working through years of great change, as modern business and professional practices took shape around them. They had kept up with the times so far, but after the 1860s these two gentlemen engineers began to find the world an increasingly alien place - a fact that played no small part in the misfortunes that befell them. The completion of the Grand Trunk Railway brought another change, equally unwitting it appears, in their working lives. Their careers diverged permanently. They stayed close, and their careers remained connected, but only for a few years in the late 1860s did they actually work together on the same job. A combination of different personalities, abilities, and choices led them along different paths for the rest of their lives.

4

Boldness and Weakness: Frank Shanly, 1855-1882

As workmen laid the Grand Trunk's rails and bolted its bridge girders into place through the fall of 1855, Frank Shanly must have been pondering the future. He had a fine situation on this railway - plenty of money, authority, and freedom - but it would soon be over. The money had indeed been plentiful: through most of 1854 and 1855 Frank had made £600 per annum for his basic Grand Trunk position and an extra £200 per annum as Gzowski's resident engineer for Toronto's lakefront esplanade.1 To maintain such a comfortable style of life was not going to be easy. To make matters more pressing, Frank was a husband and a legitimate father by now. He had finally made the long-awaited step to responsible manhood by marrying young Louisa Saunders, the daughter of an English gentleman named Thomas Saunders who had settled near Guelph. Saunders's wife, Lucy Ann (nee Willcocks), was of an old Dublin family whom the Shanlys had known for generations. Frank and Walter, while working on the early Toronto and Guelph surveys, had visited the Saunders at their country home, Woodlands, and in these proper circumstances Frank and Louisa had met. Frank's old friend James Lundy had sensed a new, more responsible man beginning to emerge before the wedding, and he regretted the change. Lundy recalled their youthful capers around London and Thorndale some fifteen years before and had written to Frank in March 1853 saying how he longed for them still: 'You don't, I think, but you are wrong sir, decidedly wrong. You were a jollier fellow then than you are now, so put that in your pipe.' Lundy urged Frank to visit him in Halifax, where he was then stationed: 'Couldn't you run down for a fortnight in May? I should like to see you before you are married. It

104 Gentlemen Engineers changes people so. I rather dread its effects on you.' But Lundy was left unsatisfied. Frank and Louisa were married in Guelph on 28 September 1853, and after a brief honeymoon they settled into a rented townhouse at 39 Bay Street in Toronto.2 One part of the old Frank Shanly that resisted change was his spendthrift style, and since he was then at the height of confidence in his work, he and Louisa had set up a splendid home to begin their life together. They covered their floors with colourful Brussels carpet, filled their rooms with walnut tables and chairs, and draped their windows with the finest damask, all trimmed with fringes and lace. And on their walls they hung plenty of prints of horses, foxes, and hounds. 'I can well fancy the state of perfection you and Louisa are getting 39 into,' Frank's half-brother Robert wrote from Thorndale, 'and I feel quite anxious to get a squint at it.' Settling down had been expensive for Frank Shanly, and many of these bills still remained unpaid in 1855.3 Adding to the demands on his income were hefty payments for land along the Grand Trunk line which he and Walter had bought on speculation in February 1853 when word had come from Alexander Gait in London that the line would extend to Sarnia. Frank held an interest in lots at Sarnia, Goderich, Stratford, Berlin, Weston, Brockton, and Toronto, and probably at other places too. Dates and locations of their land purchases are not precise enough to determine how priviliged their information was and whether they benefited from being insiders. They probably did, but what little evidence exists makes one wonder. The land they bought was not cheap wild land but surveyed lots already parcelled out and numbered for sale; the speculation process had evidently already begun, and sale prices were far from bargains. Even at Sarnia, a remote and undeveloped location in 1853, lots near the railway had been selling for £25 to £100 per acre. And they had paid £1,375 for a lot near Georgetown with a working stone quarry on it, intending to sell the stone for railway construction.4 The terms varied, but generally they paid the owner a portion of the cost down in cash - perhaps one-quarter or one-third - and the remainder in specified instalments over the next few years. By 1855, having bought perhaps two dozen lots ranging from one-quarter of an acre to ten or twenty acres, Frank and Walter had land payments of as much as £100 coming due nearly every month. I

Frank thus had plenty to worry about in the fall of 1855 as the end of his Grand Trunk employment drew near. He sold some of his land, but hav-

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 105 ing paid such high prices and having held it less than two years, he was in no position to profit.5 It lightened his debts, but that was not enough. He needed another job. The Gait and Guelph Railway was a likely prospect. This was a short branch line about to be built by the Great Western Railway to connect its line at Gait with the new Grand Trunk line at Guelph.6 Frank knew the land, the local tradesmen and subcontractors, and the chief engineer of the Great Western, George Lowe Reid, so it seemed a natural job for him to step into. Although the company did not need engineers, it did need a contractor to build the line, so Frank set his sights on securing the construction contract and changing himself from professional to entrepreneur. It would be his first experience as a contractor, but there was no reason why he could not make the change. He knew what a contractor had to do. He had worked closely with contractors for years now and was, of course, technically working for Gzowski's contracting firm on the Grand Trunk. There would be financial risks - that was new - and he would have to try to do the work as cheaply as possible - that too was new. But all things considered, he stood a good chance of both winning and profiting from the contract. Frank heard about the Great Western's plans before they were publicly announced, whereupon he went to see Chief Engineer Reid in Hamilton. Reid freely showed him a profile of the line and the company's estimates of excavation quantities, and explained how tenders had to be presented.7 Frank drafted a schedule of prices for his bid and sent them to Walter for his opinion. Walter thought them too low and wrote back with his own suggestions. A few weeks later, after they had both done some visiting and letter writing to get the right men 'on side,' Frank submitted his bid at the higher figures Walter had suggested, £50,700. The bid included an interesting addendum: he proposed, if the company thought it appropriate, to pay the engineering corps for the job. Evidently Frank had seen how this arrangement had benefited Gzowski and thought it preferable to the principles Walter held so dear. But he did not get the job. His price was more than £5,000 higher than the winning bid.8 So it was back to the month-end accounts of the Grand Trunk's Engineering Department. A month later another opportunity presented itself - the Buffalo, Brantford and Lake Huron. This railway company had built a line from Buffalo to Brantford two years earlier, but financial trouble had forced it to stop. Now financially reborn, the company was about to resume construction. An associate of Walter's by the name of Widder, a Canada Company man living in Goderich, knew the new investors and the engineer being sent out to oversee the work, a man they called Captain

106 Gentlemen Engineers Barlow. Through Widder, Walter tried to get Frank the position of Barlow's resident engineer on the line, and for a few weeks in January 1856 they all held out hope. But nothing came of it.9 When the winter passed without any job prospects, Frank resolved to do what he had done ten years before in such circumstances. He set out to find work farther afield. His first try was in the province of New Brunswick. A railway had been started there in 1853 by the same British contractors who were building the Grand Trunk - Jackson, Peto, Brassey, and Belts. When their American sub-contractors had fallen far behind schedule (apparently because of a shortage of labour) and their financial agents had been unable to sell enough bonds in London, they had forfeited the contract. The New Brunswick government had settled with the firm in June 1855 and resolved to carry on construction itself, which it was prepared to do by the spring of 1856.10 Having learned all this, Frank hastened to New Brunswick to offer himself as government engineer in charge of construction. The odds were against him as an outsider, but he was determined to do all he could. On the boat to Saint John he by chance met A.L. Light, a Canadian civil engineer who had worked for the Board of Works and the Great Western Railway in the 1840s but had recently been working on a railway in New Brunswick. Light, Frank knew, was seeking the same job. T think we both felt we were on delicate ground and did not touch on the subject of New Brunswick Railways,' Frank wrote to Walter. T have however ascertained that he is an applicant with good friends.' After a few days in Saint John, Frank went to Fredricton to 'open the campaign in earnest.' He wrote a letter to Premier Tilley offering himself at a salary of £750 per annum, but after waiting for two weeks he learned that Light had the job.11 Back in Canada, Frank's situation was more desperate than ever. As of 1 June 1856, he was no longer employed by the Grand Trunk. He had no income at all. Walter had recently secured a contract with the Department of Public Works to survey a canal route from the Ottawa River to Georgian Bay, and there was the possibility of work there. But spending the few months in the bush was not Frank's first choice. Gzowski now had a contract to build a Grand Trunk extension from St Marys to London, and some of Frank's assistants considered working on it, but Frank was not tempted to work with Gzowski - nor Gzowski with Frank, apparently.12 There was no escaping it. Frank Shanly could not continue to live like a rich man. So in came the auctioneer to inventory the splendid

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 107 furnishings of 39 Bay Street. On 19 August nearly everything that he and Louisa had bought in their first few months of marriage passed into the hands of others. The auctioneer sold 171 household items that day - from their celery glass and toast-rack to their walnut sideboard and their piano. Louisa, with their first baby now six months old, moved back to her family home near Guelph.13 It was a heavy blow, no doubt, but Frank pressed on. He thought more seriously than ever about joining Walter's canal survey, where a few of his old associates were now at work, but he escaped that fate when one of his Stratford lots sold for a decent profit. This bought him a little more time.14 Having failed in the east, Frank now tried the west. First he went to Chicago, where he spent a week introducing himself to railwaymen and inquiring about prospects. Then he went to St Paul to do the same. He stopped in several smaller towns in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota too, but after a few weeks he concluded there was little chance of a worthwhile job. Everywhere he went he found engineers looking for work. None of them were true engineers, he observed ('they all combine banking and land agency with their own business'), but he saw what he was up against.15 Deeply dispirited, Frank came back to Canada in mid-November. Perhaps he would go up to the Ottawa after all. Or perhaps he should sell his share in the Georgetown quarry, go back to Wisconsin, and persevere there. One of his closest friends and professional associates, James Stewart, who wrote to Frank to console him, advised him to stay put and wait for something to come along, for he thought that Frank's problems lay more with his character than with his circumstances. 'It seems to me that you will chalk something out in Canada ... With a moderate fixed income, and chances of speculating, you can get along first rate, as soon as you have unlearned JOWL expensive habits; and to do that requires only a strong will for a short period. You can exert the will - the question is do you see that it should be exerted.' A week later, Stewart wrote reassuringly, 'The day of large salaries may have gone past, but there is no fear for you.'16 Heeding Stewart's counsel, Frank stayed in Canada, and his patience paid off. The railway that finally got him out of his fix was the Port Dalhousie and Thorold, later named the Welland Railway. The job seems to have come out of the blue; neither he nor Walter nor any of his correspondents ever mentioned it as a possibility. But by the end of November 1856, Frank was engineer in charge of the line's construction with a salary of £450 per annum and had already been given

108 Gentlemen Engineers instructions to commence surveys.17 No doubt with a deep sense of relief, Frank and Louisa reunited and set up house in St Catharines. It was not going to be a big job. A railway had already been built from Port Dalhousie to Thorold, so all that remained was to extend the line south up the escarpment and along the Welland Canal to its terminus at Port Colborne. Construction of this remaining twenty-five miles, the company supposed, would be done in just one season.18 So Frank and Louisa were not here for good, but at least they had a home again; and living in St Catharines would be cheaper than in Toronto, as Frank informed Walter: 'Anyhow my style of doing it will be.'19 Frank had been through this work routine many times by now and knew exactly where to begin. He hired his assistants, ordered in supplies, and began preparing the specifications. He established management systems identical to those Walter had used on the Grand Trunk: he divided the line in two, appointing an assistant in charge of each division, and set up a procedure for monthly payrolls and estimates. He had the surveys done by the end of February and construction underway in early April 1857.20 As always, there were delays. There was the usual disagreement within the Board of Directors over the location of the line and the usual early winter that unexpectedly stopped masonry work on the bridge piers. By January 1858, after one full year of construction, although the line itself was essentially complete, the major bridges were not finished and the wharves at the terminals were not even started.21 Then there was a major delay when the Board of Railway Commissioners refused to allow the line to cross the Great Western Railway on a level crossing. This meant another major bridge and an alteration in the location and grade of the line as it approached the Great Western's track.22 It also meant a big expense and a season's delay. The Welland Railway was not in business until 27 June 1859, and by then it had cost $350,000 more than Frank's original estimate of $650,000.23 Frank maintained that the lateness and unexpectedly high cost were not his fault. The company had mismanaged its affairs, he believed. It had not at first realized that to be competitive with other shippers it would have to build its own grain elevators, and these buildings had added $102,934 to the original estimates; the company had also assumed, without good grounds, that it would get approval for the Great Western Railway level crossing; and all the resulting delays had meant unexpected interest payments on investment capital.24 Frank was not wholly blameless in all this; as the engineer in charge, he had the

James Shanly Sr, Frank and Walter's father, taken in Ireland, no date (probably early 1830s).

Sketch of a cottage on or near Norman's Grove, County Meath, Ireland, by James Shanly Sr, December 1835. This is one of several sketches Shanly did in his final few weeks on the estate.

The second Mrs Shanty, Frank and Walter's stepmother, taken in Liverpool prior to sailing for New York, 1836.

Plan of Thorndale House, lower floor, probably done for the 1853 renovation. The sloping site allowed ground-level access to the basement kitchen and servants' quarters from a courtyard on one side of the house.

C*OS5 SECTION

Cross-section of aqueduct carrying the Union Canal over Swatara Creek. Detail of drawing by Frank Shanly, 1850. Frank needed plenty of help from Walter to execute this design.

Sketch of completed Union Canal near Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, by W.H.E. Napier, 1851. Napier, the son of Lord Elgin's personal secretary, came with Frank Shanly to Pine Grove to work as one of Frank's assistant engineers on the job. Engineering works built with the labour of horses and men did little to disturb the landscape.

Design drawing of timber bridge carrying Dundas Street over the Grand Trunk Railway northwest of Toronto, by William Armstrong, 1853. Later a noted Canadian artist, Armstrong worked under Frank Shanly as an assistant engineer in the Toronto office of the Grand Trunk Railway from 1853 to 1856.

Grand Trunk Railway bridge over River Eramosa at Rockwood, Canada West, c.1860. Photo by William Notman. One of the splendid stone-piered bridges built on the Grand Trunk Railway under Frank and Walter's supervision, 1853-5. The iron girder spans have long since been replaced, but the piers still stand in the 1990s.

Engraving from Canadian Illustrated News of the Grand River bridge at Cayuga, 1873. Construction of this bridge was part of Frank Shanly's contract for the third division of the Canada Air Line Railway. The piers were built by a Toronto mason, J. Esson, with stone taken from the nearby Oneida freestone quarries; the timber superstructure, built to Howe's patent, was designed and supplied by a bridge builder from Troy, New York.

Design of railway station at Simcoe, Ontario, c.1872, one of several station buildings Frank Shanly built for the Canada Air Line Railway. The drawing would have been provided to him or his staff by the engineering corps of the railway.

Frank Shanly's family in front of Ardenvohr, c.1870. Frank leased this grand home, built and owned by Nicol Kingsmill, for his few seemingly prosperous years in the early 1870s. The house still stands, altered to make the original side of the house into the front, facing Balmoral Avenue in Toronto.

CAN ABA CORK STARCH WORKS.

Engraving of the original Edwardsburg Starch Company premises, c.1860, from the Illustrated Historical Atlas of Counties of Leeds and Grenville, Canada West. Walter was a shareholder and president of the board of this successful firm from 1865 until the 1890s.

Excavation in the Hoosac Tunnel, early 1870s. Note the helmets with open flares for illumination. Walter, and Frank to some extent, was the contractor responsible for the successful boring of this tunnel in the early 1870s. The carefully detailed drawing is by Carl Weiderkinch, engineer in charge of the project, and is one of a series of such illustrations of the work printed in a pamphlet by George Mowbray.

Walter Shanly, 1863, age forty-six, taken the year Walter was first elected to the provincial assembly.

Walter Shanly, 1870, age fifty-three. If the date of this photograph is correct, Walter aged considerably through two sessions of parliament and two years of harrowing work on the Hoosac Tunnel.

Portrait of Frank Shanly, 1855, age thirty-five, byT.W. Wood. Painted a few weeks before his marriage.

Frank Shanly, no date (probably early 1870s).

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 109 responsibility to keep the company fully informed. But nobody faulted him; there was no criticism of him as the work wound up in the fall of 1859. And it is true that for at least one of the company's major mistakes (the rejected level crossing) he had tried to warn the company but had not been heeded.25 Once again, Frank Shanly had done a good job. When the railway began running trains in June, the board asked him to stay on in charge of operations, but Frank declined. A commitment to such mundane management was not for him.26 The Welland Railway had never captivated him as the Grand Trunk had. It was small. It was far from the centre of action. It did not pay enough. Frank had worked in the big leagues and he wanted back in. Walter was now the general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway, living in Montreal and making plenty of money. Frank was determined to make his mark too, and he agreed to stay with the Welland only as long as it took him to find other work. Nevertheless, he had learned much from his nearly three years on this job. On such a small line he naturally had had a wider field of responsibility than on the great Grand Trunk. And without his older brother telling him what to do, he had broadened his knowledge through his own experience. He had ordered the rolling stock and arranged for its maintenance, contracted for building the water tanks and supplying fuel wood, and set rules for the speed and frequency of passenger trains once they started to run. Frank was no longer just a civil engineer; he now knew enough about the operation and management of a railway to be a railwayman.27 He had also learned first hand what Walter had learned years ago - that it was not easy being an independent professional. In this case, it had not been contractors challenging his authority but board members forever meddling in his affairs.28 What was the point of confining oneself to such a role? II

It was to contracting that Frank Shanly now turned. This is not surprising. It was an appealing and logical step for him at this stage of his career. Frank had never shared Walter's disdain for contractors, nor had he ever truly felt a deep commitment to independent professional practice as Walter had. Neither structural design nor the intricacies of construction techniques had ever been Frank's forte; his strengths lay in managing the job, in assigning and coordinating tasks - just the sort of work a contractor did. And all around him it seemed to be the con-

110 Gentlemen Engineers tractors, not the engineers, who were making the big money on railway projects. The stakes were high, he knew, but the rewards were correspondingly rich. He might have recalled that some of the contractors he had worked with, even the very experienced ones, had been driven to financial ruin by unforeseen circumstances and bad fortune, but such thoughts were rare in the mind of so bold and sanguine a man. He broke into the world of big-time contracting with a fine contract that he executed with great success - reconstruction of the entire Northern Railway from Toronto to Collingwood. The Northern had fallen on hard times in the late 1850s. Its business had shrunk severely in the 1857 depression, and the line, poorly built in the first place, had deteriorated to the point that running trains was hazardous. Faced with these problems the Northern had renegotiated its government loans, sold a new issue of bonds in England, reorganized its management structure, and embarked on a major reconstruction program to raise the line to the standards of the Grand Trunk.29 The work was going to be given to the great English contractor Thomas Brassey; this seems to have been predetermined, probably because Brassey had bought the company's new bonds. But Brassey's Grand Trunk experience had left him aware that profit was unlikely without an experienced Canadian in charge. Frank knew all this, and by late 1859, with the Welland Railway essentially completed, he had set his eye on being the general subcontractor Brassey would need.30 He stood a good chance. He had come out of the Grand Trunk construction with a fine reputation, for everyone now knew that the section he and Walter had supervised was the only properly built part of the line. Influential money men in London had also been pleased with Frank's sound business practice and quality work on the Welland Railway. And it helped, no doubt, that Walter was one of three engineers engaged by the Northern Railway to estimate the cost of reconstruction and recommend where the newly raised money should be spent.31 So in January 1860, armed with a few valuable letters of recommendation, Frank went off to England to present himself to Brassey. He returned with just what he wanted - a firm promise that he would indeed be engaged as sub-contractor for the whole job. There was more than $500,000 worth of work to be done in the next two years; a 10 or 15 per cent profit on that would be a good start.32 So in July 1860 Frank and his family (he and Louisa now had three children) moved back to Toronto. He rented a home on the University Farm on the northwest outskirts of the city and an office downtown on

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 111 York Street, and began setting himself up for the work ahead. His contract with Brassey had not yet been signed, but it was sure thing; Alexander Gait had written to him in April congratulating him on getting the job. The work itself was so pressing that the railway company got Frank started that summer even without a contract with Brassey, engaging him directly to begin construction along the Toronto waterfront and on a culvert at New Lowell that was already collapsing.33 On 20 September 1860, Frank signed his contract with Brassey and began work in earnest. Brassey was under contract to renew the entire line - to widen and stabilize the embankments, replace the old timber bridges and culverts with masonry and iron, and lay all new ballast, ties, and rails.34 Along with this he was to maintain the existing line while rebuilding the new one. As Brassey's sole subcontractor, Frank was in charge of all this work. He was to be paid monthly by Brassey, according to the railway company's estimates of the quantity of work done and a schedule of unit prices specified in his contract, up to a fixed maximum. Beyond this, he would be paid $400 per mile per annum for maintaining the existing line.35 Frank elected to have all the work done by small subcontractors, the method he was accustomed to from his earlier work. By the time he signed his contract with Brassey, he had already received dozens of letters from interested tradesmen and contractors, but he advertised nonetheless, and received further offers.36 In the end, he contracted with about ten men, or partnerships, most of them well known to him. All were Canadian, and most were from the immediate area. He engaged two men he knew from his Grand Trunk work: John Robinson of St Catharines, one of his former assistant engineers, to do excavation and fill from mile 66 to 78, and John Worthington of Toronto, a contractor for the Humber River bridge piers, for all the masonry (with the requirement that he use stone from Frank's Georgetown quarry). Other contracts were similar. David Fleming of Collingwood was to do fencing at certain designated points; Messrs. Ginty and Hall of Toronto were to do excavation and fill from mile 83 to 94, while Messrs Gibson and Dixon of Whitby did the same from mile 29 to 53; William Stewart was to build all the small timber road bridges over the line.37 Frank also employed two or three men directly. The only man clearly on record is William Thompson, one of Frank's assistant engineers on the Welland Railway the year before, whom Frank now hired as inspector; his job was to be Frank's presence out on the line, inspecting the

112 Gentlemen Engineers quality of work primarily. But Frank also must have hired at least one secretary or clerk, for the job's letterbook is not written in his own hand.38 Keeping the labouring men in line was not his job or that of any of his employees; it was the responsibility of the subcontractor's site foremen. Since the subcontractor was being paid by Frank according to the quantity of work done but was paying the labourers' wages according to time worked, he would be the first to feel the effects of a workforce not working hard enough.39 Frank's own job was to keep the work coordinated. He wrote letters to his subcontractors urging them on or telling them to turn their attention from one thing to another; he reported regularly to Brassey's agent and to the company's engineer, Sandford Fleming; and he had to order and arrange for the delivery of much of the construction material.40 Frank also had to manage the money. When working at full speed, his monthly payments from Brassey ranged from $10,000 to $25,000.41 Most of this Frank promptly had to pay out to his subcontractors and suppliers - of the iron and ballast, for example - and at times he bought provisions for the men boarded by subcontractors at certain job sites. Modern accounting was still in its infancy, and keeping track of such a large and rapid cash flow was a considerable challenge. Frank seems to have employed some sort of accountant or bookkeeper, but his own role could not have been entirely insignificant. Frank was, in fact, becoming conversant with such things and was right up to date with his knowledge. At the end of his work on the Welland Railway (which had employed an accountant), he knew the difference between construction and operational accounts, a distinction that had first been made in the big U.S. railways only in the 1850s.42 One troublesome aspect of this job was having to work for two masters. Frank's main authority was of course Brassey, whose agent had taken an office in Toronto. But Frank often complained of delays in receiving answers from Brassey's firm.43 It was better for him to receive instructions directly from the railway company, either from Engineer Fleming or Managing Director Frederic Cumberland (also an engineer), for these were the men he ultimately had to satisfy; but this was not always possible. He also had to keep the contract for reconstruction separate from yet coordinated with the contract for maintenance.44 All in all it was not an easy job to manage, especially for a first-time contractor. Frank had, of course, overseen the construction of a railway

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many times before, but as an engineer not as a contractor, and there were differences. Frank was working now as the judged, not the judge, and this required a little more humility. As well, his pay now came in his profit, not in salary cheques he could count on every quarter, so tighter control of expenses was called for. Nevertheless, by drawing on his past experience and using good tradesmen and experienced clerks, Frank was able to keep the job under control. It was originally to be finished by the end of 1861, but several delays that truly were no fault of Frank's extended the deadline into 1862.45 The company began to grow impatient at the end of the summer of 1862, fearful that Frank would not finish before freeze-up, and it started to put its own men on the job to add to the workforce. This irritated Frank but seems not to have led to any serious rift. The company took the line out of his hands at the end of 1862, fully satisfied with his work.46 There is no record of how much money Frank made from this work on the Northern Railway. He held clear title to thirty-three £100 Northern Railway bonds at the end of the job, but he must have cleared much more than that because there was none of the desperate searching for work that had followed the Grand Trunk job. In fact, he felt flush enough to take a six-week trip to England, France, and Ireland early in 1863, staying and dining at the finest hotels wherever he went.47 Still, Frank was in no position to retire, especially with his remarkable capacity for spending. He needed more work, and opportunities were few. Railroads were just not being built in Canada in the 1860s.48 Nor were they in the United States, where the Civil War was raging. Public works were unlikely for some time to come, Walter thought: T see not the slightest prospect of anything turning up in Canada for a long time. The finances of the province under Gait's rascally management are in a most alarming condition, rendering the undertaking of any public works by the government wholly out of the question.'49 Any major railway construction was going to have to wait several years. There was the odd small contract to be had, though Frank found that winning one was not so easy. He bid on a job to construct grain elevators at Hamilton for the Great Western Railway but failed to get the work. He was also unsuccessful in bids to build the Montreal and Vermont Junction Railway, to repair and upgrade the Erie and Niagara Railway, and to supply replacement ties to the Grand Trunk.50 Construction contracts being so rare, Frank was prompted into the only railway promotion venture of his career. In the 1860s the whole of southwestern Ontario north of the Grand Trunk line - most of Welling-

114 Gentlemen Engineers ton, Dufferin, Grey, Bruce, and Huron counties - was still without a railway. The population was sparse but growing, and the prospects looked reasonably good. It was the obvious place for a new railway, but no promoters had come forward, so in 1862 the provisional county council of Bruce announced that it would provide $400,000 in debentures to any company that would undertake to build a line to its county. In early 1864 Frank responded with a scheme to construct a small, light-weight, standard-gauge (5 ft. 6 ins. at the time) railway for a relatively low price.51 His proposal elicited a flurry of letters, to him and to the papers, from the citizens of the northern counties. As usual, those along the line were strongly in favour, and those not were not. Opinion everywhere was cool towards his idea of the line being anything but the grandest, but Frank stood by his scheme of a smaller than usual railway. 'I know it is the only kind you are likely to get that will pay for many years to come,' he wrote to an objector from Kincardine. Walter thought highly of Frank's proposal but cautioned him that modest railways, appropriate though they were in Canada, would never attract British investment.52 There was enough support, however, for a company to be organized and a bill to be passed, and the Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway Company was incorporated on 30 June 1864, with Frank Shanly as one of eighteen provisional directors. But the project immediately fell dormant. Walter was probably right.53 It was during these lean years of the 1860s that Frank began to develop an aspect of engineering practice which one would now call consulting - inspecting or investigating a particular engineering problem or legal dispute and reporting his opinion in return for a professional fee. Frank was perfectly suited to such work. He had always valued his own judgment and disinterestedness, and he could write an excellent report. He already had done some work as an arbitrator in construction disputes; his first job of this type had been in 1853, while still with the Grand Trunk, when he had been called upon to arbitrate between the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway (later the Northern) and one of its contractors. Now, with his experience as both a contractor and an engineer, his opinions were very well respected.54 In November 1864 Frank was engaged by the Grand Trunk Railway to inspect the current state and future prospects of railways in the Maritime provinces. The Intercolonial was going to be built sooner or later, and the Grand Trunk wanted to be fully informed when the time came.55 Frank worked on this job through the early part of the winter, examining the existing lines (including the line he had wanted to work

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on eight years earlier), studying engineering reports and profiles from earlier surveys, and meeting with Premiers Tupper and Tilley. He concluded his work with a long, thorough report that would have pleased the most demanding railway manager. For the two existing lines - Halifax to Truro and Windsor, and Saint John to Shediac - he described their current business activity and their physical condition, and gave precise estimates for the cost of operating and upgrading them in the years ahead; for the two new branches under consideration - Truro to Moncton, and Windsor to Annapolis - he commented on possible routes and estimated the cost of construction. Both were feasible, he concluded, although the latter had more promising local traffic. His recommendation, once again, was for a low-cost light rail line. Frank was paid $1,000 for his eleven weeks' work.56 This led into more consulting that looked for a time as if it might deliver the big job Frank was waiting for. The Grand Trunk was also considering expanding west, into Michigan and on to Chicago. Charles J. Brydges, the managing director of the Grand Trunk, had visited central Michigan to discuss this possibility with some of the go-getters there, and they had responded, as he had hoped they would, by organizing a company and soliciting local investment. The locals could not agree on the route, of course, and to sort through their competing views, Brydges hired Frank in the summer of 1865 to examine the routes and judge which was the best. Frank spent about six weeks learning what he could and once again wrote Brydges a fine report with a clear recommendation of the route. Brydges and the local promoters eventually came to an agreement in the spring of 1866; the whole line from Port Huron to Chicago was to go ahead. On Brydges's recommendation, Frank was offered the chief engineership. Frank stated his terms - $10,000 per annum, with authority to appoint his own assistants - which the company, now called the Chicago and Michigan Grand Trunk Railway, accepted without hesitation. Frank was set, and immediately began hiring men for the survey parties. Then, before the survey reports were even finished, the enterprise fell apart. Nobody, neither the local promoters nor the Grand Trunk Railway had raised enough money, and Frank had to abandon this promising job having received only two quarterly payments of his big salary.57 He got through the next year with a few small consulting jobs and a contract to supply ties to the Grand Trunk for one winter, but such jobs did not add up to much. He sold a few of his lots in Stratford, bringing

116 Gentlemen Engineers in a little cash and relieving himself of the burden of taxes, but this did not carry him far either.58 His family had been growing steadily over the years - by July 1867, he and Louisa had seven children - and although he was doing his best to control his spending, the cost of servants and tradesmen for a such a large household was considerable. By the fall of 1868 he could no longer sustain them. Frank was out of money again, and once more had to give up the family home. He terminated his lease on the University Farm property and sent Louisa and the children back to the Saunders in Guelph. It would not be for long. He knew that a boom was coming. The Civil War was over, and business was bursting back to life in the United States. And with Confederation achieved in Canada, there would soon be Canadian railroads built, both east and west. Frank had good reason to think he would be in on some of the Canadian projects: he had been working with James Reekie, Brassey's Canadian agent, on preliminary engineering for a Grand Trunk extension to the northwest, and they had talked about work on the Intercolonial. Also, a group in Hamilton had revived the dormant Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway, and although capital was short, there was a chance something might come of that. Frank stood ready and anxious for, as he put it, 'the "scramble" that is about to take place - the last of our time.'59 Ill

Frank's several Canadian possibilities quickly came to nothing. The Grand Trunk did not build to the northwest; his bid to construct the Wellington, Grey and Bruce was not accepted; and the Intercolonial became so entangled in politics that Walter advised him to keep out of it.60 Instead, it was the revival of railway construction in the United States that brought Frank work. Several years earlier, in the summer of 1863, just after completing the Northern Railway, Frank had struck up a correspondence with the American engineer Benjamin H. Latrobe Jr regarding construction of a portion of the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad in central Pennsylvania. Latrobe had, for years, been a leading engineer with the Baltimore and Ohio, of which the Pittsburgh and Connellsville was a part, and Frank had submitted a tender to build the latter; but his prices had been too high, his proposal to contract for only the entire line had not found favour, and he had not been awarded any work.61 However, in June 1868, Frank received a letter from Latrobe, apparently unsolicited, enclosing an advertisement 'which

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speaks for itself.' The State of Massachussetts was advertising for contractors to build the Hoosac Tunnel, an enormous undertaking - a five mile tunnel through solid rock in the Berkshires of western Massachussets, which had already defied the efforts of several contractors and engineers. The money to finish it is all appropriated and there can therefore be no trouble as to funds ...,' Latrobe wrote. 'It is the sort of work that might suit you well.'62 Indeed it was. It also suited Walter, who by this time was an independent businessman (and member of Parliament) in Montreal. It was big, challenging, and quite likely would be profitable. So big and attractive was it, in fact, that Frank and Walter decided to bid for its construction as a partnership - their first work together in over ten years. Their bid immediately found favour. Walter, more prominent and better connected than Frank, handled all the negotiations with the State of Massachusetts, and after several trying months in Boston he and the state agreed to terms on 24 December 1868. F. and W. Shanly, Contractors, would build the Hoosac Tunnel by March 1874 for $4,594,268.63 It was a great achievement, astonishing really, to have secured this huge American contract, and for a time they were the talk of the town in Montreal. Walter had been more than a little dubious at times during the negotiating, but on Christmas morning, back in Montreal, he wrote Frank rich in confidence: Only the most dire mismanagement and blundering can prevent our making more out of this thing - at its worst - than we can reasonably hope to make in any other way within the next five years ... If there is any of the old fire left in us we must wake it up in this Hoosac business. I believe we can let daylight through the mountain in four years and that, if we do, we can easily get a bonus of $100,000 from the State.64

To which Frank replied: You have fought a good battle and gained a great victory I only wish I could have been at your back all thro' - but I am ready now for anything in the way of work and do not fear the result -1 think I have lost none of the old energy and don't believe that you have - this has been a great triumph for us and a source of wonder to everyone how we achieved it.65

Frank and Walter were at work in North Adams, Massachusetts, only a few days after the contract was signed. Construction was underway,

118 Gentlemen Engineers and they were now legally responsible for its management, so there was no room for delay. And now, with this big contract secured, Frank was safe again. Only a few months after having to give up the lease on his home, he suddenly had just what he had been hoping for since rebuilding the Northern Railway. He promptly made plans to lease Nicol Kingsmill's vacant mansion on the brow of the hill above Yorkville, just north of Toronto, and to bring his family back to a suitable style of life.66 Frank's enthusiasm for the Hoosac Tunnel evaporated almost as quickly as it had formed. Perhaps working with Walter was less enjoyable than it had been fifteen years earlier. Walter had become a colder, harder man. He was a successful man, too, and probably did not view Frank as his equal. Although they had contracted as a partnership, Walter had in truth taken on the job as his own. In courting investors, he had promised to manage the affair himself.67 Few records survive from their Hoosac work, and there is nothing to reveal any disharmony at this early stage, but Frank's views are evident nonetheless: no sooner had he settled into work at North Adams than he was bidding on other jobs. A man by the name of R. Jones, a contractor from Port Hope working on the Intercolonial, asked Frank in January 1869 to join him in a bid to construct the Rondout and Oswego Railroad in New York State. After carefully reviewing the prices, Frank agreed to participate. The company accepted their bid in principle but, on the verge of signing the contract suddenly backed off. It had been informed, Jones wrote to Frank, 'that you and your brother were highly honorable men, but ... that you had no means.'68 Then Jones and Frank learned that the Pittsburgh and Connellsville, which had gone nowhere six years earlier, was being revived, and they put in a bid to build it under the name Jones, Shanly and Company. Included in this firm were two other Canadian contractors, Robert McGreevy and James Walsh. How Frank came to know Jones or either of the other men has escaped documentation. He could not have known them well, for he seems never to have done business with any of them. Nevertheless, rather unexpectedly, their bid was accepted. They were offered a contract to construct twenty-three miles of the line, largely on the strength of their claim that they would be able to bring labourers from Canada to Pennsylvania, where labour was scarce. Since Frank was still obliged to work on the Hoosac Tunnel, his commitment to this second job was rather feeble. T have met my partners and signed the contract,' Frank wrote to Latrobe, who was still the

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 119 chief engineer. 'I will not be able to give much time to the work, but my partners will surely give satisfaction.'69 What had Frank done? In association with men he did not know, through terrain in a foreign country he had seen but once, Frank Shanly was legally bound to build twentythree miles of railroad. And he was going to accomplish this without giving the work much attention? As it turned out none of the other partners planned to give much time to this job either. They too were all busy elsewhere. And with the Intercolonial now under construction, their plentiful Canadian labour supply was used up. So they thought it best to subcontract the work to local Pennsylvania firms, completely disregarding their earlier promise. For the first construction season this was satisfactory, but in early 1870 the work started to unravel. Their subcontractors, unable to keep men at the prices they could afford to pay, began to abandon their contracts. When McGreevy went to the site in March 1870, he found that Walsh, who they believed was supervising the work, had left for Toronto. Not one of the four partners was on the job. Nobody was doing any work.70 Frank, who was dividing his time between the Hoosac Tunnel and even more new work in Toronto, gave this job just enough attention to realize he was in trouble. He tried to withdraw from the partnership in April, but McGreevy reminded him that it was the railroad company that would have to release him from his obligation. The company's engineer had no intention of doing so. Latrobe was in a rage, threatening to break the contract and confiscate all the equipment and materials they had brought to the site. He even threatened Walter, who had no interest in the project. Late that summer the railroad agreed to relieve Jones, Shanly and Company of some sections of the work, but that was little help, for by then word had spread that Jones, Shanly were unreliable in paying wages and few men would work for them. Adding to their woes, the railroad company had so little faith in their ability to finish the work that it was holding back payment of their monthly estimates. 'You may not be aware of how near this business is to a crash,' the firm's bookkeeper told Frank in November. Their 'pressing debts' had swelled to $41,000 and their October payroll was $28,000, while that month's payment from the railroad company would total only $18,000.71 By the end of March they had managed to finish their remaining sections. They had long given up any hope of making a profit; they just wanted to finish to save their reputation. Their losses grew even greater

120 Gentlemen Engineers in the final few months, for they had to pay a premium to the men and the subcontractors to get them to work in such haste and insecurity. Even with a final push, they were so late in finishing the job that the railroad company refused to release their holdback. The financial damage of the whole affair took months to come into focus, but by 1872 more than $100,000 worth of claims had been filed against their firm. In return, the partners were preparing a suit against the railroad to recover $150,000 they believed their firm was still owed. Complicating matters further, they were far from agreement on the extent of each partner's personal responsibility.72 Grand though it was, this was just the beginning. Frank's main endeavour in the early 1870s was neither this nor the Hoosac Tunnel, but setting up and expanding his own contracting firm in Toronto. From 1870 to 1874, Frank Shanly and Company built more than 200 miles of railway in Ontario and in return received almost $2 million from the companies it worked for. Frank built nearly all the Toronto, Grey and Bruce, the eastern half of the Canada Air Line Railway (an extension of the Great Western), and portions of the Midland Railway. Just as he had hoped, he became one of the key men in this Ontario railway boom. Frank's first major Canadian contract was with the Toronto, Grey and Bruce (TG&B). This was an odd turn of events because for several years he had been a major opponent of the line. The TG&B had been one of three companies proposing to build into the counties northwest of Toronto, where municipal bonuses still lay untapped; the other two were the Wellington, Grey and Bruce (WG&B), referred to above (running north from Guelph), and the Northern (which proposed a western branch). As one of the original promoters of the WG&B, Frank had been on its side during a competition for charters in 1867-8, and he had joined a petition against the TG&B. He also had engineering reasons for opposing it. The TG&B was to be a narrow-gauge line, and Frank believed that narrow-gauge railways, although inexpensive, had little hope of attracting freight business because their cars would not be able to run on the province's other railway tracks. Where cheap railways were called for, he favoured building smaller, lighter railways at standard gauge.73 As things turned out, both the TG&B and the WG&B were built, and it was the narrow-gauge TG&B that Frank built. He secured a contract in November 1869 to build roughly the first half of this low-budget line, from Weston to Arthur.74 Being busy with his American work, which was still well in hand at

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this time, Frank was not able to manage the job entirely on his own, so he hired a number of assistants. At first he hired four, one for his Toronto office and one for each divisional office along the line - Woodbridge, Charleston (Caledon), and Orangeville. He was doing this job by direct labour rather by than subcontract, so he needed a manager at each division to pay the men (as many as 150 on each division that winter), to buy the tools and materials, and to arrange and pay for boarding. Before long this proved inadequate, and by mid-1870 he had two men on each division (one in charge of payrolls and accounts, the other, better paid, in charge of construction matters). He had by this time also engaged a man named W.H. Ellis to be his main confidential assistant, a bookkeeper/accountant named Hodgetts, and one or two clerks. All of these men were based in the Toronto office, though Ellis was almost always out on a job site.75 Construction went smoothly through 1870. It was not a big or difficult job. Frank started two more divisions in May, from Orangeville west to Arthur, after the company made the necessary preparations, and he hired more men to manage them. He changed his approach on this section, using subcontractors to employ and manage the workforce, but he did not reduce the number of men employed to manage the job. The subcontractors, all local men with little experience but quite low prices, each took about five of the additional twenty-five miles. The use of local men in this way was probably not Frank's own idea, although he did not object; it had been part of the scheme proposed by the line's promoters to help secure local bonuses.76 At the end of 1870 Frank took on even more work. For over a year he had been seeking contracts to build the Great Western Railway's new Canada Air Line branch through the very southern part of Ontario, just north of Lake Erie. He had been underbid on the first two divisions, from Glencoe to Aylmer and from Aylmer to Simcoe, but he won the contract to build the third division, from Simcoe to Canfield Junction. This was another mid-sized contract - thirty-five miles of standardgauge line, including a large bridge on stone piers over the Grand River at Cayuga, with a total value of $347,000. Frank began it at the end of December 1870 and was to finish in one year.77 Shortly after taking on this Great Western work, he also agreed to build another fifteen-mile extension of the TG&B from Arthur north to Mount Forest, for $100,000. Business was humming at Frank Shanly's York Street office in early 1871. They were pushing hard on the original TG&B contract, which

122 Gentlemen Engineers although well behind schedule was now nearing completion. The company wanted to hold a grand banquet in the freight shed at Orangeville on 6 April and was demanding that track be laid there in time, but meeting this demand seemed unlikely.78 The Mount Forest extension of the TG&B and the Air Line had been subcontracted, and work was going at full bore on both these new jobs. In April 1871 the firm employed about sixteen or eighteen men and claimed for more than $14,000 worth of work on the TG&B and more than $21,000 on the Air Line.79 On top of all this, early 1871 was the time that the Pittsburgh and Connellsville crisis was weighing on Frank. And of course the Hoosac Tunnel still needed his attention. Frank was spending less than half of his time in Ontario managing his jobs there, but the work seems not to have suffered from his absence. Ellis and the men managing the divisional offices were quite capable. And even when Frank was away, he stayed close to the work. Ellis consulted Frank by letter on important matters, and the companies with whom he was contracted corresponded directly with Frank, wherever he might be, on official business.80 It was an exhausting routine no doubt, travelling round and round from Boston to Pittsburgh to Toronto, reading and writing letters and reports, and adding up figures to prepare another bid or consider a subcontractor's proposal, but it seems to have worked. When problems started to emerge, which indeed they did, Frank's absence from the job was not the main cause. The first sign of difficulty appeared on the Air Line - the old problem of a shortage of labour, or at least a shortage of men willing to work for the wages being offered. The Canada Southern, a competing line being built near and parallel to the Air Line, was offering higher wages, so Frank's subcontractors had no hope of keeping men at the wages they had planned to pay. When the warm dry weather came in June and progress on the earth excavation was imperative, the subcontractors found themselves with almost no labourers to do the work. Some were striking for higher pay; others had simply vanished. One of Frank's assistants reported in July that only two of the ten subcontractors had any men working; he calculated that at the current pace it would take five years to finish the job. Faced with this predicament, the subcontractors must have raised the wages because by fall the work was progressing well again. But soon they were all asking Frank for cash advances and higher prices. Frank was now the one in a fix. If he did not loosen his purse strings, many of the subcontractors would abandon their work. Tf you increase their price a little, say 2 cents, they will

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 123 immediately put on men and push the work to completion,' Ellis had written Frank of one of the subs. So up went the prices. The result was predictable: on 8 October, Ellis reported to Frank that the earthwork was costing more than they were being paid for it. And even with higher prices, some subcontractors could not make the work pay; several absconded, leaving suppliers and men unpaid. Frank's divisional managers then had to recruit men themselves - at higher wages.81 There was still more work to be had - and maybe it would pay better. Free now from the Hoosac Tunnel, having arranged with Walter to end their partnership, Frank turned his full attention to the Ontario scene.82 He bid on the next section of the Air Line, with prices 20 per cent higher than those on his current contract - he knew where his problem lay but his bid was rejected. He did succeed, however, in winning a contract to build another forty-five miles of the TG&B for $302,120. This meant at least another year of work. And in January 1872 he secured a contract to build fifty-nine miles of the Midland Railway, from Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay, for $365,876. Later on that year, with his Third Division of the Air Line finally completed, he was awarded the Fifth Division, from the Welland Canal to Fort Erie, for $148,000. Late in the fall he was also awarded the contract to construct the station buildings on the line for $91,000.83 The work kept coming in. But the problems did not go away. The Fifth Division of the Air Line fell behind schedule, as Frank's work so often did. Here the problem was not only labour (although that problem remained) but the vagaries of nature. There were so many things that could go wrong. Frank had been obtaining timber and lumber for all the bridges on this line from Norfolk County, where virgin forests still stood and small sawmills were in operation on the streams flowing into Lake Erie. For this eastern division he planned to bring the timber by barge or ship from Port Ryerse along the lake and down the Welland Canal to where his work commenced. Ellis had begun making arrangements for the supply of timber just a few days after the contract was signed in July, but even so they were not able to get enough vessels to carry the required timber to their work sites before the lake froze. Added to this, nearly all the workhorses fell ill that fall, bringing haulage almost to a stop.84 In the midst of all this activity, in the late summer of 1872 Frank ran unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative in the riding of Toronto Centre. One might think he had reached new heights of foolishness, adding to the demands on his time in this way, but in fact the endeavour was little more than a slight diversion. He seems to have

124 Gentlemen Engineers given it barely a thought, never once mentioning the campaign in his correspondence that summer. The president of his riding association found this indifference rather frustrating. After putting up with Frank's absence from the campaign for several weeks, he telegraphed him in North Adams insisting that he be present at his nomination meeting: 'It is important that you should be here at nomination. Sir John will be present. We can easily carry you through triumphantly if present otherwise may be doubtful. Reply.' Walter had for some time been a member of Parliament in eastern Ontario, and Frank knew the advantages such a position bestowed, so this must have had something to do with his decision to run. But the whole project, as the wording of the telegram suggests, was almost certainly the local committee's idea, not Frank's. It was Frank's first and last venture into politics. He lost the election.85 What Frank was thinking about that fall were troubles on the Midland Railway. This job had started in unorthodox circumstances, and Frank should have foreseen problems. The line had been built from Port Hope to Beaverton several years earlier and had recently been taken over and revived by the Philadelphia capitalist Adolph Hugel, who had sold enough bonds in England to begin an extension of the line around Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay. The company had started the new work in 1871 under its own management but soon decided to engage a contractor to do the construction.86 Frank agreed to build the fifty-nine miles of standard-gauge railway in twelve months for $365,876 - only $6,000 per mile, a lower rate per mile than even the narrow-gauge TG&B. The price was so low because the company's estimates on which Frank had based his bid showed earth excavation quantities much smaller than usual. This, the company said, was because some work was already completed and because in certain places embankments could be built on a base of brushwood.87 But no sooner had Frank's men started work than they found the company's claims to be erroneous: the ditching done earlier by the company was not holding and the company's suggestion of saving earthwork by building on a brush base was not working. Then a subcontractor on the north shore of the lake encountered 'hard-pan,' earth as solid as rock, and could not possibly do the work for his agreed-upon price. Within a few months Frank could plainly see that he was losing money on the job.88 He seems to have renegotiated some prices in May, and work went on. They laid track that summer and fall, and except for a swing bridge at the lake narrows, they were finished as far as Orillia by November.

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 125 This was only the first half of the line though; the contract required that the whole line be finished by the end of the year. The company had complained about the lateness, but not adamantly.89 In January 1873, with the bridge finished and trains running to Orillia, Frank proposed an increase in prices for the rest of the line, something he claimed the company had informally agreed to; but it responded with a heavy hand that caught Frank completely by surprise. Not only did the company refuse the price increase, but it accused Frank, since he was late, of failing to honour his contract and stated, 'If you cannot complete the work, please say so candidly so other arrangements can be made.'90 Frank's response was to press on. He sensed that the company was out of money - it had altered his November estimate and not yet paid his December one - but rather than admit this, it was trying to make it appear that Frank had forfeited the contract by failing to perform. To strengthen his position he kept his men at work for another two months. Right or wrong in his supposition, this was a risky tactic. By the time he did stop the work, he had run up nearly $40,000 in debt to his subcontractors without having received another dollar from the company.91 Frank was not alarmed. Money was still coming in from his work on the TG&B and his various Air Line contracts, and he had also secured a new $150,000 contract with the Great Western to double its track along the western end of its main line from Glencoe to Windsor.92 As well, there was his expected share of the big profit that would soon come from the Hoosac Tunnel, and of course he would eventually receive a settlement from the Pittsburgh and Connellsville. So his financial situation did not seem particularly grave. But like all bankrupts, Frank could view his credits and debits through different ends of his binoculars. In fact, he was in deep trouble, but he needed Walter, who as his co-signer was liable for much of this debt, to show him the truth. They met in March 1873, just as Frank was finally abandoning work on the Midland. Walter learned all he could from Frank and prepared a list of the liabilities that were coming due at the banks month by month. He found that between March and July, Frank would be called upon to pay $142,000 just to the banks! This enormous sum - all cosigned by Walter - had begun life as a series of start-up loans which Walter had helped Frank secure to begin his various contracts. Against this Frank held $34,500 in paper assets, all of which were with the banks as collateral. Yet Frank still remained sanguine. He wrote to Walter with a list of receivables from his current contracts and

126 Gentlemen Engineers expressed hope about the Hoosac Tunnel and the Midland. Walter had no time for such dreams. The final receivables on his contracts should not even be considered as assets, he insisted: 'Such items are always swallowed up, & generally a good deal more along with them, before work is taken off your hands - so in your statement of 27 July I drew my pen at once through that item.' Walter still calculated $95,000 of bank debt and $37,000 of floating debt from Frank's contracts.93 Frank tried desperately to scrape together some cash. He pleaded with the Great Western Railway to pay him for extra work on his contracts. Things have not gone well with me in some of my works - and the sum I claim as my right from your Company is a serious consideration to me,' he wrote to Chief Engineer George Lowe Reid. He also tried to sell back some bolts left over from his work west of Chatham. But there was no hope. Reid could do nothing. All Frank ever got was a sixty-dollar reduction in his bill for passenger fares. He even requested credit from Nicol Kingsmill, the owner of the mansion he had leased in 1869 (which he and his family had named Ardenvohr) because of a new fence and well pump he had bought the previous year; but he had no success here either. Even worse, as the claims grew more urgent his sources of money dried up. By 1874 the great boom had ended. His contract for the Grey extension of the TG&B and his various contracts with the Great Western - Fifth Division, station buildings, and double track - all were finished by the end of 1873. No longer could he count on next month's cheque to pay his debts. There were no more cheques. The scramble he had so craved had come and gone and had left him in ruins. In came the auctioneer once more, this time under order of the York County sheriff.94 IV

Frank Shanly's career as a railway contractor was essentially over, and what a terrible failure it had been! The railways were built - the TG&B was nearly completed (the final section in the hands of another contractor), the Air Line was finished and carrying trains, and the Midland, although half its projected length, was running trains - but Frank Shanly, the man who had built these railways, was nearly $150,000 in debt.95 Everything had looked so promising ten years earlier when Frank's successful Northern Railway work had brought him such profit and esteem. Now fifty-four years old, with nine children all still at home and dependent, Frank had to accept this great disappointment.

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 127 Remarkably, he was not totally defeated. At times like this, groundless optimism is a valuable trait. Most important, great though Frank's debts were, he was not technically bankrupt. Since Walter had cosigned the bank loans without too much thought, the main debts were effectively Walter's now. Walter had money, an unblemished financial reputation which he would do anything to maintain, and a profound obligation to his immediate family, so he promptly began to direct everything he had towards Frank's banks. This terrible turn of events nearly ruined Walter too, and it wounded him deeply, but he never tried to evade the responsibility. So Frank was saved. And although his personal possessions had been sold by auction, they had all been bought by the money lender Edward Nanton, whom Frank knew well and who leased everything back to Frank for eighteen dollars per month. Frank had had to give up the Ardenvohr mansion but was able to lease a more modest home on William Street in the village of Yorkville.96 His days of living in grand style were over, but life went on. Of course the size of this great mountain of debt was not due to unsuccessful business ventures alone. Frank had been living as Frank Shanly did - well - throughout these years. While he seems to have outgrown his penchant for personal indulgences, supporting his family in suitable style was enormously expensive. Just the cost of leasing Ardenvohr must have been substantial. Add to that the tailored clothes, private tutors, and Sunday dinners that were part of his family's life, and it is clear that his cost of living would have been great indeed. He must have been drawing personal money out of his contracting business, for he had no other significant source of income. Nevertheless, the business ventures themselves were failures. They yielded at best meagre profits and at worst heavy losses - adding up, unquestionably, to a negative balance. Although Frank's expensive style of living swelled his debts, it did not cause them. Assessing the outcome of the contracts individually is tricky because few documents survive from the wrap-up phase of these jobs. (By the time of his financial crisis, the origins of his debts were of no significance to him or any of his creditors.) It is clear that he took severe losses on the Pittsburgh and Connellsville and the Midland; they alone accounted for much of his debt. He was taking legal action to recover some of this, but his chances of success were slim. On his various Air Line contracts his losses were much smaller; he made a little profit on the Fifth Division, and perhaps on the later contract to double-track the main line, but he took losses on the Third Division and the station buildings. Evidence

128 Gentlemen Engineers from the TG&B is especially scanty, but it appears that the losses here were due to the company's not being able to pay his final estimates; in which case, he may have made a small profit on paper but was unable to realize it.97 This was not how things were supposed to turn out. What had Frank done wrong? As a railway contractor, he had done a good many things right. There is no doubt that he built good railways. Not once in the thousands of letters in his papers is there a criticism of his standard of workmanship. Occasionally the work of a subcontractor is criticized, but the critic always appeals to Frank's good judgment in urging him to set things right.98 He had acquired, through his years of experience and observation, a complete mastery of railroad construction materials and techniques and had put it to good use. Many aspects of his business management were also very well handled, as they had been years earlier on the Northern. What little evidence there is of how he set prices for his bids shows him to have been methodical and thorough.99 His accounting appears to have been faultless. Every expense on every contract was recorded and cross-referenced to a voucher or receipt. Credits and debits were balanced monthly. He kept separate Toronto Office accounts for expenses that did not apply to individual contracts, and when Toronto employees did incur expenses pertinent to a contract - Ellis's travelling expenses while inspecting the TG&B, for example - these were accounted for under that contract.100 Nothing seems to have been overlooked. Frank and his accountant could clearly see that their costs exceeded their income; they had a good view of their sinking ship. As well, the reporting structures were clearly established. Immediately below Frank, Ellis was in charge of construction matters and Hodgetts of accounting. Information flow within the firm never broke down. Ellis generally received incoming correspondence and passed it on, with pencilled instructions or queries, to Frank, Hodgetts, or one of the clerks, or if need be to one of the divisional superintendents. It was then assigned a folio number and filed. Copies of all outgoing letters were written in a letterbook, usually cross-referenced to incoming letters. Frank also shows skill as a manager of staff, regularly moving his men around to suit their abilities and permit them to advance in responsibility and pay; there is even one reference to an applicant being given an examination during an interview. Frank always had, and kept, competent men in his employ.101 All in all, Frank certainly did not lack technical knowledge of management; his failure is not a

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 129 case of 'traditional' management techniques being unable to meet the demands of modern business.102 It is in another realm of management that Frank's weaknesses, and the reasons for his failure, show themselves. Frank could never keep his work on schedule. Every job he did was late. This was not in itself a great failing. Apart from the Pittsburgh and Connellsville, where he and his partners fell irresponsibly behind and a punctilious engineer showed little mercy, railway companies did not view his tardiness too seriously. Although he was late on every section of the TG&B and the Great Western's Air Line, the companies still awarded him subsequent contracts. Moreover, the companies held performance bonds signed by Walter and James Shanly Jr but never demanded that either of the brothers pay when Frank was late. Completion demands often were fanciful anyway, and the companies must have known it. Construction in the 1870s was very dependent on natural circumstances, much more so than today, so the railways were not unaccustomed to delays.103 Where lateness did its damage was in raising Frank's costs. This, more than anything else, is where his profit went. Time and again one can see Frank paying for this failing. He missed bonuses on the TG&B by not meeting its deadline. When work fell behind on the Air Line, he had to pay the rail fares of extra labourers brought from Toronto (he bought 236 passenger fares that fall). By not finishing excavation in the fall on one job, he had to pay men to blast the frozen earth with black powder and work it with iron wedges. To meet even an extended deadline on the Fifth Division of the Air Line, he had to pay a subcontractor as much per cubic yard of excavation as he was receiving from the company.104 And so it went. Frank was certain that none of this was his fault. He always believed, and repeatedly explained to chief engineers, that the delays were beyond his control. But can he escape blame completely? Obviously he had no control over the weather, but surely an experienced contractor should have known that something would always go wrong, whether it was indifferent partners, recalcitrant labourers, early freeze-ups, or sick horses. He alone was responsible for completing the work on time regardless of circumstances. Was there not something he could have done to keep on schedule? Could he not have learned what Walter had told him when he was twenty-eight years old - that the only way to finish on time was to plan for the unexpected? It appears not. By far the most common cause of delay was a shortage of men, and to obviate this there were just two things Frank could

130 Gentlemen Engineers have done: find more men willing to work for low wages or pay higher wages. The former was out of the question, given the state of the labour market, unless one recruited abroad. Frank did try tapping into an Ontario government scheme to procure immigrant workers for his work on the Midland, but with little success.105 He ended up instead paying higher wages, with consequences that have already been told. Only by receiving more money from the railway companies could he have offered an attractive wage, kept his work on schedule through unexpected weather, and still turned a profit. But when he bid higher, as he seems to have known he should do and in fact did at times, he got no work at all. He needed to find a way either to bid high and still get the job (i.e., exploit an inside position or be corrupt) or bid low and assiduously control his costs (i.e., build poorly or manage ruthlessly). He did neither. So while it is conceivable that Frank could have controlled his costs more carefully and come away with at least some profit, this would have required extraordinarily strict management. It is more correct, and fairer, to say that Frank was unable to profit from these jobs because the competitive system of awarding contracts - at a time when there were plenty of willing contractors - precluded a contractor being paid a fair price.106 Only on the Northern, the one job for which he did not have to compete, had Frank made a reasonable profit. One might add that Frank also had to contend with economic forces beyond his control. The depression of 1873 did not cause as much trouble as one might think. Except for the Midland, and possibly the final TG&B contract, a shortage of money was not the problem.107 The railways usually paid him for his work according to the terms of their contracts. But the business cycle was still a factor; it was the inflation of the boom years preceding 1873 - particularly the rising demand and cost of labour - that made it especially hard for him to control his costs. Nevertheless, even when all these circumstantial problems are added up, Frank still has to accept some of the blame. Taking on the construction of the Pittsburgh and Connellsville with unknown partners and in unfamiliar terrain was a colossal misjudgment, and his insouciant handling of the Midland contract was foolish. All in all, it was a combination of his own imprudence, some bad fortune, and an unforgiving, one might even say exploitative, competitive system of awarding contracts that caused Frank's contracting ventures to be failures.

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 131 V

Although the causes of Frank's failure were complex, the result was easy to see. His financial position in 1874 was, to use Walter's word, 'frightful.' Beyond the major bank debts, which Walter was paying down, were some unsettled matters from the Pittsburgh and Connellsville contract (awaiting the outcome of a settlement with the company) and countless small debts to subcontractors and suppliers which Frank had been unable to pay when all his work ended. These small debts were never fully itemized, much to Walter's dismay. Frank just carried them month after month, the weight a constant burden.108 He still held some railway bonds, but they were not then salable. Apart from them, his only assets were lawsuits. Frank's contribution was to try to get more work. He seems to have helped with the Hoosac Tunnel in early 1874, but there is no indication that he considered re-establishing the partnership with Walter.109 Frank continued on his own, bidding unsuccessfully on the Brantford and Port Burwell in Ontario and on the Pembina and Fort Garry in the Northwest. He also considered a venture with a Buffalo entrepreneur named William Wallace to tunnel the Niagara River, but gave up after one meeting.110 He did get some work building an extension of the TG&B into Toronto (the original line had stopped at Weston), but after a few months of work he learned that a group of Midland creditors had placed a garnishee on his payments, and he had to transfer the contract to Walter's name. His affairs continued this way, with little income and much uncertainty, into 1875.H1 All the while, Walter kept paying the banks, and by the end of 1874 he had paid off the Merchants' Bank in full and about half of the others.112 What eventually brought Frank's working life back to an even keel was a return to engineering. He had never completely given up his independent professional practice, even at the peak of his contracting. A few times a year he had been called upon to arbitrate in a legal dispute or to inspect and report on some technical matter.113 He had also been retained since 1872 as chief engineer in charge of construction for the Grand Junction Railway. This was not much more than a nominal position, for he had a resident engineer in Belleville doing the work, but it kept his engineering skills and reputation intact. And in the year since his contracting collapse, he had done engineering inspections for the Credit Valley, the Whitby and Port Perry, and the Kingston and Pembroke railways.114

132 Gentlemen Engineers Two substantial government consulting jobs came his way in the second half of 1875 which seem to have re-established him as a professional engineer. First he was engaged by the Government of Canada to conduct an inspection of the Prince Edward Island Railway. As is well known in Canadian history, this railway was bought by the Canadian government as part of the agreement to bring Prince Edward Island into Confederation. After the purchase was completed, the government heard from supposedly informed sources that the contractors had scamped on their work and that the value of the railway, and thus the purchase price, had been inflated. Frank was given the task of investigating these claims of overvaluation. He spent most of the summer on this work, submitted a thorough report, and received a fee of $1,650.115 He was then retained by the Ontario government to study two competing routes for the Kingston and Pembroke Railway, work that took him out into the field for a time that fall.116 Suddenly, in the midst of the latter inspection, Frank's work was interrupted by an entirely unexpected appointment as engineer for the City of Toronto. How and why he obtained this job is not documented, and it certainly comes as a complete surprise to an observer of his career. Urban improvements such as sewers, waterworks, and street railways had been underway throughout most of his working life, and they had employed a good many of his fellow civil engineers, but Frank had done no such work. Nor was he ever involved in civic affairs. Somebody must have pulled some strings somewhere. Whatever the circumstances, Frank closed his York Street office for good and on 25 October 1875 became an employee of the City of Toronto. His salary was an ample but rather ordinary $3,000 per year, which Frank formally signed over to Walter, probably to avoid his creditors.117 New though he may have been to city improvements, Frank had seen this type of work many times before. The Toronto city engineer of the 1870s, with the waterworks still a separate department and the street railway still in private hands, had two main responsibilities: street (and sidewalk) paving and sewer construction.118 This meant engaging contractors for construction, measuring earth excavation quantities, inspecting quality of materials and workmanship on the site, and controlling expenditures within assigned budgets. All this was hardly new to Frank Shanly in 1875. With a staff of eight - an assistant, an accountant, a draughtsman, a clerk, and four inspectors - and a budget of some $200,000 per year, Frank went about his work, and all indications are that he did it very well.119 He brought a fairly high tech-

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 133 nical standard to the job. He was displeased, for instance, to find no complete set of levels for the city streets upon which an overall sewer plan could be based, and immediately on being appointed he secured an appropriation of $1,500 to hire men to do the necessary surveys. His cosmopolitan outlook also served the city well: he corresponded with other big city engineers to learn what they knew about such things as paving stone and steam engines.120 The engineering Frank knew. What he did not know was how to be an employee. In all his years he had never truly worked for another man. As an engineer in the 1850s he had worked for railway companies, but always as a professional with some degree of control over his affairs, free to take on other work when the demands of the job allowed. Serving as city engineer was something entirely different, and Frank simply could not grasp that city aldermen had the authority to tell him what to do. Frank took it for granted that since he had to travel to the city offices every day to do his work, the city would bear the cost of his journey. So along with his $3,000 salary he insisted on a horse allowance of $50 per month, which he used to rent a horse and phaeton nearly every day. He saw no need to be at the office all day; he had other things to do, and his staff was quite capable. He generally went in about 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and returned home about 1:30 p.m. to have his lunch and spend the afternoon on his own affairs. Only twice a month did he have afternoon duties - meetings of the Committee of Works from 4:00 to 6:00 every second Tuesday.121 Meanwhile, he had not a qualm about taking on other work. He was a consultant to railway companies, lawyers, and municipalities, travelling to Goderich, Windsor, and Brampton to do inspections. He was even consultant to the city's Waterworks Depart ment. He was retained as the chief engineer of the Whitby and Port Perry for some construction in 1877. He considered bidding on at least one railway construction contract (the North Shore Railway in Quebec), and his ultimate decision not to do so was not because he felt any obligation to the City of Toronto. Frank had his own ideas about what it meant to be employed.122 The city did not share his views, and the difference of opinion came to a head in early 1877. Frank had decided to travel to England to try to sell some railway bonds. He held about $50,000 (par value) worth of bonds, some left over from his contracting days and some newly acquired from recent work.123 Their value on the local market was so low that the creditors to whom they were assigned had not tried to sell

134 Gentlemen Engineers them, but Frank had reason to believe that he could sell them in England or Scotland for a good price. So he wrote to the city council requesting two months' leave, beginning 1 March, to go to England on 'important private business.' His leave was granted, but only by a vote of seventeen to seven. He returned on 1 June, having written from abroad (but not until mid-May) for permission to extend his absence the extra month.124 At the end of June, after his first month back, Frank found that his horse allowance had been cut off.125 He protested, and it was reinstated (at a lower rate), but only after the council received a legal opinion that they were bound to keep paying it. Soon afterwards, an alderman proposed that the city consider 'having another agreement entered into with the City Engineer, by which that officer would be required to give his whole time to the service of the city in place of the present arrangement,' and this suggestion found considerable support. It took some time, for the council had to write and pass an entirely new bylaw to create a new agreement, but in March 1879 this was done and Frank's terms of employment were altered. His authority to appoint his own staff and his freedom to carry on other work, two essential conditions for independent professional practice, were taken away.126 Frank knew what the council had been doing and, not surprisingly, had been looking for other work more actively than ever. He bid to construct the Belleville and North Hastings in the summer of 1878 - unsuccessfully, as it turned out. He put together a group of contractors and investors in January 1879 to bid on a 118-mile section of the Canadian Pacific Railway in northwestern Ontario, but the group fell apart just before tendering. He also bid early that year on a section of the Credit Valley Railway west of Toronto, again without success.127 And he wrote to John A. Macdonald saying that he was 'anxious to get out of this thankless office,' and offering himself for the position of government railway commissioner. Things were looking up in some ways. Frank continued his consulting work, the Ontario government now being an especially good client; it repeatedly engaged him as an inspector to ensure that new railway lines met the standards necessary for government bonuses. He moved house again late in 1878, to a fine new home on Spadina Road that his old friend James Stewart arranged to have built for him. Stewart cashed in a Building Society account he had been contributing to for years in the name of Frank's children, and this provided the down payment.

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 135 Stewart technically owned the house (to avoid creditors), but Frank paid the monthly mortgage. And at last (using Walter's name) he obtained a construction contract, in the summer of 1879, to build the Georgian Bay and Wellington Railway. Although neither this nor all his other new work was enough to allow him to give up his (Walter's) $3,000 per year, life was definitely improving.128 The job that finally freed Frank from his city employment was the chief engineership of the Intercolonial Railway, an appointment he received in June 1880. 'Could you run down tomorrow to see me,' Charles Tupper telegraphed Frank on 17 June. 'Gov't wants to secure your services on an important matter.' Frank took the overnight train to Ottawa, met Tupper and John A. Macdonald the next morning, and his appointment was confirmed. With great pleasure, no doubt, he offered his resignation to the city council the day he returned from Ottawa.129 Here was a position more to Frank's taste. Now he would rub shoulders with statesmen, not aldermen. His salary would be a respectable $6,500 per annum, and he would be allowed an expense account for his Montreal hotel rooms and his afternoon tea. He could even arrange to have his son put on the government payroll as his secretary.130 The work was more to his liking as well. He had the task of settling a tangled mess of contractors' claims that had lain unsettled since the line's completion in 1876. The trouble stemmed from the fact that contractors on the Intercolonial had all been made to build beyond specifications, so the claims for extra work were enormous. Nobody questioned the need to pay for this extra work, but establishing its fair value was proving time-consuming and highly contentious.131 That Frank Shanly was chosen to take charge of this work, even considering that Walter was by then a devoted servant of John A. Macdonald's, is a clear indication of how highly Frank was regarded on both the government's and the contractors' side. Sadly, Frank's finances were not in as good shape as his professional reputation, even though Walter had cleared all the bank debt several years earlier. By July 1875, when the Hoosac Tunnel contract was finally wound up, Walter had paid $109,636 to banks on Frank's behalf. This left Frank deeply in debt to Walter, for when they dissolved their partnership in 1871 Walter had agreed to pay Frank only $50,000 from the tunnel contract's profits (which they still thought would be substantial). But this debt was not the problem that bedevilled Frank; Walter was not expecting or demanding his money.132 It was the many

136 Gentlemen Engineers small debts that were proving such a hardship now. Frank still owed money to banks, old business associates, suppliers, insurance companies, and private money lenders - a complex web of interconnected debt that demanded endless amounts of money and time to service. Frank, who was not given to financial exaggerations, claimed that a $5,000 debt to Edward Nanton (later referred to by Walter as a 'noted, usurious money lender') had cost $10,000 in interest over the eight or so years of the debt's life.133 In March 1881, months behind in his mortgage payments, Frank had to give up possession of the Spadina Road house that Stewart had had built for him and his family; he continued to live in it, for the new owner rented it back to him for a modest charge, but this arrangment was not secure.134 Unable even to support his family, it was simply beyond Frank's means to reduce his debt. Everything was beginning to take its toll. By the time of his Intercolonial appointment, Frank, now sixty years old, was showing signs of wear. He knew now that there was not the slightest hope of collecting what money he was owed or of paying his debts, and he was reconciling himself to this truth as never before. In March 1882, sitting in a rented chair in the study of his rented house, Frank wrote to a creditor: 'The debt, no doubt, is a just one, and so are many of the others of a like nature, so, also, are the debts due to me by the Railways but I have given up all hope of realizing. You will see that I could not recognize one without doing injustice to the others ... Thanking you for the kindly tone of your letter ...*135 In years past Frank would never have thought these thoughts or bothered to write such a letter, but his foolish optimism, his source of energy all his life, was wearing out. Nevertheless, he stayed as busy as ever. His Intercolonial work demanded enough on its own, but he maintained his affairs in Toronto too, consulting and poking around for possible construction contracts. He travelled between Ottawa and Toronto every week or two, usually on the night train.136 He had to keep his own affairs alive because his Ottawa job was only going to last until the contractors' claims were settled, a year or two at best. Frank had had his eye on the new Canadian Pacific Railway since shortly after receiving his Intercolonial appointment, and he had written to lames J, Hill in December 1880, two weeks after Hill's syndicate had signed with Macdonald's government, offering himself as chief engineer for the company. Hill had replied that they were not yet ready to consider the position. A year later, with the Canadian Pacific chief still not appointed, Frank wrote again; this time he met with Macdonald to press for the appointment. On 31 December

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 137 1881, three weeks after Frank's meeting with the prime minister, Hill announced the appointment of the now famous Cornelius Van Home as chief engineer. Nobody will ever know how near Frank Shanly came to being much better known in Canadian history than he is. After missing out in this quest to be company engineer, he turned to assembling a group to bid on constructing a section of the line in British Columbia but failed at the last minute to raise the $3 million needed to back the bid.137 Mixed in with these business matters was a new preoccupation of Frank's - his son Cuthbert, a likable twenty-two year old who showed promise as an artist and engineer. Frank had had him appointed his secretary the month after he received his Intercolonial appointment. Now that the young man was entering the work world it was time for his father to step into the parenting, and Frank took to the job with enthusiasm and devotion. Letters from Cuthbert almost monopolize Frank's correspondence files in these years. In mid-June 1881, when Cuthbert was coming home by rail from a winter in California, Frank wrote the young man's location in his diary every day - Ogden, Omaha, Chicago - and travelled from Ottawa to Toronto to meet him at the station. And in late 1881 Frank arranged some railway office work for him in Winnipeg and accompanied him west that fall to get him started.138 When all hope of working on the Canadian Pacific ended in the spring of 1882, Frank's mind was on 'Cussie' more than anything else. Cuthbert was not a healthy boy. He suffered from a chronic cough and went through periods of weight loss. To a family in which tuberculosis had already ended the lives of several of its children, including Frank's oldest boy just a few years before, there was reason to worry. They could do little against such a disease. The family always gave Cuthbert the best medical attention, encouraged him to live in the most salubrious air, and hoped for the best. When Cuthbert left for Winnipeg in the fall of 1881, they were quite confident of his health. But the young fellow was stricken badly that winter and returned to his family in March. He kept up his strength for a few months, but by July he and everyone else knew he would not last long. He died on 8 August.139 Frank was shattered. Death was not new to him; his two youngest children, one just a baby, had died in 1880, as had his eldest before that. But this was different; Frank had taken Cuthbert into his own hands and, diverted from his work, had grown closer to him than to any of his other children. He tried to rally. He went off to Ottawa as he

138 Gentlemen Engineers always had, but his mind was elsewhere. He entered not one letter into his letterbook after 8 July of that year. Losing Cuthbert was a heavy blow. Frank could no longer hold his head up, Walter said.140 On 12 September, a little more than a month after Cuthbert's death, Frank boarded the night train to Ottawa as was his custom. He had spent the afternoon and evening meeting with some men from the Souris and Rocky Mountain Railway, a new venture in Manitoba, and from there went straight to the railway station. He had an uncomfortable night, the porter said, and came out of his chamber and walked about the car. The porter suggested he get off at Gananoque to see a doctor, but he refused. 'I fear it's all up with me/ the porter recalled him saying. Shortly after this exchange he had a sudden seizure and within a few minutes was dead.141 So Frank Shanly's troubled career was over. At age sixty-one 'his work was done ... and he died of a broken spirit.' His affairs, however, lived on, and it now fell to Walter as his executor to try to untangle and settle the skein of debt that Frank had left. The work began as soon as his remains were brought to Toronto. Walter learned of a letter Frank had had in his pocket when he died - a medical certificate, due that day, which his life insurance company had demanded and which in his haste Frank had forgotten to mail before boarding the train. Would this nullify the insurance? Settling this matter (the company agreed to pay after a brief hesitation) was the start of a long troubling process for Walter. Frank's financial state was worse than even his closest friends had imagined; try as Walter did, he found not one significant asset to counter nearly $50,000 of debt.142 Frank Shanly's shortcomings are so easy to see. Too proud to accept anything but the best and too blindly confident to anticipate or accept his slightest mistake, he was a man who lived beyond his means his whole life long and repeatedly embarrassed himself by doing so. Yet the obverse of this weakness was an 'indomitable energy' and 'great boldness in the face of physical difficulties,' which led Frank into his many ventures and allowed him to accomplish so much.143 For indeed his accomplishments were many and they deserve to be remembered alongside his questionable character. Vain and proud Frank Shanly may have been, but he was undoubtedly an honourable man. His word was good. When he said he would finish a job, he did; and when he said he would pay a man, he did. If there is one sentiment that stands out in the letters of condolence Walter received from Frank's colleagues it is that Frank was admired

Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 139 for his integrity. A more honourable man I never worked for/ an old man once wrote after a few years as Frank's employee.144 What is one to make of these contradictory traits - the honourable bankrupt, who lost so much money accomplishing so many things? Perhaps these few words of Walter's, made only in passing, with their touching blend of reproach and respect could serve as Frank's epitaph: 'He was a man who always paid his debts to the utmost of his ability.'145

5

Honour and Pride: Walter Shanly, 1855-1899

As construction of the Grand Trunk Railway began to wind down in the spring of 1856, Walter Shanly had not half the financial worries of brother Frank. With only himself to support, and with tastes not nearly so extravagant, Walter faced the imminent completion of his job with equanimity. He was living well - in a rented house at 35 Wellington Street, around the corner from Frank and Louisa's home on Bay Street, with servants and ample space - but he lived within his means. Some years earlier Walter had awakened to the danger of indulging in a gentleman's life and had resolved to steer clear of that trap. Land investments were worse than useless, he had concluded. 'I am in a money "fix" and have learned within 12 months at a cost of about £2000 that landed property is another name for ruin,' he had told Frank in the summer of 1854. Whereas Frank, in the same fix, had responded by visiting a moneylender, Walter had resolved to cut his expenses: 'As for myself I am determined to "pull up" - paying Armour about £70 a year for books I never read is gratuitous folly and so it is with many matters.'1 I

Something else was keeping Walter free from worry: the end of his job had not yet been announced. Frank was released by C.S. Gzowski on 1 June 1856, but Walter, in the employ of the railway company, was kept on through the summer and fall of that year to oversee final construction on other parts of the line and to set up a permanent engineering staff. By December, with the line officially open from Montreal to Stratford, Walter felt his work growing thin, but still the company kept him

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 141 on: 'I only remain because they imagine it will look better - in fact for some reason or other they seem scared at the notion of my going.' In March 1857 he declared his intention to leave at the end of the month, but he was still there in July, planning the construction of new grain elevators.2 Even without this continuing Grand Trunk work, Walter stood on firmer ground than Frank because in July 1856 he had secured another job. He was engaged that month by the Department of Public Works to take charge of surveying a canal route from Ottawa to Georgian Bay along the Mattawan [Mattawa] River, Lake Nipissing, and the French River. A canal along this remote route seems fanciful now, but at the time and for years afterwards many people thought this old fur traders' route - 'the earliest highway of Canadian commerce,' Walter labelled it - was the most practicable water route to the north-west. With annexationism running high, the Department Public Works decided to conduct a thorough survey to determine its feasibility and committed £5,000 to the job. Walter thought this amount 'entirely inadequate,' but at a time of fiscal restraint, when millions had just been invested in a more modern form of transportation (the Grand Trunk), any more was politically impossible.3 Still employed by the Grand Trunk and unable to do much fieldwork himself, Walter put the entire job in the hands of his old friend and trusted colleague, James Stewart, and placed the upper survey (along the Mattawan and Lake Nipissing) under the joint supervision of his half-brother Robert and H.M. Mackenzie, both lately released from the Grand Trunk. Stewart took rooms in Pembroke for a small office and dispatched the two crews, about fifteen men in all including their native guides, for a fall and winter of surveying.4 It was an enormous job they had taken on - 430 miles of surveying, much of it through uncharted (although well-travelled) wilderness. Two small survey par ties could not hope to conduct a detailed instrumental survey of the whole route in one or two seasons, but they did what they could. They sounded the lakes and rivers at key points, measured distances and elevations, observed water flows, and gathered meteorological data.5 Walter managed to get into the bush himself for about a month late in the fall, paddling the route from west to east with native guides until he met up with his crew. He found the wilderness and the earthy company of his fellow engineers a welcome relief from the offices and boardrooms he now habituated. With his old friend Stewart, and in the relaxed circumstances of bush camps and boarding houses on the

142 Gentlemen Engineers upper Ottawa, Walter became youthfully alive. 'I was really glad to see it,' Stewart wrote to Frank, 'having thought for sometime back, his feelings were becoming slightly ossified. But they aren't in the least. They are less transparent, but quite as fresh and natural as they were ten years ago. He was convivially abusive of me, and spent a fair share of the time in drinking brandy and grumbling. If this doesn't prove him in a healthy state of mind, nothing can.'6 Their work was abruptly cut short the following spring when the department's money ran out. Walter was ordered to take his men off the upper sections in April 1857. Then the lower parties, back for more work the following winter, were halted in January 1858 just before taking soundings of the Ottawa River below Ottawa. This curtailment annoyed Walter - he tendered his resignation at one point - but in spite of a few gaps in his information, he was able to write a report adequately grounded in observations and facts.7 He presented the report 30 July 1858, two years after he had begun the job. The long delay seems not to have dismayed the department, which was more worried about cutting costs than speeding up the work. One wonders, in fact, if it had any intention of ever undertaking the huge project and if the delay even mattered. In any case, Walter's opinion was that a ship canal of ten-foot depth was feasible. He had even become quite an advocate of it. He was especially moved by the vision of a grand harbour at the debouchment of the French River into Georgian Bay. Her the water was still and deep, the river mouth wide and sheltered, the setting magnificent, and the site 'capable of being rendered in every respect suitable for the entrance of a great ship canal.' The route would need only fifty-eight miles of canal - fewer, Walter noted, than the seventy-one miles of canal between Montreal and Lake Huron on the St Lawrence-Great Lakes route - but most of it would have to be cut through hard rock, and it would be necessary to dam the outlet of Lake Nipissing in order to raise its level sixty feet to the summit of the route. It was all possible, Walter concluded, though it would be expensive $24 million, he estimated, for a canal of 10 foot depth with locks 250 feet long. Such an expense precluded doing the work all at once. It would have to be 'a gradual and progressive work,' he advised, 'advancing towards completion as we grow in wealth and natural resources.'8 So ended Walter's concern for this grand scheme. Too pragmatic to be much of a visionary, he finished his work and moved on.9 By the time he submitted his report, he was in fact already very much involved in other affairs. In January 1858, Walter Shanly was appointed

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 143 general manager and chief engineer of the entire Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. This was the top management position in the company, subordinate only to the vice-president of the board, who acted as the managing director.10 That Walter should have been offered this position appears quite extraordinary and suggests nothing short of a stellar performance of his earlier duties as engineer (which appear never to have officially ended). Previous managers - and subsequent managers too, for that matter - were all brought from England and had considerable railway management experience. Here was a man whose only such experience was in 1850 when, for a few months after completion of construction, he had assisted in managing the Northern Railroad of New York. Now he was to be manager of the longest railway in the world. Not to take too much away from Walter's achievement, it is important to put this in the context of the history of management. The long railway lines built in the 1850s, with their huge and varied workforces, their great geographical extent, and their complex schedules, presented management problems that were entirely unprecedented. The directors of such large U.S. lines as the Pennsylvania, the Erie, and the Baltimore and Ohio were finding unexpectedly high operating costs in their first few years of operation - higher per mile of paying freight, it was turning out, than on the shorter lines they were competing with. The long lines were simply not paying, and before they would do so, their managers had to develop novel multi-unit management systems that could handle their complex operations. Only then did they become profitable enterprises.11 The Grand Trunk faced these problems and, like many of the U.S. lines, turned to its top engineer to solve them. Railway directors were not clear who else should take charge of this complex new species of corporation. The engineer seemed as good a choice as any. He knew the roadbed, track, and bridges intimately; he had experience managing an extended, multi-unit workforce; he had some familiarity with the methods of the skilled machinists who built and maintained the locomotives and rolling stock; and he knew the importance of controlling costs. Another factor may have been that engineers, with their rational, systematic approach to problem solving and their professional (not proprietary) relationship to the companies they worked for were well suited to management innovation.12 So while Walter certainly must have impressed the influential men in the company in order to have been considered for this position, his appointment can

144 Gentlemen Engineers partly be explained by factors other than his own ability. Bringing railway engineers into management seemed the right thing to do. If Walter's only challenge had been how to make a long railway pay, he would have had a much simpler job than he actually had. But such basic management problems paled beside the financial and political predicament that the Grand Trunk Railway was in when Walter took over its management. For one thing, the railway had cost much more than it was worth. Its securities had sold at such a discount that far more bonds than expected had had to be sold just to keep paying for construction; now, with the railway in operation, interest costs on this excessive capital were crippling the fledgling company. As well, most of the line was poorly built; the shortage of ballast under the rails was so bad that rails were breaking in the winter cold, with many consequent derailments. The location of the line and its stations were less than ideal, so the railway was not picking up as much freight business as it had hoped. Added to this was the open hostility of all who had invested in the company; the British stockholders wanted a return on their investment, while the Canadian government wanted good service and economic growth. Both were being disappointed, and both, believing that some sort of fraud or gross mismanagement was at the heart of the matter, were unwilling to give the company what it needed - more money.13 Such were the challenges Walter faced as he stepped into this top management job. But hardly had he begun when his extraordinary pride led him into a fracas that quickly cut short his tenure in the position. Thomas E. Blackwell, the English vice-president to whom Walter reported, returned to England in 1858 to attend a shareholders' meeting, appointing an Englishman by the name of Reith to come out and act as general manager during his absence ('in the room of Mr. Shanly the source is worded). Walter, sensitive as ever to a personal slight, immediately resigned. But then Reith quarrelled with some members of the Canadian board and resigned too, whereupon Walter was reinstated - but this time as general manager of all but the Engineering Department. The head of engineering was Blackwell's appointee, so Walter probably refused to be responsible for him. Walter's authority was then further reduced to general traffic manager, with the Locomotive and Car Department also taken out from his authority14 Nothing suggests that these demotions were for incompetence; in fact, the two fields Walter was relieved of, first the civil and then the mechanical engineering, were the two fields he knew most about. And

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 145 with the general business affairs of the railway still in his hands, he was left with perhaps the most important departmental management position. As general traffic manager he was in charge of more than a thousand men, including the divisional superintendents, and he reported directly to the board, not to the managing director. He was, in other words, still the principal manager of the line, so the company must have trusted him. It is likely that Walter himself requested the lower, and less political, job.15 Into this position of general traffic manager Walter settled for a time, and while in it he gave his full attention to helping the railway struggle on against debt and public disfavour. The slightly lower-level job was still a huge challenge. In 1859 the line was completed west from St Marys to Sarnia, and an extension from Port Huron to Detroit was added in the hope of intercepting some of the Great Western's through traffic. The Victoria Bridge was completed late in 1859 and officially opened on 25 August 1860 by the Prince of Wales. These were not insignificant enhancements, and Walter must have played some role in their success. But such changes could not alter the public mood or relieve the burdensome debts. Anyway, why should one waste money on such things, declared the disgruntled English shareholder Henry Cleaver Chapman in an influential report. The railway needed better management, not more extensions or royal ceremonies. Indeed, financial circumstances were so bad that in January 1861 when the company issued bonds worth £2.556 million, 81 per cent of that was needed just to pay overdue interest on investment capital.16 By 1861, public accusations of incompetence and graft were so prevalent that the Canadian government had to take some kind of action, so it appointed a royal commission to investigate the troubled railway's affairs. The commissioners studied the company's financial records and took testimony from its managers (including Walter) and its customers, and presented their report to the legislature in May 1861. The news was both good and bad. Many complaints were unfounded, the commissioners concluded. The railway was not spending lavishly, giving away too many free passes, or being unduly influenced by politicians, as some had accused. And its poor service was largely due to its being unable to buy more rolling stock or build additional sidings. The railway needed, above all, a major write-down of capital (to reduce its interest payments) and a substantial infusion of cash. Nevertheless, although a shortage of equipment was the main reason for the company's poor service, management was not blame-

146 Gentlemen Engineers less: 'We cannot look back at the evidence which has been laid before us, without expressing our opinion that there has been mismanagement and defective organization to a very serious extent/ the commissioners stated. In particular they held that the preoccupation with through freight and the rate schedule that went along with it were illadvised and financially disastrous.17 As the general traffic manager of the company, Walter naturally took this criticism personally. To set things straight, he immediately wrote and published a petulant reply, which he titled 'Notes and Corrections' to the report. In it, he complained that the report spoke mean-spirited and ill-informed nonsense. He claimed that the commissioners had misquoted his testimony and misrepresented his explanations, that they had used outdated figures and drawn erroneous conclusions from them, and that in four cases they had simply repeated rumours of incompetence without asking any company officials for explanations. On close examination, he concluded, in uncharacteristically grandilo quent prose, one would see that 'to erroneous conclusions, deduced from false data, arithmetical blunders are super-added, until imposing-looking tabular statements, sententiously prefaced, can be shown to contain little else than dross.'18 On some of these 'corrections' Walter had a point. How could the commissioners really be so much more astute than the company's managers? Walter insisted, for example, that it was absurd for the commissioners to conclude that the company's through rates for flour were causing it to lose 4l/2 cents on every barrel it shipped. Was it really possible, he asked, 'even amid all the many foolish acts laid to our charge, that we would go on, year after year, toiling after so palpable a loss?' But on other points he overreacted. His denunciation of the commissioners for understanding him to mean that long railway lines were difficult and expensive to manage, when in fact he had meant that long lines with the Grand Trunk's circumstances were so, seems unnecessary. According to business historian Alfred Chandler, difficulties managing long lines were already being discussed in the railway literature of the mid-1850s.19 This response and others like it in Walter's pamphlet show more about the shortness of his fuse than anything else. In fact, many of the commissioners' conclusions - that the railway needed more rolling stock and sidings, that the top-level management structure was inefficient, and that policies had been ill-advisedly set by Englishmen - drew directly, and accurately, from Walter's testimony. He need not have been so peevish.

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 147 Walter was in the wrong job, and after this conflict he must have known it. The money was princely ($7,300 per annum as general traffic manager), but having to live by the decisions of others whom he did not always respect and being subject to ill-informed public criticism were two things he could not abide. Sisyphus he would no longer be. On 15 March 1862 he offered his resignation to the company.20 Walter's experience as a railway manager can hardly be deemed a success. Not only did he find the job distasteful, he cannot be said to have left behind any major accomplishments. The standard histories of the Grand Trunk barely notice Walter's few years managing the company, so low is his profile on the historical horizon. The fact is that notwithstanding all the reasons why as a railway engineer he could have run the company effectively, the Grand Trunk's great problems remained unsolved at his departure. Yet to judge his legacy is difficult, for he never really had the time or freedom to devise a scheme of his own and carry it through. Perhaps, faced with such challenges, he would have proved to be a management genius, like the engineers Benjamin H. Latrobe of the Baltimore and Ohio and J. Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania, but this nobody will ever know.21 What we do know is that both the company and its employees regretted Walter's leaving. Twice the company's president wrote to him asking him to reconsider his resignation, and both times Walter refused. His third letter of resignation was accepted with the following resolution of the board: That in accepting the resignation of Mr. Shanly the Board desires to express its regret at the termination of his connection with the Company ... At the same time the Board desires to express its respect for Mr. Shanly's personal character and abilities, and its appreciation of the anxieties and labors of past years so much of which have devolved upon him.'22 Then, at a farewell dinner that was held for him at St Lawrence Hall in Montreal in June 1862, Walter was given a bound volume with the signatures of all three thousand men who worked for the Grand Trunk Railway Company. To have satisfied so many of the men above and below him, Walter Shanly must have done many things right. II

With the Grand Trunk Railway behind him and several years of big salaries prudently invested, Walter embarked on an entirely new course. He left this life of labouring for a corporation, of taking direction from

148 Gentlemen Engineers others, and returned to a life of independence. But it was not to professional engineering that he turned. Walter set his sights on, of all things, politics. Sometime between his resignation in June 1862 and the election necessitated by the fall of Sandfield Macdonald's government in May 1863, Walter decided to run for elected office. He sought the Conservative nomination for the riding of Grenville South, where he owned land but had never lived, to run in the June 1863 elections for the legislative assembly of the Province of Canada.23 Walter's decision to enter electoral politics comes as quite a surprise. Towards government, generally, he had never been favourably disposed. Nor had the democratic will of the people been something he was inclined to defer to. And the debates of the assembly surely would not have appealed to a man of Walter's haughty and sensitive constitution. Nevertheless, enter the fray he did. By the end of May he was stumping through the back townships of the county, speaking at town halls and schoolhouses, and dropping in at farmhouses for impromptu chats; and the local Conservative paper was soon in gear too, championing his abilities and principles.24 Why Walter chose this unexpected direction must remain a matter of conjecture, for he has left no papers revealing his thoughts. It was not, of course, especially unusual to take the well-worn path from business success to the legislature. In fact, several of Walter's associates, such as Alexander T. Gait and Luther Holton from the Grand Trunk, were established members of the assembly. There were personal advantages to being close to the centre of power, and perhaps this motivated Walter though since he already had such good connections, it is hard to give this idea much credence. In a public statement to his electors published during the campaign, Walter laid out his platform. He professed himself a Conservative: 'My education and traditions have been strictly Conservative,' he declared. But this did not mean loyalty to the Conservative party or to John A. Macdonald; he said nothing of either. For Walter in this election Conservative meant primarily one thing: 'Loyalty to the Crown of England the basis of my political faith.' Flowing from this faith came his support for a Canadian militia to aid Britain in its defence of Canada, a militia bill he vowed to support regardless of the party proposing it. Concerning railways, he wanted to make it clear that he had no connection whatsoever with the railway interest, having completely severed his ties with all companies. He would support no more grants to railways, although he did favour a fairer arrangement with the Grand Trunk for

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 149 its carriage of the mails. Turning to his personal credentials, he reminded the electors of Grenville that although not a resident of the county, he was a landowner who had paid taxes there for many years. And lest anyone feel that his inexperience in politics was a handicap, he closed by stressing the broad experience he had gained from travelling in all parts of the Province and working with all classes of people: 'I feel therefore, though I have never made a trade of politics, and never intend to do so, as though I am not without some of the qualifications required in a useful member of parliament.'25 Two points about this statement are worth noting. First is Walter's insistence on his independence. Walter Shanly was determined, if elected, to sit in the assembly as his own man. Although nominally a Conservative, he would be beholden to no person, party, or special interest. In presenting himself this way, he brings to mind the eighteenth-century, pre-party, Burkean notion that a representative should act according to his own enlightened judgment rather than as a voice for those he represents; following this principle a man could wish to be the people's representative without believing in the will of the people. This helps explain the apparent contradiction between Walter's views on democracy and his decision to enter elected politics.26 Another striking aspect of this election statement is the prominence of 'national' over local issues in his platform. If it is true, as some political historians have observed, that in an age before rapid communication many elections were fought over local matters that were of concern only to the residents of the electoral district being contested, rather than over major national issues, the election of 1863 in Grenville South was not one of them. The militia bill, aid to railways, and a new postal subsidy for the Grand Trunk were three of the main issues of the Province of Canada's legislature in 1863, and they had no special connection to South Grenville.27 The election was a close contest. The Conservatives gained seats in Canada East but lost seats in Canada West, and overall the balance in the House was not much changed. Sandfield Macdonald's Reform ministry was still precariously in power.28 One exception to the pattern was in Grenville South, where Walter Shanly handily defeated the Reformer, William Patrick, who had held the seat for twelve years. Perhaps the victory was a result of 'the separate school bill and Mr. Shanly's money,' as the Globe maintained, or perhaps the constituents had actually warmed to Walter's handshakes and speeches. In any case, on Declamation Day in late June, Walter Shanly's political career

150 Gentlemen Engineers was launched, and it was done in grand style: 'Shanly was drawn in a triumphal car, seated in an arm chair, decorated with evergreens and flowers and was supported by nine of his committee.'29 When Parliament opened in Quebec on 13 August, Walter Shanly was there in his seat on the opposition Conservative side. A little over a week later, he made his first speech in the House. Walter announced for all to hear just how independent a member he intended to be. His speech concerned a recent agreement that the Reform government had made with the Grand Trunk Railway for carrying the mails, an agreement that was being widely criticized by the Tories. He began by interrogating Antoine-Aime Dorion, attorney general (Canada East) in the Reform ministry, about the details of the agreement. Walter's object, it gradually became clear, was to discredit not the Reformers or their agreement, but the critics 'on this side of the house' who had made allegations of election bribery. The allegations rested on the fact that the government had offered the Grand Trunk $150 per mile before the election but had settled for $100 per mile after, the extra $50 apparently having been offered just to encourage the railway to support the ministry. By questioning Dorion, Walter led him to reveal that the lower post-election offer had been for significantly fewer services than the higher, pre-election price. The allegations, therefore, were groundless. Walter acknowledged that the ministry had tried to gain the railway's support in order to influence its many employees, but in doing so it had simply followed in the footsteps of its predecessors, he said 'for I know that every administration that has existed since the Grand Trunk was in a position to control a certain number of votes, has endeavored to influence the voters through their dependence on the Company.' Human nature, Walter concluded, was 'the same on both sides of the House.'30 This was a remarkable, perhaps rather startling, keynote speech from a new member. Would Walter Shanly maintain this independent pitch throughout the session, attacking his own party's position? Not really. He never again made such a blatantly nonpartisan speech. And when the house divided, he usually sided with the Conservative leaders John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier, both while they were in opposition and later when they held power. There were, however, a few instances when he voted with the Reformers, and they deserve some attention. True to his promise, Walter did not speak for the railway interest, and on occasion this put him at odds with the leaders of his party. What he

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 151 opposed, more fundamentally, were government-granted privileges. On one occasion he voted with the Rouges and Reformers in favour of their amendment to a Conservative bill, calling for restrictions on the applicability of earlier railway acts to newly chartered railway companies. The Rouges and Reformers sensed that the newly incorporated Chaudiere Valley Railway, which intersected the Grand Trunk, was trying to gain all the protection granted to the Grand Trunk in the Grand Trunk Arrangements Act of 1862, and this they did not want to permit. The amendment was opposed by the leading Tories (Macdonald, Cartier, and Gait) and was defeated.31 In the next session, Walter moved his own amendment to a bill that provided financial relief for the Ottawa and Prescott Railway; his amendment called for the creditors (secured and unsecured) of the company to be consulted before the detailed arrangements of the relief were settled. This amendment also failed to pass, as did a subsequent amendment of Luther Holton's, which Walter supported, to get the bill back to committee. Walter was resisting big business in its efforts to use the legislature for its own protection. Although he had been a 'Grand Trunk man' just two years earlier, his sympathies now were certainly not with big business, and indeed they never really had been. One might recall that Walter had never thought well of the Grand Trunk and its close ties to government. His recent unpleasant experiences managing the company had probably solidified these views.32 One can see a similar antipathy to privilege in another matter on which Walter and his party occasionally disagreed - what one might call individual liberty. Walter opposed Cartier on a bill that would empower barristers to regulate their profession; he spoke strongly against a bill that would allow potential mining land to be locked up against settlers or other independent prospectors; and he voted against a bill of Macdonald and Cartier (prompted by the St Alban's raid) that sought to prevent violations of law at the frontier by denying certain basic liberties.33 He also voted against the Conservative ministry by supporting a Reform bill that would have allowed the impounding of vessels whose owners were liable for debt.34 In all this Walter shows himself to have been something of a nineteenth-century Liberal, almost an agrarian at times, and not in close step with the Macdonald-Cartier Tories. Towards the one great government initiative of this parliament, Confederation, Walter Shanly had mixed feelings. When the Great Coalition ministry was first announced, he was displeased, despite his

152 Gentlemen Engineers nonpartisan principles. He refused to be part of it, claiming 'that from thenceforward I owed no political allegiance, no party fealty, to any man or any body of men on the floor of this house.'35 When the time came, however, he spoke and voted in favour of the Quebec Resolutions. Although he still had misgivings, he thought the best approach was to pass the agreement in the hope that it would be improved in the years ahead. What Walter favoured was a legislative union, for he believed that the federal concept, though theoretically appealing, was impractical. Not that he dismissed the importance of differences in 'language, laws, and local customs' among the colonies; it was simply that he foresaw undesirable consequences which could be greater than any gains that a federal system might bring. He predicted two such consequences. He thought the 'petty parliaments of the separated provinces' would spawn 'politicians rather than statesmen,' men with small minds and parochial interests, who would 'lower the tone of political morality' in the new country. And he was certain, notwithstanding Gait's claims to the contrary, that the creation of two levels of government would swell public expenditures 'beyond the present limits that we have become accustomed to.' He was also uneasy about the intention to annex the Northwest: 'We cannot jump all at once from the position of colonists to that of colonizers.'36 These were insightful comments. Walter occasionally showed an un-Tory streak of retrenchment. His election platform, in fact, had openly stated his opposition to 'government extravagance,' and he generally favoured realistic limits on public expenditures. In supporting the Reform ministry's militia bill, he spoke of Canada being too weak and poor to provide much of a contribution to its own defence. He also voted with the Reform ministry in support of the governor general's reduction of the grant to hospitals and charities.37 But neither of these modest shows of retrenchment put him seriously at odds with his party. Nor does such thinking seem to have lasted; both of these illustrations are from the first two months of his first session. Shortly thereafter, Walter voted against a motion to limit expenses on the Intercolonial Railway, against a prohibition on salary increases for officers of the House, and against a motion regretting that government expenses exceeded revenue. On all these matters he was voting with his party; Walter evidently was being brought round.38 As well, he generally supported the government's tariff adjustments at the end of the session in 1866, though he did oppose the ministry in favouring ad valorem over fixed duties, in calling for a duty on

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 153 imported factory machinery, and in wanting corn to be admitted duty free and corn starch to be dutied.39 But in other matters he supported the ministry's position. When the final session of the Province of Canada's parliament ended on 15 August 1866, Walter Shanly could not have felt much satisfaction. He had given copious time to his work as a member, but he had encountered his own limits. As an engineer in the legislature he had certainly been highly valued. Immediately on taking his seat in 1863, he had been named to the Standing Committee on Canals, Railways, and Telegraph Lines, and over the life of the parliament he had been appointed to several special committees.40 But as a parliamentarian he had fallen short. Walter's one personal initiative - an amendment to the Ottawa and Prescott relief bill - had not even won the support of his own party. He made two major speeches in the first month of the first session, but after that, except for his contribution to the Confederation debates, he spoke only occasionally and briefly. Although Walter was a perspicacious observer and a clear thinker, he was not a public speaker. The reporter of his speech on the militia bill prefaced the account with some revealing words: 'Mr. Shanly was very indistinctly heard in the gallery.'41 Would Walter run for the new Canadian federal parliament? His first response was no. He had simply not felt comfortable in the political world. As he said, 'I commenced my public career somewhat late in life to be moulded into a good, plastic, practical politician.' His professional and business affairs demanded time too, and since prospects were good for a revival of railway construction, his own affairs would probably demand even more time in the years ahead. Nevertheless, when it came time to decide in July 1867, Walter wavered, being urged from two sides to stay on. One plea came from the electors in his riding, who presented him with a 'numerously signed requisition' calling on him to run and promising that no other Conservative would challenge him if he did.42 The other came from Frank, who at the time held such high hopes for the coming railway boom. Frank reminded brother Walter that his 'parliamentary position' was the main reason why railroad capitalists and contractors looked favourably on either of them. 'If you can now be returned by acclamation I do not think you are justified in hanging back -1 seriously think that by doing so you are shelving yourself prematurely and doing us both a lasting injury - The very prestige of your being in "The House" will be a matter of strength to me and without some backing of the kind I feel that my chances are

154 Gentlemen Engineers very small indeed.'43 To vanity and family obligation Walter gave in. He announced his candidacy in Prescott on 17 July 1867. Walter's political views had changed little since 1863; in his platform for this election, he promised basically more of the same. Again he labelled himself Conservative, and again he tied this to loyalty to Britain. This time, however, he openly declared his independence from party allegiance, saying that to carry existing divisions 'over the threshold of our young nationality' to the new parliament would be unhelpful. And he was more Burkean than ever in his role as a representative 'relying on my own judgment for the views I may adopt and the votes I may give,' he said. Therefore, electors ... to find me, cast your eyes along the back benches of the House; in the cool recesses of which one may still faithfully serve his country while keeping watch upon those whom fortune, ability or ambition may have sent to the front.'44 So with an unchanged platform but reduced ambitions, Walter Shanly entered the 1867 election. He won handily again, though with a slightly reduced majority.45 Once in the House, Walter kept his promise of giving his constituents more of the same. As the sessions passed, he spoke rarely, served dutifully on the Standing Committee on Railways, and usually, but not always, followed the Conservative party line. His few disagreements were, once again, over matters of railway policy and government finances; Walter had moderated his views somewhat but was still uneasy about big government. One railway policy disagreement of substance was over the method of building the Intercolonial Railway. The government had opted to build the line itself, through the Department of Public Works, and Walter thought this an utter waste of time and money. Speaking in support of A.T. Gait's motion to turn the construction over to a private general contractor, he argued that the preoccupation with economy, necessitated by the government's need to look prudent, was slowing progress. Contracts were being awarded at such low prices, he maintained, that contractors were proving unable to build for their stated price and nearly all had been forced to abandon their work before completing it. Was this saving money? Walter asked. Certainly not. But this rare venture into rhetorical persuasion had little effect. Gait's motion was easily defeated, with both Macdonald and Cartier opposed.46 Walter's occasional concern for limiting government expenses lingered on. He opposed the acquisition of the Northwest because of its

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 155 expense, though he voted with the government against Reform amendments to make the terms of the acquisition more democratic. He supported a Reform amendment to a civil service bill that would have made an employees' superannuation fund available only to those who held no private life insurance; but the amendment failed.47 All in all, however, in spite of his professions of independence, Walter was becoming a party man. In the opening weeks of the session, he presented yet another bill in aid of the Grand Trunk and rather uneasily had to defend it against the persistent questioning of Alexander Mackenzie and Antoine-Aime Dorion. Strictly speaking, it did not provide aid for the railway; it only enabled the company to sell more bonds. But it permitted changes in the order of preference of its bonds, which the opposition had good reason to probe.48 As the session progressed, Walter repeatedly took the government's side in resisting Reform and Rouge amendments calling for retrenchment. Maybe Walter Shanly had lost his interest in politics. He was absent more often now. In fact, he missed almost the entire second session in the spring of 1869. On all the main issues of dominion politics - tariffs, the 'pacification of Nova Scotia,' dual representation, New Brunswick schools, banking and currency laws, and the Treaty of Washington - he voted with the government without uttering a word in the House. He was even absent from debates on matters one would expect him to have taken an interest in, such as the government's obligation to build the Pacific railway as part of its agreement with British Columbia.49 Although it is true that his own business obligations had become more pressing, at least part of this indifference derived from Walter's not making the step from the old Canada to the new, from the Province of Canada to the dominion. These national issues were beyond his experience. He found it easier to vote with the party. This is not to say that Walter shirked his responsibilities. There was plenty to do as a member of Parliament beyond debating in the House. Walter regularly presented petitions or bills of incorporation on behalf of railways, mining companies, or individual constituents; each of these, no doubt, involved correspondence and perhaps a meeting or two. The Standing Committee on Railways, on which Walter always sat, reported on draft bills at least weekly when Parliament was in session. He fulfilled his duty as a dispenser of patronage, regularly writing to Public Works and to Macdonald recommending men from his riding for public positions. And he did speak a few times when his technical expertise was wanted.50 All told, Walter was a satisfactory representative

156 Gentlemen Engineers of his constituents - the landowners of his riding and his colleagues in business and engineering- though a true politician he had not become. Walter ran again in 1872, but like many other Ontario Conservatives in that election he was unseated by a Reformer. The riding was won by a well-known Prescott doctor, William Brouse.51 It is worth noting that, once again, national issues predominated in the campaign. The local Reform paper, in attempting to discredit Walter, mentioned nothing about his absence from the riding, his success or failure in providing local patronage appointments, or his views on local affairs; instead, it played up his opposition to such laudable national Reform policies as greater democracy for the Northwest, a wider franchise, and the abolition of dual representation.52 So even though Walter was an unimpressive performer in the House and was not deeply engaged by political issues, this does not appear to be why he lost his seat. He lost it, as he had largely won it, through his views on national affairs and his affiliation with a national party. Although Walter Shanly's political career had been derailed, it was not yet damaged beyond repair. He had proved himself to the men in the inner circle of power, and he still held their respect. 'From his high personal and professional standing,' wrote a journalist in 1870, Walter Shanly was 'ranked among the most influential of the private members.'53 John A. Macdonald, in particular, had come to rely on Walter, and would call on him again in the years ahead. On hearing that Walter had lost his seat, Macdonald wrote: 'I cannot say how much your defeat affected me. I have a peculiar and personal grief in losing the support of a gentleman, & God knows there are few of them in this country.'54 Walter kept close to the party through the short life of this parliament and grieved with Macdonald when the Pacific Scandal brought him and the government down.55 But after running and losing again to Brouse in 1874, Walter seems to have turned decisively away from politics.56 A political career that had lasted more than ten years went into eclipse. As in railway management, so it was in politics: Walter Shanly cannot be credited with any novel initiatives or judged as having made lasting contributions. Walter had been, above all, an engineer in politics. That is not to say that he held any radical views about social 'engineering' or that he approached political problems with an ultrarational perspective. His political views, if anything, were the antithesis of this. Walter was an engineer simply in the sense that he provided technical engineering knowledge to the House and the government.57 He was viewed

Wai terShanly, 1855-1899 157 thus by his political colleagues, and in time he too came to see and accept himself this way. So although he was never really at home in politics, Walter Shanly served well and found some satisfaction in playing his limited but useful role.

Ill Walter had left the Grand Trunk in the summer of 1862 with more in mind than elected politics. He wanted to escape the unrelenting and unresolvable pressures of big public enterprise, to be sure, but there were other options in business life. 'Nothing I would like better now than to get charge of an American Railroad,' he told Frank just after his resignation was accepted, 'about 100 miles long- salary $2000 -1 woul close with an affair of the kind at once.' No such ideal escape appeared, however, and once Walter won his seat in South Grenville, politics took most of his time for the first year or two. But he was not finished with business. Engineering, though, seems no longer to have beckoned him at all. When he did start becoming active again, it was as a 'man of affairs' not as a professional engineer. During the next few years of his career Walter Shanly's name is more often suffixed by MP than CE. The first of Walter's new business activities that has left a historical record was his participation in the Detroit Commercial Convention of 1865. It was a small but telling episode. The convention was initiated by the Detroit Board of Trade to discuss how businessmen of the midwestern states might better exploit the expanding markets of the U.S. Atlantic coast. Since reciprocity with British North America (which the U.S. government had recently decided to abrogate) affected their strategy, the subject was placed on the convention agenda and delegates from British North America were invited to attend. Forty-two commercial associations attended, ten of which were from the British colonies. Walter came as one of twenty delegates representing the Montreal Corn Exchange. He left no mark whatsoever on the proceedings. He was not named to any committees and, not surprisingly, never spoke publicly. He was not important to the convention and the convention was not important to him. But one can conclude from his membership in the Montreal delegation that he, Walter Shanly, MP, had become par of the Montreal commercial community.58 Walter's main new venture in these years was the Edwardsburg Starch Company, a small and quietly successful industrial concern to which he remained attached for the rest of his life. The company had

158 Gentlemen Engineers been founded a few years earlier, in 1858, by two English immigrants who had met in Montreal, William T. Benson and Thomas Aspden. Benson had been a partner of an established chemical firm in Manchester but had sold out and come to Canada, presumably with some capital and an eye towards business possibilities. Aspden's origins are not known, but the idea for the starch company apparently came from him. Upon meeting Benson and learning of his skills, Asp den pointed out to him the absence of (and growing demand for) a starch manufactory in Canada to serve the expanding textile industry. Benson, being already knowledgeable about industrial chemistry and aware that tariff protection would soon be in place, readily went along. He and Aspden went into partnership, found a suitable waterpower site on the St Lawrence (lock 26 of the Galops Canal, below Frescott), and there set up a small factory to make starch from corn.59 With a 30 per cent duty on starch imported to Canada and no duty on raw corn (they imported all their corn), Benson and Aspden stood up well against their main U.S. competitor, who had established a corn starch plant in Oswego, New York, ten years earlier.60 They were so successful, in fact, that by 1865 a major capital investment and expansion was in order. At this time Walter entered the concern, his connection no doubt being through the plant's location in his South Grenville riding and the fact that he was well acquainted with other Montreal investors. In January 1865 a prospectus for a new joint stock company was issued, with Walter Shanly as one of the five provisional directors. By May enough stock had been spoken for that the Edwardsburg Starch Company was incorporated; it then bought the holdings of W.T. Benson (Aspden had sold out) for $30,000 cash and $45,000 of stock. The major shareholders and directors of the company were all Montreal merchants, with the exception of Benson, the largest shareholder, who lived near the plant in Edwardsburg. Walter Shanly, MF> holder of twenty shares of $50 each and resident of Montreal, was elected president by the shareholders.61 The day-to-day operations of the plant were overseen by Benson, but beyond that all the company's affairs were managed by the Board of Directors. The board made agreements for the purchase of corn, set prices for the sale of starch, determined where to exhibit the product for promotional purposes, decided on major equipment purchases, and reviewed all accounts. Such matters were discussed at the board's monthly meetings, where Walter, as president, played a leading role. This was far from a passive board.62

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 159 One of Walter's key responsibilities, as a member of Parliament, was to ensure that tariff protection was maintained. In this he did an admirable job. In 1866 the minister of finance, A.T. Gait, had proposed, among many other changes, lowering the duty on imported starch from 30 to 15 per cent and imposing a new ten-cent-per-bushel duty on raw corn. The company was most alarmed and called on Walter to present a petition to the government opposing this move.63 The petition had some effect; Gait left the starch duty high, though he kept the new duty on corn. When the first dominion parliament opened the following year, Walter met Gait and urged him to reconsider the raw corn duty. This, evidently, Gait did because Luther Holton, in a debate in the House, argued that since Gait was now planning to remove the duty on corn he should remove the duty on starch too. Holton reminded Gait that the duty on starch had been left high in 1866 only because a new import duty had been put on raw corn - or so Gait himself had stated at the time. If the latter was not to be imposed after all, Holton argued, it was only reasonable to expect that the duty on starch would be removed. Walter replied with one of his rare speeches, arguing the standard protectionist line that without complete tariff protection there would be no Canadian starch industry. The argument worked. A week later Walter could report to the company directors that the old advantageous duty structure had been reinstated - a high tariff on starch and no tariff on corn. Holton and his fellow free traders had lost again.K4 With a steady demand for its product, the company thrived under this protective tariff, paying dividends of 14 per cent in 1868 and 1869.65 The new expanded venture was most certainly on a solid footing, and Walter had played no small part in this achievement. Through the 1870s and 1880s, the company continued to expand and prosper, and Walter stayed on as its president. Over the years, more of the work came to be done by managers, but every January at the annual shareholder's meeting Walter presented his report of the year's business and yet again was elected president. At times his commitments elsewhere kept him from attending the monthly board meetings, but the January meeting he attended regularly, always having put in 'a full week's work' to prepare for it.66 This was one of the few business activities of Walter's that caused him no grief. Another business in which Walter became involved was the Mechanics' Bank, a small, one might say marginal, enterprise based in Montreal. Walter presented a petition in the legislature on 1 February 1865,

160 Gentlemen Engineers on behalf of Charles J. Brydges and others, to incorporate the bank. But the extent of his personal involvement at this point is not on record. One questionable source states he held eight hundred shares in the bank, four hundred of which were 'in trust.'67 By the early 1870s, however, Walter definitely was involved; he was by then one of the directors and probably vice-president. The bank did reasonably well through the good years of the early 1870s but faltered badly in the recession that followed. It issued notes on a rather scanty capital base in 1872, prompting some questions about its integrity. It fell further into disfavour in 1875 after an employee defrauded it of more than $100,000, and it was forced to suspend operations for a time. The bank was reorganized, Walter then becoming president, but it did not last. It failed in May 1879, bringing down with it a good deal of its shareholders' capital. The Mechanics' Bank is known in Canadian banking history for only one thing - its failure. Here was an enterprise Walter probably wished he had never touched.68 It was in this period too that Walter, in partnership with Frank, took on the job of constructing the great Hoosac Tunnel in northwestern Massachusetts, a job that was to occupy much of his time for six years. The completion of this five-mile tunnel through Hoosac Mountain, called by some the greatest engineering feat of the age, brought Walter (and Frank to a lesser extent) considerable fame. Even today, among those acquainted with Canadian engineering history, it is the one major work associated with the Shanly name. To have succeeded here where so many others had failed is said to be evidence, more than any of their other accomplishments, of their extraordinary engineering skill.69 There is not a little irony in this. Walter would never have considered it the peak of his engineering career. To begin with, Walter and Frank Shanly were not the engineers on this job. They were contractors. No doubt their engineering knowledge made them good contractors, and one cannot deny that completing this tunnel was a remarkable achievement both for its engineers and its contractors. But the fact remains that they were not in charge. They took orders from the Massachusetts State engineers, and Walter's relationship with them was anything but harmonious. This was one of Walter's few experiences in such a position - subordinate to another engineer - and it rankled him endlessly. The job also caused acrimony between the brothers. As a joint venture between two men in the middle of quite separate careers, perhaps this was inevitable, but the resentment it left behind ran deep

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 161 enough to last into the next generation.70 As well, in spite of his optimism at the outset of the project, this job was a great financial strain on Walter. In the end he made some money on it, but far less than he had expected and believed he deserved. It was by no means the high point of Walter Shanly's career. The Hoosac Tunnel already had a history when Frank and Walter began their work. The Troy and Grenfell Railroad had made two attempts at tunnelling in the early 1850s - one from the east in 1852 and one from the west in 1854 - with little success. The latter bore was revived in 1856 and put under the superintendence of a notable West Point-trained engineer, Herman Haupt. Using the traditional methods of 'hand drilling and black powder/ they made some progress, but not nearly enough. When the Civil War halted construction, they had bored only 3,100 of the required 25,000 feet, and in doing so had spent more than half of their $2 million appropriation.71 Showing remarkable - one might even say bizarre - perseverance, the tunnel advocates in the Massachusetts legislature pressed on, and towards the end of the war the State of Massachusetts itself took over construction. Something had to be done to increase progress. One new effort was the sinking of a central shaft down from a depression in the mountaintop only 1,028 feet above tunnel grade. When completed, this shaft would allow two more excavation sites, tunnelling outward in both directions from the centre, and would thus presumably double the rate of progress. As things turned out, the work of sinking the shaft became a huge job of its own and served only to slow everything else. The state also introduced two technical innovations - nitroglycerine and pneumatic drills - both of which, unlike the central shaft, immediately did increase the rate of excavation.72 Both of these technological innovations were in a very early stage of development, and the tunnel is justly famous for being the site of their successful application. Nitroglycerine had been invented in 1846 by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero. Its explosive power was unrivalled (at least eight times more powerful, per weight, than powder), but it exploded so easily while being shipped and handled that few dared use it. In desperate need of a more effective blasting agent, the tunnel's chief engineer, Thomas A. Doane, supported by the consulting engineer, Benjamin H. Latrobe, agreed to allow the practical chemist and great nitroglycerine advocate, Thomas Mowbray, to set up a manufactory on the site (to obviate the need for shipping) and test its effectiveness. Mowbray's works made a pure nitroglycerine which, properly

162 Gentlemen Engineers handled, proved very satisfactory. By mid-1868, this terrifyingly potent liquid was blasting away the hard mica rock in a way nobody had seen before.73 Meanwhile, the holes into which it was being placed were being made faster than ever, thanks to the use of pneumatic drills. These drills had first been used in excavating the Mount Cenis Tunnel in the Italian-French Alps in the 1860s. Patent restrictions prohibited their use on the Hoosac, but the state set up a private company to develop a modified version that was free from legal restrictions and was more suited to the locale. These Burleigh Drills, as they became known, also were in use by mid-1868. The state built a dam on the Deerfield River to provide waterpower to drive air compressors, and it laid a line of eight-inch cast-iron pipe through the tunnel to carry the compressed air to the drills at the rock face. Together, these two innovations both developed at the State's expense, immediately doubled the pace of excavation. Further increases seemed only a matter of time.74 At this stage, with the tunnel looking more practicable than ever but with work progressing slowly in the hands of multiple subcontractors, the state decided to turn the job over to an experienced general contractor.75 As was mentioned in chapter 4, the need for such a contractor was brought to Frank's and Walter's attention in the summer of 1868 by Benjamin H. Latrobe, who was principal consulting engineer to the State of Massachusetts for the tunnel (and also chief engineer of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad). They submitted a bid in September which, although not the lowest, was viewed favourably by the tunnel committee. To discuss terms in detail, Walter was invited to Boston in November.76 Walter faced two main obstacles in these negotiations, both of which stemmed from the state's past experience with contractors failing to complete the work. The state - or, more correctly, Latrobe - was proposing a dangerously unforgiving contract. One of the early drafts called for the contractors to forfeit the work completely if in any month they fell short of the stipulated progress. Walter would not accept this, and over the weeks of meetings he managed to make the state relax such clauses.77 The other obstacle was a requirement that the chosen contractor deposit a $500,000 performance bond before the state would agree to the contract. Frank, of course, had no means at all, and Walter had nothing approaching such a sum. So Walter had to try to raise the money among the capitalists he knew, and with only a few weeks to do so, this was impossible. The great Montreal merchants in

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Walter's circle showed some interest, but the only one who appeared serious was Peter Redpath, and he went off to Cuba before anything could be arranged. In the end, the State of Massachusetts relented here too; it replaced the $500,000 bond with a requirement that the contractor do $500,000 worth of work before being paid - so in effect, the contractor would be creating the bond through his own labour. This still meant having to borrow to pay suppliers and sub-contractors for maybe a year, but Walter thought that would be possible with the contract in hand.78 Walter signed the contract on 24 December 1868 and immediately returned to Montreal, his thoughts alternating between trepidation and elation. The negotiating had exhausted him: 'My patience was at last so completely exhausted that had not the matter been closed yesterday I believe I would have thrown up my hand and come away leaving a victory to those who sought to defeat us.' But his calculations showed that an enormous profit was almost a certainty: 'In the central drain pipes alone there must be $70,000 clear profit.' This was not an opportunity to throw away. Walter was still nervous about the money they would have to borrow, but he was placated by everyone else's reaction. 'There is one strong point in our favour,' he observed, 'everyone thinks it is a capital contract and that is capital in itself.'79 It was a fixed-sum contract: they would be paid $4,594,268 to build the tunnel, regardless of how much work or expense it took. The contract included unit costs for the various types of work, but these, along with measurements of work done, would be used only as a guide for monthly payments; the sum of their monthly payments would have to match the total value of the contract. The state would provide the pneumatic drills and the compressed air to drive them, a sawmill and machine shop, and the required ventilation equipment, but the contractors were responsible for maintenance of the machines. There is no mention of nitroglycerine in the contract; Walter and Frank probably bought it from Mowbray at their own expense. When they took over the work, 5,282 feet had been excavated from the west and about 2,500 feet from the east, though not all of this was to full size. The central shaft, sunk into the rock only 583 of the required 1,028 feet, had recently filled up with water and was in need of constant pumping.80 In other words, previous contractors had made a start, but not much more than that. Within days of signing the contract Walter and Frank were on the job, but there are few records to suggest what they did when they got

164 Gentlemen Engineers there. Some scattered newspaper reports are the only sources extant. During the first year these speak of sub-contractors being hired for brick arching, of steam boilers being added to augment the supply of compressed air, of the drill carriages being mounted on wheels, and of the steady increase in the number of men on the job - nearly three hundred by June 1868. It appears that Walter and Frank were first giving their attention to putting men, equipment, and a system into place. The underground workers, of which there would eventually be about four hundred, were almost all Cornish miners, but there is no record of how they were recruited. However, enough evidence survives for one thing to be clear - the Shanly brothers were doing an impressive job: 'The joint Special Committee of the Legislature in a recent visit to the Hoosac Tunnel... were unanimously of the opinion that the operations under the Shanlys are progressing in the most encouraging manner. The work has never been in such good hands, and is done rapidly and well.'81 The construction itself seems to have been a demanding but fairly routine matter. At each work face there were two carriages on which were mounted four pneumatic drills. Each of these bored a hole in the rock from seven to thirteen feet long, depending on the position, and into each hole the men placed a cylinder of nitroglycerine one and a half inches in diameter. They then withdrew, detonated the explosive, and returned to clear out the rock and begin again. This process usually occurred twice in an eight-hour shift. So it continued, shift after shift, day after day, as the tunnel was extended as much as five feet at each work face every day but Sunday.82 By 22 August 1870, with about two miles of rock still to remove in the middle of the mountain, the central shaft finally reached the grade of the tunnel, and work began to spread outward from the centre in both directions.83 There were now four work sites, as the state engineers had intended more than five years earlier. But this new outward excavation from the central shaft led to unexpected trouble. By March 1871, having tunnelled west from the central shaft only about two hundred feet, they encountered water-bearing rock that poured out water at eighty gallons per minute. This necessitated a large new pump, which took seven months to purchase and install, during which time no central excavation could be done. When at last they resumed progress from the central shaft in November, the men encountered even more water in the westward excavation. So on 12 February 1872, Walter urged the state to release him from having to tunnel westward until the entire

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 165 eastern section was completed; as he explained, water in the central shaft would then have a way out eastward along a level, rather than up a thousand feet by means of pumps. But the state's engineers refused. If Walter (Frank had legally departed in October 1871) wanted to receive his monthly progress payment, he would have to do as they said - continue tunnelling into the water-bearing rock. Walter obeyed, but before long the water inundation had increased to such an extent that all the rock-lifting capacity was being used to lift water. They were going nowhere, and the possibility loomed of the central shaft again filling up with water. Consequently, the state relented and at last allowed Walter to carry out his plan.84 The two 'headings' in the eastern section came together on 12 December 1872, allowing easy drainage of the water and resumption of westward excavation from the central shaft. The western headings joined on 27 November 1873, and thus the tunnel was finally open from end to end. There was a small celebration that day, attended by dignitaries and newspaper reporters, but plenty of work still remained. Not until 22 December 1874 was the tunnel completely excavated to full size and the water-bearing rock properly lined with brick.85 It had been a monumental effort, with nearly a thousand men at work for the last two years, working in three shifts around the clock. One of the greatest North American engineering accomplishments of the time had been realized - a tunnel 25,031 feet long, 20 feet high, and 24 feet wide through solid rock. Its alignment was virtually perfect, and it had been built within budget and very nearly on time. The Hoosac Tunnel became a benchmark for future tunnel engineering.86 What role had Walter Shanly played in this? Many factors contributed to the successful completion of this work. Perhaps the most remarkable is the strength of the motivation to build it. Why did men go to such lengths and expend such effort and money just to reduce the distance between Troy, N.Y., and Boston by ten miles and to lower the maximum grade on the line from eighty to forty-five feet per mile? As Edward Kirkland says of the tunnel's advocates, 'Their case could hardly be reduced to logic.'87 The only answer one can give is that the Hoosac Tunnel is yet another example of the powerful blend of insatiable entrepreneurialism, unquestioned faith in material progress, and heartfelt local rivalry that underlies so much nineteenthcentury business growth. This was the main force behind the project. Nonetheless, many other things were necessary: the courage of the workmen and the authority of the bosses (195 men died);88 the critical

166 Gentlemen Engineers innovations, nitroglycerine and pneumatic drills; and the willingness of the State of Massachusetts to contribute. This last feature of the work is particularly striking; not only did the state aid the development of crucial new technologies, but it actually paid for the construction of the entire tunnel and its supporting infrastructure. Walter Shanly had little to do with any of this. Even with all these circumstances in place, the tunnel could have remained unfinished. The money could have run out, progress could have been too slow, rivals could have won over the legislature, and the shafts might not have stayed on line. Such outcomes were not unknown. Here one must acknowledge the roles played by the men in charge, one of them being Walter Shanly. A final qualification must be made, however. Since Walter was not the engineer on this job, he would not have been responsible for the surveying and proper alignment of the tunnel. Much is made of the extraordinary exactness of this - the two eastern headings were only seven-sixteenths of an inch out of alignment when they met in December 1872 - but this was the engineers' not the contractor's accomplishment. Two contemporary accounts compliment the Danish-born civil engineer Carl O. Weider kinch for this precision.89 No doubt there was some give and take between engineer and contractor, and Walter certainly would have influenced the engineers, but strictly speaking Walter's contribution lay not in the engineering but in the management of construction.90 With his knack of keeping great numbers of men at work on the right jobs at the right time, of staying on schedule, and of keeping costs under control, Walter brought the Hoosac Tunnel to successful completion. These skills he had learned years before on the Beauharnois Canal and the Northern Railroad of New York. Thirty years later they were as sharp as ever. George Mowbray, in dedicating his 1874 pamphlet about the tunnel to Walter, refers to Walter's 'indomitable energy, admirable organization, integrity of purpose, and engineering talent which have rescued the Hoosac Tunnel from the mire of politics and rendered it an engineering success.' This seems a fair assessment of Walter's essential contribution.91 The year this monumental undertaking ended, 1874, was one of the great turning points in Walter Shanly's life. Finishing the tunnel was just one of several critical events. Late that summer, Walter had been defeated in his attempt to regain his seat in South Grenville, and he turned decisively away from politics. His brother Coote, always his dearest sibling, had died that April at his daughter's home in Wiscon-

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 167 sin, leaving Walter without his closest family confidant.92 Early that year, Walter had learned the true state of Frank's finances and had begun the enormous task of extinguishing his debts - an unexpected and unwanted job that would sap Walter's strength and darken his outlook through all his remaining years. Now the tunnel was finished too. Walter was just fifty-eight - still fully capable, widely respected, and well-connected - and far from withdrawing or retiring. It was on to new challenges. Back in Montreal to stay, Walter began to weave a new life from what threads remained of the old. IV

Walter Shanly had built the Hoosac Tunnel to make money. Of this there is no doubt. He had had high hopes when he signed the contract in 1868.93 But in the first few months of 1875, as he worked his way through the books and paid off the final bills, the picture that emerged was what he feared, not what he had hoped. He had made almost nothing. Or, more correctly, much of what surplus there was had gone to cover 'the very large liabilities I had unwittingly assumed for my reckless and utterly uncalculating brother Frank.'94 There remained, after six years of anxious labour, about $200,000 from the $4.5 million contract. Of this, Walter paid $109,635 to banks for loans he had co-signed for Frank, which left him some $90,000 for himself. But Walter had not yet paid interest on the $600,000 working capital he had borrowed to carry through the first year of the job. He had paid back some of this capital in the first year, but most of it he had held until the job was over, so the interest he owed was well in excess of the remaining surplus.95 Fortunately for Walter, because of some peculiar circumstances, the lender was content just to have his principal returned in full, without interest. What had happened is that the lender (who may have been A.T. Gait) had come close to personal bankruptcy during the time that Walter held his money, and somehow his investment into Walter's contract had escaped the eyes of his creditors when affairs were settled. So when Walter was finally ready to repay the loan, the lender offered to forgo the interest if Walter would keep the matter to himself. Walter obliged, noting years later on the margins of a financial statement, 'Not even my bookkeeper knew from where the working capital came.' He thus escaped with the $90,000 profit.96 Walter did not need an accountant to tell him he had been done an injustice. He had long believed that the State of Massachusetts had

168 Gentlemen Engineers dealt unfairly with him. Only a few weeks after the work was officially completed (and before he had settled with his forgiving lender), he had dispatched the first of many petitions to the state, calling on it to compensate him for expenses beyond the contract, which he claimed amounted to $131,681.54. Walter was on shaky ground, and he knew it. The contract had explicitly stated that no extra payment would be allowed for extra quantities of work. What he was trying to claim, however, was that he had been forced to do work and pay expenses that were truly beyond the contract - not just extra quantities but extra work - for such things as brick arching, extra excavation, damages from an extraordinary storm, and loss of interest as a result of the actions of the state engineers. On top of this, he made an appeal for what he called a 'bonus' of $85,000 (roughly equal to the state's profit in interest on the accumulated drawback, he said) in consideration of the great expenses he had incurred from the state's ill-advised insistence that he continue tunnelling into water-bearing rock. He had no right whatsoever to ask for this, he admitted, but in view of the greatness of the undertaking and the many difficulties he had encountered, might they not consider such a gift?97 But the state's money was not easily dislodged. Walter petitioned again in March and again the following January. Twice in February 1877 he went to Boston to argue his case. It was 'a most uphill and distasteful work,' he complained to Frank. But in the end it paid off. Although it took years of persistent soliciting, Walter eventually received nearly all he had requested - though, understandably, he does not appear to have shared any of this extra compensation with Frank.98 Walter had persisted with good reason. Money in the mid- and late 1870s was not easy to come by, and he needed plenty. Frank's debts continued to be an open drain. Although by mid-1875 Walter had paid all the bank loans he had endorsed, Frank also had debts which Walter had not endorsed and which Walter was having to help Frank service and in some cases pay down. To this end he paid $13,000 in the second half of 1875, more than $11,000 in 1876, and more than $4,000 in 1877. Mid-1875 was also the time of the Mechanics' Bank's troubles. It suspended operations briefly, then reopened, but it did so by writing down shareholders' capital by 60 per cent. Walter lost $20,000 in this transaction. He claims to have lost a further $29,000 in other failed investments, mostly real estate, and was called on unexpectedly to pay back a personal loan of $15,000 (for which no details are on record). It is no wonder that Walter kept up his pleas to the State of Massachusetts.99

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 169 There had been little time for other work during construction of the Hoosac Tunnel. Walter's duties as an MP, his responsibilities to the Edwardsburg Starch Company, and his occasional dealings with Frank took up most of his time when he was in Canada, which he was for maybe a week every month or so. One matter to which Walter did give some attention, however, was the original ill-fated Pacific railway scheme of 1872-3. Walter was part of the Toronto-based Macpherson group whose company, the Interoceanic Railway, rivalled Hugh Allan's Canadian Pacific in seeking a charter. When in the summer of 1872 David L. Macpherson refused to submit to pressures from John A. Macdonald to join Allan, Walter Shanly fully supported him. Writing to Macpherson from North Adams, Walter declared, 'I told you in our first interview on the subject of the Pacific Railway that I would on no account associate myself with Sir Hugh Allan's company and I hold to the same determination now. It would be better for Canada to defer construction of the Pacific Railway indefinitely than to court a failure by letting in American (hostile) interests.'100 When the charter was granted to Allan's group the following January, Macdonald pleaded with Walter to join as one of five Ontario directors. Walter had many reasons for not wanting in on the scheme, besides his aversion to Allan. He had little ready money, for one thing, and the directors had to buy stock; he also thought the prices being considered for construction (by both companies) were far too low, and he foresaw problems there; as well, still at work on the tunnel, he simply had too much to do. In the end, temporarily and half-heartedly, Walter relented. He agreed to serve as a director, but only if someone else would put up the $80,000 for stock and if he would be replaced at the earliest opportunity. What arrangements he had made with Macdonald are not known, but whatever they were they were inconsequential, because when Parliament opened the next month Macdonald's government and the Pacific Railway scheme came to a sudden end. Walter was never again associated with the Canadian Pacific Railway.101 Consulting engineering had never been entirely absent from Walter's repertoire of skills. Before the Hoosac Tunnel contract, in 1867, he had arbitrated a dispute between the dominion government and the contractor who built the new fortifications at Quebec. The following year he wrote a report for the City of Montreal recommending how it could expand its waterworks. He even managed one consulting report - on the condition of the Northern Extension Railway - during the tunnel contract. But such work had been rare.102 Now that he was

170 Gentlemen Engineers back in Canada, with the Hoosac Tunnel completed, Walter began to rely more than ever before on consulting. He really had little choice. He had lost his taste for contracting in the Hoosac Tunnel experience; working for others was surely out of the question; and with money in short supply, large construction projects were unlikely. Consulting was his only marketable skill. One of the first signs of this change in direction for Walter is a report prepared in the summer of 1874 for the directors of the Caughnawaga Ship Canal. This canal, to join the St Lawrence River and Lake Champlain, had been a pet project of Walter's for several years. He had advocated it in one of his few speeches in the House of Commons four years earlier, arguing that Canada's canal policy should be set to encourage exports to the growing industrial centres of the U.S. northeast, not to Britain or Europe. The Caughnawaga Ship Canal, he had argued, would allow goods to pass easily from the St Lawrence into the Hudson river system. This was the proper way for the St Lawrence system to compete with the Erie Canal, he had maintained. His 1874 report on the feasibility of the canal expressed these same thoughts, together with quantities and costs taken straight from an 1848 report (doubled to account for inflation) by his former Public Works boss, John B. Mills. It was a hastily prepared report, not up to Walter's usual standard, but since it was written amid the hectic final year of the tunnel construction, this is understandable.103 The next consulting job that has left a substantive historical record was untangling the legal and political mess of the North Shore Railway for the Quebec government. This was no mean task. The major contractor, Duncan Macdonald, had given up the work in 1875. The Quebec government had taken over the company, renamed it the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway, and renegotiated with Macdonald. Over the next few years Macdonald built much of the line, but in September 1878, once again short of money and now also caught in disputes over the route and the terms of his contract, Macdonald again gave up the work to the province. To aid it in sorting through Macdonald's claims and judging between the rival routes, the newly appointed Liberal regime of Premier Henri Joly engaged Walter Shanly.104 Walter's first step was to settle the matter of competing routes. The line had originally been laid out to cross the Ottawa River just above its junction with the St Lawrence at Bout de 1'Ile, but opponents of this route had managed over time to convince the government railway

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 171 commissioners to move it several miles north to cross the river at Terrebonne. The contractor had built along this new, northerly route, but since the line into Montreal was not finished when work stopped, the possiblity remained of returning to the old route. Walter studied the matter and in May 1878 presented a report in which he declared himself strongly in favour of the new, northerly route. The report is a clear and thoroughly convincing presentation. The rhetorical style recalls Walter's impressive reports of nearly thirty years earlier for the Toronto and Guelph and the Bytown and Prescott; by keeping his reader guessing until he finally shows his hand, Walter's conclusions seem unbiased and nearly irrefutable.105 A few months later Walter reported on the dispute between the Province of Quebec and the contractor Duncan Macdonald. This was indeed a tangled mess. Elements of the old contract had remained in effect after Macdonald had entered into his new contract with the province in 1875, and this had led to confusion over how much he was owed for his work. Walter sifted through the financial details and came up with a definitive statement showing how much each of them owed the other. One cannot imagine who but an experienced engineer and contractor with an accountant's eye - such as Walter Shanly - could have done such work so well.106 Walter stayed on with the province for a time. He was still under contract in July 1879, having recently arbitrated another dispute with a contractor. He seems to have kept his job until his client, the Liberal government, lost its job in October 1879. Meanwhile, he was still dabbling in railway contracting, holding a construction contract in 1876-9 for the Western Counties Railway in Nova Scotia, on which he was doing very little because of shortage of capital. He also put in a bid, perhaps on behalf of Frank, to complete the Belleville and North Hastings Railway in 1878, but withdrew on learning that he would have to 'compete' for the contract.107 Consulting work, however, continued to be Walter's main livelihood. Like Frank, he excelled at it; clients found him thorough, fair-minded, and trustworthy. And like Frank, he seems to have enjoyed this independent work most of all. Into this reasonably placid period of Walter's life Frank's unexpected death suddenly intruded in the fall of 1882. Walter and Frank, for all their differences and disagreements, had travelled many roads together, and the loss to Walter was profound. He wrote a few days after Frank's death, To his family the blow is overwhelming. To me his brother hardly less severe. From childhood up our way has been side

172 Gentlemen Engineers by side - friends and companions as well as brothers.'108 The emotional trials were only part of the ordeal for Walter. As Frank's executor, he now had to settle the estate as best he could, and this task was to occupy him off and on for several years. Not knowing the full picture of Frank's personal finances, Walter received and replied to all the creditors' appeals with the same explanation: when the estate was settled they would be paid a portion of what they were owed. The pile of bills grew higher. Frank had died owing money to his tailor, doctor, butcher, chemist, stationer, bookseller, grocer, milliner, tinsmith, brewer, furrier, sculptor, jeweller, plumber, and ice man. Many of these accounts had remained unpaid for years and stood at as much as a thousand dollars. The credit side, unfortunately, did not amount to much. Most of Frank's stocks and bonds were worthless, and anything that did have value was assigned as collateral against bank debts. His few receivables had liens on them. The only assets that could be uncovered were a small piece of land in Manitoba that Frank had inherited from his deceased son Cuthbert (and in the short time between their deaths had not had time to sell) and a $600 fee due him from his last client, the Souris and Rocky Mountain Railway. By 1885, after repeated correspondence with lawyers and bankers, it was clear that there was nothing to divide up. Walter, having already paid $143,000 towards Frank's debts over the previous ten years, was not inclined to be generous where he was not legally bound to be. He did pay portions of some debts, but most of the creditors of Frank's estate received nothing.109 Walter also had to see to the support of Frank's family. Frank had held several life insurance policies (although one had a lien on it and was almost not paid), but these were not sufficient to support Frank's widow and six surviving children. So Walter leased a good modest home for them on Willcocks Street in Toronto, not far from Frank's final residence on Spadina Road. Mrs Shanly bought a different house on Willcocks Street the next year, after the life insurance premiums were paid, but Walter continued to pay their household accounts for many years.110 One attempt to help that failed was a personal request from Walter to John A. Macdonald for six months of Frank's salary for his family. Pointing out to Macdonald that Frank had been working for the Intercolonial when he died, Walter wrote, 'As an Item in the Estimates it would pass without a murmur.' Macdonald replied that he thought the suggestion good, but in the end did nothing. The old prime minister's celebrated unscrupulousness evidently had limits.

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 173 In the summer of 1885, now nearly seventy years old, Walter Shanly took another unexpected turn: he went back to the House of Commons as representative for Grenville South. The sitting Conservative member, W.T. Benson (the starch company founder), had died, and the local committee invited Walter to take his place. Unopposed by the Liberals, Walter was acclaimed in the by-election. 'Privy Council send hearty congratulations bring your certificate at once and take your seat,' the prime minister cabled on 4 July. The session, which had been sitting since January, was nearly over, but Walter did as Macdonald bid, taking his seat on 7 July.111 This was the beginning of six more years in the House. Walter sat for the remaining two sessions of this parliament, ran again successfully in 1887, and retired before the 1891 election. His political style was much the same as it had been twenty years earlier. He spoke very little and took no part at all in debates on national issues. The Kiel affair, for instance, which inflamed parliament and the nation at the end of the 1885 session and during the next, evoked not a word from Walter.112 No doubt he had opinions - Walter was, after all, a learned man with informed thoughts on social and political matters - but he never officially expressed them in the House. He spoke only on what he, as an engineer and railwayman, was expected to speak on: canal depths, arrangements with railway contractors, and government subsidy to railways. Walter still disliked subsidies, although his categorical opposition to them had softened somewhat. Subsidies to railways built to compete with existing lines he still believed to be unfair to the capitalists who invested in the original line, but colonization railways to open up new land for settlement were another matter. Commenting on the Parry Sound Colonization Railway Company's request for a subsidy, Walter declared, 'Roads of that kind will be entitled to double the subsidy they are given. I shall have great pleasure in supporting this item.'113 Walter had in fact adopted what would soon become a popular Canadian article of faith: 'We are at certain natural disadvantages arising from climatic conditions, and therefore the Government ought to do even more than is ordinarily done by Governments to counterbalance those disadvantages.'114 He was still loath to accept government interference in business. He opposed giving much regulatory power to the Board of Railway Commissioners, just as he opposed passing laws to enforce safety measures on railways. The latter was not the concern of legislators, he said. Such

174 Gentlemen Engineers problems were already 'engaging the attention of a far abler parliament for this kind of legislation than ever assembled or will assemble within these walls ... It is a parliament composed of the master mechanics of all the great continental railways ... and it is a parliament in which every member knows what he is talking about.'115 These men had already invented new safer couplings and brakes that would be far more efficacious, Walter maintained, than unenforceable safety laws passed by ill-informed legislators. Walter also played a small part in founding the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) in the late 1880s. It is surprising that his role was not greater. Years earlier, he had developed such a strong professional identity, and he knew well the importance of maintaining true professional independence. One would expect this to have prompted Walter into participating in the founding and sustaining of a professional engineering society, but not so. His role seems to have been little more than perfunctory. The CSCE was conceived in Montreal early in 1886 by a small group of Montreal engineers and a professor of applied science at McGill College. They met several times that year, drafted a constitution, and began recruiting members. By 20 January 1887 the society had recruited and elected 104 members. Walter Shanly, however, was not among them.116 Not until their first annual meeting a month later, on 24 February, did Walter join, and even then it may not have been through his own volition for he did not attend the grand affair. Despite his absence, the members named Walter first vice-president. This honour did not elicit much more of a commitment, however, for in the year he held the position he did not attend one meeting of the society's council.117 In April of that year Walter introduced the society's incorporation bill in the House of Commons - an action for which he is often thought responsible - but one wonders whether he deserves the credit. If he contributed to drafting the bill, he did so without leaving any evidence of having done so; and he said nothing in the House about the bill or the CSCE either when he presented it or at its subsequent readings.118 He did, most certainly, have the respect of his professional peers, for the next year, when Thomas Keefer declined to serve as president, Walter Shanly's name was put forward to replace him. Walter declined, saying he 'could not without serious interference with business spare the time to enable me to properly discharge the duties of President.'119 He was not again invited to serve on the society's council, although he did act as chairman of the nominating com-

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 175 mittee for 1890 and 1891, and as a member of the committee on professional status in 1893.12° Why Walter remained aloof from the society, whose goals he must have supported, is difficult to say. He could not have been as busy as he claimed. He was, admittedly, slowing down with age, and this might explain his reluctance to take on new challenges. But if one looks back through Walter's entire post-Grand Trunk career - the very years the Canadian engineering profession was growing and struggling to define itself - one sees that Walter's indifference to his profession's development was not new in the late 1880s. Notwithstanding his earlier views and experiences, Walter in fact made no effort through the 1860s and 1870s to help establish the profession or create the new engineering schools. Apparently the engineering profession of the later nineteenth century - which, one might note, was increasingly made up of scientifically trained men working in large corporations - was not something to which he felt committed. By the late 1880s, compelled partly by age and partly by sentiment, Walter was withdrawing from most of his other work as well. He kept up his duties as an MP and his occasional work for the starch company, but other business and professional work was becoming infrequent. He did a brief report for the Grand Trunk in 1884 on the most suitable location for a tunnel under the St Clair River at Sarnia, but he did no instrumental surveys, so it could not have been a time-consuming job. He probably used information obtained in a shore and hydrographic survey done under his authority in the 1850s for the Grand Trunk. When the tunnel was actually built a few years later, he took no part.121 Walter also contributed to an 1889 City of Toronto study on the arrangement of its waterfront rail lines, but again this was not a major job - simply an appendix commenting on the main body of the report. In 1891 he was consulted by the Macdonald government regarding the new Sault Ste Marie Canal, and for this he must have done some onsite investigations, but shortly after presenting his report he turned down a request from Macdonald to chair a commission on the St Lawrence canals. There may have been other small consulting jobs in these years, but there were none that led to significant reports. Walter Shanly's professional career was essentially finished by the early 1890s.122 So, too, was his political career when he chose not to run in the 1891 election. Through the final decade of his life Walter's thoughts were elsewhere. To a man raised in an Irish gentleman's country house in the

176 Gentlemen Engineers 1820s, whose formative professional years had been spent in a Canada that was still emerging from pioneer life, and whose idea of good construction was still stone and earth, Montreal in the 1890s was becoming a foreign country: governments, factories, department stores, and of course railways - everywhere railways. Walter's family was no longer part of his life. Coote and Charles had been gone for some twenty years, both having died in the 1870s, and Frank had been gone for close to ten. Walter's half-brother Robert, who had turned into a ne'er-do-well and something of a drifter, had died in 1888 in Winnipeg, his loss unlamented by Walter. James lived on in London, where his only child, Charles James Nisbitt, who was married but childless, also lived; James and Walter had never been very close, and although they corresponded occasionally, they no longer visited. Walter's half-sister Ellen, whom he had supported and occasionally lived with during the 1850s in Toronto and Montreal, had been abroad for many years. In 1863 she had married a French-Canadian military officer, Charles Courtenay Villiers, and on her husband's retirement in the early 1870s had moved to Brittany and then, in 1892, to Windsor, England. Frank and Coote had both had children (unlike Charles, who never married), but apart from Walter's obligation to support Frank's widow and family, he was not close to his nieces or nephews. To Frank's daughters Walter seemed little more than a 'distant big shot.' One of Coote's two children, James Moore Shanly, had moved from Wisconsin to Montreal by this time and was working as a railway engineer, but Walter never mentions having contact with him.123 The present held little for Walter now. Like many other aging Anglo-Canadians of the time, he turned to the past.124 History became his avocation. He transcribed the names and dates from tombstones in an English military burial ground he knew would soon be built upon. He wrote a narrative of the duke of Richmond's death in the village of Richmond in 1819, based on an interview he had conducted many years before. He wrote notes on Loyalist settlers he had known, and on military affairs in the American Revolutionary War.125 Walter believed that the prestige of the soldier, especially the British soldier, was slipping in the new world that was being created around him, and this dismayed him. His most complete historical research was into his family's past. He wrote to relations in Ireland to ascertain details, not only about his own family but about important families the Shanlys had married into. He also wrote to his half-sister Ellen in England to learn the origins of her

Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 177 husband's French-Canadian family, the Villiers. All this he assembled into a fine narrative of his family's history, detailed yet touching, to which he appended charts and family trees that went back centuries.126 This manuscript of Walter's, informative though it is, emanates melancholia as much as information. Walter was not living a contented old age. He was lonely and growing lonelier as his peers passed on and his waning strength kept him at home, though this he bore well. What festered were the regrets. Looking back, he saw little but 'a long life studded with regrets.'127 Above all, he regretted the unmarked family graves in Ireland on which, his whole life long, he had wished to place tombstones. He had given so much to others and kept so little for himself that he could never find the money and time for an overseas voyage. His resentment at Frank's calls on his generosity had grown so deep (Frank had gone overseas three times) that in these final years Walter took to writing glosses in the margins and on the backs of his accounts with Frank, often in red ink, drawing attention to how much he had sacrificed for Frank. And he greatly exaggerated his own penuriousness, which he attributed to Frank's imprudence. A financial cripple ... broken in health and very poor,' he described himself in 1893.128 Walter thought his life could best be epitomized by an altered verse from Psalm 37. The original verse reads: The wicked borroweth and payeth not again: but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth.' This would be apt, Walter believed, if'foolish' were substituted for 'righteous.'129 In this case, the judgment of the historian differs from the judgment of the judged. Walter, adrift in a fog of resentment and regret, slipping ineluctably towards his death, had lost sight of his accomplishments. Yet they were many, for almost everything Walter Shanly did, he did well. Every job he left, he left his peers and employers regretting his departure. His engineering work on the Grand Trunk Railway was nothing short of exemplary. His standards, both in the workmanship and the professionalism he demanded, while perhaps unattainably lofty, set an ideal that more willing compromisers could never quite forget. As a politician his contributions are harder to see; he had little influence on the country's politics, but his views on engineering matters were always highly valued by government and by parliamentary committees. His views were sound too. John A. Macdonald might well have been better off if he had taken Walter's views on the Pacific Railway to heart. As a consultant and arbitrator Walter Shanly was so knowledgeable and impartial that the governor of Massachusetts once described him as one 'whose judgment, even in a case where he might

178 Gentlemen Engineers be interested, was to be preferred to that of most unbiased persons.'130 Walter Shanly was a peculiar and at times a troubled man, but he was a fine engineer. He died in his room at the St Lawrence Hall in Montreal on 17 December 1899. 'My papers/ he proudly informed those assembled, 'are all in order.'131

Part Three

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6

Gentlemen Engineers

It is as engineers that Frank and Walter Shanly are best known, and so it should be. Although their life's work included much more than professional engineering, it was as engineers that they were most comfortable and found their greatest satisfaction. And it was as engineers that they saw themselves. Yet to fully understand these men and their careers one must also see them as gentlemen. Gentlemanly values suffused their working lives from start to finish, first leading them into the engineering profession and then shaping their style of work, not just as professionals but as entrepreneurs and even as corporate employees. So it is as both engineers and gentlemen that Frank and Walter Shanly come into sharpest focus. It is important to stress one last time that describing Frank and Walter as gentlemen does not refer to any sort of social or professional accomplishment. They did not seek gentlemanly status and would never have wished to be remembered as men who had successfully achieved such a thing. They were born with it. They and their family brought their social status with them from Ireland as part of their gentry culture, and inevitably Frank and Walter carried it with them when they set off on their own to find work. The purpose of employing the gentleman concept is to help us understand who these brothers were and why they did what they did in the way they did, not to describe what they became. To define exactly what 'gentleman' means is difficult, but it must be done at the outset of this analysis. In its common usage today, it is not a very precise word, being used sometimes to describe a man of good manners, sometimes one of good morals, and sometimes just one of high social position. Although this study seeks to be more precise, the

182 Gentlemen Engineers term is not used here in any single, simple meaning either. As introduced in chapter 1, drawing on the ideas of the English historians EM.L. Thompson and G.E. Mingay, a gentleman is a man living with the customs and values of the old rural gentry - a country house, a family pedigree, and a commitment to social and military leadership. But the term is also deliberately used here with a connotation of the high social position to which holders of these customs and values feel they are entitled. Thus to be a gentleman is not just to be gallant and judicious; it is also to believe that since you hold these values you deserve proper deference from the people around you - and that society will work better if you are granted it. But there is more still. The word gentleman is used here with the implication that such a man lives by 'traditional' rather than 'modern' beliefs, and that such beliefs - in a fixed social order, for example - were becoming increasingly outmoded as the nineteenth century progressed.1 So it is with all three of these meanings - living by gentry customs and values, with the presumption of social authority, but with creeping obsolescence - that the word gentleman is here employed. Could men be both gentlemen and engineers in the mid-nineteenth century? A contradiction immediately comes to mind when one thinks of these two types of men, for the engineer is assumed to embody almost the opposite of these three gentlemanly qualities. Yet, surprising though it may be, the engineering profession which Frank and Walter chose to enter in the 1840s certainly appears to have been a very gentlemanly one. With its ties to the land, its claim to disinterested judgment, its affinity to the governing class, and of course its generous salaries, it was indeed gentlemanly enough to be suitable for a young Shanly. Such a picture is definitely at odds with the accepted view of the early engineering profession, and this inconsistency deserves some exploration. According to the received view, early engineers, or perhaps protoengineers - men such as George Stephenson in England and John B. Jervis in New York - were a kind of tradesman/businessman hybrid; then, as the nineteenth century progressed and the demand for technically skilled men increased, such men were able to gain status until, by the second half of the century, they were recognized as professionals. Thus, one of the defining features of engineering in the nineteenth century was the upward social mobility it provided for practical men. Also, largely because of their origins in the practical world of work, early engineers are said to have been generalists, the profession having

Gentlemen Engineers

183

had no need to specialize until it increased in numbers and professionalized.2 The incongruities between this and the profession that Frank and Walter practised are glaring. Frank and Walter were not tradesmen/ businessmen but educated gentlemen - practical gentlemen, to be sure, but gentlemen nonetheless - and the profession they entered was already formed by 1840. They chose the profession not because it offered upward mobility but because it offered a socially acceptable means of halting their downward mobility. It already had status. Nor were they engineering generalists. The scope of their practice never went beyond strict civil engineering (which included, as it still does, an element of structural design). The closest they came to mechanical engineering was supervising the bolting of bridge girders and the laying of rails. The design, construction, and maintenance of railway locomotives and rolling stock were all beyond their domain as engineers. Could it be that Frank and Walter were an unusual pair and that a more extensive study of the early Canadian engineering profession would reveal a greater number of practical men? One must admit that the Shanlys were unique; Walter, in particular, appears to have been a truly exceptional character. But their eccentricities are not enough to explain away the significance of their experiences. When one considers Frank's and Walter's early professional colleagues, at least those who have been introduced in these pages and whose biographical information is known - Hamilton Killaly, Nicol Hugh Baird, Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski, Alexander Luders Light, Thomas and Samuel Keefer - one finds not tradesmen or even the sons of tradesmen but educated men of the professional, military officer, or land-owning class.3 Only with more research could one say for sure, but this close study of Frank and Walter Shanly's careers leads one to suspect that there were many others who were both gentlemen and engineers in Canada in the 1840s. Other professions in the nineteenth century show similar connections with gentlemen. As noted in chapter 2, the relationship between Harold Perkin's 'aristocratic ideal' and the ideals of modern professionals is quite striking. This has not drawn as much attention as one might expect, but it has been observed.4 And the recent work of R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar on professions in nineteenth-century Ontario makes the point explicitly.5 Through their analysis of lawyers, doctors, and Anglican clergymen - the traditional professions - these authors have discovered that professional men in early-nineteenth-century Upper Canada held very high social status; so high, in fact, that in the

184 Gentlemen Engineers absence of a true landed gentry, they functioned as Upper Canada's gentlemen. Many actually were of gentry origins and had thus been able to obtain the classical liberal education necessary to gain entry to their chosen profession. Gidney and Millar's analysis pertains only to the traditional learned professions, not to engineers. They barely mention the early civil engineers of the union period (1841-67), and when they do they follow the standard view of engineers as technical men who professionalized later in the century. So while their study does not argue in support of the claim made here that early Canadian civil engineering was a high-status gentlemanly profession, it does point to the close connection between the gentleman and the professional man in an industrializing society. If such a gentlemanly engineering profession did exist in the 1840s, what is its connection to the later professionalization movement that brought the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) into being? The connection is not as close as one might think. Frank's and Walter's profession flourished a good two generations before the professionalization movement began. It consisted of a small, closely knit group, and until the mid-1850s their work was based on a commercial agrarian economy not an industrial one.6 Later, as the century passed and industrialization progressed, a very different engineering profession developed in Canada. Engineers became much more numerous (there were 719 men in the profession in Canada in 1881) and in the latter part of the century many were formally educated in engineering or practical science. By this time the mechanical engineer, who did indeed have one foot in the shop, was entering the picture and altering the make-up of the profession. It was this new 'Victorian' profession, which espoused the ideology of progress and social betterment, that Walter and Frank had mixed feelings about, and it was this profession that organized itself into the CSCE, from which Walter stayed aloof. It is also the profession historians of engineering know best.7 The older 'pure' civil engineering of Frank's and Walter's early years seems, in comparison, almost a different profession. It must not be ignored, however, for it is an essential element of the profession's ancestry, in Canada at least, and its existence calls for a whole new starting point in an analysis of Canadian engineering professionalization. The next generation of engineers, those who formed the CSCE, undoubtedly knew about the experiences of Frank and Walter and their colleagues in the union period - the struggles to maintain independence from contractors and clients, the uncertainty of

Gentlemen Engineers 185 professional apprenticeships dependent on the whims of capital investment, and the insecurity of professional income. These would have been the professional lore of the time. Indeed, to this day, what little knowledge exists about Frank and Walter Shanly resides among the senior members of the profession in Canada. So to see the professionalization movement as an effort to increase income and raise status without recognizing the very real problems that earlier practising professionals faced is to see the process entirely out of historical context. Furthermore, to view such efforts as a process of 'gentrification' without seeing the gentlemanly nature of the early profession would be to overlook a critical point. And lastly, to portray the movement to regulate entry to the profession simply as a way of limiting the number of practitioners without recognizing how entry was already effectively restricted by personal connections is to miss the mark again.8 One final question, when attempting to put these findings into the context of the history of engineering in the wider world, is whether this 'professional gentleman' type of civil engineer was unique to Canada. Gidney and Millar's analysis of the traditional professions leans this way. Although never explicitly stating Upper Canada's exceptionality, they do present it as a society dominated by somewhat outmoded conventions and institutions, citing William Westfall's felicitous phrase, 'the curiously eighteenth-century world,' to describe it.9 That was why, they suggest, the Georgian 'professional gentleman' could survive beyond his time in Upper Canadian society. Perhaps an unusually oldfashioned society could also harbour an unusually gentlemanly civil engineer. This is an appealing explanation, for if true it answers the question of why the received view of the early engineering profession does not include the gentlemanly type - that view being based on the British and American experience, where there was no such thing. There are reasons to be cautious about this pat explanation. A careful reading of the recent British and American literature on engineering history leaves one not so sure that this gentlemanly engineer really was so rare. While historians of engineering have never called attention to him, they seem nonetheless to have found him. The same British author who emphasizes how the profession grew in the nineteenth century through the upward mobility of tradesmen also notes the existence of a reasonably high-status gentlemanly type of engineer. Other research on the British profession has uncovered surprisingly high social origins for many of the early engineers. And we now know that the gentleman 'amateur' scientists of the early nineteenth century

186 Gentlemen Engineers in Britain had some interest in engineering and the practical arts.10 Even the American profession, an understanding of which has for so long been influenced by Daniel H. Calhoun's views on the close ties between early engineers and business corporations, begins to take on a different colour when one considers recent research on such engineers as Laommi Baldwin, Benjamin Latrobe Jr, Claudius Crozet, and the architect-engineer Robert Mills, all of whom seem to have had a fairly well developed sense of professional independence and gentlemanly authority.11 Upper Canadian engineering, in other words, might not be so exceptional. Perhaps this older style of civil engineer, who elsewhere had lost his dominance by the 1840s, remained influential in Canada for another generation. This would be consistent with Gidney and Millar's observations about other professions. Once again, however, more research is needed before any general conclusions can be drawn. Once Frank and Walter actually began to practise their profession they did so, not surprisingly, as gentlemen - and as rather old-fashioned ones at that. They seem never to have believed in material progress as an end in itself, or if they did they were not enthusiastic enough about their belief ever to say so in their many letters to each other. One gets the impression that they might even have been happier to halt the celebrated progress of the Victorian age, or at least its social concomitants, had they not been making their living by advancing it. Not that they ever recommended against building a railway - except in the case of Walter and the Canadian Pacific - but they were usually more pragmatic and cautious than the men who employed them. They show, in other words, no true faith in railways. In their day-to-day work neither of them was ever an innovator; they never sought new solutions to engineering problems. Walter laid out a railway line in the 1850s following the principles of the 1830s; he was a lifelong advocate of canals and of stone and earth construction; and he generally favoured the tried and true over the novel. He did use new techniques on the Hoosac Tunnel, but they had been advocated and developed, and their efficacy proven, by others before he arrived. Frank was never really in a position to determine the technological style of what he built, but there is no evidence of him criticizing other men's engineering designs or methods as outdated. This was no shortcoming. The heart of their professional practice lay in their work as managers and judges, not as technical puzzle-solvers. Here their gentlemanly values were quite appropriate. They readily took charge of construction projects, fully accepting responsibility for

Gentlemen Engineers 187 keeping peace among the competing interests they supervised. They both always counted on, and were given, the allegiance of 'their men,' as they tended to call their assistant engineers early in their careers. The most striking illustration of this was Walter's experience at the beginning of the Grand Trunk Railway, when he openly said he expected the personal loyalty of his engineering corps even though they were being paid by someone else. He got it too; deference was not yet dead. And as mentioned several times in chapters 4 and 5, both brothers were steadily in demand as consultants and arbitrators. It is in this gentlemanly light that one can understand Walter's insistence on independence from contractors, so essential an element in his early professional identity. An engineer, like any good justice of the peace, was impartial, being guided in his decisions by the interests of all concerned. Contractors, on the other hand, worked in their own interest, so their views could never be trusted, and they should never be given authority over the engineer. They should, of course, be treated fairly by the engineer in charge. If contractors' costs really did unexpectedly rise through no fault of their own, they should be compensated, subject to the engineer's approval, with payments for extra work, a process Walter always followed when wrapping up jobs he supervised. This was desirable because strict contractual arrangements should never take precedence over the legitimacy of a fair price in the mind of a judicious professional engineer. Here we see glimpses of the 'moral economy' - E.P. Thompson's famous label for the economy of pre-industrial society - and are reminded that it was not just peasants and craftsmen who struggled through the experience of modernization.12 If the role of the independent professional suited Frank and Walter so well as gentlemen, why did they spend so much of their working lives not as professionals but as businessmen? A good part of the answer is that there was not enough well-paid work available. Gentlemen might deserve deference and independence, but they also needed money. The canal and railway construction of the 1840s and 1850s drew a good number of engineers into the Province of Canada and sustained them for a time, but when it ended with the completion of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1857 there was little work to be had. Frank landed an engineering job with the Welland Railway, and Walter took on the Ottawa Canal survey for Public Works, but that was the end of it. Through the late 1850s and early 1860s there was the odd government job for engineers and the occasional consulting contract, but nothing

188 Gentlemen Engineers like the employment opportunities that had given Frank and Walter their start. One also suspects that their frustrating Grand Trunk experiences left them a little disenchanted with supposedly independent professional work, though as they are nearly silent on this in their correspondence, one is reluctant to rely on it too heavily. Nevertheless, whether it was from lack of work or lack of suitably respectful clients, Frank and Walter were not lifelong practitioners of professional engineering. What does this say about the claim that they were true professionals or that a Canadian engineering profession already existed in the 1840s? It does not weaken the claim at all. Frank and Walter always knew full well whether or not they were working as professional engineers. They did not mix entrepreneurship or corporate management with professionalism; they were at times professionals and at other times not. As entrepreneurs they took financial risks; as professionals they were paid for their service. So Frank's and Walter's experience might reveal that a true engineering career was barely viable in Canada in the mid-nineteenth century, especially for ambitious young men not inclined to permanent government appointments, and it does indeed show that there was a body of technical knowledge that was common to professional engineers and construction contractors, but it does not mean that true professional practice, or a true profession, did not exist. 'Business' was not something these gentlemen engineers found distasteful, so they were not reluctant to turn towards it as an alternative to professional work. There was a time when one might have had to explain what a gentleman was doing in the world of business, the two classes supposedly being anathema to one another. This is no longer necessary. Historians now recognize that even some of the greatest aristocratic landowners were successful businessmen, usually in ventures connected with maximizing profits from land, and that such men were often quite knowledgeable about business methods.13 James Shanly Sr seems to have been such a man, and Frank and Walter grew up without any family aversion to business, though it is interesting to note the father's tie to land-based industry lingering on in the family's failed Thorndale enterprises and the sons' subsequent abandonment of this vestige of gentry life. Neither brother lacked! enterprise or shied away from hard work. Frank, more than Walter, suffered somewhat from a gentleman's taste for indulging in the fruits of his labour before the labour was done, but he had plenty of entrepreneurial spirit and was capable of extended periods of hard work when they were needed.

Gentlemen Engineers 189 Management was an aspect of business they both excelled at, just as they did at construction management in their professional engineering practices. Walter's work with the Grand Trunk Railway, the Edwardsburg Starch Company, and the Hoosac Tunnel all show management skills of the highest calibre. Frank, in spite of his failures in railway contracting, was a competent manager too. Understanding contract law, managing cash flows, issuing clear and timely instructions - not to mention ordering other men around - all came naturally to them. It was quite compatible with their sense of their social position. There were, however, unmistakable limits to the compatibility between their gentlemanly values and those of the business world. In their contracting work, for instance, they had great trouble coming to terms with modern methods. As engineers both of them always believed that at the end of a job, within reason and under the engineer's authority, contractors should be compensated for extra work. Walter had learned this system at the Board of Works, and he employed it on the Beauharnois Canal, on the Northern Railroad of New York, and with Frank on the Grand Trunk. Legal history suggests that this system was already obsolete by mid-century, although it was still part of Frank and Walter's way of doing things at that time.14 But in the 1870s when they tried to follow this system as contractors, they found little sympathy. Fortunately for Walter, his prominence allowed him to recover, after years of solicitation, some of his extra expenses on the Hoosac Tunnel contract, but Frank was not so fortunate. What they were encountering, although they did not see it that way at the time, was the new 'fixed-price' contracting system and the associated system of competitive bidding for contracts. This was a set of business techniques born among the English 'master builders' (the English equivalent of 'general contractor') of the late eighteenth century, which spread through the construction industry as the nineteenth century passed.15 This dangerously unforgiving system thoroughly perplexed them. It seemed inevitably to lead to poor-quality work whenever construction costs ran unexpectedly high. And poor workmanship they simply could not do. Neither of them ever fully resolved this conundrum. Frank blithely marched into the dangerous waters anyway, with disastrous consequences; Walter would never compete (he would only negotiate) for a construction contract, and as a result he did little contracting but plenty of grumbling. Another unresolvable problem in their nonprofessional jobs was their inability to work for other men. Indeed, their preoccupation with

190 Gentlemen Engineers independence and their obsession with their own social superiority made them so ill-suited to corporate employment that their experiences in this work are almost laughable. Neither Frank with the City of Toronto Engineering Department nor Walter with the Grand Trunk Railway had any difficulty with the actual work they were expected to perform. But neither of them could stand being told what to do by their social inferiors. For both of them, potentially satisfying work was cut short by this excessive pride. It is in Walter's work as a politician that his traditional gentlemanly values stand out most clearly. His antipathy to big government, his sympathy towards individual liberty and rural life, his extraordinary preoccupation with his own independence from party discipline, and ultimately his personal allegiance to John A. Macdonald - here was Walter Shanly, the Burkean conservative and Jeffersonian aristocrat, with intellectual roots deep in the eighteenth century. As a working politician, he was an engineer; as a parliamentarian, he was unmistakably a gentleman. So by viewing Frank and Walter as gentlemen one can see why they chose the profession they did, which parts of it they excelled at and which they did not, and why they did not participate in the new engineering profession of the later nineteenth century. Such a perspective also helps explain the successes and failures of their nonprofessional working lives, both as entrepreneurs and as corporate employees, and reveals that, overall, professional work was more to their taste than business; notwithstanding their skill in managing and leading men and in comprehending complex problems, their inability to come to terms with business competition and corporate employment left them a little like fish out of water. Sorting all this out chronologically makes the picture clearer still: Frank and Walter grew more and more out of place as the century wore on. In the first twenty years of their careers their gentlemanly values fitted into their work rather well. During this time they were the gentlemen engineers they wanted to be: in charge and well paid. After about 1860, however, with the completion of the small engineering jobs that followed their Grand Trunk work, they both set off into the world of business. Frank turned to contracting and Walter first to corporate management and then to contracting. Here they had their troubles. They were thus drawn back to professional practice, but the only kind of engineering work they still felt right about - or could get, for that matter - was independent consulting. The new engineering profes-

Gentlemen Engineers 191 sion, peopled as it was with university-trained men working for corporations of one kind or another, was not something they could be at home in. Fortunately for them both, independent consulting remained, as it does to this day, a legitimate form of professional engineering practice, so they were able to find some work in their final years. But all in all, Frank and Walter only really fitted in the world of their early adulthood. Frank and Walter were gentlemen and they were engineers, but they were also brothers. This aspect of the story deserves some attention too. In their early careers especially, they were very close and were clearly each other's most important friend and ally. They made a good complementary pair too; Walter's circumspection and Frank's recklessness served them well both on the job and in society. Yet it was a complex relationship that bound them, a curious mix of helping and bullying, of appreciating and expecting, and of loving and resenting. They hindered as much as helped one another. The most obvious feature of their relationship is the assistance Walter gave Frank in the latter's professional development. Walter encouraged Frank to enter the profession, did what he could to help him get started, and tutored him along for several years until Frank was able to work on his own. At first glance this seems touching, a fine illustration of how families supported one another in their shared economic strategy; after all, both brothers were concerned at the time with stabilizing their family at Thorndale. But a closer look reveals that Frank may not have been so well served by this arrangement. It meant that for years he worked at a level beyond his competence, but being too proud to admit it and too anxious to get ahead, he never saw how it was interfering with his development. Yet it most certainly was. Right through to the end of the Grand Trunk construction, Walter repeatedly ordered Frank to go beyond his depth, only to chide him for not being able to keep his head above water, with the result that Frank never really had an opportunity to gain command of his profession. Not until he worked a few years on the Welland Railway, free from Walter, did Frank fully master railway engineering. There was, in other words, more at work here than a shared economic strategy; Walter seems to have needed to keep Frank beholden to him. One also gets the impression that even after years of working both together and apart, Walter still did not believe Frank to be fully competent. This is clear in Walter's promises to prospective investors in the Hoosac Tunnel contract that, regardless of the partnership, he would

192 Gentlemen Engineers be handling the project management himself. And much later, after Frank's financial losses had nearly ruined Walter, Walter occasionally expressed a veiled opinion that Frank's financial troubles had resulted simply from his inability to estimate the price of a job. This accusation is not fair, and Walter must have known it. Frank was occasionally reckless in entering contracts with bids that were too low, but it was overeagerness not incompetence that led him astray. Walter knew as well as anyone how hard it was to get a fair contract in the competitive tendering system. But he never fully respected Frank - perhaps Frank was always the rakish young brother in Walter's eyes - and they both lived with the resentment this disrespect engendered. On rare occasions Frank threw his weight around too. When he did, he could be as imperious as Walter, and Walter could be surprisingly compliant. Frank's plea for Walter to stay in Parliament in order that he, Frank, might have a better chance of winning railway contracts was followed promptly by Walter's public declaration of his candidacy. Then, after Frank had fallen into debt and Walter had begun to pay those debts to save Frank from bankruptcy, Frank was shamelessly ungrateful; there was never a hint of thanks or apology in his letters. Indeed, on occasion, there was an equally shameless presumption that brother Walter would keep the money flowing. Walter, of course, did keep on paying, in silence, and carried his resentment to his grave. What was motivating Walter in all of this is hard to uncover. He was a silent, stoic man all his life. And as his friend James Stewart observed in 1857 when Walter was forty years old, what openness Walter had had in his youth 'ossified' once he succeeded in his career. What is clear is that Walter took his family responsibilty seriously. From the time he began sending money home to pay Thorndale's debts in the early 1840s, Walter was his family's financial saviour, helping get his brothers set up in careers, paying for the Thorndale renovations, supporting his halfsister Ellen until she was suitably married, co-signing Frank's start-up loans, and supporting Frank's widow and family. Walter was not the eldest son - both James and Charles were older - but he was the one with the means, so he was the one who bore the burden. It is no wonder he never married. He had his own family to support. Were these obligations just a manifestation of Walter's commitment to his family, a sign to us of how important maintaining family respectability was to a gentleman with a true pedigree? Or might they have grown from Walter's guilt at abandoning Thorndale against his father's wishes? Certainly, a terrible bitterness endured between Walter and his father

Gentlemen Engineers 193 over this departure. Regardless of their origins, these obligations surely took their toll on Walter. It all begins to look something less than loving. When one adds it up, one sees that resentment among family members predates the individualism of the twentieth century. Historians of the family have begun to see in recent years that the traditional nineteenth-century family was not as solid or as nurturing an institution as had earlier been supposed.16 Uncovering just a little of the complex family relations among the Shanlys leads one to agree. The story of Frank and Walter Shanly's working lives is not a happy story. It may be one of accomplishment, but it is not one of fulfilment. Neither Frank nor Walter ended his life in circumstances he would have chosen. Walter's opinion, for what it is worth, was that his whole life had been a failure - his personal fortune drained away and the Shanlys of Thorndale barely able to sustain themselves. Frank, deep down, likely knew the same dark thoughts; his boldness kept him sanguine until his final days, but as he drew his last gasp on the train that night, he knew what a financial mire he was leaving for his wife and brother. Yet material matters were only part of the problem. People have died happy in far worse circumstances. Frank and Walter's unfulfilment and thus their tragedy comes not so much from their financial failures as from their maladaptation. Like their father, they were most at home in the generation from which they came. Such is the curse on those who live through changing times.

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Notes

Abbreviations AO CHC CNS CRHA CS CSCE CTA DCB EIC FS GTR GWR ICE JLA JS NA NB RS SP T&G UWO, RC WS

Archives of Ontario Canada, House of Commons Coote-Nisbitt Shanly Canadian Railroad Historical Association Charles Shanly Canadian Society of Civil Engineers City of Toronto Archives Dictionary of Canadian Biography Engineering Institute of Canada Frank Shanly Grand Trunk Railway Great Western Railway Institution of Civil Engineers Journal of the Legislative Assembly James Shanly National Archives of Canada Notebook Robert Shanly Shanly Papers Toronto and Guelph Railway University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection Walter Shanly

1: The Shanly Boys Leave Home 1 Much of the following is drawn from a family genealogy and personal

196 Notes to pages 4-8

2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16

memoir that Walter Shanly (hereafter WS) wrote in the winter of 1895-6, three years before his death, titled The Canadian Shanlys: Whence They Came and How They Got to Thorndale' (hereafter The Canadian Shanlys'). Walter drew from published material on Irish family histories, his own family lore, and in some cases memories of folk tales he had heard in his youth. Most of his facts have been accepted as true. The document, some fifty pages of closely written manuscript, was never intended to be, nor was it ever, published. One copy is in the Archives of Ontario, Shanly Papers (hereafter AO, SP), MU2730; another, also in WS's hand, is in Canadian Railroad Historical Association Archives, Shanly Collection. MacLysaght, Irish Families: Their Names, Arms and Origins, 264-5 Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 54-5 Simms, The War of the Two Kings, 1685-91,' 478-508; Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 146 WS recalled hearing this among the people of Dromod when he was a boy (The Canadian Shanlys,' 5). WS never mentions the conversion to Protestantism in his family history, but it must have happened by this time; Roman Catholics could own land only with severe restrictions (Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 157-8). Private collection, 'Certified Copy of Will of Michael Shanly,' 1814 University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection (hereafter UWO, RC), Shanly Family Papers, B4297, deed of partition, 2 May 1816; B4296, letterbooks of James Shanly Sr UWO, RC, B4296, 'James Shanly, Letters Received, 1820-1836' Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, 126-9; Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 152-62; Spring, The English Landed Estate, 9-13, 97-9, 120 The Canadian Shanlys,' 15 UWO, RC, uncatalogued map, 'Survey of Norman's Grove' UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.' Macdonagh, The Age of O'Connell, 1830-45,' 166; Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 304-16 UWO, RC, B4296,10 Sept. 1835, D. Stewart to J. Shanly Fitzpatrick, 'Emigration, 1801-70,' 562-622; Dunae, Gentlemen Immigrants, 7-8; Akenson, The Irish in Ontario, 21; Adams, Ireland and Irish Emigration, 158-239; Houston and Smyth, Irish Emigration and Settlement; Elliot, Irish Migrants in the Canadas The letters referred to in n8 above often have an irritating, supercilious tone.

Notes to pages 9-12

197

17 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Miscellaneous,' 20 Oct. 1835, 'Auctioneer's List of All Items Sold, and Their Value, John Littledale Auctioneer.' It has proved impossible to determine how much money Shanly had with him when he departed, but the proceeds of this auction could not have been the whole amount. He had no land to sell, but he must have had cash saved. He was confident enough to leave without collecting a sum still owed him by one of the estate owners he worked for. 18 Macdonagh, The Age of O'Connell,' 166 19 UWO, RC, B4296, inventories of china, books, etc., dating from the 1870s; UWO, RC, Landon Papers, Shanly Family Scrapbook, 'West Missouri and Thorndale Story Recalled,' clipping from London Free Press, 12 June 1937; Canadian Railroad Historical Association Archives, Shanly Family Scrapbook, The Shanly Homestead,' clipping from St Mary's Journal, n.d. [c.1896-8]; private collection, 7 Mar. 1897, WS to Harold Malet 20 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 5 June 1836, WS to Aunt Harriet; 'The Canadian Shanlys,' 18; Langton, ed., A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, 10-24 21 Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 228 22 The Canadian Shanlys,' 18 23 UWO, RC, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 29 Aug. 1836, Coote-Nisbitt Shanly (hereafter CNS)to Aunt Harriet 24 The Canadian Shanlys,' 18-20; 'cavalcade' is WS's word. 25 Ibid. 26 Illustrated Historical Atlas of Middlesex County, 9; Houston and Smyth, Irish Emigration and Settlement, 131-8; Russell, 'Forest into Farmland: Upper Canadian Clearing Rates, 1822-1839,' 135-9 27 The Canadian Shanlys,' 21-2; interview with Lucy Little, Thorndale, 19 June 1992; The Canadian Shanlys,' 25 28 UWO, RC, maps of the Monsarrat land, the Ball land, and genealogy of the Monsarrat family; B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 29 Aug. 1836, CNS to Aunt Harriet 29 The Canadian Shanlys,' 28; AO, SR MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' CNS to Frank Shanly (hereafter FS), 18 Aug. 1853 30 The Canadian Shanlys,' 23-4; Read, The London District Oligarchy in the Rebellion Era'; UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 6 June 1838, Charles Shanly (hereafter CS) to WS; Askin, John Baptist (Jean Baptiste),' DCB 9:8-9 31 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 22 June 1838, CS to WS; Stacey, Canada and the British Army, 17; Hamilton, The Canadian Militia: From 1816 to the Crimean War,' 468 32 The Canadian Shanlys,' 25

198 Notes to pages 13-18 33 Ibid. In 'Shanly, Francis (Frank)/ DCB 11:817-19, H.V. Nelles suggests that the name was chosen because of the thorny life that lay ahead of them - an interesting but rather illogical speculation. 34 Thorndale House still stands, having been bought from the Shanly family in the 1920s by the Harrises, a prominent and historically minded London, Ontario, family; it has been preserved almost in its original form (interviews with Lucy Little, 19 June and 10 November 1992). For the major renovation, see AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 8 Aug., 1 Sept., 18 and 22 Oct., 25 Nov., and 17 Dec. 1853, Robert Shanly (hereafter RS) to FS. 35 The Canadian Shanlys,'26 36 Ibid., 24 37 Ibid., 19, 22, 25 (where he states that the family cat had become his confidant), and 27-8 38 Ibid., 28; 'Killaly, Hamilton Hartley,' DCB 10:403-6 39 The Canadian Shanlys,' 28; AO, SP, MU2719,19 Oct. 1848, CNS to FS, and 31 Oct. 1848, RS to FS; MU2731, 20 Oct. 1848, WS to FS 40 The Canadian Shanlys,' 28-9; 'Shanly, Charles Dawson,' DCB 10: 648-9; UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1840, CS to WS; National Archives of Canada (hereafter NA), RG11, vol. 753, 'Staff Register' 41 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 28 Feb. 1842, CNS to WS; The Canadian Shanlys,' 27 42 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 5 Feb. 1843, CNS to WS 43 Johnson, 'Land Policy, Population Growth and Social Structure in the Home District, 1793-1851,' 49; Parr, 'Hired Men: Ontario Agricultural Wage Labour in Historical Perspective' 44 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Personal Corr.,' 15 May 1841, CNS to WS 45 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 6 Nov. 1841,15 June 1842, and 22 Oct. 1843, CNS to WS 46 The Canadian Shanlys/ 29; UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Personal Corr./ 18 Mar. 1841, FS to WS, and 15 May 1841, CNS to WS; 'WS Corr. 18321850,' 6 Nov. 1841, CNS to WS 47 Logan, Through the Years in West Nissouri, 24; UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850/6 Nov. 1841,11 Jan. 1842,15 June 1842, CNS to WS 48 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850/ 5 Feb., 7 Mar., 5 June, 6 Aug., 22 Oct., and 9 Dec., 1843, CNS to WS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS 49 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 5 Feb., 5 June, 6 Aug., 22 Oct., and 9 Dec. 1843,11 Mar. and 19 May 1844, CNS to WS 50 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850/ 15 June 1842, CNS to WS; 'Shanly Family Personal Corr./ 18 Dec. 1842, WS to CNS

Notes to pages 19-23

199

51 UWO, RC, 'Shanty Family Personal Corr./ 27 Jan. 1841, CNS to WS; UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 6 Nov. 1841, 28 Feb. and 15 June 1842, 7 Mar. 1843, and 12 July 1845 (quotation from last letter). There were only two surviving children from Shanty's second marriage, a boy and a girl. The other boy had died when they were in Hamilton. 52 Landon, 'British Regiments in London' 53 Armstrong, The Forest City, 55,60; Miller, This Was London, 41-3; de Pentier, Posted to Canada, 55-61; Burant and Saunders, The Garrison Years, 519 54 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanty Family Personal Corr.,' 27 Jan. 1841, CNS to WS; ibid., 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 28 Feb. 1842, 5 June 1843,13 Jan. 1844, CNS to WS, and 18 June 1843, FS to WS. Miller, This Was London, 42, a playbill of 'The Gentlemen Amateurs' shows James Shanty among the actors and Coote Shanty singing The Widow Malone' during an intermission between the two plays. Most of the men named on this playbill were friends of the Shanlys. 55 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr. 1838-49,' 27 Oct. 1849 (filed as 1847), Clara Coupland to FS. For the latter quote, see AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr. 185153,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to WS 56 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr. 1851-53,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS 57 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr. 1838-50,' 23 Dec. 1849, CNS to FS 58 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr. 1838-50,' 27 Jan. 1845 and 23 Apr. 1845, Lundy toFS 59 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr. 1851-53,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS 60 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanty Family Personal Corr.,' 18 Mar. 1841, FS to WS; 'WS Corr.,' 18 June 1843, FS to WS; painting of the steeplechase by Lady Evelene-Marie Mitchell Alexander in Burant and Saunders, The Garrison Years, 40 61 Thompson, English Landed Society, 16-18, 95; Mingay, The Gentry, 195; Kirby, The English Country Gentleman, 209-55 62 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 19 May, 9 July, and 28 Oct. 1844, CNStoWS 63 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 27 Aug., 29 Nov. 1844,17 Mar. and 23 Apr. 1845, Lundy to FS 64 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 12 July 1845, CNS to WS 65 AO, SP, MU2719,12 July and 9 Sept. 1847, CNS to FS, and 24 Feb. and 30 Oct. 1847, Harry Allen to FS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 4 Aug. and 28 Oct. 1850, CNS to FS; Hamilton, The Canadian Militia' 66 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 23 Apr. 1845, J. Lundy to FS 67 AO, SP, MU2685, accounts with T. Drake and J. Wells; AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen.

200 Notes to pages 23-30

68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77

78 79

Corr.,' 10 Aug., 23 Oct., 11 Nov. 1845,17 Feb. 1846, J. Lundy to FS, and 6 Jan. 1846, CNS to FS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Corr. 1850,' 3 Feb. 1850, Fanny Coupland to FS, 20 Jan. 1850, Lundy to FS AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr., 1843-1849,' 28 June 1846, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS; AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' Harry Allen to FS AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr. 1851-53,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 12 July, 9 Sept. 1847,12 Mar. and 24 Apr. 1848, CNS to FS; ibid., 12 July 1847, JS to FS; ibid., 10 Apr. 1848, James Young to FS UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 30 Sept. 1848 and 11 Mar. 1849, CNS to WS; AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 19 Oct. 1848, CNS to FS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr. 1851-53,' 14 Nov. 1850, CNS to FS; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 20 Oct. 1848, WS to FS; The Canadian Shanlys,' 29-32 Moodie, Life in the Clearings, xxix AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 13 Aug. 1847, James Shanly (hereafter JS) to FS A gentleman's attitude to money is proverbially one of lordly indifference' (Thompson, English Landed Society, 16) Moodie, Life in the Clearings, xxx Dunae, Gentleman Emigrants, 13-31; 'Moodie, John Wedderburn Dunbar,' DCB 9:566-7; 'Strickland, Samuel,' DCS 9:767-9; 'Strickland, Catharine Parr (Traill),' DCB 12:995-9; 'Langton, John,' DCB 12:527-8; Langton, A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, editor's preface; Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 13 Aug. 1847 and 21 Feb. 1851, JS to FS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 1 July 1851, CNS to FS; AO, SP, MU2722, n.d. [c.1850], fragment of letter, JS to FS AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 9 Dec. 1843 and 11 Mar. 1844, CNS to WS; ibid., 13 Aug. 1847, 21 Feb., 20 July, and 17 Aug. 1851, JS to FS. Their father had unpaid mortgages totalling £560. James Jr's house still stands on Picadilly Street in London, Ontario.

2: Learning on the Job 1 Personal Communication from librarian of Institution of Civil Engineers, London, re ICE membership lists 2 Buchanan, 'Gentlemen Engineers;' Haber, The Quest for Authority and Honour, 295; Best, Mid-Victorian Britain, 249; Thompson, English Landed Society, 22; Mingay, The Gentry, 117; Way, Common Labour, 57-8 3 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 21 Feb. 1851, JS to FS, and 7 Apr. 1853, CNS to FS 4 UWO, RC, B4296, 'James Shanly: Letters Received 1820-1836,' 10 Sept. 1835,

Notes to pages 30-4

201

D. Stewart to JS; Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, 144; Spring, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century, 97-8 5 Best, Mid-Victorian Britain, 247; Hughes, The Professions in the Eighteenth Century'; Buchanan, The Engineers, 13-14, 34, 39-45; Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 218-70 (quotation, p. 260) 6 The Canadian Shanlys,' 26 (see chap. 1, nl) 7 The Canadian Shanlys,' 19, 26 8 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 18 June 1843, FS to WS 9 Roll, Victorian Engineering, 15 10 Chrimes, Civil Enginering, 20-2; Buchanan, The Engineers, 30-45; Pannell, An Illustrated History of Civil Engineering, 58-80; Rae and Volti, The Engineer in History, 90-7 11 Buchanan, The Engineers, 38-43; Chrimes, Civil Engineering, 20-2; Joby, The Railway Builders, 23; Musson and Robinson, The Profession of Civil Engineer in the Eighteenth Century'; Skempton and Wright, 'Early Members of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers'; Smith, 'Professional Practice,' in Skempton, ed.John Smeaton, FRS 12 Rolt, Victorian Engineering, 23-45, and George and Robert Stephenson, 10818, 179-80; Chrimes, Civil Engineering, 25-6; Buchanan, The Engineers, 768; Pannell, Illustrated History of Civil Enginnering, 100-7 13 Chrimes, Civil Engineering, 24 14 Reynolds, The Engineer in Nineteenth-Century America,' in his The Engineer in America; Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, 1-53; Watkins, The Beginnings of Engineering' 15 Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, esp. 23 16 Ibid., 24 36-46; Pessen, Jacksonian America, 122-53; Morison, From KnowHow to Nowhere, 36-9; Watkins, The Beginnings of Engineering,' 39; Reynolds, The Engineer in Nineteenth-Century America,' 19-21, and 'Education of American Engineers before the Morrill Act,' in which he reveals the existence of many more engineering schools than anyone previously thought existed. 17 Dilts, The Great Road, esp. 159-69; Rae and Volti, The Engineer in History, 140 18 Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, 16; Reynolds, The Engineer in the Nineteenth-Century America,' 25; Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience, 115-23; Foner, Free Soil, Free Labour, Free Men, 11-39 19 Owram, Building for Canadians, 12 20 For Mills, see Millard, The Master Spirit of the Age, 6; Calhoun The American Civil Engineer, 36; Canada, Public Works, Alphabetical Record of Engineers and Superintendents; for Barrett, see Report of the Commissioner of Public

202 Notes to pages 35-7 Works for 1846,12 July 1847, 2; Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, app. D, 210; for S. Keefer, see DCB 11:463-5; for T. Reefer, Murphy, Thomas Keefer, 5-6; for Killaly, DCB 9:403-6; for Baird, DCB 7:33-4; Canada [Province], Journals of the Legislative Assembly (JLA), 1842, app. Z [app. 7] 21 Col. Philpott's testimony re route of Beauharnois Canal, in JLA, 1842, app. Z; Capt. William Robinson's 'Report on the Proposed Trunk Line of Railway,' in Report of the Commissioners of Public Works for the Year 1848 22 This count includes all positions with the board that used the word 'engineer'; Report of the Board of Works for 1843, schedule D; NA, RG11, vol. 135, Engineers' instruction book and other Board of Works papers; Millard, The Master Spirit of the Age, 6. 23 The Canadian Shanlys,' 22; Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada, 140-6; Guillet, The Story of Canadian Roads, 8224 JLA, 1841, app. D, 'Report on the Chambly Canal' (work could proceed here because capital had already been raised locally); Hodgetts, Pioneer Public Service, 178-9; Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada, 77; UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1840, CS to WS 25 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Personal Corr.,' 27 Jan. 1841, CS to WS; ibid., 22 Nov. 1841, CS to ]S;JLA, 1843, app. JJ, 'First Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate and Report on the Outrages ...,' testimony of WS; Taylor and Baskerville, A Concise History of Business, 216 26 Owram, Buidingfor Canadians, 13-17; The Canadian Shanlys,' 22 27 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr., 1832-50,' 11 Jan., 28 Feb., and 15 June 1842, CNS to WS; NA, RG11, vol. 65, file 7, 28 Jan. 1848, WS to commissioners of public works 28 Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada, 83-4; Legget, Canals of Canada, 150-62 29 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1842, WS to CNS. Walter's description can be corroborated in later Public Works reports. 30 Kingsford, The Canadian Canals, 48 fn (Kingsford drew his information from the participants); JLA, 1842, app. Z, nos. 8,9,10; NA, RG11, vol. 94, var ious letters to Tate from Feb. through Aug., esp. 10 Aug. 1842; UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1842, WS to CNS 31 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1842, WS to CNS 32 NA, RG11, vol. 94, 14 Oct. 1842, Mills to Board of Works; ibid., 21 Oct. 1842, Killaly to Mills, and 23 Dec. 1842, Mills to Board of Works. The quotation (and list of contractors) is from NA, RG 11, vol. 112, Board of Works, Minute Book, 6 Dec. 1842 33 UWO, RC, B4296, 'Shanly Family Corr.,' 18 Dec. 1842, WS to CNS. 'It is a beautiful situation in summer,' Walter wrote.

Notes to pages 38-41 203 34 JLA, 1843, app. T, Report of the Commissioners to Inquire into the Disturbances upon the Line of the Beauharnois Canal during the Summer of 1843; Owram, Building For Canadians, 28. The number of fatalities is from Owram, drawn from newspaper accounts; early reports said as many as thirty deaths; the government report said only six deaths were caused by the military attack. 35 NA, RG11, vol. 94, 7 Apr. 1843, Board of Works to WS, 11 and 22 Apr. 1843, provincial secretary East to WS; UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr., 1832-1850,' 6 Aug. 1843, CNS to WS;/L4,1843, app. T, Report of the Commissioners, deposition nos. 25, 26, 32,40 36 UWO, RC, B4296, 'WS Corr. 1832-1850,' 22 Oct. 1843, CNS to WS; Report of the Board of Works for 1843, schedule D, 16 37 NA, RG11, vol. 94, correspondence registries from the time. Kierzkowski's resignation letter is 27 Feb. 1843; a report on the state of the work from Nov. 1844 is signed by Mills but written in WS's hand. 38 Report of the Board of Works, Dec. 1844,6; NA, RG11, vol. 94,15 Mar. 1843, Board of Works to Mills; ibid., 18 Mar., Mills to Board of Works, and 26 Mar., Board of Works to Mills and to WS 39 Scores of letters in NA, RG11, vol. 94 40 NA, RG11, vol. 94, 22 Nov. 1845, Board of Works to WS; ibid., 27 June 1846, WS reports to the Board, and 6 and 7 Mar. 1846, WS to board; also various letters April through June pertaining to the Beauharnois; AO, SP, MU273 'WS Corr.,' 28 June 1846, WS to FS (the letter is sent from Beauharnois). 41 Report of the Commissioners of Public Works Laid before the Legislative Assembly 12 July 1847,1; Owram, Building for Canadians, 31-43, and 'Management by Enthusiasm'; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 28 June and 3 Sept. 1846, WS to FS 42 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 Sept. 1846, WS to FS, and 28 June 1846, WS to F 43 Taylor, 'Historical Development of the Four Welland Canals,' 48-55; Report of the Commissioners of Public Works for the Year 1848, app. N, A Statement of the Public Works of the Province of Canada... since the Union (10 February 1841) to the 31st December 1848 ...' written by James Stewart; Keefer's reports in Report of the Commissioners of Public Works... 12 July 1847 (for 1846) and Report of the Commissioners of Public Works for 1847 (dated 25 Feb. 1848) 44 Keefer's reports, as above; NA, RG11, vol. 65, file 7,31 Dec. 1846, S. Keefer to T. Begley, and 28 Jan. 1848, WS to commissioners of public works 45 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 6 June and 28 Oct. 1843, WS to FS 46 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 95; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 Sept. 1843, WS to FS

204 Notes to pages 41-5 47 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Con.,' 28 Oct. 1843, WS to FS 48 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 25 Dec. 1846, Harry Allen to FS; also 3 Feb. 1847, JS to FS, and testimonial letter from Roswell Benedict, 4 Oct. 1848 49 NA, RG11, vol. 65, file 7, 12 June 1848, S. Keefer's report on expenditures and work remaining to be done - Samuel Zimmerman, who was active in GWR circles, had a contract on the Welland. 50 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Estimates, Notebooks,' various receipts; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 June 1847, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 24 June 1847, JS to FS 51 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 12 Feb. 1847, WS to FS, and MU2719, 'Gen. Corr./ 3 Feb. 1847, JS to FS 52 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 June (quotation) and 4 Aug. 1847; AO, SP, MU2719, 21 Sept. 1847, JS to FS 53 Stuart, Report on the Great Western Railway, Canada West, to the President and Directors; Comm, The History of the Great Western Railway'; Smith, The Early Years of the Great Western Railway,' 210; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 97; Baskerville, Americans in Britain's Backyard' 54 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 13 Aug. 1847, JS to FS; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 17 Nov. and 17 Dec. 1847, WS to FS 55 AO, SP, MU2714, FS Notebook (hereafter FSNB); NA, RG11, vol. 65, file 7, monthly payrolls; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 June 1847 56 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB 57 Taylor, 'Historical Development of the Four Welland Canals,' 55; NA, RG11, vol. 65, file 7, 14 Dec. 1847, Keefer to Begley, 16 Dec. (telegram) Begley to Keefer, 17 Dec. (telegram) Keefer to Begley, and 2 May 1847, Keefer to Begley; Owram, 'Management by Enthusiasm' and Building for Canadians, 4350; AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB; Report of the Commissioners of Public Works for the Year 1848,1 Feb. 1849. This reduction also set C.S. Gzowski and T.C. Keefer free to begin their successful independent engineering careers. 58 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB, and MU2685, 'Estimates, Notebooks' for carpet bag receipt (it cost 12/6) 59 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB, and MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 11 Sept. 1848, WS to FS 60 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB 61 AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 20 Oct. 1848, CS to FS. Charles, a clerk with the department, knew of Frank's appointment before Frank wrote to tell him about it. 62 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 20 and 27 Oct. 1848, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB 63 Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 87-8 (his sources are probably contemporary local newspapers); Meyer, History of Transportation in the United States before 1860, 376-81

Notes to pages 45-51 205 64 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 6, 8,12, and 26 Dec. 1848,12,22, and 30 Jan., 3 and 15 Apr. 1849, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2685, 'Estimates, Notebooks/ receipt from St Lawrence Hotel in Ogdensburg; ibid., 30 Jan. 1849, Table of Farm Crossings at Grade' 65 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 29 Dec. 1848,3,17,24, and 26 Apr., 4 May, 1849; AO, SP, MU2685, 'Misc.,' Apr. 1849, Kneass to FS 66 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 9 June and 3 Apr. 1849, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2719, 'Gen. Corr.,' 30 May 1849, CNS to FS; MU2685, 'Estimates, Notebooks,' numerous boarding house and laundering receipts from Columbia; ibid, 'Notebooks,' black notebook, entries dated 30 Mar. and 17 Dec. 1849 67 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 Dec. 1849, WS to FS 68 Ibid., 24 Mar. 1850, WS to FS 69 Ibid., 14 Apr. 1850, WS to FS 70 Ibid., 19 Mar. 1850, WS to FS 71 Ibid., 13 Dec. J849 and 12 Mar. 1850, WS to FS 72 Ibid., 2 Aug. and 3 Oct. 1849,20 Jan., 20 and 30 June 1850 73 Walter asked Frank to send him his copy of Nicholson's Carpentry Guide immediately on being given the job of designing the Lake Champlain bridge (AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 12 Dec. 1848, WS to FS). The role of books in their learning is explored below. 74 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 18, 22, 31 July 1849, WS to FS 75 Ibid. 1 Nov. 1849; further examples are 5 May, 19 June, and 17 July 1850. 76 Ibid., 8 Jan., 2 and 17 Aug. 1849,11 Jan., 3 Apr., and 28 July 1850, WS to FS 77 Ibid., 5, 7 May and 20 June 1850; AO, SP, MU2685, 'Notebooks,' black notebook; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 24 May 1850, William French to WS 78 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 30 July 1850 79 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 4 July 1850, WS to FS. This comment is a footnote to the letter. 80 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 2 and 28 Sept. 1850, James Worrall to FS 81 AO, SP, MU2725, 28 Aug. 1850, hotel receipt 82 Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860, 43-4; Meyer, History of Transportation, 214-17 83 AO, F647, file 13, 'Map and Profile of Union Canal'; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 16 Nov. 1850, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2714, 'Misc./ 4 Feb. 1851, 'Chief Engineer's Report'; AO, SP, MU2713, 'Payrolls/ In comparison, the Beauharnois Canal had cost about £300,000 ($1,200,000) by the end of 1847 (Report of the Commissioners of Public Works for 1847, 15). 84 AO, SP, MU2713, letterbook, 2 Nov. 1850, FS to contractors; ibid., 'Corr./ 18 Dec. 1850, Hage to FS, and 30 Nov. 1850, A.M. Bacon to FS 85 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 2 Jan. 1851, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS

206 Notes to pages 51-5

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

97 98 99 100 101

102

103 104

Corr./ 16 Nov., 23 Dec. 1850, WS to FS; also a technical description with 'Jan 1850?' pencilled on it AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 13 Jan. 1851, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 2 Jan. 1851, FS to WS AO, F647, file 13, drawings of aqueduct, lock gates at Mifflin Dam, and short rail line; AO, SP, MU2713 and 2714 AO, SP, 'WS Corr.,' 11 and 14 Nov. 1850, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 20 Nov. 1850, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 30 Nov. 1850, WS to Schuylkill Navigation Company AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 18 Nov., 1 Dec. 1850, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2731 'WS Corr.,' 1 Dec. 1850, WS to FS Ibid. AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 10 Dec. 1850 and 24 Jan. 1851, WS to FS; Gzowski, Report of the Committee on the Montreal and Kingston Section of the Grand Trunk Railway AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 23 Dec. 1850,1 and 13 Jan. 1850, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 1,24 Jan., 9, 24 Feb., and 13 Mar. 1851, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2664, 'Bytown & Prescott/ clipping from Bytown Packet, 23 Jan. 1852 (should be 1851) naming Charles Shanly as the chief engineer; Shanly, Report on the Preliminary and Locating Surveys of the Bytown and Prescott Railway and Report on the Location, Surveys and Estimates of the Bytown and Prescoft Railroad AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 5 Apr. 1851, WS to FS Ibid., 24 Feb. 1851, WS to FS Ibid., 15 Mar., 2 and 15 Apr., 16 May, 23 June, 13 and 30 July, 14 Sept., and 6 Oct. 1851,WStoFS AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr./ 27 Oct. 1851, FS to various contractors; ibid., Philadelphia, 30 Oct. and 3 Nov. 1851, Robert Davidson (company president) toFS AO, SP, MU2713, letterbook, 1 May 1851, FS to Worrall; AO, SP, MU2714, 5 May 1851, Worrall to FS; AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr./ 18 July and 11 Aug. 1851, Lewis to FS; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 24 Feb., 2 and 5 Apr. 1851 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 30 Nov. 1851, Worrall to FS; AO, SP, MU2714, 'Corr./ 1 Jan. 1852 from Worrall and 2 Feb. 1852 from Davidson; also AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr./ 8 July 1852, Zimmerman to FS AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 23, 26 Oct., 9,23 Nov., and 5 Dec. 1851, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr/ 23 June and 23 Nov. 1851. Further examples of his profligacy are found in AO, SP, MU2713, 'Invoices, Receipts/ 27 Dec. 1850 (horse and buggy), and MU2725, 'Financial/ 26 May 1852, bill with

Notes to pages 56-63 207 E.T. Taylor (tailor). Full details of the child are revealed later, after it was born, in AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr.,' 16 May and 3 Aug. 1852, Reilly to FS, and 14 Aug. 1852, Godfrey to FS, and 23 Nov. 1851, WS to FS 105 Calhoun contrasts this uncertainty with the much more secure programs of study in medicine and law (The American Civil Engineer, 48). 106 The Canadian Journal 1 (1852) noted the 'small share of public notice it has hitherto attracted.' 107 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB 108 AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr./ 19 Aug. 1851, Worrall to FS 109 Ibid., 29 Mar. 1851, Worrall to FS 110 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Notebooks,' black notebook, inscribed 'Northern Rail Road, Ogds., January 24,1849' 111 AO, SP, MU2713, 'Corr.,' 30 Sept. 1851, E. Shapely to FS; ibid., 12 Apr. 1851, Dieterich to FS, and 11 Apr. 1851, Davidson to FS 112 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB, 24 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1848; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 2 Apr. 1851, WS to FS; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 83 fn 113 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Estimates, Notebooks,' 3 Jan. 1849, ace. with L.D. Pomeroy; AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB. His copy of Scribner's Guide is in MU2685. 114 AO, SP, MU2714, FSNB, entry dated 1 Jan. 1849. His copies of Castle's and The Assistant Engineer's are in University of Toronto Library, Special Collections. 115 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 27 Feb., 30 Jan., and 23 Feb. 1849, WS to FS 116 A few other of FS's books that deal with the mechanical side of railroading - steam engines, locomotives, rolling stock, iron structures - are in University of Toronto Library, Special Collections; they all date from this time or a few years later. 117 This accords with what one historian of engineering wrote a generation ago (Emmerson, Engineering Education: A Social History, 60). 118 JLA, 1842, app. Z [app.7]; Smith, 'Professional Practice' 119 Buchanan, The Engineers, 39-45, and 'The Diaspora of British Engineering'; Careless, 'Mid-Victorian Liberalism in Central Canadian Newspapers, 1850-67'; Radforth, 'Sydenham and Utilitarian Reform' 120 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 21 Sept. 1851, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial,' 25 Sept. 1850, account with Delmonico Hotel, New York; ibid., 14 Jan. 1852, account with Robinson Hall, London; 30 Dec. 1851, receipt from T. Bilton, Toronto, for £15 worth of clothing 3: A Rough Ride on the Grand Trunk Railway 1 City of Toronto Directories, 1851 and 1856; City of Toronto Archives,

208 Notes to pages 63-7 Armstrong and Beere panoramic photographs nos. 18 and 19,1856; AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial, 1849-62,' Ellah's Hotel receipt, 28 Jan. 1852 2 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, 6 3 Ibid.; and AO, MSS Railway Coll., MU2371, Allan RK. Brough, 'Survey of the Route of the Goderich & Toronto Railway,' field notes 4 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, 6-7; AO, SP, MU2690, 26 Jan. 1852, WS to FS 5 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, 7-8 6 AO, SP, MU2697, 'Notebooks.' WS persisted in the less senior title of'principal assistant' for a time. 7 AO, SP, MU2720,4 June and 8 Sept. 1853, B. Reilly to FS 8 AO, SP, MU2697, Toronto and Guelph Railway notebook (hereafter, T&G NB), 19 and 20 Feb. [1852]; AO, SP, MU2695, 'Payrolls, 1852,' Feb. 1852; AO, SP, MU2694, 'Financial/ 13 Mar. 1852, voucher for drawing equipment and furniture 9 AO, SP, MU2697, T&G NB, 20 Feb. [1852]; also referred to in entries for 21, 23, 24, 25, and 26 Feb. [1852] 10 AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852/23 and 28 Feb. 1852, FS to WS, and MU2690, 'Corr., 1852,' 27 Feb. 1852, WS to FS 11 Ellis, The Development of Railway Engineering/ 325; Rolt, Victorian Engineering, 42-3; Kirby, The Early Years of Modern Civil Engineering, 114; Pannell, An Illustrated History of Civil Engineering, 97-111 12 One of the few published descriptions of this process is in the editor's introduction to Shaw, Tales of a Pioneer Surveyor, ed. Raymond Hull, but it refers to a slightly later period. 13 AO, SP, MU2697, T&G NB, 26, 27, 28 Feb. and 1, 4 Mar. 1852 14 AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852,' 6 Mar. 1852, FS to WS 15 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railways, 8; AO, SP, MU2697, T&G NB, 10,17,18 Mar. 1852 16 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 1852,' 18 Mar. 1852, WS to FS. This was a draft of the letter; the lot numbers had not been ascertained. 17 ibid.; AO, SP, MU2697, T&G NB, 23, 27, 29 Mar. 1852 18 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, 8-9 19 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 1852/ 3 Apr. 1852, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2697, T&G NB for most of April; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 20 Apr. 1852, C.L. Davies to FS, and 25 Apr. 1852, A.G. Robinson to FS; AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852/ 4 May 1852, Henry Strange to FS

Notes to pages 68-74 209 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

AO, SP, MU2695, 'Payrolls, 1852,' and MU2694, 'Financial' AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial, 1849,' 21 Apr. 1852, Elian's Hotel receipt Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway Ibid. Land costs for all four routes were estimated to be the same. AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 52,' 1 June 1852, FS to H. Munro Mackenzie Ibid., 3, 11 July 1852, Davies to FS; AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852,' 11 Aug. 1852, FS to WS AO, SP, MU2695, 'Payrolls, 1852,' payrolls for Robinson and Steers parties for July; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 1852,' 19 July, FS to WS, and 3 Aug. 1852, Steers to FS; AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852,' 28 July 1852, Robinson to FS; AO, SP, MU2693, 'Corr.,' 19 July, no year, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 1852,' 31 May 1852, FS to F. Kerr (PLS), and 9 July 1852, FS to John Tully; AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1852,' and MU2690, 'Corr., 1852' AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports,' 11 Aug. 1852, FS to WS, and MU2697, T&G NB Nelles, 'Introduction' in The Philosophy of Railroads and Other Essays, by T.C. Keefer, xxiii. If Nelles's opinion is based only on Keefer's work, it is well founded; see Keefer, Report on the Preliminary Survey of the Kingston and Toronto Section of the Grand Trunk Railway; C.S. Gzowski's report in Report of the Committee on the Montreal and Kingston Section of the Grand Trunk Railway (1851), which is only nine pages of generalities, is no better. Way, Common Labour, 57 Shanly, Report on the Preliminary Surveys of the Toronto and Guelph Railway, 7 AO, SP, MU2696, 'Specifications,' MU2698, 'Misc./ 'Notice to Contractors,' and MU2694, 'Financial,' advertisement AO, SP, MU2695, 'Payrolls, 1852,' and MU2694, 'Financial,' J&H account Toronto & Guelph Railway Co., Second Annual Report of the Board of Directors (6 June 1853) (hereafter T&G Railway, Second Annual Report), 19; Klassen, 'L.H. Holton,' 140; NA, RG30, vol. 487, Toronto & Guelph ledger T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 9 T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 8-11; Klassen, 'L.H. Holton,' 142; AO, Byerly Papers, MU454, '1853,' 5 May 1853, S. Thompson to Township of Guelph; Report of the Special Committee to Enquire and Report as to the Condition, Management, and Prospects of the Grand Trunk Railway (hereafter Report of the Special Committee), Q. 31 Klassen, 'L.H. Holton,' 135-7; Skelton, Alexander Tilloch Gait, 37; DCB 12:389-96 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr., 1852,' various letters from Robinson and Davies to

210 Notes to pages 74-8

39 40 41

42

43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54

FS during November, and MU2698, 'Misc./ rough calculations and descriptions AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Con.,' 25 Nov. 1852, WS to FS, and MU2690, 'Corr.,' 1 Dec. 1852, Czowski to FS AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr.,' appointment letters, and MU2698, 'Misc.,' 'Instruc tions' AO, SP, MU2696, 'Payrolls.' An Assistant's salary ranged from £20 to £25 per month; a Subassistant's from £15 to £17; a rodman's from £9 to £10; and so on down to the axemen and other labourers who were hired, as needed, for five shillings a day. AO, SP, MU2694, 'Financial/ receipts from Weston, Guelph, and Georgetown; MU2698, 'Misc./ inventories of possessions for Mountain Division, 27 Nov. 1852, and Humber, March 1853; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 10 Apr. 1853, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2697, Abstracts of Vouchers/ and MU2691, 'Corr./ 24 Mar. 1854, FS to Mr Gooding AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports/ 28 Feb. 1853, Davies to FS T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 10 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 19 Feb. 1853, WS to FS, Prescott; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 21 Feb. 1853, FS to Gzowski, 4 Feb. FS to Robinson, and 23 Feb. 1853, Robinson to FS. The brick culvert collapsed twenty-five years later, but that was because the timber foundation piles were undermined by an extraordinarily high water level, not because of a failure of the brick arch itself (Metro Toronto Reference Library, T.E.C. Collection, William A. Johnson, pen and ink drawing of collapsed bridge); AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr./ 26 Sept. 1878, E.P. Hannaford (chief engineer, GTR) to FS AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 6,11, 30 Dec. 1852, and 3 Jan. 1853, among others, Webster to FS; ibid., 1,18, 22, Feb. and 4,17 Mar. 1853, FS to Thompson, 2 Feb. 1852, FS to various county clerks, and 30 Apr. 1853, FS to Wilson T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 11-13; Report of the Special Committee, Q. 15V2 and Qs. 428-9 AO SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 14 Mar. 1853, WS to FS Ibid., 25 Mar. 1853, FS to M. Steers, and 9 May 1853, Geo. Roberts to FS, from 'Bosanquet Post Office near the big "Sable"' Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 66-88; Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 3-23; Skelton, Alexander Tilloch Gait, 16-48; Bliss, Northern Enterprise, 181-90 Report of the Special Committee, Qs. 30-6 T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 7 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 14 Sept. 1851, WS to FS

Notes to pages 78-84 211 55 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 31 Mar. 1853, WS to FS 56 Ibid. 57 JLA, 1857, app. 6 (vol. 3), Toronto and Sarnia Railroad. Copies of the Contracts Entered into by Gzowski and Company'; T&G Railway, Second Annual Report, 14 58 AO, SP, MU2693, 'Estimates' (first estimates are March and April); Report of the Special Committee, Q. 15!/2 59 AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports,' 30 Apr. 1854, FS to Gzowski 60 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr.,' 15 Apr., 2, 4 May, and 16 June 1853, FS to Gzowski; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 20 June 1853, WS to FS 61 Klassen, 'L.H. Holton,' 157 62 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 23 June 1853, Stewart to FS; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 30 June 1853, FS to Mackenzie; AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr.,' 30 June 1853, FS to various assistants 63 Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, 1-53, 68-78; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 62 64 Report of the Special Committee, Gait's testimony, Q. 90; Brooke, 'William Mackenzie in France' 65 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 84, and Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 24, for A.M. Ross. Report of the Special Committee, Gait's testimony, Qs. 90, 97-9 Canadian Journal 1 (1852), 22; AO, SP, MU2694, 'Financial,' 30 Sept. 1852, receipt for expenses on the trip 66 AO, SP, MU2694, 'Financial,' 30 Sept. 1852; also 15 Aug. 1853, WS to FS 67 AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr./ 21 July 1853, Gzowski to FS, and 22 July 1853, Gzowski to Mackenzie 68 Ibid., 30 July 1853, Gzowski to FS 69 AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc./ 11 Jan. 1854, 'Principal Structures... on the Toronto and Sarnia Section...' 70 AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr./ 30 July 1853, Robinson to FS and to Wm Forbes; ibid., 1 and 2 Aug. 1853, Gzowski to FS, and 2 Aug. 1853, Gzowski to Worthington 71 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 3, 4, 5 Aug. 1853, WS to FS 72 Ibid., 10,15 Aug. 1853, WS to FS, and 21 Aug. 1853, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr./ 15 Mar. 1854, FS to J. Mulholland 73 AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr./ 29 Aug. 1853, Gzowski to FS, and 2 Sept. 1853, FS to Gzowski. The date of the personal note, also 29 Aug., has been misread as 1855 and has been misfiled accordingly in MU2692 74 AO, SP, MU 2691 and 2692, 'Corr./ 9 Oct. 1854, Gzowski to FS. For the Speed, see ibid., 2 and 4 Nov. 1853, Gzowski to FS; for the Eramosa, ibid., 19 Dec. 1853, Gzowski to FS; for the Nith, ibid., 9 Oct. 1854, Gzowski to FS; for the

212 Notes to pages 85-8

75

76

77 78 79

80 81

82 83 84

85

Grand, ibid., 30 Dec. 1854, Gzowski to FS, FS to Gzowski, and Mackenzie to FS, 25 Nov. 1853. See also ibid., 15 Jan. 1855, Stewart to FS, 4 Oct. 1854, Cooke to FS, and AO, SP, MU2696, 'Specifications,' original T&G specification for fencing compared with a new specification prepared in December 1853 AO, SP, MU2691, 'Con.,' 11 Jan. 1854, Stewart to FS, and MU2692, 'Corr.,' various letters in Nov. 1854. See also AO, SP, MU2692, 28 July 1855, Cooke to FS, and MU2720, 23 May 1855, Kertland to FS AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr.,' 6 Feb. 1854, FS to Worthington; ibid., 8 Feb. 1854, Worthington to FS, 10 Feb. 54, Gzowski to FS, and 11 Feb. 54, FS to Worthington; Hutcheson, Yorkville in Pictures, 13 AO, SP, MU2699, 'Misc. n.d.,' 22 Mar. 1854, 'Memorandum for Mr Shanly,' and MU2691, 'Corr.,' 23 Mar. 1854, FS to Gzowski AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' various letters, 1-17 Nov. 1854, and MU2731,2 Nov. 1854, WS to FS AO, SP, MU2693, 'Estimates, 1854-55,' progress reports. For the strike (precipitated by a dispute between the Engineering Department's inspector and the masons), see AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr.,' 20, 25 May, and 8 July 1853, Davies to FS. See also Hopper and Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 364. Report of the Special Committee, Q. ISVfe; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 104 AO, SP, MU2690, MU2691, and MU2692 (specifically: for going home, 1 No 1853, Davies to FS; for harvest, 9 Aug. 1853, Cooke to FS; for nearby road construction, 3 June 1854, Cooke to FS; a shortage of horses, 28 Feb. 1853; using farmers as a source of labour, 7 Dec. 1853 and 7 Feb. 1854) Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Shareholders of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, 12; McCalla, Planting the Province, 206-7 AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 26 Oct. 1854, FS to all assistants (letter from Gzowski enclosed); AO, SP, MU2696, 'Force Returns'; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 23 May 1855, J.B. Lee to FS AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc., 1855,' 16 July 1855, Gzowski to FS; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 10 and 29 May 1855, FS to Andrew Jarratt; AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc., 1855'; AO, SP, MU2697, Abstracts of Vouchers'; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 13 July 1855, Geo. Robinson to FS, 8 Aug. 1855, R.P. Cooke to FS, and 8 Dec. 1855, Wells to FS; Rolt, Victorian Engineering, 46-7 AO, SP, MU2698, 'Abstracts of Earthworks,' n.d., and Abstract of Wrought Iron'; AO, SP, MU2697, 'Corr.,' 30 Mar. 1855, FS to Monteur Iron Works and Rough and Ready Rolling Mills (of Danville, Pa.), and reply, 11 Apr. 1855; ibid., 5 Apr. 1855, FS to Yardley and Son, Pottsville, and to Morris and Jones,

Notes to pages 89-93 213 Philadelphia; ibid., 21 Nov. 1855, FS to Coulson; AO, SP, MU2696, 'Bills of Materials,' various bills of timber for the bridges (e.g., for Speed, 29 Dec. 1855); F. Cumberland, 'Notes on a Visit to the Works of the Grand Trunk Railway/ Canadian Journal 3 (1855-6), 225-7; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 1 and 2 Feb. 1856, WS to FS 86 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 3, 5,10,17, 21 Aug. 1853, WS to FS 87 Ibid., 1, 3 Sept. 1853, WS to FS (quotation from latter); AO, SP, MU2691, 2, 4 Nov. 1853, Gzowski to FS 88 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 24 Mar., 25 Apr., 20 Nov. 1854, and 10 Feb. 1855, WS to FS; ibid., 1854, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2696, 'Specifications/ 20 Nov. 1854 89 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ Jan. 1854, various letters; ibid., 25 Apr. 1854, 24 Sept. and 8 Dec. 1853, 5 Aug. 1854,10 Aug. and 31 July 1853, 25 Jan. 1854,1 and 2 Feb. 1856, all WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2696, Abstracts of Vouchers/ WS's salary is cited in Report of the Special Committee, Q. 217. See also Shanly, Report on the Port Huron and Lake Michigan (Michigan Northern) Railway, NA, RG30, vol. 1000, GTR minute books, 19 Oct. 1853, 21 June and 22 July 1854 90 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 28 July 1853,12 May and 2 June 1854, WS to FS; Kingsford, The Canadian Canals; Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, 78-82 91 AO, SP, MU2694, 'Financial' 92 AO, SP, MU2690-2, 'Corr./ various letters, e.g., 30 June 1853, FS to William Armstrong (later a notable watercolourist) moving him from Berlin to the Toronto office to do some drawings; ibid., 12 Dec. 1853, FS to A.G. Robinson, and 14 Mar. 1853, FS to J.O. Browne 93 This process has been pieced together from many sources in 'Corr./ 'Payrolls/ Abstracts of Vouchers/ and 'Financial' files in AO, SP, MU2690-2 and MU2694-7. 94 AO, SP, MU2690-2 numerous letters 95 AO, SP, MU2696, 'Specifications' (Dundas bridge, 15 Nov. 1853; gates, 6 Dec. 1853; ties, 2 Jan. 1854) 96 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 13 Oct. 1854, WS to FS; also AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr./ 21 Aug. 1853, FS to WS, and 11 Aug. 1854, Gregor Grant to FS 97 AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc./ statements of travelling expenses 98 Ibid., 'Notebooks' 99 AO, SP, MU2691-2, 'Corr./ 20 Aug. 1854, Gzowski to FS; ibid., 29 Aug. 1854, FS to Andrew Sterrett (of Brampton) and to Angus Gunn (of Bradford), and 4 Oct. 1854, FS to Gzowski; AO, SP, MU2694, 'Estimates/ Mar. 1856, 'Ties Delivered on the Mountain Division'

214 Notes to pages 93-8 100 AO, SP, MU2692, 'Con.,' 1 Feb. and 21 May 1855, FS to Gzowski, and 26 Nov. 1855, 'Stratford Gaol, Shaw & Wright, Contractors, to Mr. Shanly, President Engineer [sic], GTR'; AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc.,' 1 May 1855, statement of advances 101 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 25 Apr. 1853, FS to Cooke 102 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr./ 8 Dec. 1852, Robinson to FS (Robinson refers to 'a sketch the Chief Engineer gave me' which the dimensions of the valley did not permit him to follow); ibid., 26 Nov. 1852, Robinson to WS, and 27 Nov. 1852, Robinson to FS. For the culvert designs, see, for example, ibid., 1 and 6 Feb. 1853, Davies to FS 103 AO, SP, MU2690, 2691-3, 'Corr.' 104 AO, SP, MU2695, 'Reports, 1853,' 28 Feb 1853, Davies to FS 105 AO, SP, MU2696, 'Bills of Materials.' The practice was most common on the Toronto & Guelph section where aspects of the original contract remained in effect. 106 AO, SP, MU2697, 'Statements, Calculations, Abstracts,' Stewart's Table of Quantities and Distances Hauled,' and R.P. Cooke's Table of Extra Work,' 10 Jan. 1856; AO, SP, MU2701, cross-sectional measurements; AO, SP, MU2696, 'Measurements'; AO, Engineering Drawing Collection, F647, folder 5; AO, SP, MU2694, 'Corr.,' final estimates; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 5 Sept. 1855, Cooke to FS 107 AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 4 July 1855, Gzowski to FS, and MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 19 July 1855, WS to FS 108 AO, SP, MU2698, 'Misc.,' Time-table No.l'; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 330; Hopper and Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 364. Visual details are from AO, A9312, Armstrong and Beere photographs, c. 1860, and McCord Museum, Notman Photographic Archives, 7326, 7327, 7329, 7330, 7332, 7334, Notman photographs, c.1860. 109 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 43,53-70; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 241-95 110 Gregory, Report of Mr. Charles Hutton Gregory, C.E., dated 15th of August, 1857, upon the Works of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, 19-20 111 Blackwell, Report of Mr. Thomas E. Blackwell, Vice Presiden t and Managing Director of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada for the Year 1859, 41 112 Rolt, Victorian Engineering, 43-4; Kirby, The Early Years of Modern Civil Engineering, 100,114; Pannell, Illustrated History of Civil Engineering, 108; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 4 July 1855, WS to FS

Notes to pages 98-105 215 113 Skelton, The Railway Builders, 81, 84, and Alexander Tilloch Gait, 33; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 243 114 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 244; Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 66; Report of the Special Committee, Q. 306; Hind, Eighty Years'Progress, 209-11 115 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 65 116 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr.,' 3 and 4 Aug. 1853, WS to FS; T.C. Keefer concurred in Hind, Eighty Years'Progress, 210. 117 'Engineer's Final Report on the Toronto and Sarnia Division,' JLA, 1857, app. 6 (vol. 3), item 3; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 88 118 CN Rail, Engineering Department, photgraphic records of current and abandoned lines; Ralph Greenhill recognized the contribution of the Shanlys in 'Early Grand Trunk Railway Bridges and Stations,' 47. 4: Boldness and Weakness: Frank Shanly, 1855-1882 1 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 7 May 1855, FS to B. Reilly, and MU2696, 'Abstracts of Vouchers'; Klassen, 'L.H. Holton,' 155-6 2 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 24 Mar. 1853, Lundy to FS; AO, SP, MU2730, The Canadian Shanlys,' 34-5; Saunders, 'Why Did They Emigrate?' 17; Guelph Advertiser, 29 Sept. 1853; Rotundo, 'Boy Culture,' 32 3 AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial/ accounts with Jacques & Hay (Apr. 1854) and J.G. Joseph (14,17 Nov. 1854); AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 20 Sept. 1853, Alex Levy to FS, and 25 July 1853, account with J.E. Pell, print seller; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' 28 Oct. 1853, RS to FS 4 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 14 July 1853, J. Stewart to FS (Sarnia and Goderich), and 13,15 July 1853, J. Young to FS; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Corr.,' 14 Feb. 1853, FS to J.C. Daly (Stratford) (Gzowski's contract to extend west was publicly signed 18 Feb.); AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr.,' 19 May 1854, Geo. Grange to FS (for Berlin), and 21,23 Jan. 1854, Young to FS; Katz, The People of Hamilton, 191-3; Taylor and Baskerville, Concise History, 143-4 5 AO, SP, MU2691, 'Corr.,' 19 May 1854, Grange to FS, and 3 June 1854, FS to McCullogh; AO, SP, MU2692, 2720 and 2731, Corr. files, numerous references to land sales in summer 1855; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 18 Sept. 1855, Webster to FS 6 Baskerville, The Boardroom and Beyond,' 260; Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 167 7 AO, SP, MU2667, 'Gait & Guelph,' 23, 24, 25, Sept. 1855, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.,' 25 Sept. 1855, WS to FS, and 23 Oct. 1855, FS to GWR; AO, SP, MU2731, 'Corr./ 2 Oct. 1855, WS to FS

216 Notes to pages 105-8 8 AO, SP, MU2731, 22 Nov. 1855, WS to FS. WS's information had come from Gzowski. 9 Stevens, History of the CNR, 129; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 321 fn (no source cited); AO, SP, MU2731, 4 Dec. 1855 and 20 Jan. 1856, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Corr.,' 2 Feb. 1856, Widder to FS; NA, RG30, vol. 311, Minute Book, BB&LH Rly, minutes of directors' meeting, 10 Jan. 1856 10 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 158; Canadian Journal 3 (Aug. 1854), 19 11 AO, SP, MU2731, 'Corr.,' 10 May 1856, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 17,19 May 1856, FS to Hon. S.L. Tilley, and 2 June 1856, R.W. Crookshank to FS (telegram). For Light, see DCB 12:561-3. 12 AO, SP, MU2731, 'Corr.,' 18 May 1856, WS to FS, and MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 4 June 1856, Geo. Robinson to FS, and 18 Sept. 1856, H.M. Mackenzie to FS; Hopper and Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 365 13 AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial,' 23 July 1856, Account of Goods reserved,' and 19 Aug. 1856, Account Sales of Household Furniture ... to Wakefield, Coate & Co.'; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Corr.,' 11 Nov. 1856, J. Stewart to FS 14 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Corr.,' 16 Sept. 1856, J. Stewart to FS, and 18 Sept. 1856, H.M. Mackenzie to FS 15 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Corr.,' 16 Sept. 1856, letter of introduction, Worrall to Kerr of St Paul; AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial,' FS's receipts; AO, SP, MU2731, 'Corr.,' 21 Oct. 1856, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2720, 27 Oct. 1856, CNS to FS, and 3 Nov. 1856, FS to Byron Kilbourn 16 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 11,16 Nov. 1856, J. Stewart to FS, 20 Nov. 1856, CNS to FS, and 24 Nov. 1856, FS to [?] 17 AO, SP, MU2688, 'Port D&T,' 26 Nov. 1856, S.D. Woodruff to FS, and 8 Dec. 1856, E.H. Ingersoll to S.D. Woodruff; AO, SP, MU2731, 7 Dec. 1856, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2716, 'Invoices and Receipts,' 7 July 1857, receipt 18 Skelton, The Railway Builders, 90-1; Taylor,' Historical Development of the Four Welland Canals,' 54; Dorman, A Statutory History, 629 19 AO, SP, MU2720, 8 Mar. 1857, FS to WS 20 AO, SP, MU2688, 'Corr.,' 4 Dec. 1856, order for tracing paper; ibid., 1 Jan. 1857, FS to Francis Doyle, and 8,14 Jan. 1857, FS to Woodruff and return; AO, SP, MU2689, Tenders and Contracts,' various specifications, and 'Payrolls'; AO, SP, MU2688, 'Corr.,' 21 Feb. 1857, FS to engineers and FS to W.H. Merritt 21 AO, SP, MU2688, 'Corr.,' 6 Apr. 1857, Merritt to FS; AO, SP, MU2714, 'Corr.,' 20 Jan. 1858, FS to Merritt and FS to Woodruff 22 AO, SP, 'Corr.,' 27 Mar. 1858, GWR to FS, and 22 Apr. 1858, S. Keefer, Bd of Rly Comms., to FS; AO, SP, MU2715, 5 May 1859, FS to S.R Bidder

Notes to pages 108-11 217 23 Hopper and Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 777-8; AO, SR MU2715, 'Corr.,' 5 May 1859, FS to S.P. Bidder; AO, SR MU2718, 'Misc.,' 3 July 1858, Bidder to Brassey; AO, SR MU2688, 'Corr.,' 8 Apr. 1857, Welland Rly to Bosanquet, Franks & Co. (financial agent in London); AO, SP, MU2716, 'Estimates.' The Province of Canada changed its currency from pounds to dollars in 1857. 24 AO, SP, MU2715, 'Corr.,' 5 May 1859, FS to S.R Bidder, and MU2718, 'Misc./ 3 July 1858, Bidder to Thomas Brassey 25 AO, SP, MU2715, 'Corr.,' 5 May 1859, FS to S.P. Bidder; AO, SP, MU2688, 'Corr.,' 12 Mar. 1857, FS to Woodruff; AO, SP, MU2715, 'Corr.,' 8 Feb. 1859, FS's 'Report on Progress' 26 AO, SP, MU2715, 'Corr.,' 16 May 1859, Slate to FS 27 AO, SP, MU2714, 'Corr./ 27 Oct. 1857, FS to Boston Locomotive Works, and November 1857, contract blanks; AO, SP, MU2689, 'Misc./ 24 Aug. 1857, 'Instructions for Engine Drivers' 28 For example, AO, SP, MU2688, 'Corr./ 22,26 May 1857, FS to Woodruff 29 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 262-5; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 404-6; Baskerville, 'Professional vs. Proprietor/ 59 30 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Corr./ 5 Dec. 1859, FS draft of proposal, and MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 5 Jan. 1860, John Ross (president of GTR) to FS 31 AO, SP, MU2715, 'Corr./ 22 Oct. 1858, S.R Bidder to FS; AO, SR MU2686, 'Estimates, Bills, Abstracts/ 22 Dec. 1859, double page of costs (in WS's hand), and 'Misc./ s.d. 'Memo of Conditions for Insertion in Contract/ draft. The other two engineers were Sandford Fleming and James Hodges. 32 AO, SR MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 5 Jan. 1860, letters to Brassey from C.S. Gzowski, John Ross (president of GTR), and A.M. Ross (chief engineer of GTR); also AO, SR MU2683, 'Montreal and Vermont Junction Railway/ 5 Jan. 1860, James Hodges (engineer of the Victoria Bridge), and 6 Jan. 1860, James Reekie (Brassey's Canadian agent); AO, SR MU2685, 'Corr./ 9 Feb. 1860, Brassey, Jackson, and Reekie to FS 33 AO, SR MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 18 Apr. 1860, Gait to FS; AO, SP, MU2685, 'Corr./ 2, and 12 June 1860, Cumberland to FS among others; AO, SR MU2725, 'Financial/ receipts for July 1860; City of Toronto Directory, 1861 34 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 265 35 AO, SR MU2686, 'Contracts/ 20 Sept. 1860, contract between FS and Thos. Brassey & Co. 36 They were technically sub-subcontractors, but this term was never used; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ various letters in February and March, and MU2686, letterbook, 4 Sept. 1860, call for tenders

218 Notes to pages 111-14 37 AO, SP, MU2686, 'Contracts/ various dates; ibid., 5 Nov. 1860, FS to Worthington, and letterbook, 6 Nov. 1860, FS to J. Reekie 38 AO, SP, MU2686, 'Receipts/ monthly salary receipts from Thompson ($78 per month), and letterbook, 24 Nov. 1860, FS to Thompson 39 Baskerville, Transportation, Social Change, and State Formation/ 244-6; AO, SP, MU2686, letterbook, 3 May 1861, FS to Worthington, and 10 May 1861, FS to Edward Thompson 40 AO, SP, MU2686, letterbook 41 Ibid., 'Estimates' 42 Ibid., letterbook, 20 Oct. 1860, FS to Sykes, and 18 Mar. 1861, FS to Cumberland; AO, SP, MU2724, 'Notebooks/ account book with provisioner Fulton, Michie & Co. from June 1860 to June 1862; Chatfield, A History of Accounting Thought, Chandler, The Visible Hand, 109-20; AO, SP, MU2715, 'Con.,' 5 May 1859, FS to S.R Bidder 43 AO, SP, MU2686, letterbook, 6 Nov. and 4 Dec. 1860, FS to Reekie, and MU2685, 'Corr./ 13 May 1861, Reekie to FS 44 AO, SP, MU2686, 'Estimates'; ibid., letterbook, 21 Feb. 1861, FS to Bridge Inspector Graham, and 12 Dec. 1860, FS to Road Master Coulson 45 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Corr./ 8 Jan. 1862, Reekie to FS, and letterbook, 10 Apr. 1861,FStoMcGrath 46 AO, SP, MU2685, 'Corr./ 23 July 1862, McGrath to FS; ibid., 17,18 Sept. 1863, exchange of letters with Cumberland; ibid., letterbook, FS to McGrath, and 30 Dec. 1862, FS to Fleming 47 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 29 Dec. 1866, FS to Reekie, and MU2725, 'Financial/ numerous receipts 48 Skelton, The Railway Builders, 93; McCalla, Planting the Province, 311, table 11.1 49 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 2 June 1862, WS to FS 50 AO, SP, MU2669, 'GWR Misc./ 4 Mar. 1862, tender for grain elevators'; AO, SP, MU2683, 'Montreal & Vermont/ 15 May 1863, FS to D.C. Lindley; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 4 Apr. 1864, FS to W.A. Thomson (vice-president, Erie & Niagara); AO, SP, MU2669, 'GTR, Tenders and Contracts/ 30 Sept. 1864, tender for ties 51 AO, SP, MU2719, 'WG&B, Tenders/ 'Report of the Provisional Committee' (28 Dec. 1861); AO, SP, MU2723, 'Misc./ 18 Feb. 1868, printed letter 52 AO, SP, MU2719, 'WG&B Corr./ 14 Apr. 1864, FS to A. Shaw, and 1 Mar. 1864, WS to FS, as well as other letters through February and March; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ various letters 53 AO, SP, MU2719, 'WG&B Statute of Incorporation'; Dorman, Statutory History, 629; AO, SP, MU2719, 'WG&B Corr./ 27 Feb. 1864, FS to Reekie

Notes to pages 114-18 219 54 AO, SP, MU2692, 'Corr.'; 11 Sept. 1854, Sandford Fleming to FS; AO, SP, MU2686, 'Misc./ summary notes; AO, SP, MU2723, 'Ewart vs. City of Toronto,' notes and report from June 1860 55 JLA, 19 June 1866, 41 56 AO, SP, MU2723, 'Inspection of Maritime Railways'; ibid., ,24 Nov. 1864, Brydges to FS, and 5 Jan. 1865, report (67 manuscript pages), FS to Brydges; Waite, 'A Chapter in the History of the Intercolonial Railway, 1864,' 356-69 57 AO, SP, MU2664-6; esp. MU2664, 'Corr.,' 8 June 1865, Fish to Brydges; ibid., 12 Apr. 1866, FS to Morrison and Morrison to FS, and 31 July 1865, Brydges to FS; AO, SP, MU2665, report; AO, SP, MU2664 'Payrolls' and 'Corr.,' Apr. 1866, The demise of the line can be traced through Sept. 1866 in MU2664, 'Corr.' 58 AO, SP, MU2723, 'City of Toronto vs. Metropolitan Waterworks'; AO, SP, MU2667, 'Chippewa Distillery'; AO, SP, MU2669, 'GTR, Tenders and Contracts,' 3 Sept. and 22 Oct. 1867; and AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' 19 Oct. 1867, FS to Daniel Hayes; private collection, 8,21 Oct. 1867, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' 1867-8, numerous letters from P.N. Jarvis 59 AO, SP, MU2690, 'St Paul & Pacific/ 20 Nov. 1865, FS to Brydges (Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 301, refers to this line but incorrectly states that Walter did the work for Brydges); AO, SP, MU2679, 'Lake Superio and Mississippi/ 20 Nov. 1866, FS to Reekie; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ Oct-Dec. 1866, various letters to and from Reekie, and 1 June 1867, Reekie to FS; private collection, 9 July 1867, FS to WS 60 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 301-2; AO, SP, MU2719, 'WG&B/ 15 Sept. 1868, Reid to FS, and 16 Sept., FS to Reid; ibid., 1 Sept. 1868, Joseph Hobson to FS; private collection, 9 July 1867, FS to WS 61 AO, SP, MU2688, 'P&C, Tenders and Contracts/ 10 Nov. 1863, FS to Latrobe and 'Maps/ contemporary map of P&C; Meyer, History of Transportation, 395-6 62 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel, 'Corr./ 29 June 1868, Latrobe to FS; McCord Museum, M22087, Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel; Latrobe was a consulting engineer on the project; this job is fully covered in the following chapter. 63 McCord Museum, M22087, 'Hoosac Tunnel Contract' 64 AO, SP, MU2678, 'H.T. Corr./ Xmas morning 1868, WS to FS 65 Private collection, 28 Dec. 1868, FS to WS 66 Martyn, Aristocratic Toronto, 130 67 AO, SP, MU2678, 'H.T. Corr./ Xmas morning 1868, and 26 Dec. 1868, WS to FS; ibid., 21 Nov. 1868, WS to Worrall (draft sent to FS) 68 AO, SP, MU2690, 'Rondout & Oswego/ 21 Jan. 1869, Jones to FS

220 Notes to pages 119-22 69 AO, SP, MU2688, 'P&C RR,' 31 May 1869, FS (and partners) to Latrobe; ibid., 1 June 1868, FS to Latrobe, 2 June 1868, Jones to FS, and 18 June 1868, FS to Latrobe; 'McGreevy, Thomas,' DCS 12:626-30 70 AO, SP, MU2688, 6 July 1869, McGreevy to Walsh, 8 Mar. 1870, Jones to FS, and 11 Mar. 1870, McGreevy to FS 71 AO, SP, MU2688, 8 Apr. 1870, FS to McGreevy; 15 Apr. 1870, McGreevy to FS, 16 Apr. 1870, Latrobe to The Contractors,' 11 June 1870, Jones to Shanly, 7 June 1870, FS to Latrobe, 17 June 1870, FS to Walsh, 20 July and 23 Sept. 1870, Latrobe to FS, 31 Oct. and 16 Nov. 1870, Walsh to FS, and 17 Nov. 1870, Charles McCarron to FS; AO, SP, MU2670, 21 June 1871, FS to McGreevy 72 AO, SP, MU2688, 'P&C Corr.,' 17 Aug. 1870, Jones to FS, Jan.-Apr. 1871, various letters from Walsh and McDonald, 21 June 1871, FS to McGreevy, 15 May 1872, McCarron to FS, and 14 Sept. 1872, Hampton to FS 73 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr.,' Mar.-Apr. 1866, numerous letters; AO, SP, MU2723, 'Narrow Gauge Railways,' 30 Mar. 1867, FS to Adair and others, and some rough notes, n.d.; AO, SP, MU2723, 'Misc,' 18,19 Feb. 1868, printed letters; private collection, 20 Feb. 1868, FS to WS; Ontario, Legislature, Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Jan.-Feb. 1868; Laidlaw, Reports & Letters and Cheap Railways 74 Mcllwraith, 'The Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway 1863'; McKitrick, Steam Trains through Orangeville; Trout and Trout, The Railways of Canada for 1870-1,150-2. AO, SP, MU2710,'Tenders & Contracts,' 18 Nov. 1869, contract between FS and TG&B, and FS's guarantors (brothers James and Walter) 75 AO, SP, MU2706, 'Payrolls,' and MU2708, 'Pay Abstracts.' Once they had proved their worth for a few months, construction supervisors were paid from $75 to $100 and accountants $40 to $60. 76 AO, SP, MU2710, Tenders & Contracts,' various contracts, and MU2708, 'Pay Abstracts'; Laidlaw, Cheap Railways 77 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 130-2; AO, SP, MU2669, 'Corr.,' 13 Sept. 1870, Joseph Price (secretary, GWR) to FS, and 8 Nov., 2,16, and 21 Dec. 1870 (telegrams), G.L. Reid to FS; AO, SP, MU2672, Tenders & Contracts,' 24 Dec. 1870, contract between FS and GWR; AO, SP, MU2702, 'Corr.,' 20 Jan. 1871, FS to Henry Howland (TG&B) 78 AO, SP, MU2702, 'Corr.,' 11 Mar. 1871, Macdonald to FS. The banquet was held on 17 Apr., but the dignitaries could ride the track only as far as Caledon and back (McKitrick, Steam Trains, unpaginated). 79 AO, SP, MU2710 and MU2712, Tenders & Contracts,' Mar. 1871, numerous contracts (TG&B); AO, SP, MU2672, Tenders & Contracts,' Jan. 1871, numerous contracts (CAL); AO, SP, MU2674, 'Estimates' and Abstracts of Vouchers,' and MU2672, 'Expenditures on Contracts' (bound volume)

Notes to pages 122-5 221 80 AO, SP, MU2702, 'Con.,' 6 Mar. 1871, FS to Ellis; AO, SP, MU2669 and MU2670, Ellis's reports to FS (esp. 21 July 1871) 81 AO, SP, MU2670,20,31 July, Macdonald to FS, ibid., 31 Aug. and 8 Oct. 1871, Ellis to FS; AO, SP, MU2674, 'Payrolls' 82 AO, SP, MU2678, 'HT Corr.,' 20 Oct. 1871, indenture between FS and WS. WS agreed to pay FS $50,000 'over and above what has already been paid,' and FS permitted WS to continue to use his name. See also AO, F647, folder 6, drawing of tunnel 83 AO, SP, MU2672, 'Tenders & Contracts,' 20 Nov. 1871, tender for 4th Division (total bid $570,000); AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' 1 Oct. 1872, Burton (secretary, GWR) to FS; AO, F647, folder 2, drawings of buildings; AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' 25 June 1872, G.L. Reid to FS; AO, SR MU2682, Tenders & Contracts,' 18 Jan. 1872, contract with Midland Rly 84 AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' 8 July 1872, Ellis to FS, 7 Oct. 1872, McLennan to FS, 28 Oct. 1872, Anderson to FS, 11 Nov. 1872, FS to G.L. Reid, 9 Nov. 1872, Symmes to FS, and 17 Dec. 1872, Price to FS; AO, SP, MU2672, 'Tenders & Contracts,' 6 Sept. 1872; Illustrated Historical Atlas of Counties of Haldimand and Norfolk, 33; AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' 12 Sept. 1871, McDonald to Ellis 85 AO, SP, MU2723, 'FS Election'; Swainson, 'The Personnel of Politics,' 245-54 86 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 284; Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 436-8; Mika and Mika, The Grand Junction Railway, 149; AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 6 Apr. 1875, FS to Wallbridge. Currie and probably Stevens used this letter as their source, but they derive slightly different conclusions from it. 87 The TG&B was about $7000 per mile; the Air Line around $10,000; AO, SP, MU2682, Tenders & Contracts,' 18 Jan. 1872; AO, SP, MU2683, 'Quantities,' 1 Feb. 1872, Abstract showing quantity of Earthwork,' AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr./ 2 Feb. 1872, Whitson to FS 88 AO, SP, MU2683, 'Misc.,' n.d., rough list of problems encountered on the Midland Rly (exaggerated, no doubt); AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 27 Mar. 1872, McLennan to FS, 27 Jan. 1873, FS to Boulton, and 18 Apr. 1872, FS to Boulton; AO, SP, MU2726, 'Shanly Estate: Edward Nanton,' 19 Apr. 1872, statement by Midland Rly 89 AO, SP, MU2680, 'Estimates,' April 1872 estimate, and 'Letter Book, 187173,' 21 May 1872, FS to Boulton; AO, SP, MU2683, 'Force Returns'; AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 27 June 1872, Stewart to FS, and 11 Nov. 1872, Ellis toFS 90 AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 2 Jan. 1873, Ellis to FS; 27, 28 Jan. 1873, FS to Boulton and Boulton to FS; also 7 Feb. 1873, Boulton to FS (quotation)

222 Notes to pages 125-8 91 AO, SR MU2680, 'Estimates' and 'Letterbook/ early 1873; AO, SP, MU2726, 'Shanly Estate: Insurance/ 28 Mar. 1874, Cadbury (Dominion Bank) to Coleman: 'Shanly's paper held by us past due, at time of suspension of work on Mid. Railway.' See also AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 6 Apr. 1875, FS to Wallbridge; Monetary Times 7 (1873-4), 225-6 92 AO, SP, MU2676, 'Corr.,' 16 May 1873, Price to FS 93 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities,' 9 Mar. 1873, WS, 'Liabilities Month by Month and 26 July 1873, FS, 'Liabilities with WS Endorser'; also 28 Sept. 1873, WS toFS 94 AO, SP, MU2671, letterbook, 4 Jan. 1874, FS to Greet; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr./ 10 May 1873, FS to Blaikie & Alexander; AO, SP, MU2671, 'Corr./ 3 June 1874, FS to G.L. Reid, and FS to John Kennedy; AO, SP, MU2676, 'Corr 29 Apr. 1875, GWR treasurer to FS; AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities/ 17 Oct. 1874, 'List of Writs of Execution, or Extent, in the Sheriff's Office, County of York' 95 Specifically, the debts were:

96 97

98 99

Merchants Bank Royal Canadian Bank St Lawrence Bank Dominion Bank Metropolitan Building Society Edward Nanton

$27,500 36,000 13,700 6,000 8,000 7,000

Total

$98,200

The rest was to suppliers, sub-contractors, and smaller financial institutions. See also AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities/ 14 Apr. 1875, 'F. Shanly's Affairs: Statement of Liabilities/ prepared by WS. City of Toronto directories; AO, SP, MU2726, 'Shanly Estate: Edward Nanton/ 27 Jan. 1874, sheriff's bill of sale; Edgar, The Insolvency Act of 1869 AO, SP, MU2683, 'Midland: Misc./ various statements for Division 1; AO, SP, MU2671, 'Corr./ 3 June 1874, FS to G.L. Reid; AO, SP, MU2671, 'Corr./ various letters; AO, SP, MU2672, 'Invoices and Receipts/ Jan. 1874, statement of account with J.O. Robinson, and 'Estimates on Contracts'; AO, SP, MU2712, 'Misc./ n.d., 'Statement Showing the Amount of Percentages Deducted by Company' and other documents AO, SP, MU2702, 'Corr./ 18 Feb. 1871, Macdougall to FS AO, SP, MU2690 'Rondout & Oswego/ rough notes. Ellis might have had more to do with setting prices than Frank.

Notes to pages 128-31 223 100 AO, SP, MU2708, 'Pay Abstracts' 101 AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 17 Feb. 1872, William Reid to FS 102 This can be contrasted with the conclusions of Ian Radforth about Jacques and Hay in 'Confronting Distance,' which are reiterated and embellished in Taylor and Baskerville, Concise History, 182-3. 103 AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' 27 Nov. 1872, Price to James Shanly, and MU2672, Tenders & Contracts,' 25 Oct. 1871, agreement regarding completion of 3rd Division 104 AO, SP, MU2710, Tenders & Contracts,' 25 Jan. 1871, contract between TG&B and FS; AO, SP, MU2670, 'Corr.,' Sept. and Oct. 1871; ibid., 24 May 1872, McDonald to FS, and 19 Nov. 1872, contract with T. & J. Robinson 105 AO, SP, MU2679, 'Corr.,' 18 May 1872, Geo. Thos. Haigh (Ontario immigration agent at Quebec) to Boulton (Midland Rly); ibid., 21 Nov. 1872, McKellar (Ontario Department of Agriculture and Public Works) to FS; AO, SP, MU2674, force returns for 5th Division contract 106 Way, Common Labour, 65, and more generally 59-75 107 AO, SP, MU2703, 'Corr.,' 24 Mar. 1876, Taylor to FS 108 AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial/ 13 Mar. 1874, memo of Jones, Shanly & Co. expenses paid by F. Shanly; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' 4 Oct. 1875, McGreevy to FS; AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities,' 17 Oct. 1874, 'List of Writs of Execution, or Extent, in the Sheriff's Office, County of York' 109 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities,' 21 Dec. 1874, FS to WS, and MU2668, letterbook, 12 Feb. 1874, FS to G.A. Keefer 110 AO, SP, MU2664, 'Brantford & Port Burwell,' MU2683, 'Niagara River Tunnel,' and MU2690, 'St. Paul & Pacific' 111 AO, SP, MU2708, TG&B Pay Abstracts/ May 1874; AO, SP, MU2726, 'FS Estate: Dominion Bank/ 9 Jan. 1875, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2667, Columbus & Toledo RR, MU2723, 'Canada Car Co./ and MU2721, 'Gen. Corr./ 2 June 1875, Anderson to FS 112 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities/ 14 Apr. 1875, 'F. Shanly's Affairs: Statement of Liabilities/ by WS, and n.d., 'Analyzed Statement of Payments as Endorser, made by W. Shanly'; AO, SP, MU2726, 'FS Estate - Dominion Bank/ numerous letters, 1875 113 AO, SP, e.g., Hamilton & Milton Road Co. (MU2723), Toronto, Simcoe & Muskoka Jet Rly (MU2699), arbitration in English vs. Dumble (MU2719, 'Whitby & Port Perry'), valuation of iron & steel works (MU2699, 'Midland Rly: Corr/), and inspection of street railway construction for the Court of Chancery (MU2699) 114 AO, SP, MU2668, 'Grand Junction Rly/ corr. files and letterbook, MU2667,

224

115

116 117

118 119

120

121 122

123 124 125 126 127

128

Notes to pages 132-5 'Credit Valley/ MU2719, 'Whitby & Port Perry/ and MU2678, 'Kingston & Pembroke' AO, SP, MU2689, 'PEI Railway/ various files. FS concluded that the railway had been properly built, which contrasts starkly with the view of Stevens, History of the C.N.R., 97-8, and others. AO, SP, MU2678, 'Kingston & Pembroke/ and MU2724, 'Notebooks/ K&P survey field notes (in FS's hand) City of Toronto Archives (hereafter CTA), council minutes, 1876, app. 60, by-law passed 16 Mar. 1876; AO, SP, MU2725, 'Financial/ 2 Oct. 1875, 'Statement of Items Sold/ and MU2723, 'City Eng., Misc./ 11 Nov. 1875, Indenture AO, SP, MU2724, 'Notebooks/ and MU2723, 'City Engineer's Reports' CTA, council minutes, 1876, app. No. 60, by-law passed 16 March 1876; CTA, Report of the City Engineer, 1878 (for 1877 expenditures); AO, SP, MU2723, 'C.E. Reports' CTA, council minutes, 1875, app. 179, and 1876, app. 128; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Rochester Street Improvements'; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Con.,' 6 Sept. 1878, Holly Manufacturing Co., Lockport, N.Y., to FS; ibid., 12 Sept. 1878, B. Williams, asst eng., Chicago Dept. of Public Works, to FS, and 24 Oct. 1876, 'Liverpool Tramways Specification for Steel Rails'; AO, SP, MU2728, various publications CTA, council minutes, 1876, app. 60, by-law passed 16 Mar. 1876; AO, SP, MU2725, 'Diaries/ 1880 AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Con.,' 18 Apr. 1876, Goderich harbour, 27 July 1876, diversion plan for the Etobicoke River; 18 Aug. 1876, drainage scheme for the town, and 20 Dec. 1876, GWR level crossing; AO, SP, MU2678, 'Guelph Waterworks'; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Con.,' 12 Jan. 1875, McGreevy to FS, and 30 Aug. 1876, Odell to FS, among many others; MU2719, 'Whitby & Port Perry'; AO, SP, MU2723, 'City Eng., Con.,' 20 Nov. 1877, FS to Robert Bell AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Con.,' 17 Apr. 1877, FS to WS, among others CTA, council minutes, 26 Feb. and 14 May 1877 CTA, council minutes, 29 June 1877, FS to mayor and corporation CTA, council minutes, 1877-9, esp. 1877 (app. 28 and 167), 21 Jan. 1878,17 Mar. 1879 AO, SP, MU2664, 'Belleville & N. Hastings/ 27 June 1878, FS to Sutherland, and 13 May 1877, WS to FS et al.; AO, SP, MU2664, 'CPR/ 29 Jan. 1879, and 5 Feb., FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2667, 'Credit Valley Rly/ 8 Apr. 1879, FS to G. Laidlaw NA, Macdonald Papers, vol. 355, 163694-6, 1 Feb. 1879, FS to Macdonald;

Notes to pages 135-8

225

AO, SP, MU2726, 'Shanly Estate: EN,' 26 Oct 1878, FS to WS; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' 23 Dec. 1877, Dinnis to Stewart & Strickland, Architects; AO, SP, MU2724, 'Notebooks/ account book with AO, children; F647 Folder 19, plan and elevation of house; AO, SP, MU2723, 'Ontario Gov't Rl Inspections'; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' Hudeley to FS; AO, SP, MU266 'Georgian Bay & Wellington Rly' 129 AO, SP, MU2725, diaries, 19 June 1880 (telegram from Tupper is glued inside back cover); CTA, council minutes, 22 June 1880 130 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Intercolonial Rly,' 3 July 1880, T. Trudeau (Dept of Rlys and Canals) to FS, 5 July 1880, Trudeau to Cuthbert William Shanly, and expense accounts for July-Nov. 1880 131 Stevens, Canadian National Railways, 90-4; 'McGreevy, Thomas,' DCB 12:626-30; AO, SP, MU2678, 'Intercolonial Rly' 132 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities,' n.d., WS, Analyzed Statement Payments as Endorser Made by W. Shanly'; AO, SP, MU2678, 'H.T. Corr.,' 20 Oct. 1871, indenture between FS and WS 133 AO, SP, MU2722, Letterbook, various letters, esp. 20 May 1880, FS to Kerr, Akers & Bull; AO, SP, MU2726, 'FS Estate: E. Nanton/ 31 Nov. 1893, WS, memorandum, and 16 Mar. 1880, FS to WS 134 AO, SP, MU2725, FS diary, entries for 4,6,19 Oct. 1880, and MU2721, 'Gen. Corr.,' 25 March 1881, O'Brien to FS and reply 135 AO, SP, MU2722, letterbook, 3 Mar. 1882, FS to Caston, Gait, and Stewart 136 AO, SP, MU2725, diaries 137 AO, SP, MU2722, letterbook, 7 Dec. 1880, FS to J.J. Hill, 3 Dec. 1881, FS to J.A. Macdonald, 8 Dec. 1881, FS to J.J. Hill, 5 Jan. 1882, FS to C.E. English, and 3 Feb. 1882, FS to Geo. A. Keefer; AO, SP, MU2725, diaries, 8 and 16 Dec. 1881; McDougall, Canadian Pacific, and Lavallee, Van Home's Road, 60 138 AO, SP, MU2721-2, and MU2725, diaries; Rotundo, 'Patriarch and Participants,' 69-70; Hall, The Sweet Delights of Home,' 55-7 139 AO, SP, MU2722, 'Gen. Corr./ various letters, MU2725, diaries, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ July and Aug. 1882, FS to WS, several letters, and MU2730, Shanly family bibles 140 AO, SP, MU2725, diaries, MU2722, letterbook, 6 July 1882, FS to Arch. Young, and MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 22 Oct. 1882, WS to Bellen 141 AO, SP, MU2726, obituary clippings from the Globe and the Mail, 14 Sept. 1882, and from the American Railroad Journal, 11 Nov. 1882; interview with Guy Saunders, 13 July 1993 142 AO, SP, MU2730, 'The Canadian Shanlys/ 35; ibid., 'WS Corr./ 19 Sept. 1882, WS to James Shanly, and 1 Jan. 1883, WS, memo re. insurance; AO,

226 Notes to pages 138-43 SP, MU2726, 'Shanly Estate: Will, Land Papers'; AO, SP, MU2727, 'Shanly Estate: Accounts Paid/ 25 Oct. 1882, Stewart to WS, 'Shanly Estate: Claims/ 13 Mar. 1885, WS to O'Connor & Hogg, and 'Shanly Estate: Assets' 143 AO, SP, MU2730, the Canadian Shanlys/ 35 144 AO, SP, MU2669, 'Corr./ 8 May 1871, Davy to Ellis; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 26 Sept. 1882, Rothwell to WS, and 15 Sept. 1882, Donaldson to WS 145 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Shanly Estate: Corr./ 21 Feb. 1884, WS to Cameron 5: Honour and Pride: Walter Shanly, 1855-1899 1 AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 18 July 1854, WS to FS 2 Ibid., 1, 7,12 Dec. 1856, WS to FS; AO, SP, MU2688, Tort Dalhousie & Thorold Rly, Corr./ 8 Mar. 1857, FS to WS; private collection, 9 July 1857, FS to WS; Hopper and Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 364 3 Kingsford, Canadian Canals, 83-92; Shanly, Report of Walter Shanly, Esq. on the Ottawa Survey (hereafter Report on the Ottawa Survey); 'Report of the Select Committee appointed to Investigate the Subject of a Navigable Line of Communication by way of the Ottawa and Mattawan Rivers/ JLA, 1862, app. 5 (hereafter 'Report on the Ottawa and Mattawan'); NA, RG11, vol. 103, WS to Dept of Public Works, 29 June 1856; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 18 May 1856, WS to FS; Owram, Building for Canadians, 67; Klassen,'L.H. Holton/86 4 'Report on the Ottawa and Mattawan'; AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 16 Sept. 1856, Stewart to FS, and 18 Sept. 1856, Mackenzie to FS 5 Report on the Ottawa Survey 6 AO, SP, MU2720, 'Gen. Corr./ 11,16 Nov. 1856, Stewart to FS 7 'Report on the Ottawa and Mattawan'; NA, RG11, vol. 104, 9, 17, 27 Apr., 2 May, 5 June, and 25, 26 Aug. 1857, WS to Public Works 8 'Report on the Ottawa and Mattawan/ minutes of evidence, reply of Walter Shanly; Report on the Ottawa Survey, 33 9 The subject was taken up again in 1862; WS's report was reprinted in 1863 and 1890. 10 Report of Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Affairs of the Grand Trunk Railway (hereafter Langton Commission), testimony of President John Ross, Q. 229 11 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 94-109, and The Railroads, 97-108 12 Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, 73-4; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 95; Merritt, Engineering in American Society, 63-7

Notes to pages 144-52 227 13 Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 71-84; Stevens, History of the CNR, 49-54; Langton Commission, passim 14 Langton Commission, testimony of President John Ross, Q. 229, and of WS, Q. 101; Baskerville, The Boardroom and Beyond,' 226-82 15 Langton Commission, testimony of WS, Q. 101, app. 14:79-94, and app. 22:137-44 16 Stevens, History of the CNR, 52-7; Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, 71-6 17 Langton Commission, 33 18 Shanly, Notes and Corrections to the Report 19 Ibid., 20 and 6-7; for example, the American Railroad Journal in 1854 (cited in Chandler, The Visible Hand, 104) 20 Langton Commission, app. 22:138; NA, RG30, vol. 1000, Minute Book, 5 Apr. 1862, meeting of Board of Directors 21 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 99 22 NA, RG30, vol. 1000, Minute Book, 5 Apr. 1862, meeting of Board of Directors; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 349. The bound volume itself is in UWO, RC. 23 UWO, RC, Tremaine map of London, 1862; Creightonjo/m A Macdonald: The Young Politician, 341; Skelton, Alexander Tilloch Gait, 147 24 Conservative Messenger (Prescott, C.W.), 9 June 1863, editorial 25 Ibid. 26 Ward, The Canadian House of Commons, 5-6; Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 61-3 27 JLA, 1863 and 1866; Conservative Messenger, (Prescott, C.W.), 9 June 1863; Brockville Weekly Recorder, 4,11 June 1863; Morton, The Critical Years, 1324; Stewart, 'Political Patronage under Macdonald and Laurier'; Hays, 'Political Parties and the Community-Society Continuum' 28 Skelton, Alexander Tilloch Gait, 147 29 Brockville Weekly Recorder, 25 June 1863, shows a majority of 330 on 1,500 votes cast; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 351 30 Canada [Province], Legislature, Debates of the Legislative Assembly of the United Canadas (hereafter 'Scrapbook Debates'), 24 Aug. 1863 31 JLA, 27 June 1864, 474-6 32 JLA, 14, 15 Mar. 1865,199-202, 227-31 33 JLA, 14 Oct. 1863, 280; 'Scrapbook Debates,' 27 June 1864; JLA, 1 Feb. 1865, 50 34 JLA, 27 June 1864,474-6 35 Canada [Province], Parliament, Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces, 903, speech of WS

228 Notes to pages 152-6 36 Ibid., 899-906; Waite, ed., The Confederation Debates, 55, speech of A.T. Gait 37 'Scrapbook Debates/ 13 Sept. 1863; JLA, 29 Sept. 1863, 206-7; Conservative Messenger (Prescott, C.W.), 9 June 1863 38 JLA, 24 Sept. 1863,177-9, and 2 Oct. 1863, 224-5 39 JLA, 19 July 1866,183, and 9 Aug. 1866, 325-9; Skelton, Alexander Tilloch Gait, 120-1. For corn duties, see below, p. 159. 40 WS was appointed to at least nine select committees; the most important subjects were the prospects of the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay district, the destruction of forests, the feasibility of regulating the water supply of the Rideau River, and the prospects for Canadian gold and copper mines in the North. 41 'Scrapbook Debates,' 16 Sept. 1863 42 Canadian Railroad Historical Association Archives (hereafter CRHA Archives), Shanly file, WS, To the Electors of the South Riding of Grenville,' 17 July 1867 43 Private collection, FS to WS, 9 July 1867 44 CRHA Archives, Shanly file, WS, To the Electors of the South Riding of Grenville,' 17 July 1867 45 The Canadian Parliamentary Companion, 1867, election returns for South Grenville - a majority of 169 on 1,629 votes cast; CRHA Archives, Shanly fil clipping, Montreal Herald, 19 Sept. 1867, To the Majority of the Electors of the South Riding of Grenville' 46 Canada, House of Commons (hereafter CHC), Debates, 12 Apr. 1870, 97383; CHC, Journals, 12 Apr. 1870, 176-7; AO, SP, MU2690, 'Rondout & Oswego,' 9 Apr. 1869, Jones to FS 47 CHC, Journals, 9, 10 May 1870, 325, 328; CHC, Debates, 23 Mar. 1870, 659; CHC, Journals, 6 May 1870, 302 48 CHC, Debates, 25 Nov. 1867, 127-30; CHC, Journals, 6 May 1868, 289-92, 5 May 1870, 298-9, and 12 June 1872, 319 49 CHC, Journals and Debates, passim. Key votes on British Columbia and the railway were held 30, 31 Mar. 1871. See also NA, Macdonald Papers, letterbook 12-839,10 May 1869, Macdonald (JAM) to WS 50 NA, Macdonald Papers, letters exchanged re appointments every few months; NA, RG11, vols. 717-27, Public Works registries, 1864-73; other speeches were on government canal policy (CHC, Debates, 23 Mar. 1870, 658-60), the Ottawa River canal route (CHC, Debates, 28 Mar. 1870,719-25), and the Intercolonial Railway gauge (CHC, Debates, 23 Mar. 1871, 613). 51 Leavitt, History of Leeds and Grenville, 151; Brockville (Evening) Recorder, 15 Aug. 1872; The Canadian Parliamentary Companion, 1867; Swainson, The Personnel of Politics,' 208-14

Notes to pages 156-60 229 52 Prescott Telegraph, 18 July 1872 53 Canadian Illustrated News, 23 April 1870 54 NA, Macdonald Papers, letterbook 18-277,10 Aug. 1872, Macdonald to WS; Pope, ed., Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald, 139, C.S. Gzowski to Macdonald, 6 Nov. 1870 55 NA, Macdonald Papers, letterbook 18-360, 5 Sept. 1872, Macdonald to WS; letterbook 18-482,19 Sept. 1872, Macdonald to WS; letterbook 20-202,27 May 1873, Macdonald to WS; vol. 345,158472-3,12 Nov. 1873, WS to Macdonald 56 The Canadian Parliamentary Companion, 1874, table of returns for 1874 election: Brouse 1,106, Shanly 995. There had been a 25 per cent increase in eligible voters since 1867 in spite of a small decline in the riding's population. 57 This can be contrasted with the views of engineers presented in Layton, The Revolt of the Engineers, and Merritt, Engineering in American Society, but it coincides with those in Buchanan, The Engineers, 180-3 58 Morton, The Critical Years, 186; Proceedings of the Commercial Convention Held in Detroit, July llth, 12th, 13th and 14th 1865, 3-5,24, 31, 99 59 Benson, Historical Record, xi-xii, 2-4,14-18 60 Ibid., 21-2; Warrington and Nicholls, A History of Chemistry in Canada, 252-4. The process of making starch from corn (rather than from wheat) was first patented in 1841. 61 Benson, Historical Record, 25-9; NA, MG28, III, 94, Edwardsburg Starch Co. (hereafter ESCo.), vol. 1, Minute Book, statement of incorporation, 31 May 1865, and vol. 2, Sales Book, list of stockholders, c.1865. The main stockholders were Peter and John Redpath, Hugh and John McLennan, George Moffat, George Drummond, and William Workman. 62 NA, ESCo., vol. 1, Minute Book, minutes of meetings, e.g., 3 Jan., 7 Feb., 4 Apr., 5 July, 7 Nov. 1867, and 6 Feb., 5 Mar., 6 Aug., 3 Sept., 10 Dec. 1868. Benson, Historical Record, 31 63 NA, ESCo., vol. 1, Minute Book, minutes of meeting, 2 July 1866; JLA, 5 July 1866, 92; Forster, A Conjunction of Interests, 60-7 64 NA, ESCo., vol. 1, Minute Book, minutes of meeting, 3 Oct. 1867 and 9 May 1868; CHC, Debates, 30 April 1868, 597 65 NA, ESCo., vol. 1, Minute Book, minutes of meeting, 18 Jan. 1868 and 18 Jan. 1869 66 NA, ESCo., vol. 1, Minute Book, minutes of meetings; AO, SP, MU2731, 'W.S., Corr.,' 2 Jan. 1877, WS to FS 67 Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 407, no source; JLA, 2 Feb. 1865,603. Documentation regarding this bank, and Walter's involvement, is meagre. 68 Monetary Times, 5 July 1872,31; 1 Aug. 1873,103; 24 Sept. 1875,351,12 Nov.

230 Notes to pages 160-4 1875, 549; 24 Dec. 1875; 717; 7 July 1876, 44; 5 July 1878, 44; 6 June 1879, 1504. See also Walker, A History of Banking in Canada, 100-2; Breckenridge, The History of Banking in Canada, 110-17 69 Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 39-45, calls it their 'Grand Act'; it is referred to as 'one of the greatest triumphs of engineering skill the world has witnessed' (Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, a copy of which may be found in McCord Museum, Walter Shanly Papers, M22087). 70 Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 425-6 fn. 'Reliable authority states that Francis received no financial benefit from the contract which made the brothers famous.' The 'authority' is almost certainly one of Frank's daughters, whom Walker knew; such is the basis of family legend. 71 Kirkland, The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 94-6; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 6-8; Ward, That Man Haupt, 58-111 72 Kirkland, 'The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 106; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 20-30 73 Mowbray, Tri Nitro-Glycerin, 9-18, 34-40 74 Kirkland, The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 106; UWO, RC, Landon Papers, Shanly Family Scrapbook, The Hoosac Tunnel/ unlabelled newspaper clipping (hereafter, The Hoosac Tunnel'); the reporter states that the dam cost $300,000. The excerpt is from Journal of the Franklin Institute, March 1871, cited in Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 383. 75 Kirkland, The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 107; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 41 76 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Corr.,' 18 Nov. 1868, WS to FS 77 Ibid., 12,18 Dec. 1868 78 Ibid., telegram, 5 Oct. 1868, Oliver Warner to FS; ibid., 21 Nov. 1868, WS to FS and WS to J. Worrall, and 26 Nov., 18,21 Dec. 1868, WS to FS 79 Ibid., 18, 26 Dec. 1868, WS to FS 80 McCord Museum, M22087, Walter Shanly Papers, 'Hoosac Tunnel Contract,' 24 Dec. 1868. Slightly different figures are given in Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 43, and Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 34. 81 Greenfield Gazette, 16 Aug. 1868, cited in Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 45; Young, Promoters and Politicians, 93; Mowbray, Tri Nitr Glycerin, 99; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 32-3; Kirkland, The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 108 82 Mowbray, Tri Nitro-Glycerin, 99 and illustrations throughout the pamphlet; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 20-8; excerpt from Journal of the Franklin Institute, March 1871, cited in Walker, Daylight Through the Mountain, 383; AO, SR MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Misc.,' 'Hoosac Tunnel Contract: In the Matter of Certain Claims,' March 1875

Notes to pages 164-8 231 83 Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 47-8 84 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Misc./ 'Hoosac Tunnel Contract: In the Matter of Certain Claims/ March 1875. This is Walter's side of the story. 85 Ibid.; The Hoosac Tunnel'; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 6; AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Con.,' 'Petition to the Senate and Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court Assembled' 86 Kirby, The Early Years of Modern Civil Engineering, 176; Mowbray, TriNitroGlycerin, profile drawing signed by the engineer Wederkinch; Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 19-20 87 Kirkland, The Hoosac Tunnel Route,' 96; excerpt from Journal of the Franklin Institute, March 1871, cited in Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 383 88 Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 16. This includes deaths before the Shanlys took the contract. 89 Bond, History of the Hoosac Tunnel, 29; The Hoosac Tunnel'; Kirby, The Early Years of Civil Engineering, 178 90 Walker (Daylight through the Mountain, 378) claims otherwise. 91 Mowbray, Tri Nitro-Glycerin, dedication 92 AO, SP, MU2730, The Canadian Shanlys/ 31 93 See above, n79; The Hoosac Tunnel' 94 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Misc./ lune 1875, 'Account of Walter Shanly and Frank Shanly on the Hoosac Tunnel Contract/ and WS's handwritten note, 21 March 1894 95 If Walter had paid back $100,000 in the first year and kept $500,000 for the remaining five years of the job, interest at 6 per cent would have been something over $200,000, depending on how it was compounded. 96 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hossac Tunnel Misc/ lune 1875, Account of Walter Shanly and Frank Shanly on the Hoosac Tunnel Contract/ and a different draft, dated July, in the same file; AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Con.,' 23, 25 Dec. 1868, WS to FS (for Gait's offer) 97 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Con.,' 'Petition to the State and Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in General Court Assembled/11 Jan. 1875 98 AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac Tunnel Misc./ 'Hoosac Tunnel Contract: In the Matter of Certain Claims and Representations/ March 1875; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 398-9; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Con.,' 18 Feb. 1877, WS to FS. Kirkland (The Hoosac Tunnel Route/ 109) states that they received $210,495.62 in two appropriations, one in 1875 and another in 1887, but there is no sign of Walter receiving anything as early as 1875; he did, however, deliberately keep the matter of his compensation very cloudy.

232 Notes to pages 168-71

99

100

101

102

103 104

105 106 107

See also AO, SP, MU2722, 'Gen. Con.,' 28 Apr. 1882, S. Roper Crickmore to FS. AO, SP, MU2727, 'Liabilities,' 'Analyzed Statement Payments as Endorser Made by W. Shanly on Account of F. Shanly 30 July 1875 to 1 Sept. 1882'; AO, SP, MU2678, July 1875, draft statement of money taken from Hoosac Tunnel contract; Breckenridge, Banking in Canada, 116; AO, SP, MU2726 'Estate Papers: Metropolitan Building Society/ 9 Dec. 1880, WS to McMichael, Hoskins & Ogden, and 17 Jan. 1881, WS to Read NA, Macdonald Papers, vol. 123, 50791, 25 Sept. 1872, WS to D.L. Macpherson, vol. 125, 51288, 24 Jan. 1873, J.J.C. Abbott to Macdonald, and vol. 125, 51289-91, 21 Jan. 1873, WS to Abbott NA, Macdonald Papers, vol. 125,51289-91,21 Jan. 1873, WS to Abbott, and vol. 125, 51299-301, 24 Jan., 4 Feb. 1873, WS to Macdonald; Canada Gazette, 1 Mar. 1873; Berton, The National Dream, 70-5, 80-1, 90-2; Creighton,/o/w A Macdonald: The Old Chieftan, 142-7,153-5; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 388 McCord Museum, M22087, Walter Shanly Papers, 'Memo of Evidence' regarding Quebec Defences Arbitration, 2 Aug. and 18,19 Sept. 1867; ibid., WS to G. & J. Worthington, Contractors, S. Quebec, 16 Oct. 1867; Shanly, Report of Walter Shanty, Esq., C.E., on the Water Works of the City of Montreal; AO, SP, MU2688, 'Northern Extension Rly,' 18 June 1872, Hamilton to WS. Walter also bid, unsuccessfully, to construct portions of the Welland Canal in 1872 (Owram, Building for Canadians, 125), and he may have had something to do with the Rice Lake bridge on the Cobourg & Peterborough Railway in 1874 (AO, SP, MU2667, 'C&P Rly/ newspaper clipping, 3 Nov. 1874). Shanly, Report of Walter Shanly, Esq., C.E., to the Directors of the Caughnawaga Ship Canal Co'y, CHC, Debates, 23 Mar. 1870, 658-60, and Journals, 23 April 1872, 37; The Canadian Parliamentary Companion, 1872 Hopper & Kearney, Canadian National Railways Synoptical History, 648-9; Seymour, The Railway Policy of the Government of Quebec; Shanly, Report of Walter Shanly in the Matter of Duncan Macdonald Contractor, Waite, Canada, 1874-1896, 98-9; Young, Promoters and Politicians, 89-111. WS's connections to the provincial Liberals were most unusual. Shanly, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway, Young, Promoters and Politicians, 104 Shanly, Report of Walter Shanly in the Matter of Duncan Macdonald Contractor AO, SP, MU2664, 'Belleville & N. Hastings/ 13 May 1877, WS to FS; Young, Promoters and Politicians, 112-13; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 24 July

Notes to pages 172-4

108 109 110

111 112 113 114 115 116

117

233

1879, WS to FS; NA, Sandford Fleming Papers, MG29, Bl, vol. 46, file 316, 24, 31 Dec. 1881,13 Jan. and 3 July 1882, WS to SF. Other jobs were the Coteau Junction Railway (AO, SP, MU2664, 'CPR/ 14 May 1879, D.E. Luca to FS), the Grand Junction Railway (MU2668, telegram, 4 Nov. 1879, WS to FS), the St Lawrence & Ottawa Railway (MU2722, 'Gen. Corr.,' 15 Jan. 1882, WS to FS), and the Carillon Canal. See also AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr./ 4 Jan. 1877, Shanly & Plunkett to FS, and 24 Jan., 13 Apr. 1877, J. Stewart to FS; Monetary Times, 28 Feb. 1879. AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 17 Sept., 1882, WS to Clarke Gamble AO, SP, MU2726 and MU2727, 'Estate Papers/ various files, e.g., 'Corr./ 30 July 1886, WS to John Catto, and 'Misc/ 4 Feb. 1885, note re account of D.B. Read AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 23 Sept. 1882, WS to Macdonald, and 29 Sept. 1882 (photocopy), Macdonald to WS; AO, SP, MU2727, 'Estate Papers, Corr./ 13 Mar. 1885, WS to O'Connor & Hogg (for a summary of Mrs Shanly's insurance policies), also MU2726, 'Estate Papers, Insurance'; AO, SP, MU2721, 'Gen. Corr./ 3 Oct. 1873, Scottish Provincial Assurance Co. to Petterson, Beattie & Cassels; MU2726, 'Estate Papers, Will and Land Papers/ 10 Oct. 1882, lease of 5 Willcox Street; AO, SP, MU2731, 'WS Corr./ 18 Jan. 1883, C.N. Shanly to WS. Walter was still paying the household accounts in 1896, see AO, SP, MU2732, 'Corr./ numerous letters, F.E. Shanly to WS. AO, SP, MU2732, 5 July 1885, C.D. Shanly to WS; private collection, telegram, 4 July 1885, John A. Macdonald to WS See especially, CHC, Debates, May-July 1885 and Feb.-Apr. 1886. CHC, Debates, 28 May 1886, 1614, contrasted with his opinion against subsidizing the Southern Ontario Pacific Railway from Woodstock to Hamilton (Debates, 29 Apr. 1889,1633) CHC, Debates, 28 May 1886,1614 CHC, Debates, 12 Apr. 1888,165, and 8 Apr. 1886, 593-4 NA, Engineering Institute of Canada Papers (hereafter EIC Papers), vol. 211, list of attendees and minutes of meetings, 4 Mar., 11 Nov., 9 Dec. 1886 and 19, 20 Jan. 1887. The core of the provisional committee was John Kennedy (chief engineer, Montreal Harbour Commission), PA. Peterson (CPR), Percival W. St George (chief surveyor, City of Montreal), Alan Macdougall (no stated employer, Toronto), and Prof. H.T. Bovey (McGill College). NA, EIC Papers, vol. 211,24 Feb. 1894, T.C. Keefer and Alan Macdougall, memo from the provisional committee, and vol. 212, Minute Book, minutes of first annual meeting, 24 Feb. 1887, and of subsequent meetings for the year

234 Notes to pages 174-7 118 CHC, Debates, 25 Apr. 1887, 111 119 NA, EIC Papers, vol. 223, Book of Members, 1887, 30 Nov. 1887, and n.d., private memorandum 120 NA, EIC Papers, vol. 224, Misc. Corr., 24 Nov. 1887, WS to Bovey, and vol. 225, 11 Nov. 1890 and 27 June 1891, Canadian Society of Civil Engineers CSCE to WS; CSCE, Transactions 7 (1893), 283 121 Ball, Mind, Heart and Vision, 23-4; CSCE, Transactions 4 (1890), 62, president's address; NA, RG30, vol. 789, Minute Book of St Clair Tunnel Co., and vol. 2145, 'St. Clair Tunnel Corr.'; 'St Clair Tunnel,' Historic American Engineering Record MI-67, courtesy Dr Charles K. Hyde, Wayne State University; Greenhill, The St. Clair Tunnel,' in Newell and Greenhill, Survivals 122 Shanly and Gzowski, Report on the Accomodation for Railways on the Waterfront of the City of Toronto, app., 14-23; Passfield, Technology in Transition, 32-3; Walker, Daylight through the Mountain, 430. WS's estate papers list a government arbitration fee of $2,700 as a receivable; Walker (p. 55) states that this was connected to the Soo Canal but gives no source (UWO, RC, Middlesex Will Series, RG22.321.6728, will of Walter Shanly; information in the will courtesy of Prof. Fred Armstrong, UWO). 123 AO, SP, MU2730, The Canadian Shanlys'; Interview with Guy Saunders, 13 July 1993. Mr Saunders knew Frank's daughters in his youth. The descendants of James Moore Shanly (Coote's son) were and still are the only continuation of the family line. 124 Berger, The Sense of Power, 85-7 125 McCord Museum, M22087, various writings by WS 126 Private collection, packet of letters to and from Col. Harold Malet, Feb.Mar. 1897, and packet of letters to and from Ellen (Nell) Villiers (nee Shanly), Sept.-Oct. 1897; also, n.d., various memos re Villiers family, and a copy of the will of Michael Shanly, 1814, probably obtained from Ireland in these years. WS's research had been going on for many years, e.g., tracing the O'Shanly family coat of arms sent from Bernard Burke to WS in Jan. 1860, and a memo on the Percy family of Garradise written by Eliza Shanly (an Irish cousin), 1881, both in the same collection. The result was The Canadian Shanlys, Whence They Came and How They Got to Thorndale' (AO, SP, MU2730) used often in these pages. 127 The Canadian Shanlys/ 19 128 AO, SP, MU2727, 'Estate Papers, Claims/ 30 Oct. and 9 Nov. 1893, WS to J.O. Robinson and WS to Jams; AO, SF> MU2726, 'FS Estate Papers, Claims, Edward Nanton/ 31 Nov. 1893, 'Memo of James Shanly's Loss by Endorsing or Accepting for F. Shanly'; AO, SP, MU2678, 'Hoosac, Misc./ notes on back of June and July 1875 Hoosac Tunnel account statements, 21 March

Notes to pages 177-87 235 1894. WS died with an estate of about $30,000 (UWO, RC, Middlesex Will Series, RG22.321.6728, will of Walter Shanly), of which he left the largest share to Coote's childless daughter, Matilda-Harriet. 129 The Canadian Shanlys,' 43 130 Railroad Gazette, 23 Mar. 1900:193, obituary of WS 131 Montreal Star, 18 Dec. 1899, 8, obituary of WS 6: Gentlemen Engineers 1 See Brown, Modernization: The Transformation of American Life, 1600 1865, 9-11,18-19, for useful definitions of'traditional' and 'modern' society 2 Morison, From Know-How to Nowhere, 40-7; Merritt, Engineering in American Society, 3, 54; Buchanan, 'Gentlemen Engineers'; Chrimes, Civil Engineering, 1839-1889, 24; Haber, The Quest for Authority, 294-8. This view also finds its way into general histories, e.g., the treatment of Telford in Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 179-87. 3 See DCB entries cited in chapter 2. 4 Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, chap. 7, and The Rise of Professional Society, Jacobs, Systems of Survival, 57-92, offers an intriguing concept called the 'guardian syndrome,' which both the eighteenth-century aristocrat and the twentieth-century professional possess. 5 Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen 6 Reynolds, The Education of Engineers in America before the Morrill Act of 1862,' 479 7 Millard, The Master Spirit, 6; Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America; Merritt, Engineering in American Society, chap. 2, esp. p. 39 8 Layton, The Revolt of the Engineers, 6; Millard, The Master Spirit, 3-11; Hatch, 'Introduction,' in his The Professions in American History, Geison, 'Introduction,' in his Professions and Professional Ideologies in America 9 Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 12. Westfall is referring to pre1837 Upper Canada (Westfall, Two Worlds, 196). 10 Buchanan, The Engineers, 39-45; Brian C.S. Harper, unpublished research presented at the ICOHTEC Conference in Bath, England, July 1994; Rae and Volti, The Engineer in History, 97; Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, 256-66 11 Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer, Dilts, The Great Road, 159-69; Rae and Volti, The Engineer in History, 140; Hunter and Dooley, Claudius Crozef, Liscombe, Altogether American 12 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 67-73

236 Notes to pages 188-93 13 Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organization, for example 14 Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, chap. 6; Brooke, 'The Equity Suit of Mclntosh v. the Great Western Railway' 15 Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt Master Builder, Joby, The Railway Builders; Cooney, 'The Origins of the Victorian Master Builders' 16 Perrot, 'Introduction/ in History of Private Life, 4:97; Wohl, The Victorian Family

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250 Bibliography Radforth, Ian. 'Confronting Distance: Managing Jacques and Hay New Lowell Operations, 1853-73.' In Peter Baskerville, ed, Canadian Papers in Business History. Victoria, 1989 - 'Sydenham and Utilitarian Reform.' In Ian Radforth and Allan Greer, eds, Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Rae, John, and Rudi Volti. The Engineer in History. New York: Peter Lang, 1993 Rankin, Charles. 'Surveyor Charles Rankin's Exploration for the Pioneer Road from Garafraxa to Owen Sound, 1837.' Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records27 (1931),497-510 Read, Colin. 'The London District Oligarchy in the Rebellion Era.' Ontario History 72 (Dec. 1980), 195-209 Read, Colin, and Ronald J. Stagg, eds. The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1985 Reynolds, Terry S., ed. The Engineer in America: A Historical Anthology from Technology and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991 - The Education of Engineers in America before the Morrill Act of 1862.' History of Education Quarterly. Winter 1992, 459-81 Rolt, L.T.C. George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution. London: Longman, 1960. Reprint, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984 - Railway Engineering. London: Macmillan, 1968 - Victorian Engineering. London: Allen Lane, 1970 Rotundo, E. Anthony. 'Patriarch and Participants: A Historical Perspective on Fatherhood in the United States.' In Michael Kaufman, ed, Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power, and Change. Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 - 'Boy Culture: Middle-Class Boyhood in Nineteenth-Century America.' In Mark C. Carnes, ed, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Ruggles, Steven. 'The Transformation of American Family Structure.' American Historical Review 99 (Feb. 1994), 103-28 Russell, Peter A. 'Forest into Farmland: Upper Canadian Clearing Rates, 18221839.' In J.K. Johnson and Bruce G. Wilson, eds, Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives. Ottawa: Carle ton University Press, 1989 Sack, James J. From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Saunders, Guy L. 'Why Did They Emigrate? From Britain to Canada-A Study in Motivation.' York Pioneer, Spring 1977 Sebert, Lou M. The Land Surveys of Ontario 1750-1980.' Cartographica 17 (Autumn 1980), 65-106

Bibliography 251 Shaw, Charles Aeneas. Tales of a Pioneer Surveyor, ed, Raymond Hull. Don Mills, Ont.: Longman, 1970 Simms, J.G. The War of the Two Kings, 1685-91.' In Early Modern Ireland, 1534-1691. Vol. 3 A New History of Ireland, ed T.W. Moody et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 Sinclair, Bruce. 'Canadian Technology: British Traditions and American Influences.' Technology and Culture, 1979,108-23 Singer, Charles, et al., eds. The Late Nineteenth Century c. 1850 to c. 1900. Vol. 5 of A History of Techno logy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958 Skelton, Oscar D. The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways, Toronto and Glasgow: Brook, 1916 - Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Gait. London: Oxford University Press, 1920. Reprint, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966 Skempton, A.W., ed./o/m Smeaton, FRS. London: Thomas Telford, 1981 Skempton, A.W., and Esther Clark Wright. 'Early Members of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.' The Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology Transactions 44 (1971-2), 23-47 Smith, Allan. 'The Myth of the Self-Made Man in English Canada, 1850-1914.' Canadian Historical Review 59 (1978), 189-219 Smith, Denis, 'Professional Practice.' InA.W. Skempton, edjohn Smeaton, FRS. London: Thomas Telford, 1981 Smith, R.D. The Early Years on the Great Western Railway.' Ontario History 60 (Dec. 1968), 205-27 Somerville, E. O., and Martin Ross. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. London: Harrap, 1924 Spring, David. The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century: Its Administration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963 Stacey, C.P. Canada and the British Army, 1846-1871: A Study in the Practice of Responsible Government. Rev. edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963 Stevens, G.R. Canadian National Railways. Vol. 1, Sixty Years of Trial and Error (1836-1896). Toronto: Clarke, Irwin 1960 - History of the Canadian National Railways. New York: Macmillan, 1973 Stewart, Gordon T. 'Political Patronage under Macdonald and Laurier, 18781911.' American Review of Canadian Studies 10 (1980), 3-26 Styran, Roberta M., and Robert R. Taylor. The Welland Canals: The Growth of Mr. Merrill's Ditch. Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills Press [n.d.] Talman, JJ. The Development of the Railway Network in Southwestern Ontario before 1876.' Canadian Historical Association Ann ual Report, 1953 Taylor, Geoffrey W. The Railway Contractors: The Story of John W. Stewart, His Enterprises and Associates. Victoria, B.C.: Morriss Publishing, 1988

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Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964 Taylor, Graham D., and Peter Baskerville. A Concise History of Business in Canada. Toronto, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 Thompson, Don W. Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in Canada. Vol. 1. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1966 Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980 Thompson, F.M.L. English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963 - The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 18301900. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 Trout, J.M., and Edward Trout. The Railways of Canada for 18 70-1. Toronto: Monetary Times, 1871 Upton, Neil. An Illustrated History of Civil Engineering. London: Heinemann, 1975 Vance, James E., Jr. The North American Railroad: Its Origin, Evolution, and Geography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Waite, Peter B. A Chapter in the History of the Intercolonial Railway, 1864.' Canadian Historical Review 32 (Dec. 1951), 356-69 - Canada, 1874-1896: Arduous Destiny. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 197 - The Confederation Debates in the Province of Canada, 1865. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963 Walker, B.E. A History of Banking in Canada. Toronto, 1909. Originally published in A History of Banking in All Nations. New York: Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, 1899 Walker, Frank N. The Longest Railway in the World.' Canadian Banker 63 (Winter 1956), 21-32 - Daylight through the Mountain: Letters and Labours of Civil Engineers Walter and Francis Shanly. Montreal: Engineering Institute of Canada, 1957 Wallace, Anthony EC. Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Industrial Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1978 - St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. New York: Knopf, 1987 Ward, James A. That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973 Ward, Norman. The Canadian House of Commons: Representation, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950 Warrington, C.J.S., and R.V.V. Nicholls. A History of Chemistry in Canada. Toronto: Pitman, 1949

Bibliography 253 Watkins, J. Elfreth. The Beginnings of Engineering.' ASCE Transactions, 1891. In American Society of Civil Engineers, Committee on the History and Heritage of American Civil Engineering, The Civil Engineer: His Origins. ASCE Historical Publication no.l. New York, 1970 Way, Peter. Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of the North American Canals, 1760-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Webster, N.W.Joseph Locke: Railway Revolutionary, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970 Welland County Historical Society. 'Report of the First Survey for the Welland Canal from William Hamilton Merritt to Major Hillier.' Wellington County Historical Society Papers and Records 5 (1936), 232-7 Westfall, William. Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989 Wiener, Martin J. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Wilson, Donald M. The Ontario and Quebec Railway: A History of the Development of the Canadian Pacific System in Southern Ontario. Belleville, Ont.: Mika Publishing, 1984 Wohl, Anthony, ed. The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses. London: Croon Helm, 1978 Young, Brian J. Promoters and Politicians: The North Shore Railway in the History of Quebec. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978 - 'Positive Law, Positive State: Class Realignment and the Transformation of Lower Canada, 1815-1866.' In Ian Radforth and Allan Greer, eds, Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992 Zeller, Suzanne. Land of Promise, Promised Land: The Culture of Victorian Science in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1996 Theses and Unpublished Papers Baskerville, Peter A. The Boardroom and Beyond: Aspects of the Upper Canadian Railroad Community.' PhD thesis, Queen's University, 1973 Comm, Robert Wendell. The History of the Great Western Railway (of Canada).' MA thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1947 Fraser, Robert L. 'Like Eden in Her Summer Dress: Gentry, Economy, and Society: Upper Canada 1812-1840.' PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1979 Klassen, Henry. 'L.H. Holton: Montreal Businessman and Politician, 18171867.' PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1970

254 Bibliography Porter, Christopher J.B.L. 'The Building of the Grand Trunk Railway, 18531859.' M. Museology thesis, University of Toronto, 1972 Swainson, Donald. The Personnel of Politics: A Study of the Ontario Members of the Second Federal Parliament.' PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1968 Taylor, Robert Stanley. 'Historical Development of the Four Welland Canals, 1824- 1933.' MA thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1950

Picture Credits

Archives of Ontario: aqueduct carrying Union Canal, F647/AO4155; timber bridge, F647/AO4157; railway station at Simcoe, AO4156; Ardenvohr, AO4171/ ACC 9312; Frank Shanly in the 1870s, S2211 /./. Talman Regional Collection, D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario: Shanly papers: sketch of cottage, B4296; plan of Thorndale House, B4296 Shanly album: James Shanly Sr., RC-80841; second Mrs Shanly, RC80844 McCord Museum of Canadian History, Notman Photographic Archives: Grand Trunk Railway bridge, 7329; Walter Shanly in 1863,1-9040; Walter Shanly in 1870,1-47896 Royal Ontario Museum: sketch of Union Canal, 977.161.9; portrait of Frank Shanly, 975.32 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto: Grand River bridge; Hoosac Tunnel

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Index

accounting, 112,128 Allan, Hugh, 169 Allegheny Valley Railroad, 78 Ardenvohr, 118,126,127 Aspden, Thomas, 158 Baird, Nicol Hugh, 34,183 Baldwin, Laommi, 33,186 Baring Brothers, 78 Barlow, Captain, 105-6 Barrett, Alfred, 34,44 Benedict, Roswell, 52-3 Benson, William T., 158,173 Blackwell, Thomas E., 144 Board of Railway Commissioners, 108 Board of Works, 14-15,34,35; changed to Department of Public Works, 39-40; engineering principles at, 61, 80, 90, 100 Brantford and Port Burwell Railway, 131 Brassey, Thomas, 110-12,116 Brough, Allan, 63, 65 Brouse, William, 156 Brydges, Charles J., 115,160 Buffalo, Brantford and Lake Huron Railway, 105

Bytown and Prescott Railway, 52-3, 54,56 Canadian Pacific Railway: FS plans bid on, 134; FS seeks chief engineership, 136-7; WS and 1872 scheme, 169 Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, 174-5 canals: Beauharnois, 35-9; Caughnawaga ship, 170; Chambly, 35; Cornwall, 36; Erie, 33; Rideau, 34; Sault Ste Marie, 175; Union, 33, 505; Welland, 14, 34, 39-40, 42-3 civil engineering: apprenticeships, 28-61, 55-61; books on, 58-9; Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, 174-5,184; canal and railway compared, 46-8; canal construction, supervision of, 36-9, 40, 51, 54; changes in profession (1860s), 175,184,190-1; city engineering, 132; consulting, 114-15, 131-2,169-71; and design, 45, 945; early profession, 31-5; estate management, similarity to, 29-30; gentry culture, connection to, 29-

258 Index 31; engineers on GTR, 89-96, 100; mechanical engineering contrasted with, 183,184; and railway management, 143-4; salaries, 35, 36, 38,46, 50, 53,55,63, 90,91,103, 106, 107, 115, 132, 147, 157; Smeatonian style, 32-3, 61, 90; on TGR, 63-71, 74-7; in United States (1850s), 107 contracts and contracting: competitive system, 130,189; engineers, arrangements with, 80-1; extra work payments on, 38-9, 96,126, 168, 189; fixed-price system, 189; on GTR, 77-9; on Hoosac Tunnel, 117-18, 162-3; on Northern Railway, 110-11; on TGR, 73-4 Cooke, R.P., 87, 94 corn starch, 158 Cotton, James, 73 Credit Valley viaduct, 85,87, 88, 97, 99 C.S. Gzowski & Co.: engineers, relations with, 75-6, 78-86, 89; formation of, 73-4; and GTR, 77-90, 79100; and TGR, 73-6; work, quality of, 84-5, 98-100 Cumberland, Frederic, 101, 112, 213n85 Davies, Charles L., 64,66,69, 75,85, 95 Department of Public Works, 41-3, 61,106; and Intercolonial Railway, 154; Ottawa survey, 141-2 Detroit Commercial Convention, 157 distilleries, 16-18,21-2,24 Doane, Thomas A., 161 Dorion, Antoine-Aime, 150

Edwardsburg Starch Company, 1579

Ellis, W.H., 121,122,123,128 estate management, 6-7 E and W. Shanly, Contractors, 117 Fleming, Sandford, 112, 217n31 Gait, Alexander Tilloch, 111, 148; as finance minister, WS's views on (1857), 113; and Hoosac Tunnel investment, 167; Intercolonial, views on government's role, 154; protective tariff, advocate of, 159; TGR, partner in Gzowski & Co., 73, 76-8,104 gentleman, defined, 181-2 gentry life, 18-21,25-6 Georgetown quarry, 104, 111 Glyn Mills, 78 Grand Trunk Railway of Canada (GTR): construction contracts on, 77-80; construction of, 79-100; early schemes, 53-4; esplanade, 91; formation of, 77-8; labour supply in construction of, 87-8; mail, contract to carry (1863), 150; management problems (1850s), 144-6; northwest, extension to (1860s), 116; poor construction, reasons for, 97-100; St Glair Tunnel (1890s), 175; track laying, 96; Victoria Bridge, 145; WS as general manager of, 143-4; WS as general traffic manager of, 144-7 Great Western Railway (GWR): Canada Air Line branch, 121-3,127-9; construction begins (1852), 52-3; double-track contract (1873), 1259; FS's work on early surveys, 41-2;

Index 259 Gait and Guelph branch, FS bids on, 105; grain elevators, FS bids on, 113; Welland Railway, level crossing of, 108 Gregory, Charles Hutton, report of, 97 Gzowski, Casimir Stanislaus: Montreal to Prescott survey, 53; personal background, 73; St Marys to London extension, construction of, 106 Gzowski, C.S. & Co. See C.S. Gzowski and Co. Haupt, Herman, 161 Hill, James J., 136-7 Hincks, Francis, 53 Holton, Luther Hamilton: engineers, views on, 80; free trade, advocate of, 159; partner in Gzowski & Co., 73-4; politics, 148; supported by in House of Commons, 151 Hoosac Tunnel: construction of, 163-4; contract for construction of, 161; contract secured, F. and W. Shanly, 116-17; FS assists (1874), 131; FS departs partnership, 165; FS's role in, 117-18; history of, 161-2; new technology in construction of, 161-2,165; role of state, 161,163,166; WS negotiates contract for, 162-3; WS's role assessed, 160-1,166 Humber River bridge, 75,82-3, 85,89 Intercolonial Railway, 114,116,118, 119,135-6 Jackson, Peto, Brassey, and Betts: in New Brunswick, 106; on GTR, 81, 98-9

Jacques and Hay, 72, 223nl02 James Cotton & Co., 73 Jones, Shanly & Co., 118-20 Keefer, Samuel: as chief engineer, Board of Works, 36; as chief engineer, Welland Canal, 40; Erie Canal, apprenticeship on, 34 Keefer, Thomas Coltrin: Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, 174; consulting career begins, 204n57; Erie Canal, apprenticeship on, 34; GTR surveys (early), 53, 209n29 Killaly, Hamilton Hartley: at Board of Works, 34, 35-6, 39-40,44; GTR, early rumours about, 53; Shanlys' neighbour in London Township, 11-12; WS's early career, assistance in, 14-15, 55-6 Kingsmill, Nicol, 118,126 Kingston and Pembroke Railway, 131,132 Kirkland, Edward, 165 Kneass, Sam, 45 land speculation, 104-5,107,115-16, 140 Langton, John, 26 Latrobe, Benjamin H., Jr: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, management of, 147; early professsional values, 33,186; Hooosac Tunnel, consultant on, 116-17,161,162; Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad, chief engineer of, 116,11819 Light, Alexander Luders, 106 Lundy, James, 19, 20,22, 103 Macdonald, Duncan, 170-1

260

Index

Macdonald, John A.: and FS, 124, 135, 136; and WS, 156,169, 172 Macdonald, Sandfield, 148,149 McGreevy, Robert, 118-19 Mackenzie, H. Munro: GTR, assistant engineer on, 84-5, 86, 87-8; Ottawa survey, 141 Macpherson, David Lewis: Canadian Pacific Railway, 1872 proposal to build, 169; partner in Gzowski & Co., 73 Maritime Railway, inspection of, 114-15 Mechanics' Bank, 159-60, 168 Midland Railway, FS constructs, 120, 124-8,130 Mills, John B.: early professional engineer, 34; Beauharnois Canal, WS's supervisor on, 36-7,38; Caughnawaga Ship Canal, early report on, 170 Montreal and Vermont Junction Railway, 113 Moodie, Dunbar, 26 Moodie, Susanna, 9,26 Mowbray, Thomas: nitroglycerine and Hoosac Tunnel, 161, 163; WS on Hoosac Tunnel, assessment of, 166 Nanton, Edward, 127,136 New Brunswick Railway, 106 nitroglycerine, 161-3 Northern Extension Railway, 169 Northern Railroad of New York, 4450, 52,143 Northern Railway: problems in 1859, 110; reconstruction of, 110-13, 126,130; western extension, 120 North Shore Railway, 133,170-1

Ottawa and Prescott Railway, 151 Parry Sound Colonization Railway, 173 Patrick, William, 149 Pembina and Fort Garry Railway, 131 Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad: FS constructs, 116,118-20, 122,129,130-1 pneumatic drills, 161-2,166 Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway, 107 Prince Edward Island Railway, report on, 132 Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Occidental Railway, 170-1 Railways: Allegheny Valley, 78; Brantford and Port Burwell, 131; Buffalo, Brantford and Lake Huron, 105; Bytown and Prescott, 52-3, 54, 56; Canadian Pacific, 134, 136-7, 169; Chaudiere Valley, 151; Chicago and Michigan Grand Trunk, 115; Credit Valley, 131,134; Erie and Niagara, 113; Gait and Guelph, 105; Georgian Bay and Wellington, 135; Grand Junction, 131; Grand Trunk of Canada (see Grand Trunk Railway of Canada); Great Western (see Great Western Railway); Intercolonial, 114,116, 118,119, 135-6; Kingston and Pembroke, 131,132; labour shortage, 87-8,106,122-3, 129-30; light-weight, FS advocates, 114,115,120; Maritime, inspection of, 114-15; Midland, FS constructs, 120,124-8,130; Montreal and Vermont Junction, 113; narrow-gauge,

Index 261 120,124; New Brunswick, 106; Northern, 110-13,120,126,130; Northern Extension, 169; Northern Railroad of New York, 44-50, 52, 143; North Shore, 133,170-1; Ottawa and Prescott, 151; Parry Sound Colonization, 173; Pembina and Fort Garry, 131; Pittsburgh and Connellsville, FS constructs, 116,118-20,122,129, 130-1; Port Dalhousie and Thorold, 107; Prince Edward Island, report on, 132; Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, and Occidental, 170-1; Rondout and Oswego, 118; Souris and Rocky Mountain, 172; Toronto and Goderich, 63; Toronto and Guelph (see Toronto and Guelph Railway); Toronto, Grey and Bruce, 120,121-3,125-9,131; Troy and Grenfell, 161; Welland, FS as chief engineer, 107-9,112; Wellington, Grey and Bruce, 113-14, 116,120; Western Counties, WS as contractor, 171; Whitby and Port Perry, 131 Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada, 12 Reekie, James, 116 Reid, George Lowe, chief engineer GWR, 101,105,126 Robinson, Arthur G.: assistant engineer on GTR, 82-3, 214nl02; on TGR surveys, 64, 66, 67, 69 Robinson, William B., commissioner of public works, 39-40 Rondout and Oswego Railroad, 118 Ross, Alexander Mackenzie, chief engineer GTR, 81, 83, 86,87, 89, 99 Royal Engineers, 34-5

St Ours Lock, 39-40 Schlatter, Colonel, 45 Shanly, Charles, 7,12,13,14-15, 28, 176 Shanly, Charles James Nisbitt (son of James Jr), 176 Shanly, Coote-Nisbitt, 7,10,15,1624, 28, 166-7, 176 Shanly, Cuthbert William (son of FS), 137-8 Shanly, Ellen, 176 Shanly family: at the Abbey, 6-7; conflict within, 191-3; debt, 5,17-18, 25-6; emigration, 8-11; ethnicity, x-xi; and gentry culture, 18-21, 256; Irish origins of, 4-9; new world, adjustment to, 24-7; at Norman's Grove, 7-9 Shanly, Frances (mother of FS and WS), 5-6, 7 Shanly, Francis (Frank; FS): birth, 7; character in youth, 15,20-4; as city engineer, 132-5; as consulting engineer, 114-15,131,134; as contractor, 105, 109-13, 116-30, 189; death, 138; debts, 23, 125-7, 131, 135-6,138-9; engineering, early work, 40-4; family life, 104,107, 108,116,126-7,134-5,137-8; GTR, resident engineer on, 90-4; Intercolonial Railway, chief engineer of, 135-6; as manager, 90-^4,111-13, 128-30,189; marriage, 103-4; Parliament, runs for (1872), 123-4; professionalism, 60-1, 85-6,105, 109; pursues engineering, 23-4; as railway promoter, 113-14; TGR, surveys on, 64-7 Shanly, James, Jr, 13,18, 19, 24-8, 129,176

262 Index Shanly, James, Sr, 5-15,18,24-7 Shanly, James Moore (son of CooteNisbitt Shanly), 176 Shanly, Matilda-Harriet (daughter of Coote-Nisbitt Shanly), 235nl28 Shanly, Robert (half-brother of FS and WS), 19,26,104, 141,176 Shanly, Walter (WS): birth, 7; and Canadian Pacific Railway (1872), 169; Bytown and Prescott Railway, chief engineer of, 53; Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, role in, 174-5; character in youth, 13-14; death, 178; early engineering work, 35-40; Edwardsburg Starch Company, role in, 157-9; and FS's debts, 125-7,131,135-6, 167-8, 172,177,192; and FS's estate, 1712; as FS's instructor, 48-9, 51, 54, 56-7,109,191; GTR, chief engineer of Toronto to Sarnia section, 81, 83-4,89-90; GTR general manager, 142-4; GTR general traffic manager, 144-7; Hoosac Tunnel, construction of, 160-8; Hoosac Tunnel contract negotiation, 117-18; member of Parliament, 148-57, 173-4; Northern Railway, consultant to, 110; Ottawa survey, 141-2; political views, 147-52,154-5,1734, 190; professionalism, 60, 80-1, 83, 86, 90,100,187; pursues engineering, 14 Smeaton, John, 32 Sobrero, Ascanio, 161 Souris and Rocky Mountain Railway, 172 Stephenson, Robert, 32, 89 Stewart, James, 85,107,134-5,141-2 Strickland, Samuel, 26

strikes: on Beauharnois Canal (1843), 37; on GTR (1854), 87; on Canada Air Line (1871-2), 122 Tate, C.M., 36 Thorndale: distillery at, 17-18, 24; farming at, 16; land-based industry at, 188; recalled, 103; renovation (1853), 26-7; return visit of FS and WS, 61; site and house, 12-13 Toronto and Goderich Railway, 63 Toronto and Guelph Railway (TGR): conceived, 54-5; construction of, 73-7; financing of, 72-3; GTR, amalgamation with, 77-8; land purchases, 70,76; surveys of, 64-70 Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway: FS constructs, 121-3,125-9,131; FS opposes, 120 Traill, Thomas, 26 Troy and Grenfell Railway, 161 Villiers, Charles Courtenay, 176-7 Villiers, Ellen. See Shanly, Ellen Wallace, William, and Niagara Tunnel scheme, 131 Walsh, James, 118 Weiderkinch, Carl O., 166 Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway: FS promotes, 113-14; FS does not construct, 120; new promoters, 116 Western Counties Railway, WS as contractor, 171 Whitby and Port Perry Railway, 131 Woodlands, 103,107,116 Worthington, John, 111 Zimmerman, Sam, 52-3