When was the Canadian Pacific Railway completed?

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was completed on November 7, 1885 when Donald Smith drove the Last Spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia. The 4,667-kilometre transcontinental line ran from Montreal in the east to Port Moody, BC in the west and was completed more than a year ahead of the contract schedule. The CPR was the second-longest railway in the world at the time of its completion (after the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was being constructed concurrently). Its completion fulfilled the federal commitment to British Columbia at its 1871 entry into Confederation.

The CPR was incorporated by statute on February 16, 1881 (44 Victoria, c. 1) under the leadership of George Stephen, Donald Smith, James J. Hill, Norman Kittson, and Duncan McIntyre. The federal government provided subsidies of 25 million dollars in cash and 25 million acres of prairie land (later reduced to 7 million acres after the company preferred cash). The contract specified completion by 1891 (a 10-year period). William Cornelius Van Horne (1843 to 1915), an American railway executive, was hired as general manager in 1882 and drove the construction with extraordinary speed.

Construction faced enormous challenges. The Canadian Shield section north of Lake Superior (about 1,000 kilometres of muskeg, granite, and deep ravines) was the most difficult engineering challenge in railway history at the time. About 4,000 Chinese workers were employed on the British Columbia section through the Fraser Canyon and the Rocky Mountain passes; an estimated 600 to more than 1,000 Chinese workers died from accidents, disease, and exposure. Their wages were about half those of white workers. The federal Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 (the Head Tax) was imposed in part to discourage Chinese immigration after the railway's completion. Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologised for the Head Tax on June 22, 2006.

The North-West Rebellion of March to May 1885 directly affected the railway. Federal troops were rushed west on the partially built CPR to suppress the rebellion at Batoche. The 1,000-kilometre transit took only about ten days, demonstrating the railway's strategic value and helping secure additional federal support for the project. The Last Spike ceremony at Craigellachie was modest (no champagne, just an iron spike); the famous photograph by Alexander Ross of George Stephen, Donald Smith, William Van Horne, Sandford Fleming, and others is one of the most iconic images in Canadian history. Regular passenger service began in June 1886. The CPR remained Canada's dominant transcontinental carrier for a century, played a central role in immigration to the prairies, and is now a major freight railway. The Last Spike site at Craigellachie is a Parks Canada national historic site.