The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 (22 page)

As for the notorious correspondence with McMullen, Smith and Cass, they were “private letters for private information and not for publication at all,” and, in Allan’s view, that seemed to take care of that. He admitted that some of the statements in the letters “may appear to conflict” with his own evidence and then repeated his previously published explanation that they had been written carelessly.

In his testimony, Allan showed himself a master of double talk. McMullen had charged that a secret agreement had been made between Cartier and Allan, with Macdonald’s blessing, between July 30 and August 6, 1872, by which, for certain monetary considerations, Allan was to get the charter. And there, staring at him, was Allan’s own letter to Cass of August 7, stating that “we yesterday signed an agreement by which, on certain monetary conditions, they agree to form a company of which I am to be President to suit my views, to give me and my friends a majority of the stock, and to give the company so formed the contract for building the road.…”

He had also used the word “agreement” in an August 6 letter to McMullen. But in Allan’s curious interpretation “yesterday” no longer meant “yesterday,” “signed” didn’t really mean “signed” and an “agreement” was actually, on second thought, not an agreement at all.

The word “yesterday,” Allan insisted, was used inadvertently for “recently” or “some time ago.” It was “merely a slip of the pen.” “Signed an agreement” was an expression “used in the hurry of the moment.” And though Allan was faced with a letter in which he had written that the contract decision was ultimately in the hands of one man – Cartier – he now denied that he ever thought that an agreement with Cartier was equivalent to an agreement with the Government. Then he added that until Macdonald sent the wire refusing to accede to it he really
had
looked on it “as a kind of agreement.”

Again the commissioners dealt lightly with the witness. What had made him discount Cameron’s note? Did he expect Beaubien to pay back his “indefinite” loan? What happened, exactly, to the money he paid to three cabinet ministers? Why, if it was a free gift freely given, did he make so much fuss about getting receipts? Was the nominally paid-up capital of the Canada Pacific all in cash or was some of it bogus? Was he normally in the habit of spending almost four hundred thousand dollars at election time? The Reform press asked these questions rhetorically. The commissioners did not bother.

John Joseph Caldwell Abbott,
M.P
., took the stand following Allan’s testimony. Even though the correspondence, telegrams and testimony showed that he had been handing out cash on behalf of Allan by the tens of thousands, he denied that he was Allan’s confidential agent with respect to money.

“No, I don’t think I was. Sir Hugh asked me to assist him in this affair.…” With these carefully chosen words Abbott subtly moved to dissociate himself from the discredited knight. He was the most powerful corporation lawyer in Canada – his clients included the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Bank of Montreal as well as the Allan Line – and he knew how to hedge. His testimony was peppered with “not likelys.”

A remarkable man, Abbott sprang from a remarkable lineage. His father was a pioneering missionary, a distinguished scholar, a well-known writer, first librarian and Vice-Principal of McGill. (His father-in-law, the tempestuous Dean John Bethune, was the Principal.) His mother was the daughter of another minister, a former midshipman with Captain Cook. Abbott himself, a voracious reader who knew a bit about everything, had an extraordinary range of interests – the merchandising of calico, the buying of grain, the packing of apples: he had done all these things himself. An enthusiastic gardener, he cultivated rare orchids in a specially constructed conservatory. He was not content to pursue his hobby of salmon fishing on public waters: he
owned
a salmon stream. His fine tenor voice had been a feature of Christ Church Cathedral, English Montreal’s principal place of worship; he not only sang in the choir, he also directed it. A pillar of Montreal’s military society, he raised and commanded his own regiment. A lecturer at McGill, he became Dean of Law. He was the kind of man who liked to be in charge of things and, obviously, he had the ability for it.

He claimed to be unhappy in politics. “I hate politics,” he said,
late in his career. “I hate notoriety, public meetings, public speeches, caucuses, everything … [to do with politics] except doing public work to the best of my ability.” Yet he could not avoid it; a corporation lawyer in those days was automatically immersed in politics. Abbott had started young, as a Liberal, and switched to the Conservative Party after Confederation. His dislike of politics seems to have been genuine – he was a man who automatically did his best (not terribly successfully) to stay out of the public eye; but he remained in politics all of his life. For, above all else, Abbott was a survivor. The Pacific Scandal, in which he was immersed to the ear lobes, failed to sink him, even though his own role was among the least admirable. In all of the shady background manoeuvring, from the time of Allan’s dealings with Cartier to the final denouement of the Royal Commission, Abbott’s guiding hand is to be seen. When secret agreements are drawn up, Abbott composes them. When election funds are promised, Abbott hands over the cheques. When damaging letters are purchased, Abbott negotiates. When indiscreet papers must be destroyed, Abbott presides. When dissident clerks defect, Abbott dangles the bribe. When friendly commissioners are needed, Abbott comes up with the names. Seven years later, Abbott the fixer would still be around to draw up new railway charter; “the most perfect organ of its kind” it would be called. By 1887 he would become mayor of Montreal and in 1891 he would enjoy a brief and not too glorious moment as the first native-born prime minister of Canada, in spite of his late leader’s declared belief that he had not a single qualification for the office. But then, Macdonald never warmed to Abbott. He was an extraordinarily ugly man with a face like a homely John Bull – a big pudgy nose and hard metallic eyes – but as Macdonald’s secretary Joseph Pope remarked, his nature was agreeable and his smile was sweet. Macdonald slew Abbott with a single phrase: “Yes,” he said, “a sweet smile. All from the teeth outward.”

There was one moment of comic opera in Abbott’s testimony when the lawyer took it upon himself to comment on the McMullen charge “respecting an agreement … written by three clerks in my office so that none of them might know its contents.”

Although he had, the previous November, specifically referred in a letter to Allan’s “arrangement with Cartier,” Abbott swore that there was no such agreement ever prepared or written. Then he added that Cartier’s letter of July 30, promising Allan the presidency whatever Macpherson might do, actually
had
been written by three
different clerks. Why? Abbott’s straight-faced explanation was that he “placed one sheet in the hands of each clerk to save time.”

By this time, however, interest in the Royal Commission was fading fast. Very little had emerged from the tangle of evasion, hedging and double talk that the public did not already know. The newspapers were still publishing verbatim accounts of the proceedings (the leader writers were concentrating on little else) but the people were bored. When Abbott returned on September 27 to read and correct his deposition – a task that occupied two hours – one of the commissioners went into a calm sleep from which, at intervals, he would rouse himself to take snuff. Another paced the floor at the rear of the bench pausing to help himself from the snuff box of his slumbering comrade. Only Judge Day, the chairman, managed to stay alert.

The voice that was the pride of Christ Church Cathedral droned on and on. The messengers nodded. The secretary of the commission read listlessly from the
Canada Monthly
. One of the three or four newspapermen present laid himself out on one of the cushioned seats that the public had abandoned and he, too, slept.

Thus did the proceedings of the Royal Commission grind slowly towards their close. The commissioners made no report but simply published the evidence without comment. It was left to Lord Dufferin to write its epitaph as he sent his account of the affair off to the Colonial Secretary: “A greater amount of lying and baseness,” he remarked, “could not well be crammed into a smaller compass.”

5
Battle stations

The final act was played out on Parliament Hill from October 23 to November 5 in what James Young, the parliamentarian-historian, called “one of the most remarkable and profoundly exciting debates of that period.” There would be only one subject discussed in this new session of Parliament: the evidence taken before the Royal Commission.

The Governor General spent two days going over the evidence with Judge Day. On Sunday, October 19, he wrote Macdonald a brutal note in which he said that “what has occurred cannot but fatally affect your position.” The Prime Minister’s first impulse was to resign on the spot. Had it not been for Dufferin’s “imperative commands to the contrary” he would have done so. But Dufferin wanted a meeting and on
Monday morning a painful interview took place at Rideau Hall. Dufferin pointed out to his prime minister that there were four charges against him: first, personal corruption; second, selling the railway to an American ring; third, granting corrupt and improper concessions to Allan; and, fourth, “having obtained money from a suspicious source and having applied it to illegitimate purposes.” On the first three counts Macdonald had not been found guilty; on the fourth he had. Worse, he had been acting as Minister of Justice at the very time he had, by his own admission, broken the law by “treating” the voters. His letter, added the Governor General, was not to be seen as a dismissal but as a warning to save Macdonald from humiliation.

Dufferin felt that Macdonald ought to have the honesty to admit his guilt on the fourth charge and call an election; such frankness might just save him. And “having paid the penalty and received absolution you’ll return to office under circumstances both more honourable and more favourable to you than if you seek to prolong the existence of a discredited administration.”

Of course, Dufferin added as Macdonald took his leave, if he managed to retain a healthy majority in Parliament he could consider the letter null and void since it only discussed the contingency of his “pulling through with the skin of his teeth.”

The interview had been more than merely painful; it had been perplexingly ambiguous. The truth was that the Governor General shrank from the idea of losing his charming and able first minister, in spite of the many embarrassments he had caused. It would be different if there was a stronger man to fall back on; in that case, if Macdonald’s majority in the House was narrow, Dufferin would have no hesitation in asking him to resign. But he considered Mackenzie “a poor creature,” completely under George Brown’s thumb, likable enough but “cautious, small and narrow.” As for his supporters, they were “an incompetent set of men” on whose advent to power, he said privately, he would look with great alarm.

For the whole of Tuesday, an uncertain Macdonald was closeted with his cabinet. Then a chastening message arrived for the Governor General from the Colonial Secretary and the impetuous Dufferin realized he had gone too far. It was up to Parliament, Lord Kimberley reminded him, to withdraw confidence in its own people. The Governor General hastened to tell the Prime Minister that his letter was “in some degree cancelled.” The stage was set for the parliamentary struggle.

Parliament opened on Thursday, October 23, a raw, wet day with
the smell of snow already in the air. Millards, on Sparks Street, was enthusiastically advertising “thick-soled, water-defying, slush-repelling, damp-excluding, snow-dispelling, cold-defying, heat-contracting boots.” The roads and sidewalks were in their usual terrible condition, pocked by cavities and riven by cracks, which caused one lady, that day, to sprain an ankle. But this did not deter the crowds who congregated all along the principal streets early that morning. Tantalizing rumours were about. It was said that George McMullen was in town. It was said that Louis Riel, the Member for Provencher, was in town to take his seat in Parliament. It was said that the two brothers of Thomas Scott, Riel’s victim, were in town to exact revenge. It was said that Macdonald was despondent over the criticisms of the British press. It was said that Macdonald was confident of a majority. It was said that Macdonald would retire into private life. In the cavernous stairwells of the Russell House, the famous hostelry which every visitor and parliamentarian of note made his headquarters, the whispers echoed as human eddies formed and parted and circulated and formed again to exchange gossip about the scandal.

By noon a river of people was flowing towards Parliament Hill. By two, the galleries and corridors of the House were so tightly packed that it was difficult to breathe. Never before had there been such a crush within those Gothic walls. Outside, a damp wind was cutting through the thickest overcoats; inside, the temperature had become oppressive.

On his way to Parliament, Lord Dufferin paused to open the new iron bridge across the Rideau Canal. The bridge – which was to bear his name – had been appropriated by the crowd and detectives were required to clear the structure, which had then to be barricaded to prevent the sports of the city from crossing ahead of the Governor General so that they could boast that they had performed the ceremony. Dufferin made one of his brief, graceful addresses and then, to the accompaniment of roaring cannon, moved on to the real business of the day.

Once more he found himself within the crimson chamber before that rustling flowerbed of silks and velvets, reading another man’s speech in two languages – a speech that announced, among other things, that the report of the Royal Commission would be tabled in the House and that the Royal Charter for the Canadian Pacific Railway would be surrendered for lack of financial backing. The House adjourned. The preliminaries were over. After the weekend, the real contest would begin.