JHE Secretan, Canadian Railway Surveying

Railway line location inthe good old days.



This section features a chapter of a book written by a civil engineer who was involved at key points during Canada's railway building boom. He gets a speaking part in Pierre Berton's film, The National Dream , but is not listed as a historical figure in most Canadian reference books.

His "fame" results from his ability to tell a good story and, unlike most of the civil engineers of the day, his ability to put his story in writing as entertainment. Perhaps this is why he fit so well into Berton's efforts to popularize Canadian history and give us our own historical "heroes".

Maybe this is why his version of some key events is now seamlessly sewn into The National Dream.

In London, England in 1924, his adventures relating to the CPR were published under the title Canada's Great Highway and the University of Alberta has scanned the book, so you can read the whole thing on-line if you want. I have just reproduced his earliest work on the CPR as a representation of the conditions faced by civil engineers working to locate Canada's wilderness railways through the Canadian Shield.

JHE Secretan, railway surveyor
James Henry Edward Secretan 1852-1926

Secretan's account comes from the "Old CPR" - the CPR when it was a government public work. A miniature version of the current British Columbia had joined Canadian Confederation in 1871 on the condition that a railway would be built to connect it to eastern Canada within 2 years, and that the railway would be completed in 10 years ... so 1881, eh?

Then there was the Pacific Scandal, Macdonald's Tory government was dumped, and the Canadian Pacific Railway idea was mothballed.

With Sir John A. Macdonald back in power in 1878, the government dropped the "CPR as a public work " idea and connected with "The CPR Syndicate" which included Canadian J.J. Hill, and Scottish cousins George Stephen and Donald Smith - thus forming a trendy public-private partnership. Hill hired American W.C. Van Horne as General Manager during construction to finally bang the whole thing together - 1881 to 1885. And everyone lived happily ever after.
Thanks, but not so fast, Pierre.

Here is a partial image of  "Canada's Railway Problem " as it appeared in a 1915 school atlas
... in a child's atlas, Mandrake.
map: Ontario north of Lake Superior, too many railway lines. POE OPE Peace on Earth. One pure essence.

Did we we really need THREE railway lines north of Superior in 1915?
Ask the government - it built the top one and did plenty to encourage the building of virtually everything you see.
World War I cut off immigration and western growth for a while. It killed the British mania for investing in Canadian railways because capital and people were sucked into the war effort. The Great War killed both the Canadian Northern Railway and the Grand Trunk/Grand Trunk Pacific as independent financial entities.

By 1923, the two most northerly lines were absolutely and officially part of Canadian National Railways - the overbuilt, federally owned and supported network. The CNR competed with the CPR - a corporation whose shares were traded on stock exchanges here and in London. However no proud bastion of private enterprise, Berton's National Dream included, can ever turn down government subsidies linked to politically popular consequences - such as reducing freight rates for grain producers.

Were they all nuts?

Consider what railways offered:
 "Surely, we in Government cannot go wrong by supporting all this good stuff with":
... hmm, maybe too generous, but ...

Would Canadian history have come out the same if we had settled the west via northern Ontario dirt trails connecting lake steamboat routes
... as the Grits wanted in the mid-1870s?

It would have been much easier for prospective settlers/squatters from anywhere to travel via existing U.S. railroads
to the world's longest undefended, unmarked, non-border, border ...  and just walk across.

Would the map of Canada be different today if the governments hadn't gone a little nuts (well ... OK ... a lot nuts)
supporting the railways between 1890 and 1914?

Now think back ... think way, way back to 1871.

There are NO railways north of Lake Superior. Four-year-old Canada-in-diapers doesn't have enough of anything for its coming railway boom - well, maybe enough trees for railway ties, but that's it.

The American and British railway building booms have already produced hundreds of engineers skilled in railway location. This works out perfectly for Canada, because our transcontinental and western branchline railway building booms are just getting started. American, Scottish and English civil engineers will be in great demand. Freshly trained Secretan begins work for the CPR at age 19.
Briefly - if such a thing is possible on this website - how do you locate a railway line in northern Ontario?


Step 1 - Where do we want to go?
Whoever is paying the shot has a general idea of where the railway should go. Hudson's Bay Company water-based trade routes are well-established so there is a good body of knowledge about "the country". For example, Secretan's 1871 group is told to head east from north of the top of Lake Nipigon. It is possible that the area had already been scouted by a "Locating Engineer".

Step 2 - OK, we're starting ... um ... exactly where are we?
If you can link to a documented "benchmark" just work from there.

Or... using a precision timepiece ... you have brought the exact time with you from the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa. Like a gallant sea captain on the faceless ocean, you can use an instrument to "shoot" the sun or the stars because their movements are predictable. Their "angles" relative to you at a given time, plus a few calculations, tell you where you are - longitude and latitude down to a high degree of precision. Stake zero is at ...

Step 3 - The Chief of the Survey Party does some reconnaissance , on horseback if possible, and produces a sketch of a possible route ahead which he gives to The Assistant (...Chief Engineer).
Reconnaissance sketch made ahead of railway survey party
Ideally, you'd build a railway line in a straight line with no grades. In reality, the grades should avoid climbing (roughly) more than 2 units for every 100 units they travel along the ground. Curves shouldn't be too sharp either - about 10 degrees maximum - a radius of 573 feet if you can.

In the sketch, the Chief is laying out some tangents (straight parts). The question is: is his "highly experienced eye" right? Has he found a path through the Canadian Shield trees, hills, rivers, rocks and swamps which can easily be transformed into a railway? Using instruments to check his eye, are the grades and curves acceptable?

So the Assistant sees the Chief's "vision", the Chief has used hand-held instruments to provide rough compass headings and distances and has clearly marked where the tangents meet geographical landmarks. The Assistant is in charge of the tripod-mounted instruments and the staff which follow to do the accurate measuring work.
On the diagram:
Above the tangents are compass headings in degrees and minutes (minute = 1/60 of a degree).
Below the tangents are their lengths and + or - slope in per cent (2 units vertical over 100 units horizontal = 2.00%).
At each change in direction (P, Q, R) the relative change in heading is also shown in degrees and minutes.
In this textbook example, with a sketch the Chief shows visually where the Q-R segment should cut a ridge to help the Assistant see exactly what the Chief is thinking.

Step 4 - As he works, the Assistant (with the Chief) gets a "feel" for the extent of construction work do be done: grading, timber clearing, cuts and rock removal, building embankments across muskeg, bridges, tunnels. This is all recorded in notes.

Step 5 - Relative to the starting point - the first stake of your "trial line" - each day's work is recorded on paper at night. Key points on the map match stakes and other numbered markers which were placed as the party proceeded.

 



In the end you have:
 Ultimately, some big wheel in an office in Ottawa and/or Montreal looks at all this and determines if building your particular line is worth the estimated cost to build and operate it. Caution: sharp curves and steep grades will cost you money forever.

Members of a railway location survey party circa 1900 - listed by "importance"

Chief of Party
Perform reconnaissance for the survey party and "be in charge"

Topographer, "The Assistant"
Supervise the party's work during the day as he interprets it through the Chief's diagram. Should be experienced in construction and on all the instruments. Makes notes on key features of the proposed line.

Transitman
Maintain and operate the transit  (the heaviest instrument, the "universal" surveying instrument - which can measure both horizontal and vertical angles and "prolong straight lines").  The transitman also keeps alignment notes and assists in platting (an old term for plotting or mapping) the line at night. The "flag" (range pole) held by the rear flagman enables the transitman to "backsight" - lining up his next sighting point with his previous sighting point as he stands smack dab between them. The transitman uses all sorts of elaborate processes and mathematical calculations to nail down precisely where each important feature is.
Here is a transit from the pre-1940 era:
Transit - all purpose instrument used during railway surveying

Here is an example of a party trick you can perform with a transit - surveying a straight line in spite of an obstacle like a lake. 
But I bet you have to know yucky math.

Diagram: Prolonging a line over a lake. Railway survey party trick.

Draftsman
Create the "map" and "plan" of the potential railway line - as it evolves, with data from the others

Levelman (our man, Secretan)
Maintain and operate the level - which is used to survey the gradient of the line. Take notes to supplement the Assistant's on local physical features. Assist in platting at night. Operating a level "demands less professional experience than the transit ... may be filled by some young graduate engineer ". Secretan's "dumpy level" (the original design was short and stout in appearance - dumpy) was the most common type used. On a dumpy level, the telescope is permanently connected to its supports. The level is set up to always sight parallel to level ground, aiming at a calibrated rod held by the Rodman. So you read the height difference on the rod through the telescope, you chain (measure) the distance to the rod at ground level, and you can then calculate the gradient.
Here is a dumpy level. A is the telescope and C is a spirit level so you can ... level the level!
Railway survey instruments: Dumpy level

Here is the type of fun the Levelman and Rodman would have together.
Waving the rod: as seen through the telescope - the lowest value is the correct value.
Railway survey technique: Waving the rod

Head Chainman
 Measure distance with a 100 foot chain (later steel measuring tapes) and set the pace for the party - considering the relative speeds of the axmen, transitman, levelman, and other party members. He is the foreman of clearing, chaining and staking the line. The Rear Chainman brings up the rear of the chain and assists in counting off each 100 foot segment - and fractions of 100 when necessary. Starting at zero, the Stakeman is responsible for semi-permanently marking the spots used by the transitman and levelman for their measurements, and any other special landmarks.

Other members - by "importance" - Cook, Boss Teamster, Front Axman (in charge of the party clearing the line ahead for the tripod instruments and chain), Axmen, Teamsters.


As you will read, it sounds as if there were no horses in Secretan's group and that the duties of Topographer and Transitman were assigned to the Assistant. A textbook suggests it is better to have the Assistant's head up, concentrating on the Chief's diagram, the land, and the whole group ... with the Transitman able to concentrate solely on the transit, making measurements and notes, and performing calculations.

You can bet on there being a high proportion of axmen and porters in Secretan's horseless party as they crashed, hacked and waded their way through the northern Ontario forest.
 

Secretan's account

First Surveys 1871

I was appointed by my old friend, The Hon. John Henry Pope, who somehow had taken a sort of fancy to me, partly I believe because I used to amuse him by making a fourth at euchre in his quarters at the old Russell House Room No. 78. I can just remember the Hon. Peter Mitchell often being one of the party and some others, mostly old enough to be my grandfather.

I always looked upon "John Henry" with awe and admiration and invariably considered him to be the Abe Lincoln of Canada, another of my heroes whose life I had devoured with great gusto. [Abe and Mark Twain, I still believe to be the greatest men America has produced. I hate to offend Chauncey Depew, but he may never know it.]

The repellent rocky shore of Lake Superior was not considered at first in the search for a practicable route for the great overland highway, but a more northerly line was to be explored with lighter work and easier gradients. Thus it was that I found myself, one bright Spring day, en route from Collingwood to Red Rock, Nipigon Bay, on board one of the old-time side-wheelers, armed with a brand new little English Dumpy level on my shoulder, a full fledged Leveller of Division H under a nice old gentleman named Johnson, with orders to run from some point about twenty miles North of the North end of Lake Nipigon in an Easterly direction to meet Division G, under an Engineer named Armstrong, running West, to link up our line with his and return home unless otherwise ordered.

So far all was sunshine and happiness. My immediate senior officer was a long lank Nova Scotian named Schurman, whose duty it was to take charge of the crew, run the transit and make the observations - subsequently I made a few myself.

I remember we had a splendid time at Red Rock on the Nipigon River, about thirty odd miles from Lake Nipigon, with many heartbreaking portages, some of them many miles in length. The Hudson's Bay Company had a post at Red Rock in charge of Mr. Crawford, the Factor, and there we were camped several days waiting for boats to arrive for what little navigation there was on the Nipigon River. These came up in the shape of Ottawa River Lumberman's Bateaux, and they were forty or fifty feet long if I remember rightly, and I do remember that they were heavy enough when we commenced to drag them over the numerous portages.

Nipigon River
A sport fishing party on the Nipigon River circa 1920

Arrived at the Lake, we transhipped into a big sailing boat, thirty-eight men and a dog, and headed for the head of the Lake, seventy miles distant. "Standing room only" was the sign on that boat, and for some reason or other we never went ashore until we reached our destination.

There was a certain amount of novelty about this trip and there was, too, quite a lot of discomfort, but all's well that ends well, and at last we reached our initial point. Here we blazed the first tree that had ever been blazed in that locality and certainly planted one of the first stakes ever planted marked zero, of that particular Division for the future line of the great C.P.R.

The regular routine of a survey party would probably not interest my readers, and it is enough to say that we turned out very early in the grey morn, worked hard all day in all weathers, ate three times a day regularly (on the principle of Josh Billings, who wrote to his wife, "Enclose please find ten dollars, if you can!") and the slept the tired and dreamless sleep of the weary. Every day was precisely the same, and the routine was the same for months on end.

The country assigned to us was most uninteresting, consisting, as it did, of a series of muskegs occasionally intersected by high rocky ridges; the timber was small scrub spruce of a most funereal aspect with long pendant weepers of black crepe - no birds, no beasts, no fish, no life, no nothing! Millions of poisonous black flies by day and mosquitoes at night. It seemed to me that a convention of all the flies in the world was being held there.

We were no doubt the first human bipeds that had ever traversed that God-forsaken country, - although perhaps we didn't fully realize the honour and glory of all this at that time. Wading knee-deep through muskegs all day and fighting mosquitoes all night, and living on salt pork of the Crimean period and beans, with dried apples for dessert, was our daily routine, until at last early morning frosts warned us that October had arrived. We were nearly one hundred miles from our starting point and supplies were almost exhausted. Our pack animals, mostly French half-breeds, had returned from the base with the fatal announcement that no fresh supplies had arrived. Well, here we were, thirty-eight men and one dog, about two hundred miles from where we knew there was plenty, "Flat Rock Portage," on the shores of Lake Nipigon.

So the nice old gentleman, previously mentioned, our Chieftain, in the proverbial language of the prize ring, "threw up the sponge," dressed himself up in a long black coat, put on a black necktie, and resigned himself to his horrible fate.

The Wolf at the Door

The elongated Schurman and I now had a committee meeting of two and decided that something had to be done, and that quick action was absolutely necessary. One of us should take the crew out over our line, now about 110 miles long and the other take his chance of meeting the party that was supposed to be coming from the East, finding his way through the bush on a compass bearing as well as he could.

We tossed up for it. I don't think there was much choice. Anyhow, he won and decided to take an Indian boy and go East to try to find Armstrong of Division G, while I was to take the men down over our line in the hope of meeting relief or at least of finding it in the shape of supplies at our initial point.

We shook hands and parted next morning, he with a compass and a few pounds of split peas, and I with thirty-eight men and a dog, about half a day's rations of flour but nothing else except the hope that "springs eternal in the human heart." I cached everything that weighed anything, and without tents, blankets or grub, we started our long tramp back over the hated muskegs and rock ridges. It was getting cold at night as we huddled round our fire, but during the bright frosty October days, the sun shone on us and took the frost out of our clothes and put some warmth into our hearts.

The only luck we had was finding any amount of the little buds that grow on rose bushes, full of seeds, which washed down with plenty of swamp water kept life in us and enabled us to do nearly thirty miles a day between daylight and dark.

We Arrive at Ombobiqua River

About four days and nights after I parted with the lengthy Nova Scotian, we arrived at last at our starting point and found - nothing ! There were a few foot-sore stragglers, whom I sent back for the next day.

At noon a bunch of Cree Indians stole softly down the river in their canoes and were much surprised to discover my ragged and hungry mob of white men. We had money, but they did not seem to understand the rate of exchange.

But they had white fish, and we had undershirts of a gorgeous scarlet hue which appealed to their simple tastes just as the fish appealed to ours, so exchanges were rapidly effected. After much haggling, we also secured a few of their birch-bark canoes and proceeded down stream to the head of the lake, where I pictured a magnificent depot of supplies and in my mind's eye, goaded on by the promptings and suggestions of an empty stomach, I saw vast hoards of succulent provisions, the much despised iron-bound barrels of Crimean pork in the front row, flanked by barrels of flour and other luxuries.

Making a birch bark canoe
First Nations women building a birch bark canoe circa 1920
It did not take long to discover that a busy but inefficient Commissariat Department had been conscientiously transporting hundreds of barrels of sugar all summer. And that was what we found - but nothing else.

At this stage of my disappointment, I suggested to the aged Chieftain before-mentioned that somebody had better try to reach the known depot at Flat Rock, where stores must be found, and modestly volunteered for the venture.

So I left that night in a fathom and a half bark canoe with one half-breed boy in the bow. Nipigon Lake has a number of deep bays many of them ten or fifteen miles across from point to point, impossible for my little craft in rough weather. So wearily we tightened up our dinner straps and paddled round these bays as far off the land as we dare. After a couple of days and nights of this work, I remember, we landed on a rocky shore and my "crew" proceeded to fell a tall, stately dry ram pike to make a fire, as the nights were not too sultry.

With a crash about thirty feet of the stately old pine top came down and went through the bottom of our last hope, the little canoe, which had been hauled up on the flat rock. This looked like disaster, if not death, but we had done so well and got so far without meeting the grim Reaper face to face, so we simply looked at each other and then proceeded to look for gum and birch-bark, also cedar for ribs. We found all these necessary materials before daylight and began shipbuilding.

About noon, we sighted an ancient aborigine of the female sex, who, after much waving of shirts as S.O.S. signals on our part, bashfully came within hailing distance and informed us we were only six miles from Flat Rock Portage!

Our troubles, at least for the present, were over.

It did not take long that morning to paddle our little patchwork round to Flat Rock Portage, where we found a big camp or depot full of supplies and my party, all now well fed and happy, they having been rescued by the Commissariat boats busily transporting more barrels of sugar to the head of the Lake.

I was joyously received, having been reported as missing
Next day our outfit moved down stream to Red Rock on Lake Superior to await a home-going steamer.

But what about my friend Schurman? His experience was perhaps worse than mine, although he chose what he considered the easiest way out.

In a few days the old Cumberland hove in sight, bound up to Port Arthur and then to Collingwood, and the first man to come ashore was my long lean friend Schurman, looking leaner than ever. He soon told me his adventures since we parted. As I said before, he left me with one Indian boy, a bag of split peas and a pocket compass.

The first day he travelled through the bush in an Easterly direction, hoping every hour to get some tidings of the on-coming party under Armstrong, but without finding any sign of them. The second day he was rather exhausted from lack of food, and as there was still no sign of a human being at night, he began to fear he might be travelling either North or South of, and parallel to, Armstrong's line. On the afternoon of the third day he struck a big lake right across his course and then began to despair and abandon all hope of ever being rescued.

In this cheerful frame of mind he was considering the desirability of blowing his brains out when towards evening he saw a canoe containing an ancient squaw who was out fishing. The Indian boy, nearly crazy with fear at first and now delighted, soon attracted her attention, and before dark the old squaw had taken them to Armstrong's camp on the Pic River where, very weak and exhausted, they were nursed back to life and later taken down to Lake Superior and so on to Red Rock, where we met. It appeared that Armstrong had run out of supplies and was on his way to civilization, having been unable to finish his line and join up with us.

Thus ended my first experience on a very small link of the great chain stretching across the vast continent.

During that winter in Ottawa, I had the honour of shaking hands with Sir Sandford Fleming, who kindly enquired whether I had not had "a rather hard summer?" When I told him we were four days without being troubled with food, he simply said, "And were there no squirrels you could shoot?"


JHE Secretan railway surveyor
J.H.E. Secretan in his tent.
Notice the mosquito netting above and the buffalo hide for a blanket.



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