There are six marvelous albums in the collection of the British Columbia Archives containing over 200 photographs that document, in one way or another, the building of the railway from Port Moody on Burrard Inlet to Craigellachie near Eagle Pass between 1880 and 1885. A complete exhibition of every image in these albums would not only tell us a great deal about the great engineering achievement of this huge public work, but would also tell us something about the various people who brought it about. The albums were assembled by the family of Andrew Onderdonk, who was the contractor for the building of the railway for the Canadian government.
On one level, the exhibition Onderdonk's Way offers a standard narrative of the heroic building of a portion of a great railway. For the people of British Columbia, this project was nothing less than one of the conditions of this province's entry into the Canadian Confederation. From then on, Canada could claim all the lands a mare usque ad mare, from sea to sea. The expression bespeaks the Imperial ambitions of the time and Canada's role within the British Empire.
It was a time of great hope and great expectations. The railway link lessened the young Province's dependency on the United States and reinforced Canada's self-sufficiency and new-found nationhood. No longer would travelers to British Columbia have to reach their destination via San Francisco.
Beyond the political level, the building of the railway and the images related to it affirm the cultural beliefs of a time and place. We may read this history today with disbelief and horror and, paradoxically, with a great sense of pride in what was achieved. The majority of British Columbians, for instance, were racially prejudiced against the Chinese workers who came to Canada by the thousands. Without Chinese labour, the railway in British Columbia could not have been built during the time allotted. The indigenous people were looked upon as indigent, although many of them also helped to build the railway. Such views were expressed by the elected political officials of the day in Victoria and in Ottawa, as well as in the press. Civilization was synonymous with having Christian beliefs and values.
The construction of a public work such as a railway was fraught with danger. Safety standards were minimal. The building of the railway meant accidental death or injury on a weekly basis to a workforce that, for the most part, was inexperienced and unaccustomed to the nature of the work. And the workforce required was enormous. At one point, it was believed that 6,000 to 7,000 men were employed in British Columbia on the Onderdonk contracts. Of that number, half or more were imported Chinese labourers.
The photographs also reflect a prevalent attitude towards nature at that time. The right-of-way was literally blasted through the landscape. Nature, as far as railway building was concerned, was an obstacle to the integration of British Columbia with the rest of Canada. British Columbia would only be settled if that obstacle was removed, or if nature was 'civilized' and made to yield its mineral and agricultural promise. Until nature was 'tamed' by the work of pioneers and settlers, it was an obstacle to 'progress.' This was an age when the right to alter nature was not questioned but held as a right or a mission. This was not a time that contemplated environmental impact studies. So nature was scarred, unalterably, but nature would remain a great power to be reckoned with, as every flood, rock slide, avalanche and forest fire insistently made clear.
Just as every tunnel, every bridge and every cutting represents a strategy in the struggle against the natural obstacle, the portraits of locomotives, with their human operators, are symbols of power and technology and the means by which this conquest was to be realized.
Onderdonk's Way, then, is the way of our 'progress' through the rugged terrain of British Columbia, and an expression of a determined ambition that came at a very high price. The end justified the means, as it often does today.
Roger H. Boulet
April 17, 1997
The contents of the BC Archives Onderdonk Albums (Acc. No. 98401-6) are accessible as follows:
Photographs relating to the Onderdonk contracts can also be found at the Notman Archives (McCord Museum, Montréal, QC), the City of Vancouver Archives and the City of Vancouver Public Library.