Time Lord (9 page)
Authors: Clark Blaise
No, there followed no promise of sponsorship to Canada, a job, or a college scholarship for wee Robert Gordon. There is simple (“manly,” as Thoreau might have put it) recognition of a lad, much like himself, whose pride and genius for hard work, for responsibility, for individualism, recommended him to the future, another spiritual son of the patron saint of all self-made entrepreneurs, all young men of pluck, industry, native intelligence, and cultivated good luck, Benjamin Franklin.
FOR THE FIRST TIME
in his adult life he was back in Britain, and for the very first time in London. It’s hard to think of Fleming as a provincial, this man who would eventually hold the whole world in his gaze, linking it by time and by cable—but he was just that, and the effect on him must have been unsettling. London was the imperial capital, the center of the world. For twenty years, while England and the United States had been undergoing their very different political and industrial revolutions, Canada had been isolated, intellectually incubated, lacking dynamism,
lacking a culture of its own. Fleming’s avid interest in London, at the age of thirty-six, is more like a schoolboy’s first encounter. He walked fifteen miles his first day, and kept up his journal to his children:
It would be impossible for me to describe here the richness of the architecture of the buildings or all that is seen in passing through the streets of London; it is perfectly bewildering to attempt to notice everything and it would be endless writing to record all that comes before the eyes or the impressions found on the mind, everything is on a magnificent scale, distances, wealth, pomp, poverty and crime are all here developed to a greater extent than perhaps in any other portion of the world … we saw on all sides an ocean of buildings, disappearing in the smoky distance with scarcely anything for the eye to rest upon but chimney tops and church spires, to the east, the Town, and to the west [sic], St Paul’s Cathedral.
And what must it have been like for a boy from the colonies, even a thirty-six-year-old boy, accustomed to the basics of Scotch-Canadian cookery, to be confronted by a High Victorian repast such as was served to him as a guest at the Civil Engineers Annual Dinner, on June 10, 1863? He thought enough of it to save the menu. From six-thirty till eleven-thirty, they ate and apparently ate some more. The menu reads like something from
Tom Jones
, and brings to mind old pictures of salmon catches, buffalo hunts, pigeon-snaring, and big-game safaris. This was London at its imperial height. One can imagine the mirrors and chandeliers, the hordes of waiters, the cigar smoke. They were addressed by Mr. Gladstone, chancellor of the exchequer, then by the Lord Mayor, then the Earl of Caithness, and, as Fleming put it, “a serene Highness of some description from the Continent.”
FIRST SERVICE
Green Peas Soup Ox Tail Soup Mock Turtle Soup
Salmon Whitings Turbots
Broiled Salmon au Sauce Piquant
John Dory à la Hollandaise Red Mullets en Papillote
Côtelettes de Saumon à l’Indienne
Stewed Eels Trout Soles à la Normandie
Whitebait
SECOND SERVICE
Entrées
Friandeau de Veau à l’Oiselle Kari d’Homard au Riz
Côtelettes d’Agneau aux Épinards
Côtelettes Mouton aux Concômbres
Ris de Veuu aux Tomates
Poulet à la Marengo Suprême de Volaille
Forequarters of Lamb Saddles of Mutton
Roast Capons aux Champignons Boiled Pullets à la Finançière
Bacon and Beans
York Hams Côte de Boeuf à la Jardinière Ox Tongues
Roast Chickens Veal Olive Pies Pigeon Pies Boiled Chickens
Asparagus Cauliflowers Salads New Potatoes
THIRD SERVICE
Quails Leverets Guinea Fowls Ducklings Goslings
French Beans Mushrooms Green Peas
Prawns Lobster Salad
Cabinet Puddings St Clair Puddings
Gâteaux Jellies Creams Meringues
Charlottes de Fraises Richmond Maids of Honour
Pastry Tarts
Omelettes aux Confitures Orange Fritters Nesselrode Puddings
Wines and Liqueurs
Sherry Madeira Hock Champagne Sparkling Hock & Moselle
Old Port Château Lafitte
Curaçao Maraschino Eau-de-vie Usquebaugh
Dessert-Coffee
His return voyage, on the
Great Eastern
, brought him to New York (from Liverpool) on July 1, 1863, a date that would mark the birth of Canadian Confederation in four more years. On July 4, the American passengers staged an impromptu celebration of their nation’s birthday. He was teased into carrying an American flag at the head of a deck parade, to which he agreed on the condition that an American would similarly honor the Union Jack. That accommodating American, the Irish-born William Dawson, later became the mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, and a lifelong friend. Fleming was always sociable, helpful, and approachable; he was particularly adept at what these days is called “networking.”
The return crossing had taken only eight days from Liverpool to the first North American landfall, Cape Race, Newfoundland—one-sixth the time of his original sailing in 1845. But as the ship headed south toward New York, heavy fog set in, as it often did off the Grand Banks and along the New England coastline, requiring careful navigation and adding an additional ten days to the journey before the arrival in New York Harbor.
Fleming was elected ship’s historian for the voyage, a custom of the time to celebrate the passage in some witty and charming manner for publication in the local papers. He was still writing when the ship entered Long Island Sound; still writing when the pilot-crew came aboard spreading news of a Union victory at Vicksburg, and, as he put it, “that General Lee was having the worst of it in his invasion of the states north of the Potomac.” The passengers gathered on deck to congratulate the captain and to praise the ship. Mr Fleming, ever the engineer, ascertained that the ship had burned three hundred tons of coal and now stood three feet higher in the water than it had in Liverpool. Then he handed over his article, which was published in the
New York Herald
the next day under the headline
NEW CANADIAN PASSAGE PROPOSED
in the Marine Affairs column. In its way, it is as remarkable a piece of prophecy as Joseph Howe’s
had been in 1851, predicting a trans-Canadian railroad with nothing but the Atlantic Ocean at his back.
What Fleming proposed was closer in spirit to his two major future projects, standard time and worldwide cable, than to any of his accomplishments to date:
Twenty years ago from five to seven weeks was considered a fair passage across the Atlantic, and although much has already been done through the instrumentality of science and iron and steam to destroy the terrors of an ocean voyage, it requires no effort to perceive that much more must be accomplished before the line of passenger traffic between Europe and America is perfected.
We must have more
Great Easterns
and the time at sea must be reduced to the minimum number of days. Half the time we have spent on board this magnificent ship has been occupied in coasting and I cannot understand that the owners of the vessel can be any better disposed to keep us at sea than we are to remain on dry land. I do not here speak for myself but for the generality of travellers as I rather like a sea voyage when time admits, but it seems very clear that the ocean voyager will ultimately be confined to the shortest duration between land and land.
The great bugbear has always been the length of the sea voyage and sea sickness which has hitherto accompanied it. Now length of the voyage would be diminished one half if a proper land communication existed between the eastern coast of Newfoundland and the railways of America. Seasickness barely finds a footing aboard the
Great Eastern
. I believe the doctor of the ship could report that there has been less sickness of any kind amongst the 1500 souls on board than generally exists in any town of the same population.
Now distance between Ireland and Newfoundland is less than 1700 miles which at the rate of sixteen miles an hour
would require four and a half days to run it. The
Great Eastern
runs it without any effort in five and three-quarter days and considering the improvement which can be made in speed, I feel sure that allowance of five days for the ocean voyage would be ample. With regard to connecting St John’s or some equally good harbour on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland with the railway system of the interior a glance at the chart will show that the most direct course is to traverse Newfoundland by a railway 240 miles in length to the Gulph of St Lawrence, thence by steam ferry (about three times the length of the ferry between Holyhead and Dublin) to Gaspé, thence by an extension of the Grand Trunk Railway to the interior of the United States to New York and to Canada. To establish this route the construction of some four hundred miles of railway would be necessary and beside a sufficient number of ocean steamers like the
Great Eastern
, powerful steam ferry boats to cross the Gulph of St Lawrence at all seasons would be required.
Let us glance briefly at what would be accomplished by establishing such a line for traffic on the scale indicated. The journey from New York to London could be done in seven and a half days, and from Chicago to London in eight days while the ocean passage would be reduced to five days which performed by steamers like this one would throw every other line at least of passenger traffic entirely in the shade. When such a passenger route is established the ease, speed and comfort with which the voyage could be accomplished would have the effect not only of concentrating traffic to this the shortest passage between the two continents but also of greatly increasing the number of travellers. It would in fact become the great highway between the old and new worlds and it is not at all improbable that the speed and comfort of the voyage would increase the traffic to such an extent that in a very few years a daily line of
Great Easterns
would be called into registration
and thus the ocean would virtually be bridged by a system of steam propelled floating hotels.
Mr. Fleming had entered a new phase. He had delivered the Red River petition, and it had been respectfully received, but with the predictable recommendation that the Canadians should build their own railroad with London’s blessing and approval. He had been accepted by his British and American peers, and he had been graced with a vision of Canada’s future that could indeed make her a player on the North American scene. Of course, there was not yet a Canada. The contrast among the United States at war, Britain in its imperial full flower, and ragtag Upper and Lower Canada had never been more striking.
IN THE FALL
and winter of 1863–64 he held a commission to survey the lands to the east and south of Quebec City, the colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a feasibility study, we might say, for the building of the long-delayed Intercolonial Railroad from Quebec City to Halifax, should all go well. Such a railroad would link the ocean ports of Halifax and Saint John, New Brunswick, with the river ports of Quebec and Montreal, and the Grand Trunk Railway inland to Toronto and beyond.
Border disputes between the United States and the British colonies had rendered earlier British maps useless. Most of the territory originally surveyed for British development, including all of northern Maine, was now under American control. Fleming believed that the United States had never intended to claim, nor had expected, to gain northern Maine, and even if it had, the maps that had supported its claims were in error. Had England stood her ground, presented sound surveying evidence, northern Maine would have remained in British hands and the passage between Quebec City and Saint John would have been comparatively direct. Because of London’s malfeasance, as he saw it, he
was forced to loop a line north of Maine, adding hundreds of miles of track, and millions of dollars to the costs.
Fleming rarely took Americans to task for exploiting London’s indolence wherever they could. It was the Colonial Office in London that had weighed the negligible costs to England of losing Maine against the possibly open-ended expense of defending it. Over the years, he became a strong supporter of Empire loyalty based on common history, culture, and instruments of government, but an even stronger advocate for the worldwide network of linked British states that came to be called the British Commonwealth.
Ever the multitasker, as we’d say today, Fleming was not merely surveying the hills and forests of New Brunswick for a rail line. He combined those duties with the political cause of colonial unification, the creation of a greater Canada to combine Upper and Lower Canada with the maritime colonies, along with the annexation of the vast holdings of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the heart of the continent. With the United States remaining an active threat (as well as a temptation), he realized, along with others, that to save the many scattered parts of British North America it was first necessary to create a single entity, no matter how repugnant it might be to the various colonial premiers who would stand to lose their positions.