Canadian Pacific Railway history

CP gained control only months after its own formation and the route opened in August of 1882.

By the end of 1883, the railway had reached the Rocky Mountains, just eight kilometres (five miles) east of Kicking Horse Pass.

In response, on 31 January 1884, the government passed the Railway Relief Bill, providing a further $22.5 million in loans to the CPR. The bill received royal assent on 6 March 1884.

On 7 November 1885, the last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, making good on the original promise.

The first transcontinental passenger train departed from Montreal's Dalhousie Station, located at Berri Street and Notre Dame Street at 8 pm on 28 June 1886, and arrived at Port Moody at noon on 4 July 1886.

The first official train destined for Vancouver arrived on 23 May 1887, although the line had already been in use for three months.

Built in 1888, the Banff Springs hotel was one of the grand railway hotels that really put the Canadian Rockies on the map as a tourist destination.

After a few years of construction the first train departed for Saint John on June 3, 1889.

That line opened on 12 June 1890.

One of the steamers, The Colville carried goods and passengers to communities on Lake Winnipeg for more than 20 years until fire destroyed it in 1894 at Grand Rapids, Manitoba.

In 1895, it acquired a minority interest in the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway, giving it a link to New York and the Northeast United States.

By 1896, competition with the Great Northern Railway for traffic in southern British Columbia forced the CPR to construct a second line across the province, south of the original line.

The Crowsnest Pass line opened on 18 June 1898, and followed a complicated route through the maze of valleys and passes in southern British Columbia, rejoining the original mainline at Hope after crossing the Cascade Mountains via Coquihalla Pass.

In 1903 CP Ships began serving the trans-Atlantic market.

In 1905 CPR purchased the Esquimalt and Namaimo Railway and 1.5 million acres of timber on Vancouver Island.

In 1908, the CPR opened a line connecting Toronto with Sudbury.

On 3 November 1909, the Lethbridge Viaduct over the Oldman River valley at Lethbridge, Alberta, was opened.

On 21 January 1910, a passenger train derailed on the CPR line at the Spanish River bridge at Nairn, Ontario (near Sudbury), killing at least 43.

On 3 January 1912, the CPR acquired the Dominion Atlantic Railway, a railway that ran in western Nova Scotia.

Van Horne died on 11 September 1915 in Montreal.

The former included 5-mile Connaught Tunnel which passed through Mount Macdonald, thus lowering the summit by 540 feet (it also eliminated more than 2,300 degrees of curvature), and opened during December of 1916.

As early as 1920 CPR began using all-steel railroad cars.

The elegant Jasper Park Lodge opened in 1922, as a challenger to the Banff Springs Hotel.

In 1923, Henry Worth Thornton replaced David Blyth Hanna becoming the second president of the CNR, and his competition spurred Edward Wentworth Beatty, the first Canadian-born president of the CPR, to action.

In 1930 CP got into the airline business by purchasing Canadian Airways Limited.

The CPR scaled back on some of its passenger and freight services, and stopped issuing dividends to its shareholders after 1932.

At its peak, CP maintained a system of 17,241 miles within Canada (achieved in 1936).

It eventually formed its own such enterprise in 1942, Canadian Pacific Air Lines, which blossomed into a worldwide venture.

To remain profitable amid shifting traffic patterns CP entered the intermodal business with trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) service launched in 1952.

By 1954, however, CPR completed the conversion of its locomotives to diesel power.

Stinson, who had been with the company for 30 years, starting as a management trainee in 1955, was the youngest chairman in the company's history.

In 1956 it set out to develop these assets, establishing subsidiaries in oil and gas, minerals, fertilizers, food products, forest products, real estate, hotels, finance, trucking, telecommunications, shipping lines, and airlines.

1958: Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas Limited is formed as a subsidiary.

But the two do share some historical similarities; both were late to fully dieselize (CP completed the task in 1960) and both operated a wide range of first-generation models from American Locomotive, Electro-Motive, Fairbanks Morse, and Baldwin.

The "Soo Line Railroad" was officially formed on January 1, 1961 by merging the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste.

CPR formed Canadian Pacific Investments Limited in 1962 to administer the development of CPR's natural resources and real estate holdings and to operate as an investment holding company.

In 1964 CP Oil and Gas purchased a stake in Central Del Rio Oils, based in Alberta.

In November 1967 the company offered to the public $100 million in convertible preferred shares of CPR stock.

In 1969 CP Oil and Gas became a wholly owned subsidiary of Central Del Rio, giving CPR a stake in the publicly traded Central Del Rio.

It was essentially Canada's version of America's Amtrak created in 1971.

In 1976 the Canadian government formed Via Rail Canada Inc. as a nationwide passenger rail service.

In 1977 VIA Rail was established as a CN subsidiary to handle country-wide passenger services, including those of Canadian Pacific.

In 1980 Canadian Pacific Investments Limited changed its name to Canadian Pacific Enterprises Limited (CP Enterprises).

Potyondi, Barry Selkirk, The First Hundred Years (Winnipeg, 1981)

The first revenue train passed through the tunnel in 1988. It acquired the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway in 1982.

Although temporarily suspended during the First World War, it was not until 1983 that the "Crow Rate" was permanently replaced by the Western Grain Transportation Act which allowed for the gradual increase of grain shipping prices.

In 1984, CP Rail commenced construction of the Mount Macdonald Tunnel to augment the Connaught Tunnel under the Selkirk Mountains.

On December 6, 1985, with the consent of both companies' stockholders, CPL and CP Enterprises merged into one company.

By 1986, Canadian Pacific, as it became known, was Canada’s second-largest company with $15 billion in revenue.

On the heels of the Cominco sell-off, the company divested itself of CP Air in a $300 million deal with Pacific Western Airlines in 1987.

The Macdonald Tunnel, located in British Columbia's Selkirk Mountains and more than nine miles in length, was completed in 1988.

The company's forest products division reported a net operating loss of more than $190 million in 1989 because of the depressed market for paper products.

In an interesting move, CP attempted to sell its Soo subsidiary soon afterwards but then abruptly changed course and acquired full control in 1990.

Early in 1991 CPL bought another rail company, the Delaware and Hudson Railway, operating in the northeastern United States.

Mercredi Ovide & Turpel, Mary, In the Rapids: Navigating the Future of First Nations (Toronto: Viking, 1993)

By 1994, though, restructuring initiatives were beginning to bear fruit.

In 1995 it was purchased by Union Pacific.

In 1996, CP Rail moved its head office from Windsor Station in Montreal to Gulf Canada Square in Calgary and changed its name back to Canadian Pacific Railway.

The purpose was to better reflect the company's wider scope and saw the rail division referred to as "CP Rail." For purposes of marketing and clarity this changed two decades later when it returned to its original name as "Canadian Pacific Railway" in 1997.

In early 1998 CP Hotels bought Delta Hotels Limited, a Canadian chain, for about C$94 million.

1999: CP Hotels acquires Fairmont Hotels, leading to the creation of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts Inc.

Hodge, Deborah, (Illustrator John Mantha) The Kids Book of Canada’s RAILWAY and How the CPR was Built, (Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2000)

On 1 January 2001 the StL&H was formally amalgamated with the CP Rail system.

Bonfield was inducted into Canadian Railway Hall of Fame in 2002 as the CPR first spike location.

Hossell, Karen Price Morse Code (Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2003)

Knowles, Valerie, From Telegrapher to Titan: The Life of William C. Van Horne. (Toronto: The Dundrun Group, 2004)

In 2006, the Canadian government issued a formal apology to the Chinese population in Canada for their treatment both during and following the construction of the CPR.

On 4 October 2007, CPR announced that it had completed financial transactions required for the acquisition, placing the DM&E and IC&E in a voting trust with Richard Hamlin appointed as trustee.

The merger was completed as of 31 October 2008.

Shortly after the name revision, Canadian Pacific announced that it had committed to becoming a major sponsor and logistics provider to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.

On 28 October 2011, in a Schedule 13D filing, the United States hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management (PSCM) indicated it owned 12.2 percent of Canadian Pacific.

Just hours before the railway's annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, 17 May 2012, Green and five other board members, including chairman John Cleghorn, resigned.

On 6 July 2013, a unit train of crude oil which CP had subcontracted to short-line operator Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway derailed in Lac-Mégantic, killing 47.

As a matter of fact, in law, CP is not responsible for this cleanup." In February 2014, Harrison called for immediate action to phase-out DOT-111 tank cars, known to be more dangerous in cases of derailment.

CP ultimately terminated its efforts to merge on 11 April 2016.

On 18 January 2017 it was announced that Hunter Harrison was retiring from CP and that Keith Creel would become president and chief executive officer of the company effective 31 January 2017.

On 4 February 2019, a loaded grain train ran away from the siding at Partridge just above the Upper Spiral Tunnel in Kicking Horse Pass.

On June 4, 2020; Canadian Pacific bought the Central Maine and Quebec.

In March 2021, the CP offered US$29 billion to purchase the Kansas City Southern Railway, which would allow the CP to own rail lines across the entire North American continent.