Home > William Cornelius Van Horne

He was brought over from the States in 1882 to serve as general manager of the CPR, when some doubted that the line would ever be completed. He retired as president in 1899, leaving a railway that went from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

He considered the railway as an integrated communications and transport system and convinced the directors and shareholders to create a telegraph service and an express freight delivery service as a complement to the railway.

Largely self-taught he was known for his great intellectual curiosity and dynamism. Furthermore, he was knowledgable in nearly every element of the railway industry, including operating a locomotive.

He was also responsible for launching the sea transport division of the Canadian Pacific Railway, inaugurating a regular service between Vancouver and Hong Kong in 1891 on the celebrated Empress luxury liners. And finally, he presided over the expansion of the CPR in the luxury hotel business and participated in the design of two of the most famous buildings in the chain, the Château Frontenac and Chateau Lake Louise on the shores of Lake Louise in Alberta.

The destruction of his former mansion on Sherbrooke street in MontrealMontreal (/mVn. tri"Al/ in English, /mO~. re"al/ in French) is the largest city in the province of Quebec, Canada, where it also constitutes an administrative region. It is Canada's second most populous city after Toronto ( Statistics Canada), and the sec created a major scandal in 1973Events January events January 1 United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark enter the European Economic Community now known as the European Union January 3 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) sells the New York Yankees for $10 million to a 12-person syndicate led among lovers of period architectureArchitecture is the art and science of designing buildings. A wider definition would include within its scope the design of the total built environment, from the macrolevel of town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to the microlevel of fu in that city.