Tom Walklate has been buying lumber and ties for the C.P.R. since 1885, and is still buying them but not at the old prices. Chris. Kyle, who was locomotive foreman in ’89 and afterwards master mechanic, is now supervisor of apprentices with headquarters at Montreal. Bob Miller started railroading in 1873 and was station agent at Windsor street station for ten years, and is now passenger train master there. No one knows when Ed. Whelan, at the Windsor Street Station started selling tickets, and his namesake Thomas at the gate has a voice like Caruso, while John Cullin, who looks after the offices, is still to the fore.
In the passenger department are such indefatigable workers as Charlie Ussher, who since 1886 has been in the fold. From a comparatively minor position he has steadily risen until now he is passenger traffic manager, and also has charge of the chain of hotels of the entire system, and spends the rest of his time either in his office or on the train. Charlie McPherson, whom his friends call Cluny, came to the C.P.R. from the Rock Island in 1886, and has been stationed at Montreal, Boston, St. John, Toronto, and is now at Winnipeg, where he is assistant passenger traffic manager. He is a Chatham, Ontario, boy, but wandered into foreign fields at an early age. Then there is Charlie Foster, assistant passenger traffic manager at Montreal. When I first met him in 1891 he was a junior clerk at St. John, N.B. He has during those thirty intervening years risen from the ranks, and he is one of that kind of fellows whose future is not behind him.
Others who have risen from the ranks are W. H. Snell and Col. Walter Maughan, of Montreal; Harry Brodie, of Vancouver; Geo. Walton, of Winnipeg; W. B. Howard, and N. R. DesBrisay, of St. John, N.B.; Dave Kennedy, of every place; Dan Steele, high muck-a-muck at Sherbrooke; Billy Fulton at Toronto; Billy Grant an old timer of the old timers at Hamilton; George McGlade, of Brockville; “Burroughs, of Belleville;” Billy McIlroy, now stationed at Detroit; J. B. Way, at the Canadian Soo; Joe Carter at Nelson; Charlie Philps, of St. John, N.B.; and the company’s representatives in the United States—Fred Perry in New York; Tommy Wall at Chicago; E. L. Sheehan, at St. Louis; Mike Malone, at Cincinnati; A. A. Polhamus at Los Angeles; Fred Nason at San Francisco; Teddy Chesbrough at Atlanta, A. G. Albertson, at Minneapolis, L. R. Hart at Boston, G. B. Burpee at Cleveland, R. C. Clayton at Philadelphia, Clarence Williams at Pittsburg, B. E. Smeed at St. Paul, Fred Sturdee at Seattle, D. C. O’Keefe at Tacoma, E. L. Cardie at Spokane, C. E. Phelps at Washington, and George Walton at Buffalo, all of whom have been with the company for years and upheld the interests of the C.P.R. in the land of the Stars and Stripes.