The Last Spike was the final and ceremonial railway spike driven into the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) track by company director Donald Smith on the morning of 7 November 1885. The ceremony marked the completion of the transcontinental CPR and was a muted affair at which a group of company officials and labourers gathered at Craigellachie near Eagle Pass in the interior of British Columbia. One of about 30 million iron spikes used in the construction of the line, the Last Spike came to symbolize more than the completion of a railway. Contemporaries and historians have viewed the Last Spike — as well as the iconic photographs of the event — as a moment when national unity was realized.
By November 1885, work crews laying track for the CPR from the west and the east had converged at Eagle Pass in the Monashee Mountains west of Revelstoke, British Columbia. CPR officials decided that, after five years of construction, some sort of ceremonial completion of the line should take place. However, the company could only afford, and only wanted, a modest celebration. There were no reporters present and no politicians. Company president George Stephen was in England and unable to make the trip. In his stead, general manager William Van Horne and director Donald Smith travelled to BC. They were joined by, among others, surveyor and company director Sandford Fleming and Major Albert Bowman Rogers, who suggested the CPR cut through the Selkirk Mountains at Rogers Pass.
As the morning of 7 November dawned, these officials — along with some of the workers who had completed the track only the night before — gathered at the western entrance to the mountain pass, at a spot Van Horne called Craigellachie. The name was in honour of a Clan Grant gathering place in Scotland that both George Stephen and Donald Smith grew up near; Smith was a member of Clan Grant. At precisely 9:22 a.m., an iron spike (used to fasten steel rails to wooden railway ties) was positioned, and Smith raised a hammer to strike the first blow. His aim was off, and the spike bent. It was replaced by another, and on his second attempt Smith succeeded in driving it home. The small crowd raised a cheer, and locomotive whistles blew.
When asked to say a few words, Van Horne simply declared, “All I can say is that the work has been done well in every way.” That afternoon, he telegraphed Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald to say, “Thanks to your far seeing policy and unwavering support the Canadian Pacific Railway is completed. The last rail was laid this (Saturday) morning at 9:22.”
The hammering of the Last Spike is regarded as one of Canada’s most symbolic events. Even though William Van Horne insisted that the CPR “was built for the purpose of making money for the shareholders,” and was not a nation-building exercise, the idea that the railway made Canada possible by joining the two ends of the country has been an enduring one. The Newfoundland poet E.J. Pratt wrote a book-length poem about the railway, Towards the Last Spike, which won a Governor General’s Award in 1952 and which depicts the railway as a force for national unity. In his two-volume history of the construction of the transcontinental line, Pierre Berton coined the phrase “national dream” to describe the railway, which he portrayed as a heroic endeavour without which Canada would not exist. If the argument is accepted that the railway created Canada by spanning the continent, the Last Spike was the symbolic moment of the country’s completion.
