Rolly Martin Country: CNoR 1992 Sir William Mackenzie and Kirkfield

In the 1990s, we did more shovel-less Canadian railway archaeology

as we looked for traces of 'The Railway King of Canada'.

William Mackenzie's hometown was connected to the Canadian railway network by the Toronto & Nipissing Railway. To locate Kirkfield on the map below, head northeast from Lorneville to the point where the line changes direction.

from: Railroad Recollections; Charles H Heels; 1980; Floyd W Hall.

On The Google from 2020 (above), you can see the railway embankment appearing in the bottom left corner, crossing County Road 6 north of town, and exiting the image at the top right corner. It crossed a bridge at the Trent Canal 'ditch'. At the top of the image, you can see a Trent Canal system lift lock, similar to Peterborough's, but smaller.

Judging by its website, this building is the location of an impressive festivity-hosting facility in 2020. In the late 1990s we had reservations to stay here. However, on the night before our arrival a small tornado knocked down so many trees on the property that it was temporarily closed.

This was the home William Mackenzie built for his large family. His spouse, Margaret Mackenzie, managed his social life and later made the arrangements to purchase the family mansion in Toronto.

Before you continue, notice two architectural features this building shares with the Smiths Falls CNoR station: a porte cochère, and a substantial brick chimney(s).

Above is the former CNR Kirkfield station as it appeared in June 1992.

It seemed to be a private residence then, and doesn't appear on Google maps today.

The agent and his family lived on the second floor.

... facilitating the 'D N' operator coverage noted below.

from: CNR employee timetable October 27, 1957.

Above is the Coboconk Subdivision employee timetable from 1957. By this era, there was no scheduled service as far as Kirkfield.

For fine print readers:

Special Instruction 2 indicates that only junction switches will display lights by night ... not other switches nor train order signals.

The view of the Kirkfield station was to the east of today's County Road 6 ... just north of the town.

The view immediately above looks west at the same location along the former railway roadbed.

* * *

Here is the main Mackenzie family plot near Kirkfield. Sir William Mackenzie, his spouse and his three sons are buried here. It was from reading The Railway King of Canada, Sir William Mackenzie 1849-1923 (RB Fleming; 1991; UBC Press) that I developed the interest in coming here. I didn't have the time or energy to make a lot of notes before my two visits here, so I was successful in photographing only the most obvious grave markers.

On his website, RB Fleming indicates that his post-graduate work was done at the University of Saskatchewan and his PhD thesis (which became The Railway King of Canada) was supervised by TD Regehr who wrote The Canadian Northern Railway, Pioneer Road of the Northern Prairies; 1976; Macmillan.

While books written about the Canadian Pacific Railway placed end-to-end would span the world, books on Canada's lesser-known railway systems and their builders are much less common. The history of 'the others', particularly Canada's private home-grown transcontinental, are particularly nice to have.

Amateur Archaeology ... Amateur Psychology

My brief biographical notes for Mackenzie's sons come from Fleming. There was no collection of William Mackenzie's papers left for historians, so writing about Mackenzie (and his family), as Fleming did, entailed piecing together a lot of information from a variety of sources.

Now, in July 2020, a recently-published book chronicled the relationships within a self-made American business family. As was probably the case with the Mackenzies, the modern American tale shows that daughters were never even considered to be fitting heirs to the business - in hindsight, a bad policy which got bad results. In the American story, the traits and behaviours necessary to be single-mindedly successful at business resulted in parenting deficiencies which produced sub-optimal childhood development. As adults, almost all of the people in the story seemed to value money above all else.

... This model is not entirely applicable to the Mackenzies. However, organizing and building a regional and later a transcontinental railway (and many other successful enterprises) generally required the ability to shrewdly analyze people and how society's 'systems' operate. Politicians and financial institutions were willing to help your business if you could make the right connections and convince decision-makers that they could benefit as well.

In addition, the private builder of a transcontinental also had to have a high tolerance for risk. Mackenzie lost almost everything he had built when war started in Europe. Probably, the thrill of taking risks was modelled by Mackenzie's sons as they matured.

A Quick Illustration

Fleming notes that a family trait was travelling unreasonably fast by automobile - sometimes resulting in damage to property and injuries to other people. Because of luck and for other reasons, The Tale of Two Cities comeuppance: 'Drive him fast to his tomb,' never seemed to catch up with the lucky Mackenzies.

Then and Now

I remember having particular reverence 'being among' the Mackenzies as figures of Canadian history during my visits to the Kirkfield cemetery in the 1990s.

Thirty years later, it is easier to understand and accept that some of the tragedy of the Mackenzie sons was predictable.

... I'd like to experience someone who, in the early 1900s, gave a 5 dollar bill (about $115 in 2020 dollars) to children ... telling them to go and buy all the ice cream they could eat. However, having that impulsive Mackenzie son as a spouse or parent might be kind of stressful. As a friend, watching them dissipate their health and resources would be a sad experience.

After 2 years of study at the University of Toronto, Mackenzie's son Alexander sat on the boards of directors of some of his companies at age 21. In 1905 his father was in London as sons Alex and RJ received the congratulations of the mayor of Edmonton on the occasion of the CNoR's arrival there. Alex's skills and approach made him William Mackenzie's preferred corporate heir.

Mackenzie was in London when word reached him that Alexander had died at age 29. Initially, Alexander had a non-routine (during that era) operation for appendicitis and he subsequently died of heart failure.

This stone marks the places of Roderick (RJ) and Joseph.

RJ attended Upper Canada College and under DB Hanna did supervisory work as the railway was constructed in Manitoba. Fleming notes that he carried a repeating rifle (e.g. a Winchester) with him as a supervisory accessory. In the Toronto Railway Chambers where the CNoR made its headquarters, the four key officers of the CNoR were Mackenzie, Donald Mann, DB Hanna and RJ Mackenzie.

RJ had an affinity for life in California and Hollywood - I am not clear how that fits into the CNoR chronology. His hobbies were gambling on horses and buying race horses.

With the government takeover in 1919, RJ resigned from the board of the CNoR. His 5000 shares of CNoR stock were worthless.

Having a California residence in San Francisco, RJ died in Los Angeles at age 49. Fleming notes the reasonable speculation at the time that his death was suicide.

Joseph was interested in fast cars and whiskey. He missed crossing the Atlantic at the same time as Charles Melville Hays because he was drunk in Paris (I assume he would have set off from Cherbourg). The RMS Titanic sailed without him.

In 1927, Joseph sold the Mackenzie house in Kirkfield to the Sisters of St Joseph for $1 and for many years the building served as a convent.