William Cornelius Van Horne
William Cornelius Van Horne |
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Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, KCMG (February 3, 1843 – September 11, 1915) was a pioneering North American railway executive.
Born near Chelsea, Illinois, United States, the family moved to nearby Joliet, Illinois when he was eight years old. Van Horne began working on railroads in 1857, serving in various capacities on the Michigan Central Railway until 1864, then for the Chicago and Alton Railway for whom he served as the general superintendent from 1878 to 1879. In 1882 he was appointed general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway and in 1884 became its vice-president. Rising to president in 1888, he is most famous for overseeing the major construction of the first Canadian transcontinental Railway.
Van Horne considered the railway an integrated communications and transportation 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 knowledgeable in nearly every element of the railway industry, including operating a locomotive. A wealthy man, he later became a shareholder of the Cuba Railroad Company.
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.
Van Horne served as a governor of McGill University from 1895 to 1915 and was one of the first in Canada to acquire artworks by members of the French impressionist movement.
He built a large summer estate which he named "Covenhoven" on Minister's Island, adjacent to CPR's resort town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. The island estate was accessible by a road during the Bay of Fundy's low tide.
Following Van Horne's death in Montreal, Quebec in 1915, a special CPR train took his remains to Joliet, Illinois for internment there in Oakwood Cemetery .
Van Horne is depicted in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television miniseries, The National Dream: Building the Impossible Railway.
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