The Last Spike
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
The Last Spike, commemorating the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. Source: Ingenium 1985.0916
The “last” spike was really the “second-to-last” spike.
It took two swings for Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) financier and director Donald A. Smith to drive the final spike in Canada’s transcontinental railway. Smith represented CPR executives at a small ceremony on November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, British Columbia. On his first attempt, Smith bent the spike. Workers replaced it with another, which Smith drove cleanly home. That spike symbolically completed the 4,800-kilometre railway and fulfilled British Columbia’s condition for entering Confederation. The simple iron spike was one of millions produced in eastern Canadian ironworks and hammered into place by thousands of workers from Canada, Europe, and China. CPR officials later removed the ceremonial last spike from the railbed in Craigellachie and sent it to CPR headquarters in Montreal. Donald Smith pocketed the bent spike as a souvenir and used parts of it to make commemorative pins. When the actual last spike disappeared from the CPR president’s office, Smith’s souvenir suddenly became a national icon. Although the worse for wear, this spike has come to represent the completion of a monumental engineering feat and the formation of Canada as a transcontinental nation.
Transcript
Canada Science and Technology Museum
The Last Spike, ca. 1885
CPR/Transcontinental Line
Donald A. Smith at the ceremony marking the last spike to be driven into the Canadian Pacific Railway on November 7, 1885.Source: W. J. Topley; Library and Archives Canada, PA-209978
Donald A. Smith drives the last spike to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway on November 7, 1885.Source: Alexander Ross; Library and Archives Canada, C-003693
Une équipe du Musée des sciences et de la technologie du Canada (alors connu sous le nom de Musée national des sciences et de la technologie) et la Bytown Railway Society lors des festivités du centenaire en 1985, posant sur la locomotive à vapeur 1201. Source: Ingenium
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