Sir William Cornelius Van Horne

Sir William Cornelius Van Horne (1843-1915) was an American and later Canadian railway executive who is most famous for overseeing the major construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway or CPR.

He was brought over from the States in 1882 to serve as general manager of the CPR, when some doubted that the line would ever be completed. He retired as president in 1899, leaving a railway that went from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

He considered the railway as an integrated communications and transport 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 knowledgable in nearly every element of the railway industry, including operating a locomotive.

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.

The destruction of his former mansion on Sherbrooke street in Montreal created a major scandal in 1973 among lovers of period architecture in that city.