It has been my good fortune and privilege to meet many of these men. Some of them made money and some of them did not. The task of calculating the cost of a piece of work over a given stretch of country, where unexpected obstacles emerged, was not easy. There were stretches on the North Shore of Lake Superior where the old Laurentian rocks had to be blasted to pieces at a cost of half-a-million a mile. There is a well-known muskeg east of Winnipeg where seven tracks went under, till a solid foundation was secured in what looked for a while like a bottomless pit. And there were tunnels and bridges and cuttings in the mountains which challenged the resources of a race of Titans. So, we say, these contractors did not, by any means, always make money. But my knowledge of them leads me to say that very few of the contractors or engineers cared for the money end of it in any case. They felt that they were engaged in a work of significance, not only to Canada and the Empire, but to the world, and that was an inspiration worth while. I recall being told by the secretary to one of the most famous of these railway builders that, so intent was this railway man on his work, that he very often forgot to have money enough in his pocket for personal necessities. In one sense he handled millions; but, only for the precaution of his secretary who knew his ways, this railway magnate would often have been personally stranded. “He thought so little of money,” said the secretary, “that he hardly ever carried any with him. But he was generous withal. The real fact was he was so engrossed in the great enterprise of helping to build a road across Canada that he forgot his own personal needs.”