The only way to get construction material to Winnipeg and the West in time for the spring opening was from the south. Van Horne bought rails in England and Germany, had them shipped to New Orleans, and hauled in trainloads up the Mississippi Valley. He made a contract with a St. Paul firm for the grading, up to the point of actually laying ties and steel, from Oak Lake, west of Brandon, to Calgary. The day after the contract was signed they advertised for three thousand men and four thousand horses. Van Horne organized his own gangs of tracklayers and kept them right on the heels of the graders. There was delay in starting work, because the Red River Valley above Winnipeg was abnormally flooded. Then the contractors didn’t work fast enough. On threat of cancelling the whole thing Van Horne speeded up the construction. Working furiously into the freeze-up, finished only 417 miles on the prairie section. But the work done elsewhere did complete over five hundred miles of construction that year; and it was plain that the new driving force would get even greater results another season. The next year saw steel laid right to Calgary and immense progress made between Lake Nipissing and Thunder Bay. This piece of work caused J. J. Hill to drop out of the C.P.R., and to become a business enemy of Van Horne’s. Hill, an Ontario farm boy, had induced Donald Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona) and his cousin George Stephen (Lord Mountstephen) to join him in getting hold of a Minnesota railroad that had been financed by Dutch bondholders. This road developed into the Great Northern, out of which Smith and Stephen made, it has been stated, more money than they did out of the C.P.R. These associates created the syndicate which obtained the C.P.R. charter, and began construction. Things were dragging, and it seemed likely that the ten years stipulated for with the Canadian Government would be needed to complete the road to the Coast, when Hill recommended that Van Horne be made general manager, with large powers. The appointment was made, but before long, Hill and Van Horne clashed, as strong men often do. When Van Horne took hold, a railway was under construction from Callender (just east of North Bay) to Sault Ste. Marie, where it was to tie in with the Hill road and its Winnipeg connections. The line from Port Arthur to Winnipeg was well advanced; and the utmost use was to be made of the possibilities of lakes navigation for communications with Eastern Canada under all-Canadian auspices. But it was figured that the line around Superior would be too costly and too unremunerative an undertaking for many years. All the traffic during non-navigation months would go over the Hill line--and that was one of several reasons for Hill’s going into the C.P.R.