The Fighting Father of Confederation, the great Sir Charles Tupper, started his final journey through Canada on this date in 1913. He was 91 and had been living with one of his sons in Vancouver for a number of years following the death of Lady Tupper. Tupper had decided to cross the Atlantic to live out his final days in England. He granted an interview with a B.C. reporter and the latter’s story appeared on April 9, 1913. You can read it below.
The New-Advertiser: “I am leaving Vancouver with deep regret. I have enjoyed the year spent here very much. It is a city I love and have known since 1's infancy, but I feel I can be of more use to my only daughter and her family than by remaining here. That added to the fact that I want to return to the spot where my dear wife and spent the last six years of her life. Memory endears The Mount, Bexley Heath, Kent, to me more than any other spot-on earth, and I am returning to it."
The above statement was made yesterday by Sir Charles Tupper, K.C.M.G., to a representative of the "News-Advertiser," who met the aged statesman at the home of Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, prior to his departure for Winnipeg.
"I have witnessed with great pride and pleasure the remarkable progress made by Vancouver in recent years," he continued, "but I am thoroughly convinced that the development of the past will be insignificant when compared with the progress of the future. I can see nothing but steady growth for the city which is so favorably situated to command a large portion of the Pacific trade. I look to Vancouver 88 having the most promising future of any city in this great Dominion, and as the gateway of this great province Vancouver is bound to become a great metropolis. "I desire in leaving them to wish the citizens of Vancouver and the people of the province much prosperity and happiness. The portal to the Pacific is in good hands.”
"I first saw Vancouver away back in 1881," Sir Charles continued. "At that time there was but one house in it. This was some time before the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Coast. Where the present beautiful city stands was a dense forest.
I rode on horseback through forest for twelve miles to New Westminster. I was then Minister of Railways. We had let the contract for the construction of the Canadian Pacific from Kamloops to Yale, and I came out from Ottawa to see how the work Was getting on. I travelled in my own car to San Francisco and from there I journeyed to Victoria in a small steamer. Several members of the government came over with me to Vancouver.
We landed at Rowan's Mills, where the only house in the place stood. We went over to New Westminster by horseback and travelled as far as Yale by steamer. The journey from Yale to Kamloops was made in a four-horse coach driven by a man named Tindlay, who is still in Vancouver. ver. It was a perilous ride and the memory of It is as keen today as it was then.
The road ran along the face of the mountain a great part of the distance with little room to spare. The chief danger was in meeting wild mountain horses and cattle, who refused to take the outer edge of the road and made us do 80. But it was a trip I can never forget."
Asked for a statement of his plans, Sir Charles said that he would go as far as Winnipeg and remain there a few days with his son, Mr. W. H. Tupper. While there he will be joined by Mr. Stewart Tupper and family, who sailed from England on April 4 for Halifax. From Winnipeg he will go to Ottawa to spend a few days with Mr. Collingwood Schreiber, general consulting engineer to the Dominion government. "Mr. Schreiber is one of my oldest friends and one of the finest men I ever knew," Sir Charles said. "We have been closely associated ever since leaving Nova Scotia. He succeeded Sir Sanford Fleming as chief government engineer on the Canadian Pacific in 1880. "After leaving Ottawa, where I will probably meet a few other of my old friends, I will go to Amherst and will spend a short time there as the guest of my nephew, Mr. Charles Tupper Hillson. Amherst was the birthplace both of Lady Tupper and myself.
We were born less than a mile apart. I lived there until I became Provincial Secretary in 1857, when I moved to Halifax. It will be a pleasure to be once more in Nova Scotia, which is endeared to me by many happy associations.
Sails on May 3
"I will sail from Halifax on May 3 on the C.P. R. steamship Empress of Ireland, which sails from St John on May 2. I do not intend to stop in London, but will go straight through to Kent, where I will live with my daughter, and son-in-law, Major -General Cameron at The Mount, Bexley Heath." S
Sir Charles left last evening on the transcontinental train. He occupied the drawing room of one of the ordinary Pullmans. He was offered a private car by the C. P. R., but refused the courtesy on the ground that being no longer in public life it would not be right to accept it. He appeared to be in excellent health and spirits. A number of prominent citizens were at the station to bid him "Godspeed."
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.