Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Fleming, Sandford
FLEMING, Sir SANDFORD (1827–1915), Canadian engineer, the second son of Andrew Greig Fleming, of Kirkcaldy, Forfarshire, by his wife, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Sandford Arnott, was born at Kirkcaldy 7 January 1827. After studying surveying in his native town he went to Canada in 1845. From 1852 onwards he took a prominent part in the railway development of Upper Canada; and from 1855 to 1863 was chief engineer of the Northern Railway. In 1864 he was appointed chief railway engineer by the government of Nova Scotia, and charged with the construction of a line of railway from Truro to Pictou. The government policy of constructing the line by a series of small contracts did not work well, as the tenders received were so far above Fleming’s estimate that he refused to entertain them. He was therefore requested by the government, in 1866, as the only method of getting them out of the imbroglio, to resign his position, and carry out as contractor the work on which he had hitherto been employed as civil servant. This offer Fleming eventually accepted, and he completed the line by 31 May 1867, with profit to himself, at a great saving to the government, and to the entire satisfaction of the government inspectors.
Fleming early advocated a Canadian trans-continental railway; and when in 1867 the construction of a railway from the River St. Lawrence to Halifax was made part of the federation pact, he was appointed by the newly formed Dominion government as its chief engineer. He at once began the construction of the Inter-Colonial Railway, and carried it to completion in 1876. His difficulties were not only those of construction through a country which was in great part unsettled; he carried on a continual struggle with the governments of the day, because they wished to award extravagant contracts to political favourites, while saving money on construction which Fleming considered essential. The great ‘battle of the bridges’, in which he insisted on iron bridges in places where the government desired wood, was finally won by Fleming. The struggle is told by him, with his invariable reticence and moderation, in The Inter-Colonial, a historical sketch, 1832–1876 (1876). Meanwhile, in 1871, the construction of a Canadian Pacific Railway was made a part of the bargain by which British Columbia was induced to enter the new Dominion, and Fleming was appointed engineer-in-chief. In 1872 he headed the ‘Ocean to Ocean’ expedition, by which a practicable route was found through the Yellow Head Pass [see George Monro Grant]; but in 1880 the government changed its policy, abandoned the plan of government construction, and formed an agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. It was the hardest blow of Fleming’s life. Over 600 miles of railway had been completed, the whole line had been surveyed, and most of the engineering difficulties overcome. All this work, together with vast subsidies of land and money, was handed over by the government to the new company, whose general manager, (Sir) William Cornelius Van Horne [q.v.], was a little inclined to undervalue the work of his predecessor. But, beyond resigning his position as engineer-in-chief of the government railways, Fleming made little protest.
From that time forward Fleming’s quiet, unceasing energy was occupied in promoting a series of good causes. He became a director of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 1883 he crossed the continent in its service and assisted in the survey of the present main line through the Kicking Horse Pass. His party had the honour of being the first white men to cross the Rockies from side to side by this route. The story is told by him in Old to New Westminster (1884). After protracted negotiations from 1879 onward, he succeeded in persuading the Canadian, Australian, and Imperial governments to co-operate in laying the Pacific cable, which was completed between Vancouver and Australia in 1902 [see George Johnson, Annals and Aims of the Pacific Cable, 1903]. From 1876 he had taken a prominent part in forcing on the adoption of standard time, which has so greatly simplified travel in British North America and throughout the world. In 1880 he was appointed chancellor of Queen’s University, Kingston, a position to which he was continuously re-elected until his death. Though not a party man he was a devoted imperialist, was prominent in the Imperial Federation League, and in 1891 came forward as an opponent of reciprocity with the United States. He died at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22 July 1915.
Fleming was tall and handsome, gentle in speech, but absolutely immovable once his mind was made up. Several portraits of him are given in the authorized biography by L. J. Burpee, Sandford Fleming, Empire-Builder (1915), which also contains a bibliography of his numerous reports and other writings. Of these the chief, in addition to those already quoted, are his reports to the Canadian government on the Inter-Colonial Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, many pamphlets on time reckoning and on the Pacific cable, and a series of small volumes of prayers and short services which grew out of those which he always provided for his engineering parties. In 1855 he married Ann Jean (died 1888), eldest daughter of James Hall, M.P., sheriff of Peterborough County, Ontario. He was survived by four sons and two daughters. During the summer he lived in Halifax, in the winter in Ottawa, though till late in life he travelled constantly. In 1877 he received the C.M.G., and the K.C.M.G. in 1897.
[L. J. Burpee, op. cit.; Canadian newspapers of July 1915; C. F. Hamilton in Montreal Daily Witness, 20 February 1911; personal knowledge.]