Talk:Canadian Pacific (film)

Pierre Berton - "The Last Spike"

Historian (and Canadian) Pierre Berton was less than impressed with the movie: in a postscript to his history of the construction of the CPR, The Last Spike, he says:

The CPR was immortalized by Hollywood in 1949 when Twentieth Century-Fox made Canadian Pacific, a film purportedly about the building of the railway. The star was Randolph Scott, who played the role of Tom Andrews, a surveyor who, unassisted, discovers a pass in the Rockies, thus allowing railway construction – held up in the prairies – to proceed once more. There are only two historical figures in the film: Van Horne, depicted as a weedy construction boss with his headquarters in Calgary, and Père Lacombe, shown as a stout and rather comical Irish priest. The conflict revolves around the attempt by the Métis (pronounced “Mettisse” in the film) living around Lake Louise (!) to prevent the railway from coming through the mountains. Dirk Rourke, the Métis leader (played by Victor Jory), rouses the saloonkeepers along the line of the road to cause a strike, which Scott breaks up single-handedly by the use of his six-shooters. Then Rourke persuades the Indians to attack the railroad as if it were a wagon train; they appear in full feathered headdress, waving tomahawks and shooting flaming arrows from their primitive bows. Scott rallies the railroad navvies and, in a pitched battle, they destroy or disperse the redskins. Love interest is supplied by a woman doctor, whom Scott eventually rejects because she believes in non-violent methods, and a pretty Métis girl who saves the day by disclosing her people’s plans and thereby winning Scott’s affections. This is perhaps the only Hollywood film ever made about the Canadian West in which the North West Mounted Police are conspicuously absent. That may explain why almost every railroader in the picture carries two six-shooters on his hip. The film lists a Canadian technical adviser in the person of John Rhodes Sturdy, at one time a public relations officer for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Thomas Peardew (talk) 17:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)