The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 by Pierre Berton Page B

was nonsense. Fleming was far wordier than most politicians – a graceful public speaker, a voluminous diarist and author who, at his death, had some hundred and fifty articles, reports, books and pamphlets credited to his pen. As a writer, Fleming again was the gifted amateur. In his diaries and reminiscences he showed a sharp eye for descriptive detail, for subtlety of character and for the revealing personal anecdote. When he was too occupied to write himself, he took along a “secretary,” such as Grant, who would be sure to put it all down on paper.
    Without this mountainous literary legacy, it is doubtful whether Fleming’s reputation as one of the greatest Canadians of the century would have survived. In his quiet yet thorough way, Fleming, the expert on communication, knew a good deal about personal public relations. There is a revealing story of Fleming’s curious role onbehalf of members of the Red River’s Canadian Party in the winter of 1862–63. He petitioned the Colonial Office and the Canadian government in their interest, representing himself as their delegate in Canada and England. His purpose, clearly, was to win public notice. Fleming paid the editor of the Nor’wester one hundred dollars to report that he had been given the post at large and enthusiastic public meetings. As the Governor of Rupert’s Land put it, “Mr. Fleming virtually appointed himself to represent a country and a people he had never seen.”
    Finally, a decade later, he was about to see it, along with his companions. The prairie, which all had read about in Butler’s book, lured them on like a magnet. One night, after supper, realizing that it was only thirty-three miles away, they decided they must see it and pushed on through the night, in spite of a driving rain so heavy that it blotted out all signs of a trail. The three men climbed down from their wagon and, hand in hand – the giant Fleming in the centre, the one-handed Grant on the right and the wiry Macoun on the left – trudged blindly forward through the downpour, leading the horse, mile after muddy mile, until a faint light appeared far off in the murk. When, at last, they burst through the woods and onto the unbroken prairie they were too weary to gaze upon it. They tumbled, dripping wet, into a half-finished Hudson’s Bay store and slept. The following morning the party awoke to find the irrepressible Macoun already up and about, his arms full of flowers.
    “Thirty-two new species already!” he cried. “It is a perfect floral garden.”
    “We looked out,” wrote Grant, “and saw a sea of green, sprinkled with yellow, red, lilac and white. None of us had ever seen the prairie before and behold, the half had not been told us. As you cannot know what the ocean is without having seen it, neither in imagination can you picture the prairie.”
    In Winnipeg, the party picked up a new companion, a strapping giant named Charles Horetzky, with brooding eyes and a vast black beard. This former Hudson’s Bay Company man was to be the official photographer for the party. Though everything went smoothly at the time, Horetzky was to be a thorn in Fleming’s side for all of the decade. Eight years later, the generally charitable Grant referred to him as “a rascal and … a consummate fool combined.”
    The party set out along the Carlton Trail – a small brigade of six Red River carts and two buckboards. The meticulous Fleming had figured that they must make forty miles a day for a full month and, leaving nothing to guesswork, attached an odometer to one of the carts. They rose at sunrise and travelled until dark in three spells a day. There were surprises all along the line of route, some of them pleasant, some terrifying. At one point they happened upon a flat plain, twelve miles wide, which was an unbroken mass of sunflowers, asters, goldenrod and daisies – an Elysian field shining like a multicoloured beacon out of the dun-coloured expanse of the prairie. At