Hiram Donkin

(1847-1934)

Hiram Donkin was born at River Philip, Cumberland Co. His first employment was in 1864, when at the age of 17 years he was on the survey of the railway from Truro to Pictou Landing and remained on the construction work of that railway until after its formal opening in 1867. When the Intercolonial Railway was being surveyed, he was appointed assistant engineer on the survey and was later promoted to have charge of his section. After an intermission during which he was on the construction of the railway between Digby and Yarmouth, he became divisional engineer on the survey and construction of the railway between New Glasgow and the Strait of Canso. He left this work before completion, having accepted an appointment as divisional engineer on the Canadian Pacific Railway. On the completion of that work he was appointed resident chief engineer of survey and construction of the Cape Breton railway from the Strait of Canso to Sydney. Then he was appointed resident chief engineer under the Dominion Coal Company for the survey and construction of the railway from Sydney to Louisbourg. On the completion of this work and the coal shipping piers, he was appointed in 1896 resident manager of the Dominion Coal Company, and remained in that capacity until 1901. In 1907 he was appointed deputy Minister of Public Works and Mines for Nova Scotia and held this position until 1923.

Cyrus S. Eaton

(1883-1979)

Cyrus Eaton began his railway career as a water carrier for the crews building the European & North American short line between Pictou and Oxford, when the line passed near his home in Pugwash, N.S. After moving to the U.S. he had a successful business career in steel, coal, railways, public utilities and agriculture. In the 1950s he financed the Pugwash conferences, bringing together scientists who were trying to diminish the threat of nuclear war.

Sandford Fleming

(1827-1915)

The legendary Canadian civil engineer was born in Kirkaldy, Scotland, and came to British North America at the age of 17 or 18. He was trained as a surveyor, and his first railway job was on the Northern Railway, under the tutelage of F.W. Cumberland. One of his associates on the railway was Collingwood Schreiber, with whom he would go into business as consultants on several projects in and around Toronto. He was hired by Nova Scotia provincial secretary Charles Tupper to survey and oversee the construction of the extension of the Nova Scotia Railway from Truro to the coal mines in Pictou County. This project soon saw some of the contractors run into difficulty, and amid a political furor, Fleming offered to take the whole job as the contractor. He completed the project with only minor delays in the schedule, and under his estimated budget.

Contrary to popular history, he was not appointed the imperial government’s engineer when a deal was struck to establish a committee to survey the Intercolonial Railway. The Secretary of State for the colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, had assumed Fleming was a unanimous choice of all the colonies, but when he learned this was not so, he rescinded the appointment, and Fleming was named Canada’s engineer, undertaking the survey at the expense of that colony, with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick paying a share of the survey costs. He died in Halifax, but is buried in Ottawa.