J.J. Hill, Rail Robber Baron

There's a good biography of Canadian rail magnate J.J. Hill over at Gods of the Copybook Headings:

Neil Reynolds at the Globe recounts the legend of James Jerome Hill (1838-1916), the Canadian who built an American transcontinental railroad, without government subsidies.

[. . .]

Hill also played a key role, until Sir John A Macdonald and his business allies at the Bank of Montreal muscled him out, in the early history of the CPR. He pushed for the appointment of Van Horne as General Manager of the CPR and argued, correctly, that the road's route was economic nonsense. For political reasons the transcontinental route was built through northern Ontario - this long before any significant natural resources had been discovered in the region. The more commercially viable route would have taken the road through Chicago and St Paul, thereby picking up traffic for the Pacific ports of Seattle and Vancouver. Eventually the CPR was forced to purchase the SOO Line to tap into the Chicago and St Paul markets.

Of course, the route taken by the Canadian Pacific had to be within Canada . . . the political realities of the day didn't allow mere economic facts to get in the way. Mistrust of the American government was nearly as bad then as it has been for the last 20 years (I kid, I kid).