Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC)

• Date Founded: 1881
• Industry: Railway/Transportation
• Corporate Headquarters: Calgary, Alberta
• Type: Public

Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) was formed in March 2023 when Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern merged, creating a unique, single-line network of railways connecting three nations. Formerly Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., it is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, with a second location beginning construction in Kansas in 2023. The company has historically offered logistics and supply-chain solutions to businesses in both countries. In 2023, the company reported 12.55 billion in total revenue.

History

Canadian Pacific started as the Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR) in 1881. In 1882, CPR issued stock worth $30 million to a number of New York investment syndicates, and in the following year, it sold 200,000 shares of common stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). With this stock sale, CPR became the first non-US firm to be listed on the NYSE.

Construction of the company's main rail line was completed on November 7, 1885, in less than half the ten-year period allowed under the company’s contract. The railway was, at that time, the longest and costliest railroad line ever built. The Pacific Express, which departed from Montreal on June 28, 1886, was the first passenger train to use the line. It arrived in Port Moody, British Columbia, on July 4.

The same year saw CPR charter seven ships to carry tea and silk from Asia to the west coast of Canada; from there, the freight was transported to the east coast by railway. With this move, CPR entered into the steamship business, and the venture later came to be known as CP Ships. In the early twentieth century, CP Ships gained fame for its luxury passenger liners—namely, the famous Canadian Pacific Empress class ships. The company’s fleet provided shipping services from 1891 to 1970.

CPR also erected telegraph lines along the route of its main transcontinental line. The first commercial telegram was transmitted in 1882, and in the same year, CPR acquired the Dominion Express Company, marking its entry into the express shipment business. In 1883, CPR started building some of its own steam locomotives and later started building its own passenger cars, becoming only the second company on the American continent to do so. The Pullman Company of Chicago, Illinois, had been the first.

Throughout its history, CP has ventured into numerous lines of business, including bus transportation, coal, energy, hotels, insurance, irrigation, manufacturing, mining, newsreels, and oil, among others. In 1942, CPR even set up Canadian Pacific Airlines when it combined ten local airline companies into one.

CPR's railway operations started off as an operator of both passenger and freight services, but the rising popularity of air travel in the 1950s led to a sharp decline in passenger rail traffic, making it uneconomical to run such services. Over time, beginning in the 1960s, some services were discontinued, and on October 29, 1978, CPR transferred its remaining passenger services to Via Rail, a new federal Crown corporation formed to manage all intercity passenger service handled by CPR and the Canadian National Railway Company (CN). CP’s freight services, however, continued to thrive; with increasing volumes across all categories of freight, the company handles bulk commodities, merchandise freight, and intermodal traffic.

By 1986, Canadian Pacific, as it had come to be known, had grown to become Canada’s second-largest company, with $15 billion in revenue. CP's subsidiaries included PanCanadian Energy, Fording Coal, CP (later Fairmont) Hotels, and CP Ships.

In 1990, in a bid to refocus on its core business, CPR embarked on an expansion of its rail network, taking full control of its Soo Line in the US Midwest. CPR had held a majority interest in the company since the 1890s. The Soo Line bought the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern (MNS) in 1982 and Milwaukee Road in 1985. In addition, with its 1991 acquisition of the bankrupt Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H), CPR gained access to ports in the US Northeast.

On October 3, 2001, Canadian Pacific spun off its five subsidiaries into separate companies in a move aimed at unlocking shareholder value, returning CP to focus on its railway business. Canadian Pacific, in the first years of the twenty-first century, operated as a fully independent, public company, with its network extending across the US industrial centers of Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Washington, New York City, and Buffalo. This network was added to its Canadian operations. In the 2010s, CP explored several merger options with US companies but abandoned them until their decision to merge with Kansas City Southern Railway in 2021. The merger was made official in late 2022 and completed in early 2023. Following April of the same year, the company's name on the stock exchange in Canada and the United States became Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway (CPKCR).

Impact

As a critical player in Canada's railway industry, CP has had an impact on transportation and, therefore, the economy and culture from its conception. Its prominent position gave it many notable opportunities for promotion or special events. For example, in 1939, Canadian Pacific ran a number of special trains to give King George VI and Queen Elizabeth a royal tour of Canada. The trains, which were elegantly decorated, transported the royal couple through forests, small towns, and the countryside, and the tour enabled people to meet them. This was the first visit by a reigning British monarch to Canada, although the royal family had been visiting Canada for more than 200 years.

The major portion of the 1976 film Silver Streak was shot on the CPR, mostly in Alberta. The film produced by 20th Century Fox, which tells the story of a murder aboard a runaway Los Angeles–Chicago train, climaxes with the engine crashing into the Chicago terminal. According to director Arthur Hiller, he could not find the locales the filmmakers needed—mountains, desert, prairies, and Illinois farmland—so he had to take the crew to Canada. The locomotive used in the film (AM ROAD’s 4070) was actually CP Rail’s 4070.

CP started a Holiday Train along its main line in 1999. The Holiday Train runs during the months of November and December to celebrate the holiday season and collect donations for community food banks. Each train has a boxcar stage for entertainers who travel with the tour, and even though it is a freight train, it also pulls vintage passenger cars that are used as lodging/transportation for the crew and entertainers. Since 1999, the train has helped raise more than C$12 million and 3.9 million pounds of food for local food banks.

CP has also seen controversies and challenges throughout its long history. Today historians acknowledge the dangerous conditions for workers building the groundbreaking transcontinental rail line, including thousands of Chinese laborers who faced discrimination. Also recognized after decades of neglect is the impact of the railway on Indigenous peoples. CP has occasionally been criticized for its labor practices and faced strikes even in the 2010s and 2020s. Strikes impact North American supply chains and commuter rail services in Canada.

Bibliography

"2023 Annual Report." CPKC, 2024, s21.q4cdn.com/736796105/files/doc‗financials/2023/ar/CPKC‗AnnualReport‗2023.pdf. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025. 

"Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern combine to create CPKC." CPKC, 14 Apr. 2023, www.cpkcr.com/en-ca/media/canadian-pacific-and-kansas-city-southern-combine-to-create-cpkc. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"CPKC Workers Vote Overwhelmingly in Favour of Strike Action." Unifor, January 14, 2025, www.unifor.org/news/all-news/cpkc-workers-vote-overwhelmingly-favour-strike-action. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025. 

Cudahy, Brian J. How Container Ships Changed the World. Fordham UP. 2006.

"450,000 People Celebrate with CP Holiday Train; Raise More than $1.4 Million for Food Banks." CP Holiday Train. Canadian Pacific, www.cpr.ca/holiday-train/canada. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

Lavalle, Omer. "Canadian Pacific Railway." Canadian Encyclopedia, 15 July 2021, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-pacific-railway. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

Liyan, Chen, and Murphy Andrea. "The World's Largest Companies 2015." Forbes, 6 May 2015. www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/05/06/the-worlds-largest-companies. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.