Sir Sandford Fleming: His Early Diaries, 1845–1853 (review)

This is a curious book. It is, true to its title, a transcription of the diaries of the celebrated Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming from 1845, the year of his emigration from Scotland to Canada, to 1853, a year chosen primarily because the diaries end there but that coincides with Fleming’s having become ‘firmly established as a railway builder and a prominent figure on the Toronto scene’ (19). They are thus the ‘early diaries’ of a man who would go on to greatness, and the rationale for the volume is that they reveal the extraordinary qualities of this soon-to-be great man. We are invited to witness his energy, enthusiasm, capability, resourcefulness, and determination.

The problem is that the diaries say so little. They are brief daily entries that simply note the main activities of the day. Some are very short – ‘Christmas. Out sleighing. Good dinner at the Drs’ (25 December 1845), ‘At Timson’s yesterday. Very severe frost. Drawing class evening’ (13 February 1849), ‘Preparing paper and diagrams for Saturday evening’ (20 March 1851). Others are more substantial – ‘Intended going over to the Island to set back meridian but wind blowing & exceedingly cold, called on Lieut de Moleyers who thinks that I had better finish my drawing of Gloucester Bay immediately while the weather is rough & attend to this afterward’ (19 January 1852). Such entries do reveal details that researchers of early engineering and surveying techniques might find useful, but they are still very short, rarely more than four or five lines of printed text, and they leave much unsaid. The months and years go by without much of Fleming’s character being revealed. One has the sense that almost anyone could have written these entries.

In time, though, the numerous mundane facts and details begin shaping into a sketchy picture of Fleming, and perhaps the most striking quality that emerges is how resourceful and capable a man he was. He arrived in Canada with several valuable skills – drawing, drafting, surveying, engraving – and he used them all to make a living. He pursued every opportunity, and every job he did seems to have brought him some recognition, and often the opportunity to do the same again. The entries also reveal a strong commitment to work. A large map of Toronto, which he surveyed, drew, and engraved in association with the Toronto printers Scobie & Balfour, was a multi-year project, on which he seems to have persevered with extraordinary tenacity. All in all, Fleming emerges as the essential self-made man who established himself through his own competence and effort. One gets glimpses of his humbleness too. In one of his few reflective entries Fleming looks back and marvels that ‘a poor boy came to this country 8½ years ago with his brother’ (6 September 1953) and that he is now so respected and financially secure. The entries are slim, to be sure, and the editor’s concluding claim that the diary offers ‘a clear forecast of the accomplishments of his later years’ (306) overstates the matter, but something of the man emerges, no doubt.

These hundreds of mundane details, taken together, also reveal something of the world Fleming inhabited – that intriguing period from the late 1840s to the 1850s that was such a critical moment in the modernization of English Canada – and although the editor makes little mention of this it could well be as important as what the diary says about Fleming. One reads of Fleming’s going to church, frequenting taverns, playing chess, interacting with Native peoples, eating Christmas dinner (never with his family), lending and borrowing money (often with his family), sleighing on snowy days, courting women friends, and travelling about the region. This last point is one of the most striking – Fleming lived in Toronto but had a range of work, despite having to travel by stage, sleigh, and steamer, almost as extensive as the ‘Toronto region’ of today. The diaries also include details about...