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The roadbed work was completed to just past Kemney, and the Brandon Yard and passing tracks were finished.  
 
The first train carried Sir Charles Tupper, Minister of Railways, whose arrival at the end of the steel line was an event of first class public importance, which of course interfered with every day business.  
 
Other political celebrities followed, in the same fall the Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne saw Brandon, but the most significant was the legendary Sir John A. Macdonald, the Prime Minister of Canada.  
 
Sir John was also Member of Parliament for Kingston, and Saluting children was for him a natural born art, and not an acquired political procedure.  
 
His first visit was during the construction of the Trans Continental Railway. He had opposed the timorous Dominion public who were content to boat across Lakes Huron, and Superior in summer, and approach the western plains through the United States in winter.  
 
His aggressive optimism had been compressed into a five-word election slogan: “All Rail Route or Nothing.”  
 
Sir John stood on the rear of the train with his light curly hair waving in the breeze: his hat in his hand, and wearing his never absent red tie that was only worn by Socialists, or Communists in those colourful days.  
 
He is reputed to have said, “You can come in on the train in the morning and start ploughing in the afternoon.”  
 
Source: A Horseman and the west by Beecham Trotter.