Percy Girouard

Sir Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard, (26 January 1867 – 26 September 1932) was a Canadian railway builder, High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria and the East Africa Protectorate. Education Born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Désiré Girouard and Essie Cranwill, he attended Collège de Montréal (1877–1878) and College St. Joseph in Trois-Rivières (1879–1882) and graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, in 1886. Girouard's father was a wealthy French-Canadian lawyer who went on to become a Conservative MP and Supreme Court justice while his mother was an Irish immigrant. Unlike most of the other members of the French-Canadian elite of Montreal, Girourad was not educated at Laval University, the traditional training ground of the Francophone elite, instead electing for an education in English at the Royal Military College. Girouard graduated first in his class as an engineer, and was the first Roman Catholic ever to be awarded a degree in engineering at the Royal Military College. Career Girouard worked for two years on the Canadian Pacific Railway's "International Railway of Maine" in Greenville, Maine, before he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1888. Quickly earning a reputation as a very able and tough railroad man due to his work in Maine led to Girouard being offered a position in Britain in 1890. Girouard's family wanted him to stay in Canada, but Girouard wanted to see the world by building railroads all over the British Empire. Railway-building in Sudan and Egypt From 1890 to 1895 he was in charge of the Woolwich Arsenal Railway before he joined the Dongola Expedition in 1896 and was asked by Kitchener to supervise the extension of the old Wadi-Halfa to Akasha railroad, which marked the beginning of the Sudan Military Railroad. Kitchener had asked for Girouard as he was reputably the best railroad builder in the entire British Empire. On 20 March 1896, the town of Akasheh was taken by Sir Archibald Hunter, and Girouard went to work building a railroad across the desert. By 4 August 1896 Girouard reported to Kitchener the railroad now extended from Wali Halfa to Kosheh, covering some 116 miles of arid desert.