William Francis Tye
William Francis Tye (1861-1932)
1933 Obituary [1]
WILLIAM FRANCIS TYE was born at Haysville, Ontario, on the 5th March, 1861, and was educated at Ottawa College and the School of Practical Science, Toronto, 1878-1881.
In 1882 he entered the service of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was engaged until 1885 as rodman, transitman, and Assistant Engineer on the construction of the main line from Winnipeg to British Columbia, and in 1886 and 1887 on the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway-Montana Extension.
In 1887 and 1889 he was in Mexico, at first as Track and Bridge Engineer on the Mexican Central Railway and afterwards engaged as a mining engineer. For the next two years he was successively Divisional Engineer on the Great Palls and Canada Railway in Montana, and on the Great Northern Railway, in charge of construction west of the Cascade Range in Washington.
He was Chief Engineer of the Kaslo and Slocan Railway, British Columbia, in 1895, and of the Columbia and Western Railway, Columbia, 1896-99.
In 1900 he became Chief Engineer of Construction, in 1903 Assistant Chief Engineer, and in 1904 Chief Engineer, of the Canadian Pacific Railway System.
In 1906 he retired from that appointment and practised as a consulting engineer.
He was at one time President of the Sterling Coal Company.
In 1920 he left Canada, and travelled extensively throughout Europe. In the course of one of his journeys he was seized with sudden illness in a train, and on the 9th January, 1932, he died in Paris.
Mr. Tye became a member of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 1896, served on its Council, 1905-10, and was President in 1912. The Institute awarded to him in 1917 the Gzomski medal for a Paper on "Canada’s Railway Problem and its Solution." He was also a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the American Railway Engineering Association.
He was elected a Member of The Institution on the 11th January, 1910, and from 1916 to 1918 he served as the Member of Council resident in Canada.
He married, in 1898, Mabel S. Moloney, who survived him.