Andrew Onderdonk (30 August 1848 – 21 June 1905) was an American construction contractor who worked on several major projects in the West, including the San Francisco seawall in California and the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia. He was born on August 30, 1848 in New York City to an established ethnic Dutch family. He received his education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He married Sarah Delia Hilman of Plainfield, New Jersey. After starting his career surveying town sites and roads in New Jersey, he headed west to work as a general manager for financier Darius Ogden Mills on several engineering contracts. He died in Oscawana-on-the Hudson, New York on June 21, 1905. San Francisco His first major project was the San Francisco seawall. This project took three years and involved constructing ferry slips and seawalls for the San Francisco Harbor. His son Andrew Jr. was born in San Francisco. Canadian Pacific Railway In 1879, Onderdonk won a series of contracts to build the western section of what is now the Canadian Pacific Railway. Working directly for the Canadian government, he built the 227 mile (365 km) section from Port Moody, 11 miles east of Vancouver and tidewater at the coast, northeastward to Savona (near Kamloops). When those sections were complete, he continued building eastward under contract with the Canadian Pacific Railway, until he ran out of rail in Eagle Pass in 1885. Onderdonk and his wife moved to Yale, British Columbia so that he could supervise the construction. Yale was the head of navigation for steamships on the Fraser River and very near the starting point at Emory's Bar for his first contract. It was not until 1882 that the contract was let for the section between Yale and Port Moody. Chinese workers One of the more controversial aspects of Onderdonk's work in British Columbia was his use of Chinese workers as labourers. From Emory's Bar to Savona, the railway had to be built through the Fraser Canyon, whose immense cliffs required extensive and expensive tunnelling. He got permission from the Canadian government to import Chinese workers from both California and China. This solution was opposed both by the Anglo-European white population in British Columbia and the new province's government, which wanted to attract British railway workers as settler-colonists. The Canadian government wanted to save money by hiring workers at lower costs than would be possible with British