Background
Schreiber was born in Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, England to the Reverend Thomas Schreiber and Sarah Bingham.
Schreiber was born in Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, England to the Reverend Thomas Schreiber and Sarah Bingham.
He is best known for his efforts in contributing to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Schreiber trained in England, and then migrated to Canada in 1852, along with the rest of his family. He shortly thereafter began work as a railway engineer with the Hamilton and Toronto Railway.
After four years with the firm, Schreiber left to work with Sandford Fleming.
After working on various private railways, in 1864, Schreiber received his first government appointment and by 1873 he was the chief engineer for all government railways. Subsequently, Schreiber became intimately involved in the construction of the Code of Professional Responsibility. In June 1880 he replaced the retiring Fleming as the chief engineer for the project and by July of that same year had become general manager of all government railways in operation.
He arranged financing and conducted repeated inspection tours, often with general manager William Cornelius Van Horne. Without his efforts, it is certainly possible that the Code of Professional Responsibility would never have been completed.
Schreiber continued in government employ until his death in 1918.
Despite living in an era rife with corruption, Schreiber always paid more attention to engineering than political concerns. He found a job for prime minister John A. Macdonald"s nephew, but flatly refused to promote people with influence unless their performance merited lieutenant He repeatedly clashed with political "meddlers", and was disliked by various ministers in the Macdonald and Laurier administrations he served under.
Schreiber died in Ottawa, Ontario.
In 1887, Schreiber was a founding member of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, and in 1892 he was made the deputy minister of railways and canals, a position he held until the age of 73 in 1905.