The Canadian Commonwealth

by Agnes C. Laut

CHAPTER XI

TO EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY

I

It must have become apparent to the most casual observer that transportation has been to Canada more than a system of exploitation by capital. Transportation has been to Canada an integral part of her very national life—which, perhaps, explains how with the exception of extravagance incident to a period of great prosperity her railroad systems have been founded on sound finance from bed-rock up. In spite of huge land grants—in all fifty-five million acres—and in the case of one railroad wild stock fluctuations from forty-eight to three hundred dollars—it is a question if a dollar of public money has ever been diverted from roadbed to promoters' pockets. Certainly, in the case of the strongest road financially in Canada, no director of the road has ever juggled with underground wires to unload worthless securities on widows and orphans. Railroad stocks have never been made the football of speculators. Charters in the old days were juggled through legislatures with land grants of eight and twelve thousand acres per mile; but at that time these acres were worthless; and the system of land grants has for the last ten years been discontinued. Because railroads are a necessary part of Canada's national development, state aid of late has taken the form of loans, cash grants and guarantee of bonds by provincial and federal governments. This has given Canada's Railway Commission a whip handle over rates and management, which perhaps explains why railroads in Canada have never been regarded as lawful game by the financial powers that prey. Including municipal, provincial and federal grants, stocks and bonds, Canada has spent on her railroads a billion and a half. Including capital cost and maintenance, Canada has spent on her canals $138,000,000. On steamship subsidies, Canada's yearly grants have gradually risen from a few hundred thousands to as high as two millions in some years. Nor does this cover all the national expenditure on transportation; for besides the thirty-eight millions spent on dredging and improving navigation on the St. Lawrence, twelve millions have been appropriated for improving Halifax Harbor; and only recently federal guarantee for bonds to the extent of forty-three millions was accorded one transcontinental. This road was so heavily guaranteed by provincial governments that if it had failed it would have involved four western provinces. Its plight arose from two causes—the extravagant cost of labor and material in an inflated era, and the depression in the world money markets curtailing all extension. Workmen on this road were paid three to seventeen dollars a day, who would have received a dollar and a half to four dollars ten years ago. In fact, the owners of the road themselves received those wages thirty years ago. Sections cost one hundred thousand dollars a mile which would formerly have been built for thirty thousand; and prairie grading formerly estimated at six to eight thousand dollars a mile jumped to twenty and thirty thousand dollars. In coming to the aid of the Canada Northern, the government did no more than Sir John Macdonald's government did for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885, and the prosperity of the Canadian Pacific Railroad has amply justified that aid.

Canada's transportation system has been a national policy from the first. Her first transcontinental she built to unify and bind confederation. Her second two transcontinentals she launched to carry commerce east and west, because the United States had built a tariff wall which prevented Canada moving her commerce north and south. Her canal system to cut the distance from the Great Lakes to the seaboard and to overcome the rapids at "the Soo," at Niagara and on the St. Lawrence—has simply resolved itself into an effort to move seaboard inland, on the principle that the farther inland the port the shorter the land haul and the lower the traffic toll. Owing to the enormous increase in the cargo capacity of lake freighters in recent years, grain ships reach Buffalo carrying three hundred thousand bushels of western wheat, and Canada's Welland Canal has worked at a handicap. Until the Canal is widened, the big cargo carriers can not pass through it, and the necessity to break bulk here is one explanation of more than half Canada's western traffic going to seaboard by way of Buffalo instead of Montreal.

For years the proposal has been under consideration to connect the Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence by way of a canal from Georgian Bay through Ottawa River. This would be a colossal undertaking; for the region up Mattawa River toward Georgian Bay is of iron rock, and to build a canal wide enough for the big cargo carriers would out-distance anything in the way of canal construction in the world. Both parties in Canada have endorsed what is known as the Georgian Bay Ship Canal; and estimates place the cost at one hundred and twenty-five millions; but traffic men of the Lakes declare if the big cargo carriers are to have cheap insurance on this route, the canal will have to be wide enough to guarantee safe passage; and the cost would be twice this estimate.

On no section of her national transportation has Canada expended more thought and effort than improving navigation on the St. Lawrence. This, in its way, has been as difficult a problem for a people of seven millions as the construction of Panama for a people of ninety millions. Consider the geographical position of the St. Lawrence route! It penetrates the continent from eight hundred to nine hundred sixty miles. Montreal, the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence, is the farthest inland harbor of America with the exception of two ports—Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico and Port Nelson on Hudson Bay. Galveston is seven hundred miles from the wheat fields of Kansas. Port Nelson is four hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba. Montreal is—roughly—a thousand miles from the head of the Lakes, one thousand five hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba, two thousand two hundred miles from the wheat fields of Alberta. Montreal's great advantage is in being situated so far inland. Her disadvantages are from the nature of the St. Lawrence. First, the port is closed by ice from November to April. Second, the St. Lawrence is the drainage bed of inland oceans—the Great Lakes. Third, it passes into the Atlantic at one of the most difficult sections of the coast. South of Newfoundland are the fogs of the Grand Banks. North of Newfoundland the tidal current beats upon an iron coast in storm and fog. To save detour, St. Lawrence vessels, of course, follow the route north of Newfoundland through the Straits of Belle Isle.

When Canada began dredging the St. Lawrence in 1850, the channel averaged a depth of ten feet. By 1888, the channel averaged twenty-seven and one-half feet at low water. To-day a depth of thirty to thirty-one feet has been attained. At its narrowest points the St. Lawrence has a steamship channel four hundred and fifty feet wide and thirty feet deep from side to side. In the days when high insurance rates were established against the St. Lawrence route, there was practically not a lighthouse nor channel buoy from Tadousac to the Straits of Belle Isle. To-day between Montreal and Quebec are ninety-nine lighted buoys, one hundred and ninety-five can buoys; between Quebec and the Straits, three light ships, eighty gas buoys, one whistling buoy, seventy-five can buoys, four submarine bell ships, and a line of lighthouses. Telegraph lines extend to the outer side of Belle Isle, and hydrographic survey has charted every foot of the river. In spite of these improvements, insurance rates are four to six per cent. for lines to Canada, where they are one and one-half to two and one-half to American ports.