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.
II
What with three transcontinentals, a complete canal system from seaboard to the Great Lakes and an outlet for western traffic through Panama, one would think that Canada had made ample provision for transportation; but she has only begun. If she is to be the shortest route to the Orient, she must keep traffic in Canadian channels and not divide it with Panama and Suez. If she is to feed the British Empire, she must establish the shortest route from her wheat fields to the United Kingdom; and if she is to overcome the disadvantage of harbors open only half the year, she must secure to herself some other advantage—such as access to the harbor having the shortest land haul and therefore the lowest freight rates in America. There is another consideration. If when Canada is raising less than three hundred million bushels of wheat her transcontinentals are glutted with traffic and her harbors gorged, what will happen when her wheat fields raise eight hundred million bushels of wheat? So Canada has cast about for a shorter route to Europe by Hudson Bay, and both parties in Dominion politics have backed the project.
At a time when the food supply of Great Britain must be drawn almost solely from her colonial possessions and the United States and Argentina, when her very national existence depends on the sea lanes to that food supply being kept open—a route which shortens the distance to that food supply by from one thousand five hundred to three thousand miles becomes doubly interesting.
Take a mental look at the contour of North America! All the big export harbors of the Atlantic Coast are situated at the broadest bulge of the continent—Halifax, St. John, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore are all where the distance across the continent from the grain fields is widest. That means a long land haul.
Take another look at the map—this time at a revolving globe! Any schoolboy knows that a circle round a top is shorter at the ends than around its middle. The same of the earth. East and west distances are shorter the nearer you are to the Pole, the farther you are from the Equator.
To England from Eastern Asia by Suez is fourteen to eighteen thousand miles. To England from Asia by San Francisco is eleven thousand miles, by Seattle ten thousand miles, by Prince Rupert and Hudson Bay seven to eight thousand miles—representing a saving by the northern route of almost half round the world.
Another point—take a compass! Stick the needle on Hudson Bay and swing the leg down round New York and up through the wheat plains of the Northwest. Draw lines to the center of your circle—to your amazement, you find the lines from the wheat plains to New York are twice and thrice as long as the lines from the wheat plains to Hudson Bay. In other words, Mr. Hill's wheat empire is one thousand miles nearer tidewater to Hudson Bay than to New York. The three prairie provinces of Northwestern Canada are from four hundred (for Manitoba) to eight hundred miles (for Alberta) distant from ocean front on Hudson Bay. They are from one thousand two hundred to two thousand four hundred miles distant from tidewater at Montreal and New York and Philadelphia.
That is—if land rates were the same as water rates—the Hudson Bay route to Europe would cut rates to England from the Orient by half, and from the wheat plains by the difference between one thousand two hundred miles and four hundred, and two thousand four hundred miles and eight hundred. But land rates are not water rates. From Alberta to the Great Lakes is roughly one thousand two hundred miles. From the Great Lakes to tidewater is roughly another one thousand two hundred miles—either by way of Chicago-Buffalo, or Lake Superior-Montreal. For the one thousand two hundred miles from Alberta to the Great Lakes, grain shippers at time of writing pay a rate of twenty-two to twenty-five cents a bushel. For the one thousand two hundred miles from the head of the Lakes to Buffalo, the rate is three cents, from the head of the Lakes to Montreal five to six cents. In other words, the rate by land is just five to eight times higher than the rate by water.