Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

There is another and more popular phase of pioneerdom—that of the early settlers in a district which the railway will reach, not some day, but soon; and in this connection—let me add in a warning parenthesis—one thinks of bachelors with energy and forethought rather than of middle-aged men with nerves and a family. The farming forerunner is apt to figure in a few years as the “old-timer” with a big balance at the bank and some stories worth listening to. And note that, when he has made good progress with his tillage, the construction gangs of the on-coming track will pay high rates for his accumulated store of grain, besides offering him opportunity to earn substantial wages with his horses, his pick and his shovel.

I need attempt no enumeration of the railways being laid in Canada To-day, and to be laid in Canada To-morrow. But I will write about two of them, and about regions they will open up, since the information may well serve the reader’s personal interests.

An earlier chapter showed how the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway put a belt of prosperous civilisation across Canada. There is still only that one completed trans-continental line within the Dominion. But two others are in progress—two others that promise national advantages comparable with those that followed the making of the C.P.R. The one project—the Grand Trunk Pacific—was deliberately conceived under Government auspices; the other—the Canadian Northern—sprang spontaneously from the brains of two sagacious men.

From 1888 to 1896 no railways were constructed in Western Canada. During that period the country was “catching up,” in the matter of development, to the magnificent transit facilities provided by the C.P.R. In 1889 there was a promise of new transportation enterprise, powers being granted to a “Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company.” But for seven years its charter remained unused. Meanwhile, east of Lake Manitoba, a premature beginning was made with a railway to connect Winnipeg with Hudson Bay—the momentous development which as explained in an earlier chapter, is now about to occur. The next fact to be noted is that the inhabitants of Western Canada included two men—Mr. W. Mackenzie and Mr. D. D. Mann—who had helped as contractors to construct the C.P.R., and who, sharing an enthusiastic faith in the prairie country, became business partners. They took over the dormant charter, and made a line into the Dauphin Valley; and such was the humble birth of the great system subsequently to be christened the Canadian Northern. The fortunes of that company are to-day guided by Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, acting in association with Mr. D. Blyth Hanna, who was in charge of the initial line from Gladstone to Dauphin, which was inaugurated in December, 1896.

The last-named gentleman is indirectly responsible for the following record of an incident in the early life of a great undertaking: “A train on which he happened to be travelling to Dauphin ran over a heifer and broke her leg. On the train also were a couple of butchers on their way to a construction camp at the then terminus of the line. Mr. Hanna stopped the train, had the butchers kill and dress the heifer, whose carcase, thirteen minutes after the accident, was loaded in the baggage car, and was presently sold to the contractors. The hide was sent to Winnipeg, the farmer’s claim was paid in full, and a profit of four dollars and sixty-five cents included in the first balance-sheet of the railway.”

During the past fourteen years the Canadian Northern has grown at the rate of a mile a day. To the east, the Manitoba capital was linked with Port Arthur, and of the 1909 crops the Canadian Northern carried over 37,000,000 bushels to the head of navigation. The expansion of the system in the plains is proceeding upon a plan destined to result in five principal lines running east and west of Winnipeg, with certain north-westerly deflections that will feed the new Hudson Bay route. The Canadian Northern, indeed is now opening up an acreage of land no less fertile, and more extensive, than that which has given Manitoba and Southern Saskatchewan their pre-eminence in wheat-growing.

The British Columbia Government guaranteed bonds up to £7,000 per mile to secure the expansion of the Canadian Northern from Alberta to the Pacific coast. On the passing last year of the sanctioning Act, construction was promptly started from the mouth of the Fraser River at New Westminster, so that, as provided by the statute, British Columbia shall receive its second direct communication with the Prairie Provinces in the year 1914—the year of the proposed World’s Fair at Winnipeg.

The Canadian Northern Pacific will ascend the Fraser River cañon to the Thompson River, which it will follow to Kamloops. Thence it is to strike north-westerly through the valley of the North Thompson, reaching Edmonton by way of the Yellowhead Pass, which is the easiest route through the Rocky Mountains. From Edmonton the track is already advancing to meet the British Columbia section.

Deflecting from Fort Frances, two hundred miles east of Winnipeg, the Canadian Northern has entry to Duluth, the principal United States port on the Great Lakes; and therefore the Pacific extension will afford connection between Puget Sound and Duluth on a mileage almost identical with that of the Northern Pacific—the pioneer railway across the north-western States—with the advantage that, whereas the Northern Pacific has to climb three summits (of which the highest is nearly 6,000 feet), the Canadian Northern Pacific has to climb only one summit (a mere matter of 3,700 feet).

The project for connecting the head of Lake Superior with Canada’s eastern coast was undertaken piecemeal. By far the greater part of that distance has been covered, and, as I write, remaining gaps are being surveyed. To the question, “When will the Canadian Northern extend as an unbroken system between the Atlantic and the Pacific?” I have received this answer: “A very few years will see completion.”