First, something about the anti-monopoly fight, in which the battle of Fort Whyte has a place all its own in economic and political warfare; and then a few recalls from the long and wearisome trail of lateral development, up to the point where an insignificant line was built, which was not destined to fall into the capacious hands of the Canadian Pacific, but was the beginning of the longest, though not yet the most prosperous, system in the world—the Canadian National Railways.
The battle of Fort Whyte arose from the monopoly clause in the C.P.R. charter, and the wide and deep feeling that the C.P.R. was more an enemy than a friend of Manitoba; plus, of course, the prospective advantages which politicians saw in fomenting trouble. The monopoly clause prevented the building, by any other company, of branch lines south of the main line of the C.P.R. and within fifteen miles of the American boundary. The prohibition was held to be in the interests of Canadian solidarity. If the American lines which were pushing through Minnesota and North Dakota had free access to Canadian territory the Canadian road would be starved, and the basis of Dominion-wide prosperity, on which the Confederation was established, would be destroyed.
C.P.R. rates for hauling grain to Lake Superior were higher than they became later; but, in fairness, it should never have been forgotten that they were lower than rates on the Northern Pacific and Great Northern, in similar territory across the line. With crops uncertain and prices low—I have already told how the finest grade wheat of the 1887 crop sold for forty-eight and fifty cents a bushel in the heart of Manitoba—the proportion of the farmers’ total receipts that went for haulage to the head of the Lakes seemed high.
In the spring of 1887 the Norquay Government proposed to authorize a line from Winnipeg to the boundary to connect with the Northern Pacific. The C.P.R. denounced this as a breach of faith, and threatened to move its shops to Fort William if, as it said, it were treated as a public enemy. An Act was passed in June, by the Manitoba Legislature and was forthwith disallowed at Ottawa. Another Act was promptly passed, and the company chartered by the province began construction.
The Dominion Minister of Justice obtained a temporary injunction restraining both Government and company, the C.P.R. having already laid a spur across the path of the new line. Public temper became very hot, and Premier Norquay declared that the line would be built, “at the point of the bayonet if necessary”.
In November the injunction was made permanent, but by that time there was no more money for construction, and the Norquay Government had gone the way of all its kind. An extremely brief life was the portion of a Government formed by Dr. Harrison, and the Greenway Government succeeded it early in 1888, with the vociferous lion of Portage la Prairie, the unique Joe Martin, as attorney-general.
All winter the racket about the anti-monopoly line continued. Greenway and Martin besieged Ottawa, and, undoubtedly, had a united province behind them. They raised vigorously the issue of provincial rights. Sir John Macdonald, not wanting to make a bad matter worse, induced the C.P.R. to waive its monopoly clause in consideration of certain financial guarantees, and promised to disallow no more Manitoba railway legislation.
All seemed set fair for railway expansion, especially from the point of view of Portage la Prairie, which had never ceased to cherish the hopes on which the Manitoba North Western had been built. At the beginning, you remember, an estate had been bought south of the C.P.R. and nearly two miles from where the North Western terminals were finally located, in expectation of an extension of the line some day to the boundary.
With our own member as attorney-general, and, as it was said, the strongest man in the Government, the swift clean-up of the crossing trouble that had been left by the Norquay Government, and the imminence of a general election which, it was expected, would cinch power for Greenway, made the time opportune for starting the long-desired railway from Portage to Winnipeg, to connect with the new line that was reaching the boundary from there.
The Portage line was to cross the C.P.R. track to Emerson at Headingly, a few miles out of Winnipeg. The consent of the Railway Committee of the Privy Council was necessary to any crossing of a Dominion railway. Permission to cross the C.P.R. was slow in coming. It was alleged that C.P.R. influence caused the delay. Grading began on both sides of the C.P.R.; and, when permission did not arrive from Ottawa, the indignant Winnipeggers teamed rails, ties, and a diamond out to Headingly; and laid them during the night, eventualities being provided against, as it was thought, under the attorney-general’s inspiration.