Mr. McLennan’s name soon became identified with many of the leading enterprises of the city, as well as in its educational and benevolent institutions. He still continues his active connection with the transportation and grain export business, and by reason of his long connection has become an acknowledged authority in everything pertaining to the past history of these important branches of Canadian trade. He is an ex-president of the Board of Trade, and represented that organization upon the Harbour Board for a quarter of a century, resigning the position during the present season. He is a director of the Bank of Montreal, a governor of McGill University, and of the Montreal General Hospital, and is treasurer of the Sailors’ Institute. He is also an active member of the American Presbyterian Church.
A large proportion of the wheat grown in the Western States and in Canada is made into flour and transported in that form to eastern and foreign markets. Minneapolis, in the State of Minnesota, claims to be the greatest flour manufacturing centre in the world. Its milling capacity is said to be 54,800 barrels daily. Its actual output in 1895 was 10,581,633 barrels. Although Canada may not compare with Minneapolis in its annual output of flour, she claims to have the largest individual miller in the world, in the person of W. W. Ogilvie, of Montreal. Mr. William Watson Ogilvie was born at St. Michel, near Montreal, April 14th, 1836, being descended from a younger brother of the Earl of Angus, who, some centuries ago, was rewarded with the lands of Ogilvie, in Banffshire, and assumed the name of the estate. His immediate ancestors belonged to Stirlingshire, Scotland, his grandfather having come to this country in the year 1800.
The milling business now represented by Mr. Ogilvie was begun by his grandfather, who, in 1801, erected a mill at Jacques Cartier, near Quebec, and also one at the Lachine Rapids, in 1808. In 1860 he became a member of the firm of A. W. Ogilvie & Co., then formed, whose transactions in grain soon became very extensive, resulting in the building of the “Glenora Mills,” at Montreal, and others of large capacity at Goderich, Seaforth and Winnipeg. On the death of Mr. John Ogilvie, in 1888, Senator A. W. Ogilvie, having retired in 1874, Mr. W. W. became the sole member of the firm, and has since proved himself a man of marvellous executive ability. He went to Hungary to see the roller process at work, where it came into use in 1868, and was one of the first to introduce it into this country. He acquired by purchase the famous Gould Mills in Montreal, at a cost of $250,000, thus adding 1,100 barrels to his daily milling capacity, which, at the present time, is about 9,000 barrels a day. The annual output of Mr. Ogilvie’s mills is about 2,500,000 barrels. About 30 per cent. of that amount is exported to different European countries; and, recently, a demand has arisen in Japan, Australia, and even in the Fiji Islands, for “Ogilvie’s Hungarian flour.” The balance is sold in all parts of the Dominion. Mr. Ogilvie purchases between four and five millions of bushels of wheat annually, and is rich in elevators, having as many as sixty-nine of these for his own special use in various parts of the country. In carrying on his extensive business he occasionally charters whole fleets of lake steamers and barges, and it is said of him that he is as fair in his business methods as he is generous in his charities. Mr. Ogilvie is a director of the Bank of Montreal, ex-President of the Montreal Board of Trade, and largely interested in several of the leading commercial interests of Canada.
Deeper Waterways.
The enlargement of the St. Lawrence and Erie canals cannot fail to prove advantageous to the inland shipping trade; but, so far from solving the question of “cheapest transportation,” it seems rather to have accentuated the demand for greater facilities of a like kind. The cry for “deeper waterways” has been in the air for many years, but never has it been louder than just now. The first enlargement of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal in 1881, and the subsequent deepening of the channels connecting the Upper Lakes had the effect, almost immediately, of doubling the tonnage of vessels plying the lakes and of producing a corresponding reduction in the rates of freight. The increase of the commerce of the lakes, incredible to those who are not engaged in it, and what appears to be its limitless future, have been keenly discussed in conventions as well as on the floors of Parliament and Congress for a number of years past, but it was only in 1894 that the movement assumed an organized form.
At a meeting held in Toronto in September, 1894, there was formed “The International Deep Waterways Association,” the declared object of which was “to promote the union of the lakes and the high seas by waterways of the greatest practicable capacity and usefulness; and recognizing the supreme utility of such waterways’ development.” At that meeting it was resolved: “That the depth of all channels through the lakes and their seaboard connections be not less than twenty-one feet, and that all permanent structures be designed on a basis not less than twenty-six feet, in order that the greater depth may be quickly and cheaply obtained whenever demanded by the future necessities of commerce.”
On the 8th of February, 1895, it was resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, “That the President is authorized to appoint three persons who shall have power to meet and confer with any similar committee which may be appointed by the Government of Great Britain or the Dominion of Canada, and who shall make inquiry and report whether it is feasible to build such canals as shall enable vessels engaged in ocean commerce to pass to and fro between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, where such canals can be most conveniently located, and the probable cost of the same, with estimates in detail; and if any part of the same should be built on the territory of Canada, what regulations or treaty arrangements will be necessary between the United States and Great Britain to preserve the free use of such canals to the people of this country at all times.”
By an order of Council dated at Ottawa, 14th December, 1895, Messrs. O. A. Howland, M.P.P., of Toronto, Thomas C. Keefer, C.E., and Thomas Munro, C.E., of Ottawa, were appointed Commissioners on behalf of the Canadian Government to meet and confer with the Commissioners appointed by the President of the United States on this important subject.
Several meetings of this International Waterways Commission have been held, a good deal of money has been spent in preliminary surveys, and reports favourable to the proposal, embodying much exceedingly interesting information as to the amount and rapid growth of the commerce of the lakes, have been submitted to the respective Governments. The American Commissioners favour the construction of a series of ship canals connecting Lake Erie with the seaboard, suggesting that the minimum depth of navigable water should be 28 feet, with canal locks 560 feet long and 64 feet wide. They present a choice of routes: (1) “The natural route” via the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and via Lake Champlain to the Hudson River. (2) Via Lake Ontario to Oswego and thence through the Mohawk Valley to Troy on the Hudson. The latter would be entirely through United States territory; the former would necessarily be of an international character, and preferable, provided that satisfactory treaty arrangements could be effected for the settlement of any differences that might arise between the two Governments interested. In either case the construction of a ship canal at Niagara Falls on the American side of the river is judged to be necessary. The international route would involve a ship canal from some point below Ogdensburg to near the boundary line on Lake St. Francis, and thence through Canadian territory to Lake Champlain.
The Canadian Commissioners in general terms endorse the international proposal as the one “which would give an opportunity of doing what our canals were intended to do, but have failed to do, that is, to obtain the maximum amount of the western trade for the St. Lawrence route.” It is agreed that the class of vessels adapted to the Welland and St. Lawrence canals, limited to a draft of fourteen feet, can never compete successfully with the large United States vessels plying on the Upper Lakes; and the fact that these large United States vessels are unable to leave the Upper Lakes, “seems to embrace the whole ‘Deep Waterways’ question in a nutshell.”[60]