Railways of Canada, 1896
CHAPTER X
THE CANADIAN NORTHERN
The Opportunity—The Canadian Northern
The first quarter-century of Confederation failed to redeem the glowing promises and high hopes of the founders of the new nation. Much had been done: the half-continent from ocean to ocean had been brought into the fold of one union; national consciousness was slowly growing; great efforts had been spent in linking the scattered parts by railways and waterways. But still political unity and economic prosperity both lagged. The country was torn by racial and religious bickerings. In the East, the exodus to the United States bled the country white; in the West, drought, frost, and the low prices of grain kept settlers away. Canadian Pacific stock, selling in the middle nineties at 35, registered the market's estimate of the future of the Canadian West.
Then, slowly at first, and soon with cumulative momentum, came a transformation. World-wide causes worked with local factors to change the whole face of affairs. New discoveries of gold and rising prices gave everywhere a fillip to trade. In the United States the disappearance of free land set its farmers looking elsewhere. In Canada change of methods, or the favourable turn of a climatic cycle, enabled the lands of the North-West to prove their abounding fertility. The discovery of gold in the Klondike afforded good advertising for Canada if little more of permanence. In the government and in the financial, the railway and the industrial worlds there were men who rose to the opportunity: no longer was Canada's light hid under a bushel. The most was made of the alluring gifts she had to offer to men the world over who strove to better themselves, and the flood of immigration began.