ONE hundred years ago, “through Canada to the Pacific” was first achieved by Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Making his way in a birch canoe from Montreal up the Ottawa and connecting rivers to Lake Huron, he came to the Sault Sainte Marie. Then followed hundreds of miles of paddling along the homeless shores of Lake Superior until civilization was seen again at Fort William on the northern shore. Yet that was only the real starting-point. Here Mackenzie began one of the most adventurous and productive explorations of that era, when the world was busy with exploration. Through rivers, ponds, and portages to Lake Winnipeg, across it and up the Saskatchewan, he pursued a well-defined route of the Hudson Bay Company’s voyageurs. But finally he reached even the fur-trader’s frontier, and pushed forward into a region never then penetrated by a white man. He came to the Peace River and began its ascent. It led him into, and guided him through, the mountains. At its sources he found water flowing westward, and through weeks of hardy adventure traced this river or that until he scented the salt breezes, and looked abroad upon the Pacific—the first man to cross Canada!
That is only a century ago; yet when you place Mackenzie’s canoe beside our transcontinental railway train, the contrast is as wide as between the first and last page of history; but put the courage of the old fur-trader beside the pluck which built this railway, and the extremes meet again.
The transcontinental trip by the Canadian Pacific Railway, then, is the subject of this article. We shall not precisely follow Mackenzie’s devious route, but shall touch it here and there, and see all the way the same kind of things that he saw.
Let us, first of all, have a clear understanding of what this journey is to be.
The Canadian Pacific is the largest railway system on the continent, yet there is none so little known to the general public in the United States, and none so widely misapprehended. It lies wholly in Canada. From Quebec it follows the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and then the Ottawa to the capital of the Dominion. From Ottawa it directs an almost straight course to the northernmost angle of Lake Superior, and skirting its shore for a hundred miles, strikes west to Winnipeg. Thence it crosses 900 miles of prairie, enters the Rocky Mountains 150 miles north of the United States boundary, and forcing its way through 250 miles of magnificent highlands, descends to the Pacific coast near the mouth of the Fraser River.
This main line is 3,070 miles in length, and reaches from ocean to ocean. Its through trains do not change their sleeping-cars all the way. An English family bound for China need make only two changes of conveyance between Liverpool and Hong-Kong—one at Montreal from the steamer to the cars, and another in re-embarking at Vancouver, the Pacific terminus. This is a notable advantage over the pieced-up route through Europe or the United States.
Yet this main line is only the stem of the great system. One side-line goes to Boston. Two others communicate with railways in New York State, at Brockville and Prescott, on the St. Lawrence. Short branches reach a dozen towns in Quebec. Westward, Montreal and Ottawa are connected with Toronto, whence branches ramify through all Ontario. Lake Huron is reached at Owen Sound, whence a line of ocean-like steamships on the Great Lakes is sustained. From Sudbury, a station 443 miles west of Montreal, a branch runs along the northern shore of Lake Huron to Sault Sainte Marie, where it is joined by a bridge over those historic rapids with two new American lines—one to Minneapolis, and another to Duluth. In Manitoba, branches penetrate all the corners of that rich wheat-growing province. Thus, the total length of its railways approaches 5,000 miles, and a year hence will be increased by a direct line to St. John, N. B., and Cape Breton, to connect with especially swift steamers, forming a new Atlantic ferry and carrying England’s Oriental mails. Yet, as has been said, few Americans know or realize these important facts in Canadian progress.
“SMOKING IN A SNUG CORNER.”
The new station in Montreal, whence we take our departure for the transcontinental journey one summer evening, is a magnificent piece of architecture. It stands just at the corner of Dominion Square, where the first strains of the band concert are calling together the loitering, pleasure-making crowds which twice a week throng its gravel walks or lounge upon the turf of its green parterres.