As the western provinces came into the Confederation they exhibited in an even more marked degree the dependence on the good will of the United States for communication with the older provinces. The construction of the Canadian Pacific railway westward around the head of lake Superior and the continuance of its course across the plains of the north-west territories, and over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, gradually relaxed that dependence.
But Manitoba had been a province of the dominion for fourteen years before the first train ran over an all-Canadian route between that province and Ontario, and it was two years later before British Columbia was linked up with its sister provinces by this means.
During these periods the mails for Manitoba were despatched from Windsor by way of Chicago, St. Paul's and Pembina, Dakota: those for British Columbia, by way of San Francisco. Fortunately, the geographical position of Canada with reference to the western and north-western states, enabled the post office of this country to reciprocate, more or less adequately, the services rendered in the maintenance of communication between the several provinces.
Concurrently with the expansion of the postal system has gone a steady reduction in the postal rates. The charge of five cents per half ounce on letters was lowered to three cents per half ounce in the first session of parliament after Confederation. The effect of the reduction on the volume of correspondence exchanged was manifested in the fact that, although the reduction was the very considerable one of forty per cent., the revenue in 1871 was greater by $55,000 than the amount collected three years before.
The rate of three cents per half ounce, which was fixed in 1868, remained unchanged for twenty-one years, when the unit of weight was changed from half an ounce to one ounce, the rate becoming in 1889 three cents per ounce. The final reduction in the rate was made on January 1, 1899, two cents being substituted for three cents as the rate of postage for an ounce letter.
In 1878 Canada became a member of the Universal Postal Union, an organization whose purpose it was to make in effect a single postal territory of the whole world. The obstacles to the interchange of correspondence between the various countries owing to differences in charges and regulations, had long been felt as a serious impediment to the cultivation of social and commercial relations which there was a general desire to foster, and some tentative efforts had been made, notably by the United States, to ameliorate the conditions governing international correspondence by the establishment of uniform regulations for this class of correspondence.
Twenty-two states, comprising the leading countries in Europe, the United States, and Egypt sent delegates to a conference that assembled at Berne in 1874, and the result of their deliberations was a convention which established a code of regulations and fixed uniform postage rates respecting correspondence passing anywhere within the union.
The benefits conferred by the union on those, who, for any reason, had to carry on correspondence with foreign countries were inestimable. Some illustrations drawn from the case of Canada will be enlightening. In 1873 letters sent to India were subject to two different rates, according to the route by which they were directed. If sent by Canadian steamers to Great Britain, and thence on to their destination, the charge was twenty-two cents; if sent by the United States, the charge was thirteen cents. To Chili, Peru, and Ecuador, there were two routes and two rates; by way of England, the charge was forty cents, by way of the United States, twenty-five cents.
The extreme instance of variation in the charges according to the route chosen was in the case of letters from the United States to Australia. There were six different routes, and the postal guide set out the different charges: five cents, thirty-three cents, forty-five cents, fifty-five cents, sixty cents, and one dollar, according to the route by which the letters were sent.
Difficulties of an accounting nature arising from different standards of weights hampered the operations of the officials in preparing the mails. Thus a letter from Great Britain to Germany, passing through France was taxed at a certain rate per half ounce in England, another rate per ten grams in France, and, finally, a third rate per loth[328] in Germany.