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Updated: May 25, 2025
Railway building had almost ceased after the completion of the Canadian Pacific system. Now it revived on a greater scale than ever before. In the twenty years after 1896 the miles in operation grew from 16,000 to nearly 40,000. Two new transcontinentals were added, and the older roads took on a new lease of life.
Surely three great transcontinental systems for a country with a population not larger than New York State were enough. So argued the East, and a great many conservative people in the West. Better make haste slowly, especially as it was becoming more and more evident that Canada would have to come to the aid of two of the transcontinentals or see them go bankrupt. Then something happened.
Canada has only three big transcontinentals and no big trunk lines to take care of a crop that may be as large as the whole United States crop. Panama promises, not a menace, but the one possible avenue of relief to the railroads. Of course eastern cities may fight a diversion of traffic to the seaboard of the West, but they can not stop it.
No more land-grants were given, and when cash subsidies were bestowed, the companies so aided were required to carry free government mails, materials and men, up to three per cent on the subsidy. The transcontinentals were specially favoured.
He had sent out such and such expeditions to rescue snow-bound immigrants in the mountains; he had received hospitably the travel-worn transcontinentals; he had given freely to the indigent; and so on without end. I am very glad that even at second hand I had the chance to know this great-hearted old soldier of Charles X while in the glory of his possessions and the esteem of men.
The railway made possible the rapid settlement of the West, and the growth of settlement in turn called for still new roads. In the fifteen years following 1896 nearly ten thousand miles were built, two miles a day, year in and year out, and the three years following saw another five thousand miles completed. Two great transcontinentals were constructed.
Her second two transcontinentals she launched to carry commerce east and west, because the United States had built a tariff wall which prevented Canada moving her commerce north and south. Her canal system to cut the distance from the Great Lakes to the seaboard and to overcome the rapids at "the Soo," at Niagara and on the St.
Both province and Dominion were afraid of the labor vote. The losses caused during that three months' strike in the construction camps indirectly afterward fell on the Canadian people; for the embarrassed transcontinentals had to come to the Dominion government for aid; and the Dominion government is, after all, the people.
Of course there are features of this diversion of traffic to new channels which the lay mind will miss and only the traffic specialist appreciate. For instance, there is the question of grade over the mountains. The Canadian Pacific Railroad meets this difficulty with its long tunnel through Mount Stephen. The Grand Trunk declares that it has the lowest mountain grade of all the transcontinentals.
If Panama brings the traffic which every harbor in the United States expects, then Canada's share of that traffic will go through Seattle and Portland. Either Canada must wake up or miss the chance that is coming. Two American transcontinentals have not come wooing traffic in Vancouver for nothing. The Canadian Pacific is not double tracking its roadbed to the Coast for nothing.
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