I need attempt no enumeration of the railways being laid in Canada To-day, and to be laid in Canada To-morrow. But I will write about two of them, and about regions they will open up, since the information may well serve the reader’s personal interests.
An earlier chapter showed how the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway put a belt of prosperous civilisation across Canada. There is still only that one completed trans-continental line within the Dominion. But two others are in progress—two others that promise national advantages comparable with those that followed the making of the C.P.R. The one project—the Grand Trunk Pacific—was deliberately conceived under Government auspices; the other—the Canadian Northern—sprang spontaneously from the brains of two sagacious men.
From 1888 to 1896 no railways were constructed in Western Canada. During that period the country was “catching up,” in the matter of development, to the magnificent transit facilities provided by the C.P.R. In 1889 there was a promise of new transportation enterprise, powers being granted to a “Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company.” But for seven years its charter remained unused. Meanwhile, east of Lake Manitoba, a premature beginning was made with a railway to connect Winnipeg with Hudson Bay—the momentous development which as explained in an earlier chapter, is now about to occur. The next fact to be noted is that the inhabitants of Western Canada included two men—Mr. W. Mackenzie and Mr. D. D. Mann—who had helped as contractors to construct the C.P.R., and who, sharing an enthusiastic faith in the prairie country, became business partners. They took over the dormant charter, and made a line into the Dauphin Valley; and such was the humble birth of the great system subsequently to be christened the Canadian Northern. The fortunes of that company are to-day guided by Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, acting in association with Mr. D. Blyth Hanna, who was in charge of the initial line from Gladstone to Dauphin, which was inaugurated in December, 1896.
The last-named gentleman is indirectly responsible for the following record of an incident in the early life of a great undertaking: “A train on which he happened to be travelling to Dauphin ran over a heifer and broke her leg. On the train also were a couple of butchers on their way to a construction camp at the then terminus of the line. Mr. Hanna stopped the train, had the butchers kill and dress the heifer, whose carcase, thirteen minutes after the accident, was loaded in the baggage car, and was presently sold to the contractors. The hide was sent to Winnipeg, the farmer’s claim was paid in full, and a profit of four dollars and sixty-five cents included in the first balance-sheet of the railway.”
