Annual

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CANADIAN CLUB

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FORT WILLIAM

ANNUAL
1908

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CANADIAN CLUB

OF

FORT WILLIAM

ANNUAL

1908

TIMES-JOURNAL PRESS

FORT WILLIAM

DR. M, B. DEAN

Historical Sketch

ALMOST as many places vie with one another for th«
honor of being the first to evolve the idea of the
Ccmadian Club as contended of old for the distinction of
being the birth-place of Eomer, But, among all the claim-
ants the City of Hamilton seems to have the first place,
the idea of the Canadian Club as it now exists having
taken bodily shape under the aegis of Charles E. McCul-
lough. The idea, however, having once taken root, grew
with astonishing rapidity until today hardly a city or a
large town of importance in the Dominion is without its
branch of this institution.

For some time prior to November, 1907, tentative steps
had been taken by one citizen or another of Fort William
to initiate a Canadian Club, but the credit of bringing the
matter to a head and taking the first active steps which
led to the organization belongs to Sheldon M. Fisher, at
that time Secretary of the Industrial Bureau of the city.
He sent out the first notices which called a public meeting
for November 29th, in the Council Chamber of the City
Hall. There were present at that meeting the following
gentlemen: Wm. Phillips, E. R. Wayland, J. T. Home, S.
C. Young, S. M. Fisher, Dr. Chisholm, A. W, Frodshdm,
E. E. Wood, G. H. Williamson, J. F. Robertson, Dr. H. E.
Paul, M. H. Braden, G. A. Coslett, Wm. McEdward, H. C.
Houston, Dr. C. C. McCullough, Dr. M. B. Dean, C. W.
Jarvis, W. J. Hamilton, R. H. Neeland, G. R. Duncan, A.
Calhoun, J. E. Swinburne, J. H. Perry, Geo. Grant, A. A.
Wilson, M. W. Bridgman, A. Giguere, E. Duhamais, F. W.
Young, John Morton, F. E. Gibbs, Dr. R. J. Manion, E.
A. Morton, J. G. Taylor, W^ H. Laverty, W. A. Arm-
strong, James Murphy and J. Dyke.

Mr. Dyke took the chair and after the object of the
meeting had been explained a committee was appointed
consisting of H. C. Houston, S. M. Fisher, J. R. Lumby,
S. C. Young, Dr. C. C. McCullough, and G. U. William-
son, to draft bylaws and constitution and submit the
draft to a full meeting a week later.

3

A nominating committee was also appointed to recom-
mend permanent officers for the Club, this committee being-
made up of C. W. Jarvis, J. T. Home and J. E Swin-
burne.

R. L. Richardson, editor of the Winnipeg Tribune
then addressed the meeting, taking as his theme the grand
destiny of Canada, and the responsibility that rests upon
the individual of promoting good citizenship. Among the
signs of the awakening of the people to the duties that de-
volve upon them as Canadians, the Canadian Club move-
ment was most impressive, showing that the present
generation was determined to carry on the good work in-
augurated by the Fathers of Confederation.

A vote of thanks was tendered to Mr. Richardson for
nis able and impressive address.

On December 3rd the committee met to consider the
proposed constitution and bylaws and after careful studv
wni^?JT "^^",^^^;? other cities agreed upon those which
would be most suitable to the conditions of this city, the

iJdtd'optfd^^^^^^ ''-'' --^^^^ - ^--b"- 6th

r^r.S^ ^^i *'™® the membership had risen to seventy-five,
most of whom were m attendance when the nominating

Xrtt%'ir^-*'' *'°"" '^' ^^P^'^*' "P- «^e a~on"o^
year : ^™^ '^*''® *^ officers for the ensuing

President-Dr. M. B. Dean.

First Vice-President^K E. Larmour.

Second Vice-President-Dr. C. C. McCullough

Secretary— H. C. Houston.

Treasurer-R. H. Neeland.

Literary Secretary-J . E. Lumby.

Executive Committee-Joshua Dyke, Geo. A. Graham,
Dr. R. J. Mamon, W. J. Hamilton, G. H. Williamson, A
Will'n ''' °' ^'^^^'^°''^' ^- E. Trautman, A. A.

Mr ^vwXTot^'^A **'"" .^^^""^"^ *^« ^^^ir vacated by

thi-SaTd^ir<^^:^rx:^Sub^ '-''' ^'"^ °^

p.sf£\r£PcTurof°ktrte^^^

membership of one hundred and L"enty-fi^r?he en^

thusiasm that marked its first steps having never waned
for a moment during the year.

Since its inauguration the Canadian Club has held six
luncheons, at each of which they have entertained a guest
from among the most distinguished in his particular
branch of activity in the Dominion of Canada. The list of
speakers and their subjects is as follows :

I. "PLATO'S WATCH DOG." January 13th, 1908.

Maurice Hutton, M. A., LL. D.

Principal of University College, Toronto.

II. "HISTORICAL LANDMARKS IN CANADA."

February loth, 1908.

George Bryce, D. D., LL. D.

Professor of History, Manitoba College,
Winnipeg, Man.

III. "THE GEORGIAN BAY CANAL." March 30th, 1908.

Pascal Poirier, Member of the Senate of
Canada, Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour, Shediac, N. B.

IV. 'PUBLIC OPINION, THE CANADIAN CLUB, and

DEMOCRACY." August 31st, 1908.
J. A. Macdonald, M. a.

Editor-in-chief, "The Globe."
Toronto, Ont.

V. "THE WATERWAYS OF CANADA-" September

and, 1908. Major G. W. Stephens.

Chairman of the Montreal Harbor Commission,
Montreal, Que.

VI. "THE HERITAGE OF THUNDER BAY." Novem-

ber 5th, 1908. F. W. Thompson.

Vice-President and General Manager, The
Ogilvie Flour Mills Co., Montreal, Que.

MAURICE HUTTON, M. A., LL. D.

Plato's Watch Dog

Maurice Hutton, M. A., LL.D.

Py incipa I of Un tversity College

Toronto^ Ont.

In a very charming book, by a charming writer, ''The
Future in America,'' by Mr. H. G. Wells, I find the author
auguring well for America on account of the attention giv-
en to Political Science in its Universities ; well for America
on account of the Greek letters, which he also found in-
scribed upon the blackboards of the same Universities, and
fhis is a bold augury. I have been reading such letters,
chiefly in Plato, for a third of a century and more, and I
have been reading Mr. H. G. Wells for a third of that time
and I thought I was reading in pari materia till I came
across that augury ; I had fancied Plato a forerunner of
Mr. Wells and Mr. Wells a later Plato , I had supposed
that Mr. Wells would welcome the study of Plato as lead-
inpr directly to that scientific, socialistic Utopia to which
he devotes all his ability and his magnetism and his charm
of style. He is strangely ungrateful to Plato. However, it
is of the H. G. Wells of Athens, not of En^and, that I am
speaking now.

Plato's mission — says Emerson — is to raise first all
the problems which are still interesting thoughtful men.
Among these are the problem of incompatible virtues, of
virtue casting out virtue, or of Satan also being divided
against Satan. Plato is at once confronted with this
problem when he starts out to find an ideal state — th« first
requisite for any state or family or individual, as I under-
stand him, is that "virtue," which was ''Virtue" with a
capital "V" to the ancient world — self-reliance, aggressive-
ness, manliness, the power of jjovernment and organiza-
tion, the Imperial or Roman spirit, as it has been called
since his time, bparta (says Aristotle) would never nave
lost her Empire, if she had retained her virtue, that mili-
tary spirit; that which is such a large part, according
to Plato and Aristotle, of perfection. A modern humani-
tarian Christian would retort that she would never have

7

gained that empire, had she been more ''virtuous.' JSo pro-
foundly has tne annotation of the word ''Virtue'' altered.'

But if Plato does not put our "virtue" first, he puts
it second ; for he continues his argument with the proposi-
tion that the second requisite for any state or family or
individual is the opposite of the first, and is the virtue of
gentleness and sweet temper, of patience and amiability,
of loyalty and consideration, or more broadly — for Plato
characteristically overlooks even deep distinctions, and
lumps together qualities moral and qualities intellectual,
which we or iiristotle would have distinguished — the vir-
tue of thought, intelligence, philosophy. Without this sec-
ond or opposite virtue Plato sees no salvation for the
state or the individual ; Christianity, therefore, broadly
speaking, is only less necessary than Paganism ; it comes
in not to destroy but to fulfil the old dispensation; and
Christian Virtue — self-restraint pitifulness, mercy, sweet
reasonableness, is only less necessary, if it be really less
necessary, than Pagan (or Roman) virtue. Each alike,
continues Plato, is necessary; but how are they compat-
ible ; and if incompatible, what becomes of the ideal state ?
Or rather, what becomes of the chances of any state or
any individual prosperitj^ except for a moment? One will
be submerged because it has waxed fat and kicked ; and
another because it meekly yields its individuality and its
will and its ways at the bidding of the first aggressor.

And so the ideal state begins to vanish and with it
also the smaller hopes of some sort of progress, or at least
some fair stability in state. And Plato is becoming de-
spondent, when his eye falls on a familiar and homely
figure, the common or garden watch dog. Why, surely
out of the bark of sucking puppies nature has perfected
praise ! For has not even this poor creature the two vir-
tues imagined to be incompatible? Is he not full of all
gentle virtues, of all patience, of all trust and loyalty ? Is
he not true to all old memories with his master? IN ay, is
he not friendly to all the faces that are familiar to
him, even though their owners never petted or patted
him ? While conversely he is full of all virtuous vice,
(or of all Pagan Virtue) of all aggressiveness to the
stranger and the wayfarer, even though these strang-
ers be from God and these wayfarers be angels un-
awares ? Obviously, then, the dog is a natural philoso-
pher; all his virtue is based on knowledge (as ideal virtue
is) all his vice is based on ignorance; which is, as Plato
avers, the root of all vice. Here, then, even in the kennel,

8

is discovered the paragon, who seemed undiscoverabie and
yet who must be discovered, if man is not to despair. And
why should man despair, when his poor servant has suc-
ceeded ! If a dog- is a philosopher, cannot philosophers be
dogs? Antisthenes and his friends, indeed, had already
earned this proud title.

All this is very characteristic fooling on Plato's part.
It is his habit to protest with scholarly seriousness and
with that playfulness which is seriousness' twin sister.
Who shall say where his seriousness ends and his playful-
ness begins ? Did he know this himself ? Does any philo-
sophic humorist know this about himself ?

But my point is today not to try and plumb the depths
of Plato's seriousness or of his humor but to set up a rival
to that same watchdog for the possession of the two (or
three) incompatible virtues — the moral virtue of self-reli-
ance, the moral virtue of self-sacrifice and loyalty, the in-
tellectual virtue of sound thinking:.

Let us call up the ghost of Plato and invite him to
judge the claims of our other state, not of dogs, which may
seem to rival his watch dog and point more hopefully to
the realization by man of the pi atonic Callipolis.

He shall reason with us, if he will speak to us, not
with the voice of a ghost (which is also the ghost of a
voice) and is as abhorrent, says Homer, as the squeaking
of bats (or in our days, as the phonograph, which is very
bat-like, and testifies that Homer was never deaf at least,
but measured accurately the ghostliness of voice and the
voice of ghostliness) if he will speak to us, no^ through
any portentous modern mis-invention, but quite simply
and colloquially : —

'^Plato," we shall begin, "'there is in the Isle of Atlan-
tis, a pepple who oueht to combine these opposite virtues.
In the first place, all great civilizations arise from the
blending of races (your own civilization has been ascribed
to the union of the aggressive Danaus with the reflective
Mycenaean, and of the reflective but still vigorous Myce-
naean with the yet more dreamy, brooding, sensitive spirit
of Asia (whence the civilizations of Greece proper and of
Ionia) and this race in the Isle of Atlantis comes from a
land conspicuous for its blend of race, for the blend of Ihe
Anglo-Saxon (himself a blend of Eoman, Saxon, Dane and
British) with the Huguenot and the Celt. So blended, the
resulting type, the British type, has been conspicuous for
the possession of those virtues which you place first, for

9

the gift of organization and administration, for self -re) i-
ance and mastery. It has reproduced the Roman type'
which overthrew Greece and ruled the ancient world.

''But it has done more than that : on Atlantis it has
mixed more, and this time with the race which stands f ore-
m^ost in the world for all that your Greece was to the Em-
pire of Rome, for literature, language, logic, science and
art, for everythiner that was greatest in the Roman Em-
pire, except the Roman spirit itself — it has mixed itself
with the French race. If the British element in this Atian-
tean blend can provide the first virtue, the French element
can provide the second and the third, and soothe us with
their fine fancy, can touch us with their lighter thought,
can supply the keen intelligence and the more feminine
grace, and the more unsellish and considerate spirit.

''Or if there be still dearth of this, Plato, look at an-
other element in this part of Atlantis. One section of this
people came up from the south when their neighbors, now
called Americans, quarrelled with the British, their mother
country, as your Greeks always quarrelled with their
mother cities. These refused to quarrel with their mother
country, rightly ; they thought of their duty no less tnan
of their rights ; they thought of ancient memories ; they
w^ere loyal to old ties ; they refused to break with all their
past for an old man's obstinacy and a few pounds of tea ;
and they sacrificed their homes and came north in recog-
nition of that second virtue of yours — patience, loyalty
and considerateness ; yes, and they must have had their
measure, too, of the first virtue or they could never have
hewed them homes and hope in the northern wildernesses,
where the timber wolf howled after its prey and sought its
meat from God.

"And so these Atlanteans have the three virtues,
Plato — the self-reliance, the forbearance, and the intellect
— the self-reliance of the British, the fidelity of the United
Empire Loyalists, and the genius of the Frenchmen. What
do you think?

"I think,'' retorts Plato, "that it may be all right
with the second and third virtues. I am doubtful of the
first. I have seen no men upon earth who combined the
three, certainly my own Athenians did not. They had
neither the faculty of administration, organization or
government, nor the loyalty that clings to old ties.
They were both anarchical and fickle. They had nothing
but intelligence, and too much of it. I found tnese

10

virtues combined when 1 was upon earth, only in
what you are pleased to call the lower animals, viz., in
well-bred dogs. Probably a poor dog is still superior to a
one-sided man. And besides, there is another reason for
my doubts : as I understand you are still sure of acting
with the virtue of the Colonies— fidelity, patience, loyalty.
But you cannot have everything, you cannot have the
passive and feminine virtues of the Colonies and the mas-
culine and aggressive virtues of an independent state, you
cannot be the Americans of whom you speak, who resent-
ed British dictation, and also retain the virtue of the
United Empire Loyalists who have submitted thereto. A
colony and an independent state have antithetic virtues.''

''Plato," we reply, much Elysium has made you pes-
simistic. We have heard all about this antithesis and we
do not believe it. Our mission is to show the world tnat,
whatever has been in the past, the antithesis is no longer
valid. We have the secondary virtues already, as you are
ready to admit, and we cannot, if we would, escape the
primary also. For many reasons, which can he reduced to
one, all the forces which make the American type are
moulding us also, unconsciously, and even against our
will.

''First and foremost these same Americans, who resist-
ed the Mother Country, and broke loose from her, are
about us and around us, meeting us on every side, in-
fluencing us in a thousand ways ; indeed they antagonize
and Americanize us equally.

"In the second place, we have the same climate as
theirs, only keener and more bracing, and philosophers
have told us in your time that a keen climate, if it does
not produce the earliest civilization, produces the most
enduring.

"We have the same influx of all the enterprising spirits
of Europe, only less of the neglected and unbalanced
southern peoples, and more of the sturdy northern races,
and a good number of Americans and of our own Ameri-
canized native-born citizens, for a time lost to us, and now
returning across the line.

"We have the same simple conditions of life, only more
so ; the conditions which make a man a jack-of- all- trades,
a handy, useful man.

"We have the same lack of wealth, ease and culture.
Those conditions which produce the highest triumphs of

11

art and science also enervate men and make civilization^
conspicuously weak and helpless, no less than artistic and
cultivated.

''We have the same sweep of countless acres and virgin
resources as the Americans once had ; and the same hopes,
therefore, as boundless as our acres ; with the same self-
confidence as indestructible as our resources.

''And, in short, we have all the same conditions which
made the Americans great, only not the unhappy quarrel
with the Mother Country, which gave a twist to their
civilization at its start, and has left the trail of rebellion,
demagogism, arrogance aad ignorance ever since across
their politics : which hampered their hero Washington from
the first with unscrupulous colleagues, and which led them
then and ever since to mistake sharp practice for states-
manship, in their dealing with the Motherland, in the
maps they provide or withhold in boundary treaties and
in the 'Jurists of repute' whom they appoint to represent
them, men bearing grudge to those whom they have
wronged.

"From the same conditions, we expect the same results
from our general state ; from our American climate, our
American neighbors and our American citizens the prim-
ary virtues ; from our British immigrants and United Em-
pire Loyalists the virtue of patience and loyalty and fidel-
ity ; from our French partners, if we do our duty by them
and really unite with them and add the fleur-de-lis of
France, which has now no other home upon the wide earth,
to the flag of Great Britain and Ireland, and to the Maple
Leaf, all that Greece gave to Rome — language, literature,
logic and art is ours, courtesy, good manners and the
power of attracting alien races (as the Briton does not),
independence, and the might and freedom from custom
and convention, under which the Roman and the English-
inan have often fallen, in short, all the genius and ima-
gination which reached their highest power only in Greeks
and Frenchmen, which renewed the world once at the Re-
naissance by the re-discovery of Greek literature (a litera-
ture whose geographical speculations prompted in some
measure the disco verv of Atlantis) and again two hund-
red years later by the spirit of the French Revolution.

"And now, Plato, I have exhausted myself and you,
and is there not here in Atlantis material sufficient for
your wished-for virtues ? Is not this Canada of ours a
<^og, yea, and more than a dog, that she also should be
able to do this great thing V

12

GEORGE BRYCE, D. D., LL. D.

Historical Landmarks in Canada

George Bryce, D. D., LL.D.

Professor of History, Manitoba College

Winnipeg, Man.

While all admit that character may outlive memorial
tablets and although old Horace declared that in his fame
he had erected a monument more enduring than brass, yet
human nature delights in mementos and loves to look at
the statues of its heroes and to see the lofty obelisk, the
triumphal arch or the pyramid, which commemorates some
great achievement or some cardinal victory.

The more costly the monument the m.ore self-sacrifice
does it represent and the more does its magnificence im-
press us.

The pioneer erects no monument for he has no past.
It is only when time has gone and some wealth has ac-
cumulated that monuments are possible.

Canada is but now coming to herself. She is not yet
held a century old as a united people, and she is but realiz-
ing herself to be a nation, but the feeling of nationality is
calling for the expression in objective form of the achieve-
ments of the fathers and the heroic deeds of the pioneers.

Accordingly, we are having formed in Canada the
^* Historical Landmarks Association,' ' a society that bids
fair to be a strong and intiuential agency in marking the
fact that we are bringing our individual provinces and
our different elements of population into one type of
people called Canadian.

This does not mean that we are to blot out the wealth
of sentiment that attaches to the storied and splendid an-
central heritage we possess, whether it be centuries of
achievement in the life of glorious Britain, or *'La Belle
France'' or of intellectual and sturdy Germany, but rather
that these are tinged and colored by the rays of a brilliant
sunrise of sentiment in a North American unity — the Do-
minion of Canada.

13

No doubt the Association will do an important work
for our country. In following the lines of patriotic senti-
ment in our history, it will seize on what is valuable in
forts, noted buildings and mementos of our great dead
and preser\^e them as may be possible from decay.

To some of us the prehistoric features of a country are
interesting. The Mound Builders and their remains and
the Indian tribes claim our attention but these are matters
of pure science; they constitute the material for the mu-
seum and the library. There is no sentiment in connection
with them.

When we come to memorials of great achievements, of
careers spent in privation for the betterment of humanity,
and of lives laid down for the safety of the nation then the
glow of domestic or patriotic or religious sentiment gath-
ers around them.

The lines of this sentiment in Canadian life may be
said to play around some six or eight periods of experi-
ence.

(1) The French Occupation of Canada. It was my
pleasant experience, along with my colleagues of the Royal
Society to take part in a commemoration of the Tercen-
tenary of the beginning of our Canadian life, of the land-
ing of DeMonts and Champlain in 1604. We unveiled the
monument on Dochet Island in the St. Croix River on the
boundary between New Brunswick and Maine where the
first winter was s{>ent by the French, and we had the
pleasure of hav^ing with us our American cousins, who
were equally interested with us in the event. In old Port
Royal in Nova Scotia monuments of the history were
found in the old fort. In St. John, N. B., a pageant
worthy of the event representing the landing of the first
French settlers was carried out with great display. A few
years ago a monument, to Champlain of the same period,
was unveiled with, much ceremony in Quebec. A monument
to Maisoneuve, the founder of Montreal, standing in front
of Notre Dame Cathedral reminds us of the same coloniza-
tion period and is known to all who visit Montreal. A
million and a half of our French Canadian countrymen
with their gallantry and courage and their picturesque
history are well represented to us by our authors Kirby,
Gilbert Parker, Abbe Casgrain, Sir James Lemoine, and
Suite.

(2) The British Conquest. The glory that gathers
around Wolfe, perishing in the arms of Victory at Quebec,

14

and the death of his great opponent Montcalm, makes up
one of the most impressive pictures of the great Seven
Years War. We reserve this in the meantime.

(3) The most glorious period in Canadian history is
that of the American Revolution, the defence of Quebec
and the patriot settlement of different parts of Canada by
the United Empire Loyalists.

All visitors passing Quebec will have recalled to them
the splendid defence of the Ancient Capital by General Guy
Carleton in 1775, on tne placard upon the great rock
pointing out the place Montgomery, the American Gen-
eral, fell.

The settlement of the thousands of the truest and best
of the old colonials in the Revolutionary States interests
us. The intensity of patriotism, their notable vself-de-
nial, and their splendid courage in facing the hardships
of making homes in the unbroken forests raise the United
Empire Loyalists of the then Maritime Provinces of por-
tions of Lower Cana«la and especially of Upper Canada to
the same picturesque f»lane as the Jacobites of .Britsh
History. If my memory serves me aright the monament
to the five thousand United Empire Loyalists who landed
at St. John, N. B., is to be seen in that loyal city, and a
pretty monument in the city of Brantford to Joseph
Brant, the leader of the Six Nation Indians, who was a
United Empire Loyalist of the truest type, was unveiled a
few years ago. That Kingston, Brockville, and old Nia-
gara, in Ontario, have not erected worthy monuments^ to
them is much to be regretted. We may hope that the wave
of monument erection may lead them to commemorate
these Fathers of Upper Canada.

(4) When you come to the West a more eventful and
monumental history meets us. The splendid achievement
of the great Hudson's Bay Company and its partner the
North- West Company of Montreal, in two full centuries
from 1670 to 1870, is to some extent preserved to us to-
day by the ruins of the Prince of Wales Fort, at Fort
Churchill, soon to be a part of Manitoba ; by old York
Factory still standing ; Lower Fort Garry standing in dig-
nity on high limestone banks of Red River, and the gate
of Fort Garry, Winnipeg, a sad reminder of the fort as we
Old Timers knew it ; Carleton House, the ruins of Fort Col-
ville, lost to us by diplomacy, now in Washington' State,
the statue of Sir James Douglas in front of the Parliament
Buildings in Victoria, B. C, and our little Seven Oaks

15

Monument to the north of the city of Winnipeg, all speak
to us of the power and prestige of the Great Fur Com-
pany.

Sir Koderick Cameron, of New York, used to write to
me about the propriety of erecting a statue in Winnipeg of
Sir George Simpson, the great governor of the Hudson's
Bay Company. Had Sir Koderick not died so suddenly,
we should probably have seen this suggestion carried out
by him.

May we not hope that the wave of sentiment may lead
to at least a statue of the good and generous Lord Selkirk
being erected in our little Fort Garry Park.

(5) The war of 1812 was the first thing that began to
fix a definite character upon Canadian life. It was a
wanton and unjust war brought upon us by the United
States. The sense of its injustice did much to nerve our
Fathers, few and scattered though they were, to a magnifi-
cent and in most cases successful struggle for their homes
and liberties.

The Niagara frontier was the scene of our most desper-
ate fight and the names Queenston Heights, Lundy's Lane
and Beaver Dams are bright in our roll of fame. BrocK's
Monument stands as our towering memorial of tne first,
the Niagara Falls South cemetery with its monument to
Laura Secord is a reminder of the second, and there ought
to be more worthy memorials of Stony Creek and Beaver
Dams.

As to Confederation Monuments, they are of events,
though the first began a short time before Confederation,
such as the Fenian Raid of 1866, the North- West Re-
bellion of 1885, and the Boer War of 1899-1900. These
have largely added to the monuments of Canada.
Almost every city and larg^e town of Canada have
monuments like that at Winnipeg's City Hall or in
St. John's, of our brave volunteers who fell in 1866, 1885,
or 1899-1900, on the Saskatchewan, or the Niagara River,
or on the South African veldt. As a volunteer of the Fen-
ian Raid and as one having had some part in encouraging
the valor of those students of Manitoba College, who went
to the Saskatchewan and South Africa, though with sad
feelings for the loss of the brave, yet I rejoice in their
strong valor and patriotism.. These events have done
much to make us a nation.

In conclusion, let me return to that period now almost
150 years ago known as the British Conquest of Canada.

16

Every circumstance connected with it redounds to the
credit of the two great countries, Great Britain and France,
which we claim as our Fatherlands. There is nothing out
glory on both sides. It is of prime importance as a young
nationality that we should unify these two elements. I
suppose the people of French descent represent one-quarter
of the people of Canada. The other three-quarters,
though of many different origins— English, Irish, Scotch,
German and so on — represent the English speaking people
of Canada, but we are one for all that. We are all British
now.

France was early over-run by the Norse, our English
relatives, and Normandy which over-ran England shows
who these Frenchmen were. In the time of Edward the
Third and the Black Prince, England and France were vir-
tually equals in the fight. In the Seven Years War the
contest was almost continually a drawn battle. When
Britain gained the advantage the tyranny of Bigot and
his cormorants led to the grateful acceptance by French
Canada of British rule.

Over two graves, those of Wolfe and Montcalm, the
marriage of France and England took place. The monu-
ment of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, the memorial
''Aux Braves'' on the St. Foye Koad, each stands for a
victory of one rival and the other, while the joint monu-
ment of Wolfe and Montcalm symbolizes the union of race
to race.

What nobler, more picturesqiue, or more unique act af
greatness can be performed than to join in the patriotic
work of the ^'Historic Landmarks Association,'' with our
brilliant, tactful and popular statesman, Governor-General
Earl Grey at its head, and the President of the Winnipeg
Canadian Club, Mr. William Whyte, high up in its an-
nals ?

The acquisition of the Plains of Abraham as a Na-
tional Park may well receive our support.

17

PASCAL POIRIER

The Georgian Bay Canal

Pascal Poirier

Member of the Senate of Canada ^ Chevaliet

of the Legion of Honour

Shediacy N. B.

This Canada of ours, composed, as it is, of nine differ-
ent provinces, some of them as large as the mightiest
kingdoms of Old Europe, and as far apart as America is
from remote Asia, is one today in national sentiment and
brotherly good- will. I intensely realize it, who, hailii^g
from distant Acadia, unknown and obscure, differing from
the great majority of you in origin, in language, and pos-
sibly in religion, have the honor to be the guest of the
Canadian Club of Fort William, and to address the citi-
zens of a city which enjoys the reputation of being one of
the most progressive of, shall I say Western or Eastern
Canada ?

'^The Georgian Bay Canal,'' so called, is the subject of
my story. I do not know what you and other men think
of this scheme, but '*for my single self,'' — Shakespeare will
not carry me further— I look upon it as I do upon that
diamond which the Transvaal parliament has some few
months ago, offered as a present to King Edward — a gem
of incomparable intrinsic value, the most precious, per-
haps, in the whole world, but shapeless yet, and needing
to be cut, if to be worn, if to be one of the Crown Jewels.

The Ottawa and French Rivers, with their coni^ecting
lakes and portages, need to be canalized and made con-
tinuous between the Georgian Bay and the St. Lawrence,
and navigable by the large lake ships — '^lakers," as they
are called — -if it is to pass from the state of a primitive
trail, which it is today, into a waterway unsurpassed in
potentialities by any other. This diamond, unless it is
cut, will remain a mass of shapeless crystal.

Nature — let us more truly say. Providence — has mark-
ed the route, and excavated the whole trench, leaving but
some 28 miles for Canadians to dig, and the remaining
distance for them to trim, as it were, in order to convert
it into a perfect waterway. This diamond will need but

19

very little cutting; in fact, its facets are nearly perfect-
only a few of them require the touch of the expert.

There was a time when the Great Lakes connected with
the ocean by way of the French River, Lake Nipissing, the
Mattawa and the Ottawa Rivers, as well as by the St.
Lawrence via Niagara.

Nothing prevents this con.nection being renewed, but a
few terraces that need to be cut through ; a few cascades
which require to be regularized — a simple matter of pick-
axe, shovel, dynamite, and less than ^100,000,000.

Let us for a moment glance at this, our immeasurable-
Canadian and American West. Nature never intended it to
be entirely isolated. From its four great territorial basins-
or plateaux, as large, put together, as the whole of
Europe, it has provided natural outlets, one by way of the
Missouri and Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico ; one to-
wards the north and north-west through the Mackenzie
and Yukon Rivers ; a third one tapping the great Saskat-
chewan Valley and draining into the Hudson Bay, and the
fourth, the most important, because it takes in a chaplet
of lakes unequalled in size and importance in the whole
world, discharging into the Atlantic Ocean through two
parallel waterways — one the St. Lawrence, to the souths,
in full operation ; the other, more to the north, the French
and Ottawa river waterway.

The St. Lawrence constitutes a stupendous outlet ; it
is one of the mightiest self-moving roads known to and
utilized by men ; but, not unlike some monopolists, it i&
tortuous and devious; the tenor of its way is uneven; at
Niagara it makes a leap and takes a plunge 158 feet
down ; from Dundee to Port Huron., or, I might better
say, to Sault Ste. Marie, it flirts dangerously, outrageous-
ly, in fact, with our fair neighbor to the south, playing
with and partly disappearing into the fringe of her starry
skirts.

Our Ottawa and French River highway is of much
more commendable morality— it stays at home; it runs
on Canadian soil from Georgian Bay to Montreal, and
thence to the Atlantic ; no instinct of fickleness or flirta-
tion with it, or if it does flirt, it is not with foreign heir-
esses. It loves Canada the best.

Strangely enough, when Champlain, the founder of
Quebec city, whose tercentenary we are about to celebrate
this summer, with much pageant and eclat was on his

20

way, seeking a passage to the great Orient, lie tarried at
Hochelaga, now Montreal, undecided as to which of the
two routes to take, the St. Lawrence or the Ottawa. The
Indians pointed to the Ottawa. The Ottawa course he
took and followed up to the Georgian Bay, along which
the canal is to be constructed. The Indians knew the way.

Let us begin by taking a look at the map. Fort Wil-
liam and the Straits of Dover, England, are pretty much
on the same parallel of latitude. By way of the proposed
canal, the whole distance between the two points can be
travelled in almost a straight geographical line. From
Sault Ste, Marie to Quebec the course of the canal does
not go outside of the 45th and 46th parallels. A straight
road, the shortest possible consequently, something like
the Mars Canals.

When Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, uttered his famous
''nil novi sub sole" he, no doubt, took in the Georgian
Bay canal. The idea is by no m-eans a new one. If we
only had the records, we could probably show that it is a
project as old as that of the Panama Canal, which was
suggested to the King and Queen of Spain during the life-
time of Columbus, and even as old as that of Suez, which
De Lesseps simply renewed from the one said to have been
constructed by Sesostris between the Mediterranean and
the Eed Sea, some fourteen centuries before the Christian
era.

We cannot go back so far for want of records ; but we
can show that as late as 1837 a survey to determine the
naAdgability of the Ottawa and French River waterway
was ordered by the legislature of Upper Canada ; and that
19 years later, in 1856, under the union of the two Can-
adas, Walter Shanly made a second and thorough survey
of the whole route, with a view to conuiecting the St.
Lawrence with Lake Huron by means of a ten-foot canal.

Manitoba and the North-west were not parts of Can-
ada at that time. No one could dream in 1856 that the
deserts of the West would become the granary of the
world, so that a ten-foot waterway was deemed sufl&cient
for all commercial i^quirements.

Walter Shanly had, however, met with an engineering
difficulty of a very serious nature, in his eyes next to un-
solvable. Other engineers after him also made surveys of
the way and also pointed to the same obstacle—the diffi-
culty of getting at the highest point of the route, at the

21

divide, situated a few miles east of North Bay, a volume
of water sufficient to feed the locks.

Some ten years ago the Senate of Canada, that vener-
able body at which so many politicians today think it
smart to throw a shaft, appointed a commission of
eighteen of its youthful and sprightly members thorough-
ly to look into the jiroj^^ct of canalizing this waterwa>',
and more particularly to examine its commercial and
economical potentialities.

They made a careful study, examined railway men and
experts, and reported favorably. From that time the pro-
ject took a practical turn. Then it was that Hon. Mr.
Tarte, too soon thanked for his services as Minister oi
Public Works, took the matter in hand, and ordered new
surveys to be made, in view of building a canal capable of
accommodating, not mere barges, but the largest boats
that now ply on the lakes, boats of twenty feet draught,
requiring twenty-two feet of water to navigate freely. The
preliminary work was entrusted to J. W. Fraser, in 1900 ;
to George Wisener, in 1902; and to some other engineers
of world-wide reputation.

Tarte struck the right note. The Georgian Bay canal
must be sufficiently deep to enable the largest lake ships
to carry their full cargo to the ocean ; and I will boldlj'
say, if 22 feet will not do it, let it be 24 feet, even if the
additional two feet should add 25 per cent, to the entire
cost. The canal needed must be equal to the future require-
ments of a vast empire, vaster than has been. A ten or
fourteen-foot canal wovild, under the circumstances, be a
sheer waste of money. Let us here make a digression.

Our canals over the St. Lawrence route, including the
Welland, which, as you know, counects Lake Erie with
Lake Ontario, are canals of fourteen feet draught. They
have not succeeded in diverting from the railways the
trade they were intended to takeaway. They do not carry
the western crop to the seaboard, or do carry just a por-
tion of it. They have in no considerable way affected
navigation and trade on the lakes. No fleet of vessels
drawing fourteen feet nas been built in response to them.
Rather the other way. The craft for fourteen feet draught
are fast disappearing from the lakes. They prove rather
unremunerative when engaged in carrying freight to
Toronto or Montreal. Besides, they are unsafe for travers-
ing the large expanse of your inland oceans. The delays,
costs and inconveniences of bulk breaking and tranship-

22

meoit^ when the goods are destined to European or
American ports, are the principal drawbacks.

There are others. They no longer meet the requirements
of trade from an economical point of view. Transporta-
tion through them from Fort William is but a little cheap-
er than by rail, and much slower.

The same may be said of the Erie Canal, connecting
Buffalo and New York. This is a nine-foot canal. It to-
day hardly answers its object, although it has contribut-
ed more than any other single artery of trade towards
making New York City the commercial metropolis of
America. In the early days of its construction, it carried
most of the freight from Lake Erie to New York ; today,
owing to the competition of improved railways, with
more powerful engines and larger cars, it carries only
about one-tenth of it. When our Georgian Bay caaal is
built, it will be outclassed; in fact, it will be counted out
in the race for European markets.

Let us now return to our Georgian Bay proposition.

In pursuance of the policy outlined by Mr. Tarte, the
Dominion Government of 1904 set itself earnestly to the
task of surveying once more, and most thoroughly, the
whole route from Montreal to the mouth of French Eiver,
making profiles and getting all the data necessary from
an engineering point of view, to form an exact idea of the
feasibility of the project and its cost.

The work was entrusted to Mr. St. Laurent, assistant
chief engineer of the Department of Public Works, at
Ottawa. This gentleman, assisted by other engineers, has
just completed the survey of the whole route, with plan&
and profiles.

He has found a workable solution to the problem of
conveying the necessary volume of water to the highest
lock, and this is by utilizing a vast watershed, south of
the projected canal, and making it flow into Lakes Talon,
Turtle and Trout.

The total length of the canal from the mouth of the
French River to Montreal will be 440 miles. Twenty-seven
locks will have to be constructed, covering a distance of 28
miles. There will be 57 miles of improved channel, requir-
ing some dredging. The rest of the way will be open navi-
gation, permitting ships to steam away at lun .speed.

Unlike the St. Lawrence, which has but one inclination
— which flows but in one direction, easterly, from the lakes

23

-to the ocean— the Georgian Bay waterway will have two
inclinations, one east and one west from its summit — the
one to the east being along the Mattawa and Ottawa
Rivers; the one to the west, following the Nipissing and
French River depressions.

The level of Georgian Bay is 578 feet above the ocean.
The rise from the mouth (^f the French River to the sum-
mit near North Bay will be : 70 feet, to Lake Nipissing,
and 29 feet from' Lake Nipissing to the summit, al-
together 99 feet. It is proposed to raise the level of Lake
Nipissing a few feet.

From this summit to Montreal there is a descent of
646 feet. The first lock at the eastern extremity will be
located in front of the City of Montreal, near the Great
Victoria Bridge, thence proceeding along the Ottawa River.
New locks will have to be built at different places. At
Ottawa the locks will be on the Hull side of the river. The
elevation of Ottawa above Montreal is 122 feet. The
Ottawa River will be followed up to its junction with the
Mattawa River, a distance from the Federal Capital of 195
miles, with a rise of 360 feet, thence along the Mattawa
River to the summit. From the summit it will slope down
to Georgian Bay, crossing Lake Nipissing and following
French Ri\'er to its mouth.

The total cost for completing a 22-foot canal, with
locks 650 feet long and 65 feet wide, and capable of accom-
modating the largest ships that now ply on the laKes,
ships 600 feet long with 60 feet beam, is estimated at
about §^90,000,000.

This $90,000,000 constitutes the crux of the question.
The construction of a canal, of a bridge, of a railway, not
unlike the winning of an election, sometimes, is a matter
of dollars. The word ''impossible/' which Napoleon want-
ed struck out of the French vocabulary, is not understood
today by engineers. The real engineering obstacle is
money.

Will Canada be justified in sinking $90,000,000 in the
Georgian Bay Ditch ? Commercially and economically,
will this be a good investment ? That is the question.
Sentiment has no voice here. This is a business proposi-
i^ion.

Let us draw a prospectus. A promoter of Cobalt
Mines would, of course, do it much better than I can; how-
ever, I will, with your permission, try to draw one myself
according to the good old method.

24

The anriiual interest or charge at three and one-half per
cent, on $90,000,000 will be $3,150,000. To this must be
added the wear and tear, repairs, running and incidental
expenses — say three-quarter of a million, making pretty
nearly four million dollars annually. Will the canal yield
annually four million dollars of profit ? To find this out,
we have first to determine whether -it is going to be a pri-
vate undertaking or a governmeriit work. Shall it be of
free navigation, or will tolls be levied ? It will be of free
navigation just as our St. Lawrence system of canals—'
iree, at least, to Canadian bottoms.

We cannot with any decent sense of propriety make one
system of canals free and its parallel brother encumbered.
That would be unfair and unjust, and we Canadians are
not that way built. But if navigation over our canal is
free, whence the revenue, whence the annual four millions
to cover interest and expenses ? Here is where your pros-
pectus becomes luminous.

As a committee of one entrusted to prepare that pros-
pectus and report, I have the honor to submit as follows :

The first cash revenues to be derived from the con-
struction of our canal, will come out of the water powers
which it will create along its course, wherever a lock and
a dam are built, and also from impounding the tributa-
ries of the Ottawa River.

It is estimated that within two miles of the city of
Monitreal there will be 100,000 horse power available for
commercial, industrial and other purposes. Engineers put
the total amount of energy to be developed by the water-
way at a minimum of one million horse power, more prob-
ably between one and two millions.

All of this'white coal, as they call it in France, is

susceptible of being readily turned into yellow gold or

variegated bank notes, part of it im,mediately, and the re-
mainder in the near future.

Electric power is today brought from Shawinigan Falls
to Montreal, a distance of 80 miles, and the Montreal
Light, Heat and Power Company cheerfully pay $15 per
horse power for the same.

Electric power is in the same manner supplied to
Toronto and other cities of Ontario from the Niagara
Falls.

At $15 per horse power 100,000 horse power means
a yearly revenue of $1,500,000 or over two per cent of the

25

interest and running expenses. The supplying of electric
energy to private corporations would not be a novel af-
fair for the Government— it is already farming, or about
to farm out, the water powers of the Lachine and Beau-
harnois Canals. The remaining, say one million horse
power, will eventually find purchasers, and sooner than
may be expected. There will be industries ready to take it
up for lumbering, pulp making, manufacturing, smelting^
ore and traction, all along its course.

Electricity would today supplant steam on railroads,,
if it could be got as readily and more cheaply than coal.
It takes seven tons of coal to generate one horse power per
year. These seven tons of coal, when converted into power,
represent about $30 per one horse power.

Would not the Canadian Pacific Railway electrify the
sections of its roads which, from Montreal, run parallel
lines with our waterway, if they could purchase their elec-
tricity for $5, even at ^10, per horse power ?

It will necessarily cost some additional millions, after
harnessing the streams, to have the electric product ready
for the market.

Let us put the entire cost of the enterprise at ^iuO,-
000,000, and say that the interest and management will
be 14,000,000 annually. This entire 14,000,000 will event-
ually be covered by the reveniue levied from the sale of
electricity.

It took nearly twenty years for the stock of the C. P..
R. to strike the mark above par, but it got there all right,
and even on one occasion kicked the beam at the 200 point.
So would the Georgian Bay canal stock very soon go up,,
if it were a private concern. If it is a government under-
taking, the country instead of a company will reap the
benefit.

Now for indirect revenues. These also are real profits,.,
real benefits, which go towards making a country rich and
prosperous, often more effectually than direct revenues.

''Charity begins at home,'' says a proverb invented
by an egotist— I will begin at home.

We, from the Maritime Provinces, (for brevity and
euphony we are called the ''Blue Noses") have enormous
quantities of bituminous coal to export. None of that
coal goes farther west than Montreal, where navigation,
closes upon us.

26

From Ottawa to Fort William, both inclusive, all the
coal that is used, and consumed, and it amounts to about
5,000,000 tons amiually, is bought in the United States,
and imported into Ontario, a duty of 53 cents being paid
on each short ton, so imported. Why is that, when for
steam, gas and coke, our Canadian coal is just as good
and economical as the American soft coal ? Simply be-
cause of the ditt'erence of cost of transportation. It is
simply a question of rates.

Give us the advantage of cheap rates so that we may
compete with your Pennsylvania article arid we will,
profitably to both you and us, and the country, supply
half at least of the 5,000,000 torws you require. We cannot,
of course, sell you the anthracite, which we have not got.

For comparison, we will take Cleveland, as the ship-
ping port for American coal. From the mines in Pennsyl-
vania to Cleveland, a distance of 140 miles, the railroad
rate is 78 cents per ton. From Cleveland, by water, to
Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay ports, the
charges are 35 cents per ton. To Lake Superior ports from
40 to 45 cents, maJiing altogether an average freight of
^L18 per ton, for the entire haul. It is absolutely impos-
sible for us in the east, today, to compete against these
rates ; the railway charges are prohibitive.

But give us as good navigation, for boats of equal size,
as you have to Cleveland, and we will not only compete
successfully against American coal on the Ontario mar-
kets, as far west as Fort William and Port Arthur, but we
will eventually wrest the supremacy from our Southern
competitors.

A few comparative figures will demonstrate this propo-
sition.

W^e have seen that the distance by rail from Pennsyl-
vania to Cleveland is 140 miles, and by water from Cleve-
land to Fort William, the longest haul, is 800 miles, with
freight rates on coal of 78 cents for the rail haul, and say
40 cents for the lake carriage.

Now, the distance from Fort William to Sydney, Cape
Breton, is 1700 miles, and to Pictou, Nova Scotia, about
1550 miles, or twice that to Cleveland.

Give us good navigation for boats of equal size from
Sydney and Pictou to Fort William, as from Cleveland to
Fort William and Port Arthur, and applying the same
rate, per ton, according to the number of miles, you will

27

find that Sydney and Pictou coal can be landed at your
door, the whole 1700 miles, for 85 cents per ton, and pos-
sibly a little cheaper.

Coal is carried today in barges from Pittsburg to New
Orleans, a distance of 1970 miles, farther, therefore, than
from Fort William to Sydney, for 71 cents per ton, not-
withstanding that the Mississippi is pretty low, at certain
places, and that no six to twelve thousand tons can be
loaded on even one of their best barges, as will be on our
large lake freighters.

This 85 cents per ton will constitute the whole cost,
from Sydney to the farthest Canadian landing place ; r..ot
so with the 40 cents per ton for coal shipped via Cleve-
land. To the water rate of 35 to 45 cents per ton must be
added the rail rate to Pennsylvania, 78 cents more per
ton, making it ^1.18 for the entire haul, or 33 cents per
ton more than for Nova Scotia coal. To this .fl.l8 for
freight must be added the duty of 53 cents per short ton,
or 60 cents per imperial ton, which we have to pay
on imported coal. This will give a c\ear advantage of 86
. cents per ton to the Canadian article landed at your door.

Therefore, out of the five millions of tons which On-
tario, today, imports from the United States, we can sup-
ply all the soft coal, that is, at least three million tons.
These three million tons of coal represent, annually, be-
tween three and four million dollars for purchase money,
which is paid in Pittsburg ; and as much again for trans-
portation.

The money paid for the coal and for the hauling of it
will all remain in Canada, when the Georgian Bay water-
way is in operation.

There will also be for our people a further saving of
nearly two million dollars in duty. What is saved on duly
is not put into Canadian pockets, but is made to remain
there, which is pretty much the same.

These three or four million, we pay today, for pur-
chasing three million tons of coal in Pennsylvania and
three or four millions for conveying it to the Canadian
works, is clearly money lost to Canada— money exported
abroad.

Let us save every cent of it, and it will be so much
added to our national wealth. This money saved will go
to the credit of the canal, and will alone pay, though in-
directly, its annual charges.

28

For commercial ends, this is not all ; there are the re-
turn cargoes to be taken into consideration. We have ia
Sydney, a smelter, about equal in capacity to that of
8ault Ste. Marie ; and also steel and iron works. We need
some of your magnetic and other iron ores to unite witli
our red hematite. These ores you have in illimitable quan-
tities along the course of our new waterway. There will be
a market open to them ; in exchange for our coal we will
take your iron ; navigation will be benefitted by the ex-
change, and rates will be reduced as well on your iron as
on our coal.

Besides iron there are the cereals. If the coal boats can
take cargoes of wheat on their way to the Maritime Pro-
vinces— of this I am not very sure — then we would certain-
ly take large quantities of wheat at your elevators, and
carry them down to grist mills that will be constructed in
New Brunswick, in Nova Scotia, and in Prince Edward
Island, just as they are being- constructed in the old coun-
try, to manufacture what flour, and bran and middlings,
we require for our own local consumption.

Let us now give some attention to the western most
section of our great country, to the far West, which I have
heard people totally devoid of form and good taste ir-
reverently call ''the wild and woolly West.'' This will lead
us to the important question of the transportation of
prairie wheat to the shores of the Atlantic.

This transportation of the Western crops to the East
is, in fact, the principal object, the prime justification of
the Georgian Bay canal.

In order better to comprehend the importance of our
subject, we will again plunge neck deep into figures, how-
ever dry, and to most people, uninteresting, figures mav
be.

In 1900 — I go back to 1900, because it has been pre-
dicted by Sir Wilfrid Laurier that the 20th century will be
CanadaV, century — in 1900 we had, in round figures, 2,-
000,000 acres under wheat, in the prairie provinces, and
half as much again growing other cereals, or a total M a
little better than 3,000,000 acres.

In 1906 the total average under cultivation for wheat
and other grains was about 7,500,000 acres, yieldmg 100,-
000,000 bushels of wheat and about as much oats, barley,
peas, etc. Both the average and the yield had more than
doubled in six years. At the rate immigration is pouring
in, we may assume that these last figures will have doubled

29

again in six more years, and that in 1912 there will be
15,000,000 acres under cultivation in the Northwest and a
total yield of 400,000,000 bushels of all grain. I am con-
servative in my figures.

Of these 200,000,000 bushels of wheat and 200,000,000
bushels of other grain, there will be seventy per cent, for
export.

What shall we do with all that wheat and other grain ?
Unless put on the market and sold, there is no money in
wheat ; rather the other way ; it costs money to keep and
insure it.

Now, our railways, taking the Canadian Pacific, the
Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern will fall
very far short of being able to handle it all.

In 1906 all that our railways and canals combined
could do, was to carry 25,000,000 bushels to Montreal,
equal to a small percentage of the whole output. But for
the Erie Canal, and the American lake fleet, our prairie
crops could not be today removed.

There would be today, were we left entirely to our own
means of transportation, an accumulation of grain, in
Winnii>eg and the Northwest, such as to paralyze utterly
immigration and farming in those regions.

There is now in Winnipeg a large portion of last year's
crop waiting for shipment.

What shall we do, six years hence, with double the
amount of grain for shipment, and only two or three times
the railway capacity we have today ?

We will be at the mercy of our cousins to the south;
the bulk of our Western products will be in their hands.

Now, what would you say, Mr. President and Gentle-
men, if we were to turn the tables on them, and, instead
of shipping our exports by means of their canals and
boats, ship it through our own channels ; nay, take the
bulk of theirs away from them and play a real Yankee
trick on them ?

That we can do, and rather easily, by building our
Georgian Bay Canal, and it can be "^shown conclusively
thus :

Our Manitoba and Western grain is carried, today, to
the Eastern markets and the Atlantic ports, by four dif-
ferent channels from Winnipeg, the present universal hop-

30 j

per — First, by an all-rail haul, without break of bulk, to
Montreal, St. John, New Brunswick, or Halifax; second,
by rail to Fort William, thence by water to Depot Har-
bour, and by rail again to Montreal ; third, by rail to
Fort William, thence by boats down to Montreal, by way
of the St. Lawrence ; fourth, by rail to Fort William, by
lake boats to buttalo, and by American canal boats to
New York, twice breaking bulk.

The two shortest of these routes are the Canadian
Pacific and the one by the way of Depot Harbour; the two
longest are via the St. Lawrence and the Erie Canals.

Although much the longest, these two latter routes
carry the bulk of our Western grain to the Atlantic sea-
ports. The Erie Canal, a nine-foot affair, connecting Buf-
falo and New York, takes by far the largest portion. This
last assertion may sound strange but it is nevertheless a
fact.

There was shipped from Fort William and Port Ar-
thur, in 1906, altogether 70,000,000 bushels of grain, 44,-
376,343 of which was wheat. Less than 25,000,000 bushels
of grain, including the exportations from Ontario, were
handled in Montreal, that same year. Much over one-half
of this 70,000,000 bushels must have gone down by the
Erie Canal.

Is this to be tolerated much longer, Gentlemen, when,
by completing our Ottawa and Georgian Bay Canal, we
eould have the shortest possible waterway to the seaboard,
with boats drawing twenty feet as against nine feet o^^r
the Erie Canal boats, carrying 12,000 instead of 2,000
tons and no breaking of bulk? Why, that nine-foot ditch
at Buffalo would look like a pigmy in comparison with
our Georgian Bay giant.

I began by saying we could easily turn the tables on
our competitors to tTie South — I must further prove it.

The distance from Chicago to Buffalo, at the eastern
extremity of Lake Erie, is, by water, 900 miles, or exactly
within five miles of what it will be to Montreal by our
canal, when it is in operation. The cost of transportation
— leaving aside the toll question — can be made practically
the same at the two terminals.

But, at Buffalo, the wheat cargo has to be trans-
shipped, as we have seen, from the big American lakers
into comparatively small boats ; thence it comes to New
York harbour, and is then loaded on board the ijreat
ocean boats.

31

At Montreal our steamers of 20-foot draught would
only have to take coal and then proceed to Liverpool, by
way of Belle Isle or Sydney.

The distance between Montreal and Liverpool is about
the same as that from New York to Liverpool. There-
fore, the additional time and cost for hauling grain from
Buffalo to New York harbour will be entirely saved by go-
ing over our Canadian route. That would mean a saving
of three days in time, and three and one-half cents per
bushel for freight from Buffalo to New York, plus one and
one-half cents for transferring charges at Buffalo and New
York, a total saving of five cents per bushel.

It takes, today, only one and one-half cents per bushel
to carry grain from Uiiicago to Buffalo, a distance great-
er than from Fort William to Montreal.

From Duluth to New York the entire cost is five and a
half cents for freight, and one and a half cents for trans-
ferring charges, making altogether seven cents per bushel.

From Fort William to Montreal it will be one and one-
half cents per bushel, or two cents at the outside.

From Fort William to Liverpool the rate will be six
and one-half cents, or less than it is from Duluth to New
York, today.

Now, the saving of one cent, or half a cent, or a quar-
ter of a cent per bushel, would be sufficient to displace the
axis of trade, and divert the flow of wheat towards
the east, through our Canadian channels.

Not only would it take away from the Americans the
transportation of wheat, but that of many other articles
of commerce as well.

Writing to Senator Belcourt, Armour & Co. of Chicago
make these statements and admissions :

"W'e have no doubt that if this Georgian Bay channel
is built twenty- two feet deep, an immense amount of
business from Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, would
be unquestionably controlled by it. Large shipments ol
grain and merchandise would without doubt be drawn
from the Buffalo and Lake Erie routes. There is a total
absence of sentiment in this business. If grain can be car-
ried over your route one-fifth of a cent per bushel cheaper
than by other routes, you will assuredly be master of the
situation. The entire transportation by way of the Great
Lakes, with such sligfht exceptions as are noted, will with-
out question avail itself of the superior advantages offered
by you.''

32

In addition to this unequivocal testimony, I might
add what the * 'Omaha Grain Exchange" says in its last
report :

''If grain could be carried from lake ports to seaports
without breaking bulk, it would be worth ten million dol-
,ars to the Nebraska farmers/'

We shall form a better idea of the reversal of affairs that
will take place when the Gorgian Bay waterway is in
operation, when we consider that the trade which is car-
ried today througn the Soo Canal is more voluminous
than that passing through the Suez Canal ; larger than
that which enters the port of London. It amounted to
over 51,750,000 tons in 1906, carried by 22,155 vessels,
and valued at over $1,000,000,000. It has been increasing
ever since.

Now, of these fifty-one and three-quarter million tons,
we had only, for our share, six and a half millions to go
through our canal at the Soo. One for us, seven for our
American friends. The showing of the St. Lawrence canal
is still smaller comparatively, being 1,700,000 for the same
year.

Let us build this canal and matters will be reversed ;
not only shall we then hold our own, but we will be in a
position to take the trade from the hands of our cousins.

Without going into minute computations, which every
one can make for himself, will not the yearly savings and
profits, which Canada will reap in the transportation of
western grain when the canal is built, more than compen-
sate for the charges it will impose ?

Let the saving or increase in price, per bushel of grain
exported or carried, be three cents per bushel, and the
amount carried be 200,000,000 bushels at the time this
waterway is ready for operation — engineers estimate that
it will take several years to complete it — and we will have
an indirect revenue, one directly due to this canal, of six
millions a year, for the first year, and equal to fifty per
cent, more than the interest on $100,000,000 and the cost
of operation and management.

These figures apply to our own Canadian trade ex-
clusively.

We must take into account the trade we will divert and
carry away from the United States, and add it to our
Canadian shipments. Now, shall we allow our friends to
have free navigation over a waterway they did not con-
tribute to construct ? If we adopt the treatment they mete

33

to us today, on their own internal waterways, we will not.
The tolls paid by them will, in that case, become a source,
a large source, of direct revenue for the Georgian Bay
Canal.

Should we give them the freedom of our canal, we will
at least insist that all their shipments go through in Can-
adian bottoms, and that will mean, Mr. Chairman, the
building of a merchant fleet of no mean importance.

The Americans are wide awake to this eventuality.
Here is what the Committee on Railways and Canals have
lately reported according to their engineers :

''On the day it becomes possible to send ships direct
from the Great Lakes to the ocean, by way of the St.
Lawrence River, while they are unable to go by way of the
Hudson, the sceptre of commercial supremacy will begin to
pass from New York to Montreal, *and the merchant
marine of the United States, which has had a new birth on
the lakes, will receive its death blow from Canadian com-
petition.''

There is a fourth source of revenue that will be re-
ceived from the Georgian Bay waterway, and which will
go directly towards paying the annual charge which it will
saddle on the country : The industries, pulp principally,
which it will create and develop all along its course; the
impulse it will give our mining, and metallurgical indus-
tries, and the millions of acres of land to which it will give
value. These again will run into millions annually, but I
will not go into this subject, 1 having already spoken too
long.

Sotoe have said that what the Georgian Bay canal will
gain, will be taken away from the railroads, and more es-
pecially from the Canadian Pacific.

Although it may seem a paradox, the contrary ob-
tains, for some of the most ardent advocates of the canal
are railway men, and among these are the very directors
of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company itself.

Here is what Sir William Van Home said about it be-
fore the committee of the house :

''I am of opinion that the construction of the Mont-
real, Ottawa and Georgian Bay canal will benefit the com-
merce of the Dominion generally. Anything done to lessen
the cost of transportation betwe^i Manitoba and the
Northwest and the seaboard must have unquestionably a
beneficial effect. The trade of the canal would chiefly be in
grains, food products and mineral and other products;

34

and the waterpower it would afford would result in the
establishment of important industries all along its course
in the provinces of Ontario and QuebeK;. This canal would
greatly increase the trade of Montreal, Quebec and other
Canadian seaports.

''It would also develop local resources by the utiliza-
tion of the water powers it would afford, and, by cheap-
ening transportation, this canal would have a good etfjct
on the Canadian Pacific Railway, as it would create more
traffic than it could take."

Sir Thomas Shaughnnssy has publicly expressed similar
opinions. Mr, J. J. iliil, a magnate among Canadian rail-
way men today, has put himself on record as an advi.^cate
of this scheme.

This objection, therefore, falls through.

But what do our leadinsr public men say about it ?
What would the keepers of the public treasury be prepared
to do ?

The greatest among our dead prime ministers favored
the idea as a remote but sure eventuality.

Sir John A. McDonald, than whom a greater prime
minister has not troverned Canada, some thirty years ago,
said from his seat in the House of Commons :

''The Ottawa ship canal and the Canadian Pacific Rail-
way must be constructed,'' thus coupling these two great
national enterprises.

He built one ; death prevented him from constructing
ihe other.

Alexander McKenzie, than whom a more honest, a
more earnest, a truer citizen of Canada, has not existed, is
on record as saying : "1 am perfectly satisfied that the
Ottawa valley presents the greatest facilities of any route
upon the continent for the transportation of the products
of the Northwest to the Atlantic Ocean.''

But what will the present politicians say, you will ask
me ?

The question is, Mr. Chairman, a live one today in
the House of Commons and in the Senate of Canada, and
has been since 1894 when the bill incorporating the Mont-
real, Ottawa and Georgian Bay Company was passed. On
that occasion several orators, but more particularly the
then member for Pontiac, put the question - before the
Canadian public as well and as convincingly as it has
ever been put, and won Parliament over to their side.

I i , 35 ■ . ; i n^il

But I am further asked : What does Sir Wilfrid, than
whom — (but let tliere be no praise for the living).

In 1903 Sir Wilfrid expressed himself rather in favor of
the scheme, but preferred it to be left into the hands of
private enterprise.

And today what does he say ?

Now, Gentlemen, this is rather unfair. I did not come
here prepared to answer such delicate questions, to reveal
in fact, state secrets. If you continue putting them, you
will simply force me to commit indiscretions.

Well, since you insist, I will tell you all about it. I
will here publicly reveal the most secret thoughts of the
Premier, his most hidden conceptions and designs ; and
you may the more readily be assured that my revelations
are state secrets, as I am a Conservative in Canadian
politics, a good old Tory ; and that at all times it has
been the custom among prime ministers to reveal afore-
hand their projects and political programmes to their
political opponents.

Now, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, today, and when I say Sir
Wilfrid, I mean the whole cabinet, I say the whole Liberal
party — I include even the Toronto ''Globe'' — Sir Wilfrid
Laurier is today entirely, unhesitatingly, determinedly, in
favor of the project of the 22-foot canal for 20-foot bot-
toms, to be constructed in the near future, and owned by
the nation as a national enterprise.

I may further add ; if we have a general election this
year, that is if he desires to make the return of his party
pretty sure, that the public announcement will be deferred
until the next parliament, on account, mainly, of the
Grand Trunk Pacific being under construction. If general
elections take place, next year, then the construction of the
waterway will be announced, and its construction made one
of the planks of the platform. And there will be signs in
the heavens, the Toronto Liberal papers will all support
it, and some clergymen will say Amen ! Amen ! from the
top of their pulpits.

This 20th century, upon which we have just embarked^
promises to be the most stupendous the world has seen.
All the gateways of the five continents will be opened to
commerce; and rail and navigation will be its principal
vehicles. Canals are gaining upon railways, in the trans-
portation, inland, and to ocean ports, of all articles of a
non-perishable nature. Europe is realizing this important
fact, and has constructed a network of waterways. Ger-

36

many has just completed the Kiel Canal; France has con-
nected the Mediterranean sea with the Bay of Gascoigne,
and lately made Paris a seaport for vessels of good ton-
nage. It has constructed, at a cost of $100,000,000, the
Suez Canal, which was pronounced a foolish venture, and
is today a colossal success,

Austria is about to begin the construction of four dif-
ferent canals aggregating i,000 miles, to connect its dif-
ferent rivers. England has just completed the Manchester
ship canal at a cost of $75,000,000.

But after our own sell, the country whose canal con-
struction concerns us the most, is the one to the south of
us.

The Panama Canal, which our progressive American
friends are building, will cost untold millions of dollars;
they are preparing to spend at least $100,000,000 in mak-
ing their Erie ditch a fourteen-foot waterway. That ii^rie
Canal is said to have put into the treasury of the State of
New York twenty millions more than it cost to build and
run it, and caused to be expended in New York State, over
$350,0('(),000.

But the two American canals which concern us to the
most, because they will have a direct influence upon our
inland navigation and more especially upon the Georgian
Bay route, are the Mississippi and the Champlain Canals.
The former will connect Buffalo with New Orleans, Lake
Michigan with the Gulf of Mexico, by way of the Missis-
sippi ; the latter will connect Montreal and New York, the
St. Lawrence and the Hudson Rivers, by way of Richelieu
River and of Lake Champlain. In order to keep abreast of
Canada it is proposed to make these two waterways 22
feet deep. Chicago has already made serious headway ;
under pretence of building a system of sewerage it has con-
structed a 20-foot canal from the lake to points connect-
ing with the Mississippi River.

The Richelieu- Champlain-Hudson Canal is under study
just as our Georgian Bay project is today. These three
waterways will one day be accomplished undertakings,
running one into another. Look at what will be the result
for Montreal, for Chicago and more especially for Fort
William and Port Arthur.

Vessels of twenty-foot draught leaving New York and
reaching Montreal by a short cut and thence proceeding to
Chicago and Fort William without breaking bulk ! West-
ern grain merchandise put on board of ships at this port

37

and sailing straight to Liverpool by the Ottawa way, or
to the Gulf of Mexico, the West India Islands and South
America by way of the Mississippi.

It looks like a dream, Gentlemen. That dream, in 25
years, will be a reality.

Then Chicago will be the bronze gateway to the south
and Fort William and Port Arthur, the Golden Gates to
and from the Golden West.

What Venice, the proud queen of the Adriatic, was to
Europe in the middle ages, so long as she stood at the
head of navigation from Asia — and -for several centuries
she grew so rich and became so prosperous and mighty
that her Doges looked upon kings with an air of pitiful
contempt — such. Gentlemen, must your city inevitably be
to the continent of America.

You are at the head of navigation from the East and
from Europe; yours will be an ocean port fifteen hundred
miles inland ; you stand at the centre of commercial Can-
ada; you will be the distributing point, in the very heart
of the continent. Geographically, your position will be-
come as good as that of New York, it should in less than
a hundred years prove better than that of Chicago. No
one single city in the whole Dominion is as interested in
the construction of the Georgian Bay Canal as your own
city, because no one will derive from it as great advan-
tages. Montreal, Fort William, and Winnipeg are staked
down as the future metropolis of Canada, with Montreal
as the terminus of ocean navigation, and Fort William
the terminus of ocean and lake navigation,

I have had the honor to prophesy tonight in what will
be **the Chicago of Canada.''

38

/. A. MACDONALD, M. A.

Public Opinion, The Canadian
Club and Democracy

J. A. Macdonald, M. a.

Editor-in-Chief of The Globe

Toronto, Ont.

Those who have not finished may give their lips to
their coffee and lend me their ears.

I am very much pleased to see so many here today. It
shows a great interest in the work of the Club, and if I
rush along as fast as we have rushed the bill of fare you
will please try to keep track.

I conceive of The Canadian Club, not as a doer of
things but as a maker of opinion. One of its advantages
is that any man can say anything he likes, knowing that
every member has the same right. These Clubs exist right
across the continent, and in them all classes of men meet,
not to do things, but to make opinion. That is the func-
tion of the Canadian Club, When you crease to do things,
you will begin to make opinion and that will be your
function. The importance of a club like this lies in its
background — the Canadian Democracy. Our Canadian De-
mocracy is not a democracy such as the Greeks enjoyed,
where the few were free and the great multitude were
slaves. It is not such a democracy as the French Republic
meant. What we mean by a democracy is that all citizens
are under obligation to do every man his share in estimat-
ing what are the laws under which men should live, not
in making laws. We elect men to our Councils and Legis-
latures and Parliament, as though laws could be made.
We shall never come to an understanding of democracy
until we com-e to know that laws are not made — that laws
ARE. The men who go to Parliament no more make the
laws under which men should live than the medical men
and the scientific men go into the laboratory and maKe
the laws by which things coalesce, or out into nature to
make the laws by which things grow. LAWS -ARE ! The
business of scientific men is to studv the facts, to examine
what actuallv are the laws bv which things combine and

m

grow and make them known for the advantage of man.
The same is true of social institutions. Men do not mal-5:e
laws. Laws are. The business of men in Council, Legis-
lature and Parliament and everywhere is to ascertain what
are the laws by which men may live together in a socially
organized state. This is one of the functions of an insti-
tution like the Canadian Club, to estimate what are the
laws of life, industrial, commercial, social and political.
If that be true, this follows : in a democracy where the
right to vote belongs to every man, the obligation to
make that vote represent public opinion rests upon every
man. We pride ourselves on our right to vote. We think
it a great thing. We tell new men coming to our land that
they are to be citizens of this land. We put upon these
newcomers the responsibilitv resting upon the scientific
man, to study what are the laws of life. Public opinion is
th-e expression of general representative opinion in a com-
munity on any live public subject or interest. Without
your public opinion your democracy cannot stand. I
should like you to think, first of all, what public opinion
must be in your community and in your land if the democ-
racy is to be strong. In the first place it must be informed
public opinion, if it is to be at all effective. In the next
place it must be alert. Tl ere is much public opinion that
is informed but is not active. On many public questions,
what is everybody's concern is nobody's concern. Much
opinion is warped by men's own interests. Ordinarily men
are straight and honest, as I find them. But generally,
when a man's own personal interest is concerned, his judg-
ment will go wrong, his perspective will be awry. He will
be sound on the tariff until some interest of his own is af-
fected. I have known high tariff men who were strong free-
traders in the materials involving their own interests, in
the making of stoves for instance. When our own per-
sonal interests are concerned our judgment goes wrong,
hum^^an beings as we are. More than that, informed,
active, public tone is as needful in the community as in
the individual. A local interest often disturbs and warps
the judgment of a community. I don't know if this is true
of Fort William or Port Arthur. I don't know anything
about your conditions, but the trouble is real, that a
local community interest often blocks the way of a sound,
active, alert, public opinion.

There are two or three dangers you have to watch
against. One is this : a man's self interest keeping him
away from giving his thought and his service to the com-
munity. If you take upon yourselves the obligations of

40

public utilities you must educate your citizens to an inter-
est in these public affairs. If you give all your people the
right to vote, you must press upon them the obligation
to discharge tneir duties. A mere principle, a mere theory
or a mere plan solves no problem at all. Until we have
our citizens as much interested in the community as in
their own affairs, our management' of public utilities will
sometimes go wrong.

Too many men of intelligfence and high standing and
influence give themselves over to the making of money,
seeking their own ends and allowing the public affairs in
the Council, the Legislature and the Parliament, to be at-
tended to by those who have axes to grind. The holding
back of your men of hicrh standing and character from
public affairs gives the grafter his chance in the commun-
ity. No democracy can stand where you put the power of
the King or aristocracy in the hands of the multitude un-
less you make the multitude do their duty.

The self-interest of the man who seeks lesfislation that
is not in the public interest, and franchises that should
be conserved to the public, and lobbies them through Par-
liament, is continually observed from the press gallery of
the Legislature and Parliament. It is because you good
citizens hold yourselves back that men who have not the
public interest in mind have their opportunity.

Once more : It never can be easy to make public
opinion in a country like Canada, with the thousands
that we have coming to us from all parts of the earth and
with the mixed races that we already have. We have a
chance to make out of the mixture a new type of democ-
racy, but we cannot do it unless the spring of harmony
and unity belongs to us in the community and in the pro-
vince as a whole. We have West and East; we have race
and creed. There is no traitor in all Canada wno exercises
so baneful an influence against the public life of our Do-
minion as that man who sets class against class, race
against race, community against community, and west
against East. Why ? Because the double-minded man is
unstable in all his ways, and the double-minded commun-
ity is unstable in all its ways. Canada will never endure
unless it is with the dominant idea of her life one and the
same from ocean to ocean.

Another danger is the disbelief in the honest and the
good and the true. I am mixed up with politics more
than you are, more than I wish you were. No ! Every

41

member of this Club should be in politics up to his brains.
You ought to interest yourselves in the politics of your
land. But there is a cynicism that disbelieves in the public
men who offer themselves for the ftivor of the public. Old
Dr. McCall used to tell us in the University that "Cui
bono'^ meant **To whom is this for a good?'" In the lexi-
con of our modern political economy it is read. ''Whose
graft is this V Some private or personal end is said to
be sought in promoting the legislation in the Council,
Legislature or Parliament. We cannot make our Legisla-
ture strong unless our ideals are high, unless we believe in
the honesty of other men as much ais we believe in our
own honesty. Perhaps th(- men in Parliament are as much
responsible as any one. Perhaps I am. We face a danger
in our unbelief in the honesty of public men.

We must have our safeguards also. First there is the
school. I like to see your elevators and other industries.
W^e have said : ''Here is where a Canadian Minneapolis
must grow.'' All that is good. But, Gentlemen, if you
bank merely on your institutions of commerce and trade,
upon your ^reat elevators and docks, you will never make
a great community here any more than the Indians in
Rainy River and Lake of the Woods made ereat and last-
ing things where they were. 'I hey were very little removed
from the beasts, but there was that in them that made
them higher. You will see the pottery and the urns they
had to light the soul with a flame for the hereafter. Your
institutions of social development have in them something
more than mere man. Your schools demand from you your
intelligent service in order that they may equip your youth
with an ideal of citizenshij) worthy of a community like
this.

I believe in Party Politics — two parties. Some of you
may believe in three. I believe they have done a great
deal. Say all you like against them, I can say more than
you. Still they have kept alive spasmodically and spora-
dorically, not always on the highest lines, but they have
kept alive an interest in the affairs of the Province and the
Dominion. The schools must give themselves more to the
education of citizenship. Parties as Parties are of little
interest. For the ins and outs of the Parties I care very
little, unless the parties stand for some principle. But you
need not worry. A party will decay that does not stand
for something.

This club is another safe-guard of democracy. I say
to you members around this board : Let the atmosphere

42

be clear and free from all partisanship. Let every man do
his own thinking and having thought his way through a
problem, when the opportunity comes, express himself
frankly, and take no votes, but back of it all put this
thought of a Canadian Democracy. We have an oppor-
tunity of doing what they tried to do in Greece and failed ;
what they tried to do in France; what they are threaten-
ing to be unable to do in the United States. Let us in this
land make up a new democracy, intelligent, self -controlled,
alert and sure of its authority in the will of the people.
Then shall monarchy be simply an institution of the
democracy, and the throne be based upon the people's will.
But unless we make our democracy intelligent and free,
there is no more divine right for the rule of the multitude
than there was for the rule of the one.

43

MAJOR G. W. STEPHENS

The Waterways of Canada

Major G. W. Stephens

Chairman Montreal Harbor Commission
Montreal^ Quebec.

Your President told you a moment ago that I had a
surprise in store for you. May I be permitted to add that
the surprise you are about to meet is not in the same class
with the surprise you have placed before me by the splen-
did tribute you have given myself and Mr. Ballantyne.

When I met your President, after spending two days
and a night on the way from Winnipeg to Fort William,
he was kind enough to ask if I would attend a small, in-
formal luncheon of the Canadian Club to be called for to-
night, and if I would deign to say a few words ; but when
I looked into the dining" room door a few moments ago I
wondered whether your President had not made a mis-
take, whether the small meeting had not been forgotten
and we were coming in here to listen to some great man,
for all that I had undertaken to do tonight was to talk
familiarly with you as fellow Canadians about a subject
which to me during the past two years has taken on such
importance that I believe it to transcend in vital interest
any question which has been placed before the Canadian
people for the past fitteen or twenty-five years. That sub-
ject. Gentlemen, is the great question of transportation.

During the past two years it has been my privilege to
stand, with two other gentlemen, at the gateway of Can-
ada's trade, in the Port of Montreal. Not knowing any-
thing to start with concerning the question of transporta-
tion itself, it has been a matter of considerable labor dur-
ing those two years to collect accurate statistics and facts
concerning our position as Canadians for carrying on our
transportation within the limits of this great Dominion.
I was struck first of all with the fact that a large part of
the Canadian business was being handled through the sea-
ports of our Great Neighbor to the South, and' it struck
me that it was time for Canadians to begin to consider
whether they were filling their proper role in allowing this,
country to produce great quantities of exportable pro-

45

ducts and handing them over after we had produced
them, to somebody else for export through their own
ports. We collected together certain facts that were so
self-evident that perhaps Canadians paid little heed to
them. For instance, our strategic position as the half-way
house between Great Britain and the Orient. Let me draw
your attention for a moment to a comparative picture
which will display before you the position in which our
great neighbor began the nineteenth century, and how we
Canadians are beginning the twentieth. At tne beginning
of the nineteenth century the population of the United
States was 5,000,000 people. They were not stretched
across the continent but along the Eastern seaboard, a
mere fringe, with a border not far west of Chicago, and
south to the Gulf of Mexico. That is where ail the popu-
lation of the United States was located at the dawn of
the nineteenth century. There were no railroads in the
United States at that time, and not a mile of canal. And
yet, with their indomitable courage, those people have pro-
duced a nation numbering almost ninety millions of i>eople.
It struck me and my colleagues that this was a good
beacon to hold up before Canadians — that if our neighbors
could begin their career with 5,000,000 people a century
ago, then we Canadians, bom of men who have made the
greatest nations on the map, could do no less. It was ap-
parent to us that we were beginning the twentieth century
with a very much better condition of affairs prevailing than
our neighbors had a century ago. We had in round num-
bers five million people — ^not bunched in a little group on
the Atlantic Coast but stretched across the continent from
sea to sea. In 1908 we have the steel ribs of three con-
tinental railroads extending almost from ocean to ocean «
In addition to that we have a waterway connecting the
gate-way of our lakes to the Atlantic that gives us a
thousand miles of the deepest waterway of this continent
from the sea to Montreal and fifteen hundred miles more
of the deepest inland navigation this continent possesses.
And if we, with these means of progress in our hands, and
the blood that is flowing through our veins, cannot make
as big a showing as our neighbors to the south have done,
we are not worthy of our country, our ancestry and our
inheritance. Here you are, standing in the middle of the
continent at the gateway, the door out of which must
come every bushel of the products that are raised in that
huge North-west behind > ou. It cannot go elsewhere unless
it goes south. If we allow it to go north and south, in-
stead of east and west, ^he lines on the map of North

46

America will be changed. If we persevere and this trans-
portation continues from the West to the East and from
the East to the West you will see a great people grow up
-above line 45 on this continent.

What does this mean in figures ? There are in the
North- West 171,000,000 acres of land upon which wheat
c^n be grown. If you cut off all the land that cannot
grow wheat or barley and any other grain, there still re-
mains 171,000,000 acres of land to grow wheat on. In
1900 there were but two million acres of that land under
cultivation. In 1906 there were 6,000,000 out of 171,000,-
000 acres under cultivation. The railroads had grown, the
elevators to hold the grrain in the West had increased in
five years from 500 or 700 to 1,200. What does all this
mean ? It means that, if we only cultivate one-fourth of
the available wheat areas of our North. West, it will orive
us an annual output of 800,000,000 bushels of wheat a
year.

Where is that to go ? If we are not prepared to create
here in Fort William and Port Arthur the terminal facili-
ties that will be required to handle in a short time, ef-
ficiently and economically, the great production of the
West, the traffic will go somewhere else. That is why I
feel that Port Arthur, Fort William, the Great Lakes, the
Georgian Bay ports, the canals, Montreal and the St.
Lawrence route snould be linked together with efficient
transportation facilities. That is what Mr. Geoffrion, Mr.
Ballantyne and myself have been advocating for the past
two years. We have a future that nothing can take from
us except our own ignorance and lack of confidence in our
own resources.

It occurred to me that it would not be thought pre-
suming on my part if I told you what has been going on
in the Port of Montreal during the past few years. We
have been handling grain there, and I thought it might
be of interest to you to know that the men of Montreal
were prepared to receive the great harvest you are to send
down to us. The Port of Montreal stands at the head of
ocean navigation, approached by a 30-foot channel, 400
feet wide at the narrow parts, and 750 feet wide in the
bends of the river. No matter what you read in the
papers, this is the best buoyed and lighted channel in the
world today — the channel from Montreal to th^ sea. I say
this after having visited during four months every Euro-
I>ean harbor of note, and having gone up every approach-
ing channel to those harbors myself. This opinion of mine,

47

not being a technical engineer, might be passed as being
worth nothing, but it has been corroborated in the papers
of Europe by the very men who in the past tried to ring
the death-knell of trade through the St. Lawrence.

From Montreal you have the deeper waterway. What
does that mean? It means that you can carry 80,000
bushels of wheat in unbroken cargo when your com-
petitor to the south can only carry 8,000. It takes ten
boats on the Erie Canal to carry what one boat will carry
from Port Colborn, opposite Buffalo, to Montreal. Our
American friends say that it will not pay to try and carry
ten parcels of grain against the man who can carry ten
times the amount in one parcel, so they have voted $110,-
000,000 to widen the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Albany.
If they do that in order to get what we possess today in
depth and width — we have the shortest route — if they are
willing to expend that in order to get what we now pos-
sess, isn't it about time we Canadians realized the force
of our position and bent our energies towards improving
the terminals through which only the full force of our ad-
vantage can be obtained.

The work going on during the past few years in Mont-
real should have been completed years ago. We should
take the conditions and mould them, to the best of our
ability. In the year 1907 the average daily business done
across the wharves in the Port of Montreal during the
season of navigation aggregated $29,000,000 a month, or
almost $1,000,000 per day. An export and import busi-
ness amounting to $1,000,000 a day places the Port of
Montreal next in Great Britain after Liverpool and Lon-
don. There is no other port in Britain doing that business.
There is no port in the United States, with the exception
of New York, doing such a monthly volume of business as
the Port of Montreal. I do not say this as a boast. When
I found it out for my sell, I thought the best thing to do
was to say it to my fellow countrymen, and let them know
the truth of it. The responsibility o f handling efficiently
and economically a business of that magnitude brings about
in a man's mind a realization that a great charge has been
placed upon him. The business has doubled in five years —
the traffic of the Port of Montreal. Concurrently with this
doubling of traffic we have, by the improvement of the St.
Lawrence River channel, cut the insurance rates in two
during the same time. The insurance on the goods import-
ed and on the snips' hulls has been cut in two, and I
have faith enough to believe that in the next five years we
will cut them in two again. When we do that, Canadians

48

will have their hands on the biggest volume of trade go-
ing out of this country uiat has ever been seen before, be-
cause the greatest deterrent of trade through the St. Law-
rence River has been the high rates of insurance. These are
going down by the inevitable reasoning of time itself.
Lloyds will not take cognizance of what has been done as
a sufficient reason for lower rates. They are not in busi-
ness, they say, for their health. But if our business war-
rants the reduction of insurance rates by half, in the next
five years, which I believe those five years will warrant,
then the men insuring our cargoes and hulls will do the
same thing.

In the handling of grain we have carried out a system
in the last two years which permits of delivery to ten ves-
sels at their own piers from a central point. We take the
grain into an elevator and deliver it to ten different ves-
sels without either of the vessels having to move to get
the grain, and we do it at less cost than the grain is hand-
led in any other port on the American continent. This is
only one small effort on the part of ourselves and the
Government to realize the importance of placing the facili-
ties in proper shape for handling the business that comes
to us. Great development plans are under consideration.
Last year one of the most renowned British ensrineers was
invited to come to Canada and look over the situation at
the Port of Montreal while business was beings carried on.
He was asked to suggest ideas for carrying out a future
scheme of development. That has been done, and our own
engineers are at work on a similar huge scheme, and when
they have completed their plans, the better of the two, or
a compromise of both, will be submitted to our country-
men for approval.

I mentioned a little while ago that it was my privilege,
through the courtesy of my colleagues, to spend nearly
four months of this year in Europe, visiting the great
harbors of the continent. Among the impressions thai
have remained strongest in my mind, comparing those with
our own, I may say that I brought back from Europe the
conviction that God had made the ports on this side of
the water and man made them on the other. By that I
mean that we are the inheritors, through the generosity of
Nature in our country, of the most magnificent oppor-
tunities for development that any country can desire.

I have noticed a slowness in appreciating this fact. I
may tell you I have been considerably encouraged in the
few hours I have spent among you by noticing the reverse.

49

I have been struck, in my short visit today, with the op-
timism^ and faith and couraere that is everywhere evident.
It was shown by the men who, ten or fifteen years ago,,
had the foresight to see what was coming, and by the men
today, in the splendid optimism of what is yet to come.
Although we in Montreal, and you here in Fort William
are separated by a distance of nearly a thousand miles as
measured on the map, it does not by any means follow
that because that distance exists you and we are not in-
timately connecteu in carrying on the same great work.
The point I would like to insist on most of all tonight is
that of getting to know more about each other instead of
thinking we are too far apart to be of mutual help. We
should have hands across the whole distance between Port
Arthur and Fort William and Montreal in a j?reat effort
to carry out the grand work that will brine trade not
only from our own North- West but a great deal from the
western regions of Uncle Sam. He always takes a good
thing when he sees it, and will send his wheat our way if
he can do so cheaper than any other way.

You have lately noticed the outcry from American
ports that they were losing their business and that it was
going to Montreal. There must be some gooa reason why
' great ports to the south would admit any such proposi-
tion as that. Our inheritance of this great water route, at
one end of which stands Fort William and at the other end
Montreal, puts it into our power to carry the products of
this country and of our neighbor to the sea cheaper than
they can be carried by any other route on the continent,
and that is why Uncle Sam sends his goods to Montreal,
and for no other reason at all, and that is why we expect
to draw the business of our own country through our own
channels. But if we allow the other fellow to push his cart
a little faster than we do, we must expect the wheat to go
his way. We do not expect anybody to do business with
us unless that business is properly handled and done more
cheaply than anywhere else. If we can do it quicker and
better we are going to get it.

I am going to give you an example of what that
means. In January last year I left for Europe. My two
colleagues, while I was gone, considered the business being
transacted between South America and New Orleans. They
communicated with a firm carrying on that business and
pointed out the fact that this business, done through New
Orleans to Cleveland, c >uld be done through the St. I^aw-
rence by an all-water route, with only one transhipment,
and could be carried on at an .enormously reduced cost,

50

compared with going by way of New Orleans and being
hauled to Cleveland by rail. The arguments of my col-
leagues were so convincing that during the past summer a
cargo was sent from Chile past Savannah, Philadelphia,
Boston and New York, around and up the Gulf of St. Law-
rence to Montreal. We were ready to receive it and give it
the best despatch. The re-loading was undertaken and
carried out and the boat started west to go through the
lakes to Cleveland when somebody poked a hole in the
Cornwall Canal and it burst. The boats we had loaded
were held up for nearly three weeks on account of the
break. Consequently our hopes were low with regard to
getting another chance at this business. However, the
gentlemen recognized that there was no human fault in this
disaster. They kindly S'.'ntus another cargo. This second
has been handled without any interference by outside ac-
cident. The business of this firm amounts to 300,000 tons
a year, and the saving on one cargo by way of the St.
Lawrence is enough to guarantee to the St. Lawrence route
all the cargoes that can come from South America to the
Western States. This is an actual occurrence of the last
few months, and it goes to show the power of a waterway
within the heart of a great continent, open to ships draw-
ing thirty feet for a thousand miles and fourteen feet of
water for fifteen hundred miles further.

Now, I should say that if there are any organizations
in Canada that have the power to bring that about, there
are none that have that power to a greater degree than
the Canadian Clubs. I don't know if this club has con-
sidered, during the first few months of its existence, for
what aim you gentlemen come together from time to time.
It is all very well for you to come and be kind enough for
me to address you. But there are deeper objects behind
all this which should be made strong from city to city and
town to town in this country and given the weight that
the best of our land can give. There is not a part of our
land from Atlantic to Pacific that could not be met
through these clubs. There should be enough big questions
for men to meet and consider and help along in this
country. I am afraid politics has been the means of stay-
ing the hand of things in this country. In W^estern Canada
there are clubs all over the country holding in their mem-
bership the best that youth has to give and the best the
older men have to impart. Why not use that power?
How ? I have had in mind a view about Canadian Clubs
which I should like to give you. Why wouldn't it be a
good idea to have a congress annually of Canadian Clubs,

51

which would be attended by members of each club through-
out the Dom.inion ? What would it mean ? It would bind
together and make visible and effective the power that is
in the hearts of all true Canadians to make this country
worthy of the great ancestral inheritance that has come to
us. It would make us worthy of the great ancestry of our
mother country, over which flies a flag we all revere. And
if the flag is worth loving, and if the word ''Canadian'' is
worthy of our pride, my last word to you must be that I
hope within a very short time the members of Canadian
Clubs from all the cities of Canada may meet and stand
upon common ground and be the agents in carrying to a
Buccessful issue the great possibilities of this transcendent-
ly important question — the question of transportation, in
which we are all so vitally interested.

And now, on behalf of Mr. Ballantyne and myself, and
the commission we represent, let me tell you that we are
very grateful for the sumptuous way you have entertained
us, and we hope you will send from time to time repre-
sentatives of Fort William and Port Arthur to Montreal,
that there may grow up a bond of good-will and power be-
tween us, and we shall help you and you help us, and the
hands that I spoke of a moment ago will be constantly
stretched between these two places and ourselves in the ef-
fort to carry out this great work.

62

F. W. THOMPSON

I

The Heritage of Thunder Bay

F. W. Thompson

Vice-President and General Manager

The Ogilvie Flour Mills Co,

Montreal^ Que.

A few days ago, when visiting this district, I was af-
forded an opportunity of taking a trip up the Kaaninis-
tikwia River. 1 found a great river, its northern bank
dotted with elevators and mills, the foreshore of which af-
forded a vista of countless cars laden with grain awaiting
unloading and shipment down the Great Lakes to the
markets of the world. I found also dredges at work cut-
ting new channels through the sandy delta which lies be-
tween the city and the lake; and I found this delta con-
nected with the mainland by the bridge of a great trans-
continental railway now in course of construction, pro-
mising additional facilities of the utmost importance for
the outlet of the products of our western land. Looking
across the bay towards Port Arthur, I saw like conditions,
and as some of the possibilities of the future arose in my
mind, I thought, not unnaturally, of the first shipment of
wheat from the Canadian Northwest.

It may not be generally known that the company with
which I have the honor to be connected, were the shippers
and owners of the first wheat that was ever taken from
Western to Eastern Canada. This was so short a time
ago as 1878. A shipment of 800 bushels was loaded on a
Red River steamer and taken up the Red River to Fisher's
Landing, then the terminus of northwest railway develop-
ment in the United States. It was here transhipped and
taken by car to Duluth, where it was carried by one of
the small boats then sufficient to meet the requirements of
lake shipping, to the east.

Had anyone been then so bold as to predict the de-
velopment which has since taken place he might have been
discredited as a man who should have devoted his time to
composing fairy tales rather than discussing the business
possibilities of our couDitry. Think what has already
happened. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company;,

53

one of the greatest, if not the <^reatest, railway cor-
porations in the world, is in operation from the At-
lantic to the Pacific, with branch lines radiating to
all points where traffic can be profitably gatnered ; its
steamship lines connect its terminal points with all the
principal centres of the world ; it has a fleet of steamships
upon the Great Lakes s«;arcely to be rivalled bv the nest
ocean-going boats of a few years ago. The Canadian
Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific are pushing their
way across the prairies, are threading the mountain passes
to the west ana reachmg down towards the Atlantic sea-
board, all as fast as money and human ability permits.
The consideration of all this is, not that these roads are
building, but that the agricultural development which is
taking place in Western Canada is such as to make it as-
sured that before these roads can be completed, the con-
gestion of business which in the past has marked the pro-
ductive capabilities of Western Canada, will tax their
carrying capacity to the utmost, and we may yet see the
unique and hitherto unheard of condition of three g^reat
trunk lines unable to fully cope with the agricultural carry-
ing requirements of a farming country.

Western Canada during the past year has grown a
crop estimated at approximatelv 115,000,000 bushels of
wheat, 100,000,000 bushels of oats and 25,000,000 bushels
of barley, to say nothing of other grains and products. We
have been able to do this with only a mere fraction of the
arable land under cultivation. If these conditions obtain
now, it requires neither a prophet, nor the son of a
prophet, to see that in a very short period of time the
Canadian Northwest will be one of the prime factors in
determining tne grain market conditions of the world.

That these things are possible is due in a measure to
the far-seeing genius of some of those master minds who
have gone before. It required more than faith — it required
genius supported by a determination and confidence which
is rarely found, to enable men to assume the tremendous
responsibility which .vras accepted when their own crodit
and the credit of Canada was pledged to its utmost for
the construction of our first transcontinental line — the
Canadian Pacific Railway. Neither can too groat credit l:e
given to our Canadinn .^^tatesmen of today, who have suf-
ficient confidence bi the future of their country to promt te
the construction of ^he Canadian Northern and the Grand
Trunk Pacific, our two transcontinental railways now
building, and who look with a favorable eye to the future

54

construction of a great ranal, the early completion of
which, I venture to hope, will make seaports of Fort Wil-
liam and Port Arthur. As I have said, it requires neither
a prophet nor the son of a prophet, to foresee some of the
things that must happen in the near future, but the Doint
which interests you all here today is : What will it mean
for Fort William and PortArthur ? What will it mean for
us who are interested in your cities ?

It will mean that the tralBBic of one of the greatest
agricultural countries both in fertility of its soil — in the ex-
tent of its territory — and in the energy of its people, will
enter your gates ; that the transfer from railway to lake
will be made here ; and that you will thus receive toll
from practically every bushel of grain and every pound of
freight which must necessarily find its way from and to
the prairies of the west, it means, too, that you will
Handle on its way from east to west the products of the
older countries rendered essential to the increasing popula-
tion of the west, the acquisition of which will be made
easy by the productiveness of our land. It means more
than this — look where you will — search in times modern
or in times ancieuo, and nowhere in the world's history
will you find a city which has been a great shipping port
without also being a manufacturing centre of no mean im-
portance. You, gentlemen, many of you, will, I believe,
live to see at the head of Lake Superior a great Canadian
city, a city that in its importance — in its population — in.
its influence, will not be exceeded by many cities in Can-
ada. You will live to see these two cities gfrow, not only
by reason of the vast shipping trade which they will con-
trol, but because with ixie increased population of the west
manufacturing facilities must be provided, and because
you, situated as you are at the head of lake navigation,
possessing better railw^ay facilities than are found in al-
most any other city in America, with cheap electrical
power such as you have, and with the unrivalled facilities
afforded for the bringing in of all necessary raw material
required for successtul manufacture at a minimum of cost,
you will see these cities continue to occupy a strategic
manufacturing situation such as is practically without
rival in Canada.

But, gentlemen, while it is pleasant to contemplate
what may be a picture of the happy future, let us
not forget that as the highest quality of our soiFs
products results only from good seed and from high culti-
vation, so must commercial prosperity depend, not alone

55

on the fortunate situation of any particular city, but
upon the constant and unwearied efforts of its people,
with their hand constantly at the plow, to advance their
interests by a broad-minded policy, and an honesty and
integrity of purpose, which will found a heritage for our
children and our children's children after us.

We are supplied, thanks to the foresight of our states-
men, and the courage of our people, with railway facili-
ties which will provide for present needs, but, gentlemen,
speaking of railway facilities, let us here sugg-est that
prosperity is not necessarily coupled with unlimited rail-
way construction. A country with bankrupt railways is
neither a happy subject of contemplation, nor an induce-
ment to the employment of additional capital. Railway
construction means enormous capital expenditure, the in-
terest on which must be provided by the population served.
It is to the interest of all that we should have adequate
facilities for nanaimg our products, but it is equally to
our interest that our railroads should not be constructed
so as to unnecessarily burden our people with a capital
expenditure, the interest on which must be taken care of
by a tax on their goods. It is also to our interest tnat
railways should be constructed so as to best serve the re-
quirements of the country without encroaching unduly on
what may be regarded as the legitimate territory of a rival
road. Because, ii in any district you have two roads to
support where traffic can properly take care of but one, it
stands to reason either that rates must be raiseu. or the
roads must starve. Gentlemen, this is not a condition of
affairs which should be allowed to obtain. What 1 advo-
cate as best for our country — ^best for our railways — and
best for our people, is sufficient railway facilities for the
legitimate needs oi our country — protection to our rail-
roads in affording them the requisite traffic to render them
profitable, coupled with the control of their rates and
operations such as is afforded by the present Eailway
Commission of Canada.

As I said, gentiemen, we must not sit idly by and
hope by reason of our situation, or by the natural pro-
ductiveness of our country, to see business grow and pros-
perity reign. In order to make Canada great, we must
keep Canada for the Canadians, not in a narrow, selfish
sensn, but in the making our country as far as possible
dependent upon our manufactures and by keeping all com-
modities wnich we may have for export or transportation
within our borders to the last possible moment.

56

Has it occurred to you what it means to Canada when
a bushel of export grain finds its way unnecessarily eariy
into the United States ? A bushel of wheat shipped from
Winnipeg east pays a freight of six ceats to the Canadian
railways between Winnipeg and Fort William or Port Ar-
thur. Further, on its journey towards Britain it pays
toll, if kept within Canada, to Canadian shipping, and as-
sists in affording employment to our working people at
our seaports. Ihe same bushel of wheat finding its way
east via the Undted States would pay to our Canadian
railways a freight of probably one cent to our boundary
instead of six cents to our lakes. The difference, if kept in
Canada, that is — ^if our commodities be shipped on our
own railways and over our own waterways, means that
this freight, which we keep from American transportation
companies, is largely circulated in Canada — ^is available
for the construction and maintenance of our own railways
— for the employment of our citizens and for the making
profitable of capital, as well as the creation and building
up of a vast inland marine. It is this motive, selfish if you
will, that impels me to advocate that Canadians, irre-
spective of political opinions, should stand shoulder to
shoulder for the up-building of transportation facilities
within our borders, which can compete on a sound finan-
cial basis with any which can be offered by our cousins to
the south. As you well know, gentlemen, the United
States, recognizing the necessity of improving her facilities
for transportation, is today engaged in the construction
— at an expenditure considerably in excess of one hundred
million dollars — of what is practically a new Erie Canal
between Buffalo and iNlew York. With this completed, as
it will be within the next few years, grain can be shipped
in larger bulk from Buffalo to New York, permitting a re-
duction of rates and increasing competition, which our
transportation facilities must meet.

As I have said, our. statesmen, past and present, have
done much towards our railway development, but there is
at least one task which is still before us. Nature has en-
dowed Canada with what is probably one of the finest sys-
tems of inland waterways in the world, but nature in this,
as in everything else, needs assistance, and what we want
—what the people of this district want — what the commer-
cial requirements of Canada demand — is that our govern-
ment should immediately take up with all seriousness the
construction of a ship canal connecting the waters of the
Georgian Bay with those of the Ottawa — a canal of suf-
ficient capacity to make the cities of our Great Lakes, the

57

lake cities not only of Canada, but those of the United
States as well, for all purposes seaport towns having direct
connection by ocean-going steamers with the salt-water
ports of the world. That this is economically and financial-
ly possible is my firm belief — a belief founded on inv-estiga-
tion which I have made, and consideration which I have
been able to personally give the matter. I believe, too, if
Sir Wilfrid Laurier will obtain the necessary statistics and
engineering reports they will verify my belief as to the pos-
sibility of the construction of this canal upon a basis of
cost which will make it profitable to Canada. A prominent
contributor to one of the leading periodicals, in a recent
article stated that, in his opinion, the comprehensive de-
velopment of the Canadian Canal System would close the
elevators at Buffalo, and destroy the commercial suprem-
acy of New York.

It is for you, gentlemen, as those probably most vital-
ly interested in this project, to lead the people of Canada
in demanding the construction of this most necessary
work. The government is doing much towards the im-
provement of your harbors — ^it is doubling and trebling the
Jiarbor capacity of the St. Lawrence between Montreal and
the sea, — ^it has done and is doing much to do away with
those dangers of river navigation which are happily be-
-coming a thing of the past, and let me say, gentlemen,
that these matters should be viewed, not in any narrow
spirit, but upon broad and comprehensive lines. Just as
the prosperity of this district is dependent upon the pros-
j)erity of eastern shipping points such as Halifax, St. John,
Quebec and Montreal, so also is it vitally dependent on the
growth and progress of our interior. The commercial in-
terests of Canada are so indissolubly bound together as to
make it of common interest that our developments should
be guided, not by the requirements of any particular town
or district, but along those lines which on the broadest
possible grounds will make surest, swiftest and best for
the permanent prosperity of all. Such were the sentiments
which indicated the actions of men like Sir Charles Tup-
per, Lord Strathcona, Lord Mount Stephen, and that far-
seeing and beloved statesman the late Sir John A. Mac-
doriald, when they constructed a work which they believed
as later experience has demonstrated, would constitute a
bond of prosperity, knitting our scattered provinces into
one great common and prosperous whole.

And so today I would say to you — Look to the future
— realize that the cities of Fort William and Port Arthur

58

are not natural rivals, but are natural allies — that what
conduces to the prosperity of either should not be viewed
with distrust or envy by the other, but rather should be
taken as evidence of that certain progress which will make
for the common good of both. The idea that grass may
grow in Port Arthur while Fort William becomes a great
city, or that Port Arthur may jprosper while the outlying
lots in Fort William are used as pasturage, has no place
in my mind, and, I am certain, does not obtain in yours.
What I hope to see is government works proceeded with at
Fort William until your harbor is made, not one of the fin-
est, but the very best upon the lakes. What I hope also to
see, and what I ask you, the citizens of Fort William, in
your own interest, as well as in the interest of Port Ar-
thur, to assist in bringing to an accomplished end, is that
the government will put forth every effort to speedily make
the harbor at Port Arthur the equal of that of Fort Wil-
liam. Port Arthur has a good harbor today, but not one
which can meet its immediate future requirements. You,
people of Fort William, should join with your neighbors
in bringing every possible pressure to bear upon our
government to at once extend the breakwater and do those
other works which may be necessary to make the harbor
of Port Arthur both safe and commodious.

Now, gentlemen, one more word, and I have done. 1
spent probably the best part of my life in working out the
problems of a great commercial company identified most
closely with Western Canadian interests. It may appear
to you that my ideas of the future of Canada, particularly
of the west and of this district, are somewhat ex-
travagant, but I can tell you, gentlemen, with all
sincerity, that what I have said today, I not only
believe, but that belief is founded upon a somewhat inti-
mate knowledge of the capacity of our country to produce
the highest quality of the world's prime necessity — food. I
may \^ permitted also to say, that in working out these
problems it should always be borne in mind that prosper-
ity can be best and quickest attained, and can be laid upon,
the surest foundation, if we so conduct ourselves as at all
times to inspire and retain the confidence of our sister na-
tions and our motherland. No country can be developed
entirely upon its own resources — no business can grow
without banking facilities — ^nations cannot mature with-
out financial help, and this assistance, gentlemen, can on-
ly be had upon its most favorable terms if the borrowers
at all times so conduct their operations as to inspire the
highest confidence amongst those to whom they must

59

look for financial assistance. It is, therefore, just
as much of importance to Canada as a nation as
to you as a municipality, and to yourselves as in-
dividuals, that while at times the judgment of financial
corporations or of financial lending nations (ii 1 may use
that expression) may appear to be somewhat harsh and
dictatorial, that your business aflfairs should be so man-
aged and your operations so conducted as to conform as
closely as possible to what the lenders believe to be of
prime necessity in order that your credit may not be im-
paired. There has of late developed what I may perhaps
be permitted to term, the fad of municipal ownership.
Theoretically, I know of no more alluring propK>sition
than that our public utilities should be controlled and
operated by the people and for the people. But, gentlemen,
while this is most pleasant to contemplate, experience ha&
taught that for many reasons better results can be ob-
tained, better service rendered, by allowing the utilities of
a quasi public character to be operated by private com-
panies, subject to suitable regulations and control. I know,
gentlemen,from my connection with financial institutions
-^it is possible their opinion may be wrong, but nevertJie-
less it is a fact — that our best financial people are of the
opinion that it is not wise for municipalities to omb^uk
upon commercial undertakings under which changes of
management — the inability to obtain proper talent for
operation because of the impossibility of paying adequate
salaries — the pressure constantly brought to bear through
the necessity of municipal elections, renders it impossible
that the best results can be obtained. There are, of course,
exceptions, but they are rare. Generally speaking, as J
have told you, these enterprises do not, nor does the credit
of municipalities which favor them, meet with the approv-
al of our best financial people. There, if you will permit
me, I want to say to you, not necessarily to avoid all
municipal ownership or operation, but to be most careful
before linking the credit of your city with enterprises which
may make the financing of your legitimate necessities, dif-
ficult, if not impossible.

V

Gentlemen, I do not know that I can say anything
more. My interests, as you know, are very largely bound
up with the interests of this section of the country. I hope
from year to year, if spared, it will be my pleasure to visit
you, and that together we may have the satisfaction of
witnessing the fruition of some of the hopes I have ex-
pressed todav.

60

I thank you, gentlemen, for the magnificent reception
you have given me, and in closing I wish you that peace
and prosperity which I believe to be the inalienable herit-
age of the district of Thunder Bay.

61

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