The History Of The Railway In Canada
Even before Confederation in 1867, Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, grasped the need to physically link the disparate provinces of the new nation. Each area needed lines of communication to the east and west to counteract the natural tug of the neighbouring parts of the USA to the south. Both the Maritime Provinces and British Columbia joined the Confederation on the condition that rail links would be built to transport their goods throughout the land. Railway construction of this scale was a huge undertaking for such a young country and outside finance was the only answer. From 1855, lines were constructed in eastern Ontario and Quebec, culminating in the completion in 1876 of the Intercolonial Railway, which linked central Canada with the Maritime Provinces. Progress of the transcontinental line to the Pacific, however, was impeded by the Riel rebellion at the Red River in 1869-70, and in 1871 the Parliamentary Opposition labelled the entire scheme "an act of insane recklessness". Two years later Macdonald's Conservative government fell after implication in scandals involving the use of party funds in railway contracts, and Alexander Mackenzie's subsequent Liberal ministry proceeded so slowly with the railway plans that British Columbia openly spoke of secession if construction was not speeded up. The eventual completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1885 finally made Canada "more than a geographical expression", and by the early twentieth century another coast-to-coast line had been completed. Passage across the hitherto virtually impenetrable Canadian Shield was now feasible and the full agricultural potential of the prairies to the west could be realized. Between 1896 and 1913 more than one million people arrived by train to settle in the prairies, and wheat production rose from 20 million to more than 200 million bushels a year. Additionally, some of the first major mineral finds in northern Ontario were brought to light during the construction of the railway. The years following World War I were a period of economic consolidation, which culminated in the union of various smaller lines into a nationwide system: the Canadian National Railways (CNR), a government-controlled organization. What has been called "the bizarre project" of the Hudson Bay Railway stemmed from the prairie farmers' desire to create an outlet for trade with the rest of the world that was not dependent on the bankers back east. A first attempt in 1886 foundered when the promoters ran out of money after the first 65km. After many delays this major engineering feat was accomplished in 1929, just in time for the Great Depression. The impact of the Depression on Canadian railways was particularly severe, leading to stringent economies and pooling of competing lines. World War II saw a rise in profits, but over the subsequent decades the story has been one of gradual decline, with freight increasingly travelling by road and air, and passenger services pruned almost to extinction on some lines. By 1992, passengers could no longer cross Canada on the CPR, and one of the world's great train rides was gone for ever. Grain and minerals are still moved by train, however, and the privately owned CPR is now exclusively a freight line. VIA, the passenger branch of CNR, operates virtually all of Canada's passenger services, including the Hudson Bay line, in roadless northern Manitoba - probably the only rail route in North America to still exist primarily as a passenger service
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