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In its earliest years Canadian railroading was influenced by British
rail practice, but after a decade of experience with North American
economic and geographic realities, American practice began a fairly
rapid rise to dominance that has remained to the present. The first
transborder line was completed between Portland, Maine, and Montreal
in 1852; it was known as the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad
in the three northern New England states and the St. Lawrence and
Atlantic in Quebec. At the behest of the Maine promoters of this
line a gauge of 5 feet, 6 inches, was adopted to exclude Boston
and its standard-gauge railroads from participation. Once the railroad
opened, the international company was sold to and extended by a
British company, the Grand Trunk Railway, which ultimately constructed
a line from Rivière-du-Loup on the St. Lawrence estuary below
Quebec city to Sarnia on the St. Clair River at the Ontario-Michigan
frontier. The Grand Trunk infrastructure was much more costly than
that found on any other rail line in North America following British
practice but was laid out on the Maine gauge of 5 feet, 6 inches,
which became the first widely adopted Canadian gauge. Only later
when the rail crossings of the international boundary became numerous
and the generally unsatisfactory example of the Grand Trunk was
fully understood were the broad Canadian lines narrowed to the standard
gauge.
The Canadian Shield posed a serious obstacle to transcontinental
planning. British Columbia, then a British crown colony, was concerned
about the impact of an influx of gold prospectors from the United
States, and it sought to join the Canadian confederation. In 1871
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald offered British Columbia a railroad
connection with the Canadian network within 10 years. An agreement
was reached with little knowledge of where and how such a rail line
could be built. A Canadian Pacific Railway survey
was begun under the direction of Sanford Fleming, former chief engineer
of the Intercolonial Railway in the Maritime Provinces. There was
some question as to the best route across the Canadian Shield from
Callender in eastern Ontario (then the head of steel production
in eastern Canada) to the edge of the prairies in eastern Manitoba,
but simplicity of construction favoured the northern shore of Lake
Superior. In the prairies the choice seemed to rest on which pass
through the Rockies would be used. Fleming strongly favoured Yellowhead
Pass near present-day Jasper, but the rail builders chose instead
Kicking Horse Pass west of Calgary because it would place the railroad
much closer to the 49th parallel, thus shielding business in western
Canada from competition with American railroads. The final question
to be resolved by the Fleming Survey was the route to be employed
across the Coast Ranges of British Columbia. Five routes ranging
between the Fraser River valley in the south and the Skeena River
near the 54th parallel in the north were considered, but the Fraser
gorge route to the mouth of that river was selected. By 1885, when
the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed by a joining of tracks
at Craigellachie in British Columbia, Burrard Inlet, north ofthe
Fraser mouth, was selected as a new port and was named for George
Vancouver, the British naval captain who conducted the most detailed
survey of this coast.
The Canadian Pacific Railway tied the recently formed dominion
together but operated on such a thin market that its charges were
high and its network of lines limited. In Manitoba at the turn of
the 20th century wheat farmers sought more rail lines, and the province
encouraged ramification of the lines with land grants. By the end
of the first decade of the century one granger road, the Canadian
Northern Railway, promoted a line from Montreal to Winnipeg and
then, along with its network of prairie railroads, a second rail
route to the Pacific coast, using Yellowhead Pass. This second transcontinental
line was finished during World War I, though wartime inflation led
to bankruptcy for its promoters.
In the first decade of the 20th century a third transcontinental
line was advanced rapidly through a large government subsidy. A
proposal was made to construct a rail line from Moncton, N.B., near
the ports of Halifax and Saint John, passing through mainly timbered
land to the south bank of the St. Lawrence River at Levis opposite
Quebec city. From there, the National Transcontinental Railway crossed
the Canadian Shield to Winnipeg. There the project was joined to
a line of the Grand Trunk. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway beginning
at Winnipeg passed through the fertile belt of the prairies to Edmonton,
continuing thence to Yellowhead Pass and across central British
Columbia to a totally new port on Kaien Island in Canada just south
of the Alaska Panhandle, which was named Prince Rupert. Unfortunately
the addition of two new transcontinentals within little more than
a year in a time of great inflation placed both concerns in bankruptcy
and led to their reversion to public ownership as the Canadian
National Railways in 1918.
Since then, there have been further demands for rail lines in Canada,
mostly to gain access to heavy raw materials. Manitoba shaped a
new port at Churchill on Hudson Bay at the end of the 1920s. Lines
from the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence were pushed into
Labrador to reach iron deposits in the 1950s. Access to lead-zinc
deposits near Great Slave Lake brought a "railway to resources"
at Hay River in the Northwest Territory. British Columbia took over
an initially private company, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway,
and shaped it into the British Columbia Railway. Even Canadian Pacific
has reflected this increasing focus on resource flows. In 1989 it
opened the longest tunnel in the Western Hemisphere, just over nine
miles, under Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia.
This reflects the turnabout in rail flows in Canada, where transpacific
shipping has overtaken transatlantic routes. The steep grades in
Rogers Pass required huge horsepower in helper (pusher) engines.
By tunneling beneath Mount Macdonald, the transit of the Selkirks
was flattened to just under 1 percent.
Canadian Pacific Ltd.
Formerly (1881-1971) The CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY, a privately
owned company that operates one of Canada's two transcontinental
railroad systems. The company was established to complete a transcontinental
railroad that the government had begun under the agreement by which
British Columbia entered the confederation in 1871. The main line
from Montreal to Port Moody (a Vancouver suburb) was completed in
1885. Later the company absorbed other railroads, including several
in the United States.
For much of the company's history, most of its owners lived outside
Canada, but this began to change after World War II as more Canadians
began to invest in the company. By the late 20th century, about
two-thirds of the voting rights were held in Canada.
Canadian Pacific initially received a land grant of 25,000,000
acres (10,000,000 hectares). Over the years it acquired assets in
mining and smelting and in timber. In 1956 it set out to develop
these assets, establishing subsidiaries in oil and gas, minerals,
fertilizers, food products, forest products, real estate, hotels,
finance, trucking, telecommunications, shipping lines, and airlines.
These assets were centralized in a holding company, Canadian Pacific
Investments Ltd., in 1962, and the parent company was renamed Canadian
Pacific Ltd. in 1971. In 1980 Canadian Pacific Investments Ltd.
became Canadian Pacific Enterprises Ltd. It sold its airline in
1987.
By the late 20th century railroad activities accounted for only
a small part of the company's net earnings. Rail freight tonnage
was largely in minerals, manufactured products, and grain. Canadian
Pacific's passenger services were taken over in 1978 by the crown
corporation VIA Rail Canada.
Canadian National Railway Company
A corporation created by the Canadian government in 1918 to operate
a number of nationalized railroads (including the old Grand Trunk
lines, the Intercolonial Railway, the National Transcontinental
Railway, and the Canadian Northern Railway) as one of Canada's two
transcontinental railroad systems. Headquarters are in Montreal.
In its early years Canadian National engaged in a fierce competitive
struggle with the privately owned Canadian Pacific Ltd. This ended
with the Canadian National-Canadian Pacific Act in 1933, which directed
the railways to cooperate in seeking economies and eliminating duplication
of services. In 1978 Canadian National's passenger services were
taken over by VIA Rail Canada, a crown corporation set up to operate
all Canadian passenger services except commuter services. In 1995
the government privatized the company.
Canadian National's transcontinental line runs across Canada from
several east-coast cities to Vancouver and Prince Rupert, B.C. The
company also owns a chain of hotels, the CN Tower in Toronto, trucking
companies, ferry lines, and telecommunications services.
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