460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the questions involved, the shrewd common sense and the recognized im- 

 partiality of the first chairman of the board, Hon. A. G. Blair, formerly 

 minister of railways and canals in the Dominion cabinet. Under his 

 control the board was instrumental in settling, by a policy of concilia- 

 tion and mutual concession, and with reasonable satisfaction to all 

 parties, a multitude of disputes which had been sources of bitterness 

 and irritation in the districts affected. Mr. Blair's resignation, shortly 

 before the last Canadian elections, was felt at the time to be an irrep- 

 arable loss, as his was by all odds the master mind of the commission. 

 Fortunately the government has secured, in Mr. Justice Killam, of 

 the Supreme Court of Canada, a successor who possesses much of Mr. 

 Blair's shrewdness and tact, as well as the alert mind and legal knowl- 

 edge of an eminent jurist. 



The third of this remarkable triumvirate of transportation com- 

 missions is charged with the location and construction of the eastern 

 half of the new Transcontinental railwav. 



There are to-day in Canada some 170 railways, twenty-five of 

 which are amalgamated in the grand Trunk system and thirty in 

 the Canadian Pacific. The rest, with the exception of the Inter- 

 colonial and the Canadian Northern, are comparatively short, local 

 roads. The total railway mileage of the country is now about 

 twenty thousand, of which the Canadian Pacific accounts for nearly 

 one half, and the Grand Trunk, some 3,200 miles. Of the ex- 

 isting roads, the Canadian Northern is growing with the greatest 

 rapidity. It is expected that by the coming autumn the rails will be 

 laid as far as Edmonton — making a second through line from Fort 

 William almost to the foothills of the Eockies. But the men who are 

 behind the Canadian Northern are by no means satisfied with this 

 program. They look forward to a much wider development for their 

 road, and confidently expect to make it the third Canadian transcon- 

 tinental. At present the main line extends from Fort William to the 

 neighborhood of Battleford. Then in the east the Canadian Northern 

 interests control the Great Northern, from the city of Quebec to 

 Hawkesbury, on the lower Ottawa; and they are now applying to 

 parliament for authority to construct the intervening link between 

 Hawkesbury and Fort William, via Ottawa and north of the Great 

 Lakes. When this link is completed, and the western end of the rail- 

 way carried to Edmonton and the Eockies, and thence to the Pacific 

 coast, the Canadian Northern will have a through line from Quebec 

 to the Pacific. 



With the completion of the Grank Trunk Pacific, and the Cana- 

 dian Northern, Canada will have three distinct transcontinental rail- 

 ways, and eventually these will in all probability be increased by one 

 and perhaps two others. One at least of these will run through the 



