wooden leg, all of which, apparently, the owners 

 do not think worth while enquiring for. Not long 

 ago a mummy, possibly a descendant of the 

 Pharaohs, crept in and was sold by public 

 auction with other effects. 



The Baggage Department of a railway also 

 has under its wing the handling of the most 

 valuable and perishable food commodity, milk, 

 which must be handled with the greatest des- 

 patch. On arrival of a train carrying milk at the 

 larger centres, one may see the vehicles of a 

 hundred dealers around the milk platform taking 

 the milk to the factory for pasteurization, 

 bottling and delivery to consumers. 



Surely this is important traffic, and deserving 

 of the best care and attention that can be given 

 it. The Canadian Pacific Railway appreciates 

 this fact, and has gone far towards promoting 

 efficient handling. Special trains have been run 

 to care for a few pieces of baggage that had 

 unfortunately been overlooked. In the year 1920, 

 the Canadian Pacific Railway handled 6,371,000 

 pieces of passengers' baggage, and of this vast 

 number but 71 pieces were lost, 200 were dam- 

 aged, more or less, and about 50 pieces delayed, 

 so small a percentage as to run into the thousand 

 decimals. There were 13,000 bicycles, 21,000 

 dogs, 28,000 baby carriages, 20,000 miscellan- 

 eous articles and 1,575,000 cans of milk. 



In the parcel rooms, which also come under 

 the administration of the Baggage Department, 

 1,189,000 parcels were handled. 



Wireless Extension in Canada 



Wireless is coming to be the world's great transmitter 

 of news and method of rapid communication, and a nation 

 desirous of keeping pace with world progress in all respects 

 must pay continuous attention to bettering their systems 

 of this most modern method of long distance conversing. 

 Canada has not been slow in recognizing the importance 

 of wireless in her economic existence, in her shipping and 

 trade, even in her forests and fisheries, and in the bearing 

 of this important factor on the whole of future Dominion 

 development, and she has kept well to the fore in this 

 regard. 



The wireless service on the Great Lakes, in the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, and on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts 

 is second to none in the world in the opinion of navigators. 

 The Canadian trans-Atlantic wireless service, in com- 

 petition with the cables, which has been in operation for 

 some thirteen years, has been very successful, and is still 

 improving in speed and accuracy. Authorities consider 

 that no series of wireless-direction-finding stations have 

 given such help and satisfaction to mariners as that 

 established by the Canadian Government on the Atlantic 

 Coast. 



Scope and Object of Service 



Government wireless in Canada comes under the 

 Radiotelegraph Branch of the Naval Department, which, 

 however, whilst owning the stations, has let several by 

 contract, for operation, to the Marconi Wireless Telegraph 

 Company of Canada. The primary object of the Govern- 

 ment service is to provide facilities for communication 

 with ships at sea and thus assist in their navigation and 

 the safeguarding of the lives of the people they carry. 



Incidentally, the service undertakes the handling of com- 

 mercial messages with ships and also provides means of 

 communication with points not reached by existing land 

 telegraphs, an instance of the latter being the Queen 

 Charlotte Islands in British Columbia. 



The total number of stations in operation in the 

 ' Dominion and on ships registered therein in 1920 was 563. 

 Of these, twenty-seven are located on the east coast, and 

 have ranges of from 100 to 1,500 nautical miles; eight are 

 in Ontario, on the Great Lakes, having ranges of 350 

 nautical miles each; ten in British Columbia on the west 

 coast have ranges of from 150 to 350 miles; two public 

 commercial stations in Cape Breton and one in New 

 Brunswick have ranges of 3,000 miles and 2,500 miles 

 the third being for reception only; two in Hudson Bay 

 have a range of 750 miles each; eleven private commercial 

 stations with ranges of from 100 to 200 miles; and there 

 are thirty-nine Canadian Government steamers equipped 

 with wireless capable of transmitting from 100 to 400 

 miles. 



With the exception of the small station at Pictou, 

 Nova Scotia, all of the forty-seven coast stations in the 

 Dominion are owned by the Government. Those on the 

 Pacific Coast, Hudson Bay, Barrington Passage, Nova 

 Scotia, and the three direction-finding stations on the 

 east coast, sixteen stations in all, are operated directly by 

 the Department of Naval Service. The stations on the 

 Great Lakes and the remaining stations on the east 

 coast, thirty-one in all, whilst owned by the Government, 

 are operated by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Com- 

 pany of Canada, under contract, and under the terms 

 of which the Company receives a total annual subsidy of 

 $89,200 and retains all tolls collected on messages except 

 on Government messages which are handled free. 



The Government-owned and operated station at 

 Barrington Passage, Nova Scotia, maintains a commercial 

 service with Bermuda. The Marconi station at Glace Bay 

 has a continuous trans-Atlantic commercial service with 

 Clifden in Ireland, and, as far as actual handling of traffic 

 is concerned, is considered one of the best trans-Atlantic 

 circuits. The use of the Hudson Bay stations is in suspense 

 until the policy respecting the Hudson Bay Railway is 

 decided upon. The stations on the British Columbia 

 coast are unceasingly in touch with Pacific bound steamers. 



Six Million Words Transmitted 



A total of 341,333 messages, containing 6,128,990 

 words, were handled at all the stations in Canada in the 

 year 1920. The total revenue collected during the year 

 amounted to $50,322.29, as against $44,288.77 in 1919. 



The Canadian Marconi Company has received its 

 biggest expansion from the Canadian Government Mer- 

 chant Marine, which has placed about fifty operators on 

 its vessels, all of which are equipped with wireless appara- 

 tus manufactured entirely in Canada. A school for opera- 

 tors is carried on by the Government, at which about 

 forty pupils are being trained continuously, whilst many 

 of the operators on the Government vessels are returned 

 soldiers, who reached their positions by way of vocational 

 courses in the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-Establish- 

 ment. 



Steps are under way at the present time to dot the 

 expanse of the Dominion with a series of wireless stations, 

 which will effectively cover it from coast to coast, rendering 

 the most effective communication from the Atlantic to 

 Pacific. This is part of a scheme of the formation of an 

 All Red system of wireless communication which is to 

 belt the British Empire and link up all the Dominions. A 

 station at Newcastle, New Brunswick, taken over by the 

 Marconi Company in 1919, is to be used as the connecting 

 station with cross-Atlantic stations, and licenses have been 

 issued to the same company for point to point stations at 

 Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and other locations, which 

 will act as feeders for the trans-Atlantic service, and at 

 the same time carry on a commercial service between 

 these cities. 



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