262 Sport and Life. 



the Canal Flat, the northern branch flowing over the flat where 

 I proposed to make the canal, while the southern occupied its 

 present bed. 



My concession contained, of course, a clause giving me 

 permission to carry out this turning of the Kootenay river, for this 

 was the vital point upon which the whole undertaking was based. 

 For two reasons this sanction should never have been given by the 

 Government. In the first place it had not the right to grant it, for 

 by the Act of Confederation, which regulates the relations between 

 the Provincial and the Federal Government, the latter had reserved 

 to itself, amongst other powers, that of dealing with all future canal 

 works in the province. As mine were the first ever undertaken in 

 British Columbia, the legal advisers of the Crow r n, as well as my 

 own lawyers, overlooked this important fact. Consequently the 

 signature of the Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works was as 

 valueless as was the formal Order in Council which approved of the 

 concession. The second reason was that had the other interests 

 that came into play been examined into by the Government ere 

 sanctioning the turning of a big river from one valley into another, 

 leaving its old course dry, and at least trebling the quantity of 

 water in the other, the dangers of such a proceeding would have 

 become apparent. In 1882, when this scheme first came up, there 

 was not a habitation or a single white resident in the Columbia 

 valley between the mother lakes, or source, and the American 

 boundary line, more than four hundred miles away following the 

 course of the river. Had the scheme been carried out in that 

 or in the following year no existing interests w r ould have been 

 endangered, for none existed then. 



But important interests soon arose, for in 1883 the Yellow- 

 head and other northern routes by which the Canadian Pacific 

 Railway Company proposed to get across the Rockies were 

 abandoned, and the Kicking Horse Pass definitely selected. This 

 forced the railway to cross the Columbia valley and the Columbia 

 river about a hundred miles from its source. 



Large forces of railway engineers had been surveying the passes 



