264 Sport and Life. 



features of the inner life in official circles, I succeeded in getting 

 the new scheme passed by the Dominion Minister at Ottawa.* 

 Its chief feature was that the turning of the upper Kootenay river at 

 Canal Flat was done away with altogether,, and instead of it there 

 should be constructed a small navigable canal, provided with a lock 

 to overcome the difference in the two water-levels. The dimensions 

 of this canal were laid down by the Government, and the work was 

 to be carried out under the superintendence of a Government 

 engineer at our cost, and the works had to be completed within 

 two years after the plans and specifications had received the 

 approval of the Provincial Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works. 

 It had taken me the best part of four years to fight matters 

 out in Victoria and Ottawa, for it was not until late in the summer 

 of 1887 that the canal plans, officially approved by the two govern- 

 ments, were handed to me. By dint of hard work I completed 

 the canal within the prescribed time limit ; it was a job I can 

 honestly recommend to those desirous of committing suicide in a 

 decent, gentlemanly manner. As a test of temper and of per- 

 severance against the forces of nature, the malignity of man, and 

 the cussedness of fate, there is, I can assure the reader, nothing 

 like building in a wild uninhabited country, far removed from 

 civilised means of transportation, a canal according to plans imposed 

 upon you by people w r ho have never been to the spot, and who 

 have no conception of what is really required. 



There were three bad features about this, the first canal of 

 British Columbia : the first was that it cost about twenty times 

 as much as would the infinitely more useful turning of the Kootenay 

 river ; secondly, it did not help the reclamation of the land on the 

 Lower Kootenay, for the lock gates could not be left open during 

 high water; and, thirdly, the Government insisted upon details in 

 the construction which, taken together, made the future use of the 

 canal as a navigable connection between the Columbia and the 



* My dealings were largely with Sir Hector Langevin, Minister of Public 

 Works, whose political career came to a sudden termination not long after- 

 wards, in consequence of disclosures which did not surprise me. 



