CHAPTER XL1V. 

 The North- West and the Canadian Pacific Railway. 



the elementary steps in canadian national progress — the 

 advantages of the canadian pacific railway to canada — 

 the monopoly clause and the people of manitoba — blun- 

 ders of the manitoba premier — the hudson's bay route. 



If HE second great step in the work of consolidating the 

 British North American Provinces into one nationalty, 

 was that of the construction of the Canadian Pacific 

 *W Railway. The Intercolonial Line, connecting the old 

 Province of Canada with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, became 

 a necessity to give reality to the first act of Confederation. The 

 union of 1867 would not have been a union without it. But this, 

 after all, was but the first step of Confederation — a sort of advance 

 union preparatory to the greater consolidation of half a continent. 

 When British Columbia agreed to enter Confederation, and the 

 Dominion Government acquired the North- West Territory, the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway became a necessity in the cause of both 

 National and Provincial interests, just as the Intercolonial Line 

 did at the outset. 



The admission of British Columbia, the acquirement of the 

 prairie regions, and the settlement and development of that vast 

 territory, together with the construction of a trans-continental line 

 of railway from the Pacific Ocean to Montreal, that should become 

 the channel of inter-Provincial commerce, as well as trans-con- 

 tinental trade, was an undertaking of gigantic proportions. But 

 fifteen years of energetic effort finds the road almost completed, 

 and what was at first the possibility that, besides adding British 

 Columbia to the union, another Province might be carved out of 

 Rupert's Land, becomes the full measure of a revelation. One 



