HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT 17 



Port Arthur and Fort William are less 

 than a mile apart, each town being the ter- 

 minus of a railway connection, hence there 

 is much rivalry between them. As each bor- 

 ough has its own set of officials, it must be 

 amusing — if not too dramatic — to the citizens 

 to keep in touch with the official doings and 

 methods of the two municipal rivals. 



As our steamer had been fighting a head 

 wind from the "Soo" Canal all the way to Port 

 Arthur, we were more than an hour late, so 

 that when our first important city — Winnipeg 

 — was reached we were too late to inspect any 

 of its wonders. Twenty years before, in mak- 

 ing this same journey across the Continent, a 

 stop of three hours was made at Winnipeg. 

 The growing city then boasted a population 

 of over thirty thousand inhabitants. The citi- 

 zens were then enthusiastic in their predic- 

 tions of a future great and growing city, but 

 they never dreamed of such a transformation 

 as has taken place in the period covered by 

 these two visits of twenty years apart. I re- 

 member then standing in the main street, 

 which I think is one hundred and thirty feet 

 wide, and watching long lines of horses pull- 

 ing heavy wagons loaded with wheat from the 

 Red River territory of the North. A man, 



