160 FOURTH EXPLORATION, 1880 



The construction of a transcontinental railway formed part 

 of the basis of union between the Dominion of Canada and British 

 Columbia. The admission of that province took place in 1871. 

 Steps were at once taken to make a survey of the proposed line. 

 Part of the arrangement was to build a line from Winnipeg to 

 Emerson to meet the railways coming up from St. Paul. The 

 reason of this was to enable the Mackenzie Government to bring 

 supplies from the United States as the road from Port Arthur to 

 Winnipeg was going to take a very long time to build. This 

 branch-line was completed in the spring of 1879 and, about this 

 time, a syndicate of Canadian and American capitalists obtained 

 control of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway and 

 all its connections. No time was lost by them in completing their 

 line, to make connections with the Canadian road at St. Vincent 

 (Pembina). Many things were transpiring now in a short time, 

 and history was being made. Winnipeg, by this time, had caught 

 a strong hold on the country and had begun to see a great future. 

 Winnipeg wished a railway-bridge to be built across the Red 

 River at Winnipeg, to connect with the Government road coming 

 from Lake Superior. Many battles took place at Ottawa around 

 the building of this bridge, and Mr. Fleming, who was Chief 

 Engineer, refused to build the bridge and use it as a connection 

 with the railway. He intended to cross the Red River at Selkirk 

 and build direct to Portage La Prairie, and, in fact, had the road 

 surveyed. I was at Ottawa at this time and I agreed with Mr. 

 Fleming that it was dangerous to build the railway bridge on ac- 

 count of the great floods that had taken place there for months in 

 1825 and other years. My later knowledge showed that Mr. 

 Fleming had not taken into account that the Red River was 

 perhaps four times as wide in 1879 as it was in 1825. I make the 

 following statement of a Mr. McDermot, one of the early settlers : 

 "The Red River channel at Winnipeg is very different now to 

 what it was when the first settlers came in. The soil is alluvial 

 and the continual action of the water on the banks is having the 

 effect of increasing the width of the waterway." It is said that 

 Mr. McDermot first crossed the stream on a small oak tree that 

 had fallen into the channel. Today, several trees would be neces- 



