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, 



