76 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



The absence of proper road communication is probably the most 

 serious handicap, both to the railways and to those who use the land. 

 It is in regard to highways that Canada suffers most from lack of 

 proper means of distribution. Although, in a country of such wide 

 spaces as Canada, railways are more essential at first than good 

 roads — yet it is also true that the railways can never be put to ade- 

 quate use without being fed by a system of good roads. With the 

 coming of the motor, the question of road transportation has taken 

 on a new meaning in recent years, and a good road system is essential 

 to successful farm settlement. 



One of the reasons for our inability to make better roads is that 

 the road system has not been designed so as to save waste in road 

 space and road construction. Our want of proper planning 

 and our public policies as regards land settlement have encouraged 

 the spreading of the population over too wide a territory. As has 

 been shown in previous chapters, productive land in the older pro- 

 vinces and in the older parts of new provinces is neglected or allowed 

 to be idle, or, where it is being used, too little effort is being made 

 to help in securing its more intensive use on the ground that it has 

 been alienated from the government; meanwhile money is spent, 

 first, to attract population to new areas, and afterwards to provide 

 new facilities to meet demands thus created. In the older settled 

 regions, perhaps ten times the present population is needed to pro- 

 perly use the land as well as the existing equipment in railways, 

 highways, and other facilities. Attractions must continue to be of- 

 fered to the pioneer who wants to open up new territory, but it should 

 be on a system which would permit good roads to be gradually exten- 

 ded to the new territory, and it should be carried out simultaneously 

 with a policy of encouragement of the industries and resources of 

 the partly improved territory, even where the latter is in private 

 hands. 



Road Improvement in Great Britain 



Those who say that the good roads in the rural districts of Great 

 Britain are due to the fact that they have been under construction for 

 many hundreds of years, and that some were made by the Romans, are, 

 apparently, not aware that in the eighteenth century the roads in 

 England were hardly passable. For instance, it is reported that in 1703 

 it took Prince George of Denmark fourteen hours to travel forty miles 

 from Windsor to Petworth. Arthur Young, writing of Suffolk roads in 

 the middle of the eighteenth century, said," Some of the roads were lit- 

 tle more than mere ponds of liquid dirt, with a scattering of loose flints 

 just sufficient to lame every horse that moves across them, with the 



