40 Timehri. 
Tt has a Pacific Coast service and is negotiating for an Atlantic Coast service 
to tap the West Indies. It owns a chain of mammoth hotels which attract 
tourists in thousands to Canada. Its founders are multi-millionaires. It is a 
corporation of vast wealth and Canada has, not alone, not regretted its own 
wonderful generosity to the.original scheme, but has actively advanced other 
similar proposals, of which policy the end is not yet. It was prophesied, how- 
ever, in 1881, and the prophecy was supported by expert opinion, the syndi- 
cate being at the same time vilified by every imaginable calumny and abuse, 
that the line, if it could ever be constructed at all, which was denied, could 
never make sufficient income to pay for its axle-grease. 
I have already mentioned that the Canadian Grand Trunk missed the first 
opportunity of getting through to the Pacific. The appointment to its Presi- 
dency of an energetic American, Charles M. Hays, which with a short interval 
has lasted since 1899, marked the arrival of a more active policy. Hays planned 
the construction of another transcontinental railway running generally some 
hundreds of miles to the north of the Canadian Pacific from New Brunswick 
via Quebec, Winnipeg, Edmondton, and over the Rocky and Cascade ranges 
to Port Rupert on the Pacific, about 400 miles north of Vancouver. From 
Winnipeg westwards the line is between the 50° and 55° N.L. where a few years 
ago It was stoutly asserted by the “experts ” that no wheat could be grown. 
We know better now. A vast new grain-growing country has been opened 
up, @ great rival, to the Canadian-Pacific created in a country regarded as 
almost uninhabifble from cold and barrenness, and the indomitable character 
of the English-speaking race in the face of difficulties has been again shown by a 
mighty engineering feat and by the settlement of an uninhabited country m 
the space of a few years with hundreds of thousands of the homes of men of 
many races who are now loyal citizens of the British Empire. 
All this has been done since 1902 while this colony has sat still 
and talked of its lack of population, of the prohibitive cost of railway 
construction, of the unknown or uncertain character of the resources 
of the interior and of not being able to afford to develop its only 
asset. We have investigated nothing and attempted nothing. Needless 
to say our population has stood still, treading its patient round under 
the complex panoply of an old and wealthy community provided 
with every detail of civilised administration. The standard of govern- 
ment has been that of the four mile radius from Charing Cross. It 
is useless to hold the executive to blame in what is virtually a self-govern- 
ing colony. The Combined Court has called the tune. A eomplete equip- 
ment of unproductive even if useful institutions—Poor Law, Orphan Asylum, 
Alms Houses, Tuberculosis Hospitals, Dispensaries, Soup-kitchens. Reforma- 
tories, elaborate and expensive educational systems, has devoured our 
resources. Our criminal classes on their arrival from Onderneeming 
{ndustrial School, where they have had every advantage an English 
public school can afford, are lappedin the arms of the Borstal System, 
tucked in with the goodnight chocolate on their lips and are met at 
the prison door on each fresh emergence by the Prisoners’ Aid Society 
and all the other resources of local philanthropy. Needless to say that 
