sterling, not
for the Pacific line itself, but to complete other extensions of the
Pacific Company's system of a directly competitive character with the
Grand Trunk, and which could never have been finished but for this
British money, so raised. While I do not enter into the controversy, it
still seems to me that blame lies nearer home than in Canada, if blame
be deserved at all. Great financiers seem sometimes ready to devour
their own industrial children.
The Canadian Pacific Railway from Quebec to Port Moody is a mixture of
the new and the old. The first section, from Quebec to Montreal, is an
old friend, the North Shore Railway, once possessed by the Grand Trunk
Company, and sold back to the Canadian Government for purposes of
extending the Pacific route to tide-water at Quebec, and making one,
throughout, management. From Montreal to Ottawa, and beyond, is another
section of older-made line. The piece from Port Arthur to Winnipeg is
an older railway, made by the Canadian Government. Again, on the
Pacific there is the British Columbia Government Railway. All the rest,
round the head of Lake Superior up to Port Arthur, from Winnipeg across
the Great Prairies to Calgary, and on to, and across, the Rocky
Mountains, the crossings of the Selkirk and other Columbian Ranges, is
new Railway--with works daring and wonderful.
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