With her feeders and tributaries tapping the distant, beautiful valleys of historic Arcadia and a trunk line that ensures a through fast freight service from ancient Quebec—an ideal gateway for men who go down to the sea in ships—the second steel highway in Canada’s transcontinental trio stretches hundreds of miles far and away through rolling uplands, untouched forests and waving wheat fields to Burrard Inlet and flourishing Vancouver, a busy maritime mart and door to the placid Pacific.

Built or purchased and gradually assembled by Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, the capitalization of the Canadian Northern Railway System, which will be taken over by the Government of the Dominion of Canada, has been reckoned at approximately $43,000 per mile for 10,000 miles of railway actually under operation, and during the arbitration proceedings at Osgoode Hall, Toronto, Mr. Pierce Butler, St. Paul, Minn., counsel speaking in behalf of his clients, stated that the railway was now on a basis of $50,000,000 gross earnings a year.

Previous to the declaration of war the “C.N.R.” was financed mainly by British capitalists whose intentions, apart from expected profit, were to directly increase the yield and transportation facilities for wheat against the possibilities of war, having in mind how far below consumption was their own production of the fundamental food.

In 1896 the Manitoba Legislature passed a charter, with land grants, providing for the construction of the Lake Manitoba Railway & Canal Company, which was not taken advantage of until 1899, when Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann purchased and commenced construction from Gladstone, Manitoba, to Winnipegosis, Manitoba, 123 miles, and operation was inaugurated January 3rd, 1897.

Construction was started the same year on the Manitoba & Southeastern Railway from Winnipeg to the Great Lakes, and in November, 1898, 45 miles of it were operated, St. Boniface to Marchand.

The Northern Pacific Railway lines in Manitoba were acquired in 1901, and in the same year the thin edge of the wedge was inserted in Ontario when Parry Sound rejoiced over its first railway connection with the outside—a 3.3 mile spur to a Canada Atlantic Railway junction.

In 1911 the track-end had reached the foot-hills of the Rockies and engineers declare the C.N.R.’s low elevation at the Yellow Head Pass, and where its line later decends to the sea by the valleys of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers through the Cascade Range, locates the track only a few feet above tidewater of the Pacific Ocean.

At one point on the “C.N.R.” mountain division the track is only 4½ miles from the base of Mount Robson—altitude 13,068 feet—the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains.

With the completion of the “C.N.R.” central Montreal terminal, near Dominion Square, which is approached by a 3.3 mile double tracked tunnel beneath Mount Royal, the Directorate will have an exceptional advantage in being able to move solid trains from west to east without backing down from dead-end tracks or breaking up their train formation.

The “C.N.R.” serves urban centres having more than 1,000 population containing 90% of the population of the towns and cities of Alberta and 97% of Saskatchewan, the centre of the wheat belt.

If the system should be extended to connect Toronto with Hamilton it would then have access to cities and towns aggregating 60% of the town dwellers of the entire provinces, which also produce 70% of their total manufactured products.

In 1916 the “C.N.R.” carried 132,000,000 bushels of grain: if reduced to flour and the manufactured flour which it transported be added thereto, the foodstuffs from territory along the “C.N.R.” would be sufficient to supply the British Isles’ 45,000,000 population with four pounds of bread each per week for six months. The “C.N.R.” should therefore, be regarded, especially since the advent of war, as an essential to the life of the Empire.

Statistics go to show that in the Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, where the principal Canadian pulp and paper mills are situated, those of the greatest capacity—or 53% of the total capacity—are situated exclusively on “C.N.R.” lines.

For the year that ended with July, 1916, the exports of paper amounted to $21,680,000 of which 88% went to the United States, and the total exports of pulpwood, pulp and paper for that year were valued at $40,865,266. United States consumers gladly took 87% of this immense output, but the United Kingdom received only 6%.

During 1917, 85,000,000 feet of British Columbia lumber, in 3,850 cars, were handled by “C.N.R.” to the Prairie Provinces and Eastern Canada. Balsam and Douglas fir, red cedar, spruce, hemlock, &c., predominated. Silver spruce for aeroplanes came also, and as a result of the efforts of the Imperial Munitions Board the output of the latter has been recently doubled, the monthly production at present being approximately 1,200,000 feet.

Mr. W. H. Moore, Secretary of “C.N.R.”, in “Railway Nationalization and the Average Citizen”, makes some clear and terse comparisons of deep interest to the public spirited tax-payer anent the government’s aid given in cash, land and guaranteed bonds to “C.N.R.”, and subsidiary properties, and also to other Canadian railways, especially the Canadian Pacific Railway. He sets down that the “C.N.R.” received from federal, provincial and municipal coffers.—

In rebuttal, the Government Bureau of Railway Statistics tabulates—

The Dominion Government’s Board of Arbitrators—Sir William Meredith, Chief Justice Harris and Wallace Nesbitt, K.C.,—which submitted a report as to the value of 600,000 shares of Canadian Northern Railway common stock, consumed 50 days from March to the middle of May in hearing the testimony of legal counsel and valuation experts, the proceedings totalling over 1,500,000 words of evidence and costing about $100,000.

The Board’s award of $10,800,000 for the railway stock valuated, exceeded by $800,000 the limit for same made by Act of Parliament, which was $10,000,000.

Each group of participating principals paid its own costs, but the Government bore the cost of taking the evidence.

The Dominion Government is perfecting a plan whereby the “C.N.R.” will be operated as a corporation under a board of directors to be appointed by the Government. Time will tell if this method reaches fruition.

The total liabilities being taken over by the Government in connection with the “C.N.R.” are $438,264,377.67 and the assets sum up to $528,437,885.74.

Speaking for himself and also voicing the views of Sir Donald Mann and Third Vice-President D. B. Hanna, Sir William Mackenzie contended that the “C.N.R.” was destined to be an essential factor in the expansion of this country and that in the opinion of the transportation experts who had examined the situation, their properties would be particularly useful in the reconstruction days on which this land must soon enter. He said his associates had devoted the best of their years in developing the system to the present state of efficiency and confidently relied on the future to justify their work and estimates of values.

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