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Rails across Canada

AmericanMuseum ofNaturalHistory

Rails across Canada

On the rails 1 Vancouver-Kamloops • Kamloops-Jasper • Jasper-Edmonton;

Edmonton-Winnipeg • Winnipeg-Sudbury • Sudbury-Montreal

Canadian basics 37 Government • Population • Language • Time zones • Metric

system • Media • Taxes • Food • Separatist movement

Early Canada 41 Petroglyphs and pictographs • The buffalo jump at

Wanuskewin • Ancient and modern indigenous cultures

Modern history: Cartier to Chrêtien 49 Chronology • The fur traders: Hudson's Bay Company and the

North West Company • Railway history: The building of the transcontinental railway; The Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad & Canadian National Railways

Index 68

AmericanMuseum ofNaturalHistory

2 • Rails across Canada

Montreal

Ottawa

Winnipeg

Saskatoon

Edmonton

Kamloops

Jasper

Fort Frances

Thunder Bay

Vancouver

On the rails

Rails across Canada • 3

Vancouver to Kamloops

VancouverContrary to all logic, Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island. Instead, it sits beau-tifully on a mainland peninsula with the ocean before it and the Rockies behind. Its mild climate and inspiring scenery may have contributed a good deal to the laid-back demeanor of its inhabitants, who, Canadians are fond of saying, are more Californian in their outlook than Canadian.

Vancouver's view out towards the Pacific is appropriate, for the last two decades have seen an extraordinary influx of investment and immigration from the Orient, notably Hong Kong. Toronto and the Prairies are much further away, to Van-couver's way of thinking, than are Sydney or Seoul. Vancouver is Canada's third largest city, after Toronto and Montreal, and the country's busiest port.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the most heavily settled area of British Co-lumbia was its northwest coast. The tribes from this region (conveniently known as the Northwest Coast Indians) enjoyed one of the highest standards of living of their time, benefitting from a relatively mild climate, a forest rich in edible plants, fruits and nuts, and an endless supply of Pacific salmon.

The Europeans explored the province from the sea as well as from the interior. Francis Drake is believed to have sighted the coast during his around-the-world voyage of 1579. In the 18th century Spanish ships sailed north from California, and Russians travelled southwards from Alaska. Captain James Cook made a thorough exploration of the coast in 1778, trading Chinese china for Indian pelts at great profit on Vancouver Island. The success of this venture brought the inevi-table British delegation to claim the land for the king. This was accomplished by Captain George Vancouver, a midshipman on Cook's expedition, who went on to map virtually the entire coast between 1792 and 1794. The exploitation of British Columbia for its furs began in earnest with the establishment of trading posts by the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, those two rival fur trading empires which play such a tremendous role in the making of Canada.

The difficulties associated with the tremendous distance between this new colony and Britain's more easterly possessions led to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental line in 1885.

As you roll out of Vancouver, you'll be entering the wide and lush Fraser Valley. This is the delta of the Fraser River, a flat region of diked flood plains almost reminiscent of the Netherlands, but with the surprise twist of mountain peaks as a backdrop. Over a 50 million year period the Fraser River brought rich soil into the valley from the interior, burying its rock floor until it lay almost a mile beneath the present surface.

Between Hope and Boston Bar lies the Fraser Canyon gorge, or 'Forty Miles of Hell !' as its early visitors must have called it. When Simon Fraser arrived here in 1808, he found the local inhabitants using ladders to circumvent the gorge, sensi-bly not wanting to risk their canoes in its whirlpools. His explorations and those of fellow Nor'wester David Thompson did much to expand fur trading activities in the area and, later, settlement, but it was the Fraser Valley Gold Rush beginning in 1858 that set off the area's development in earnest. Few of those streaming into

"British Columbia is its own ineffable self because it pulls the protective blanket

of the Rockies over its head and has no need to look out. "

Alan Fotheringham, Maclean's Magazine 1996


Mileage markersPoints of interest along the rail lines are listed with a mile number. The numbers

coincide with those on the little white rectangular mileage markers on posts by the side of the track. The markers tell you how

far you've travelled within a subdivision, which is a length of track punctuated by

what's called a railway divisional point (usually an intersection of two rail lines).

Each subdivision starts at mile 0 and runs east to west or south to north. Subdivisions

can be up to 300 miles long (on older rail lines they were set at a maximum of 125 miles, which was the average distance a

steam locomotive could travel in 12 hours). Although the markers measure distances

from east to west, the same numbers are used on the eastbound tracks.

British Columbia made their fortunes in gold, but many stayed to farm in an area billed by one transportation company as "unequalled for its beauty and salubrity of climate." To accommodate the thousands of gold-seekers pouring into the region, the Cariboo Road from Yale to Barkerville was completed in 1865.

In 1915 a second transcontinental railway line to Vancouver was constructed, this one by the Canadian Northern Pacific Company. It was later amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway system. This is the line you will be following across Canada.

The CPR and CNR tracks parallel each other for most of the distance to Kam-loops, usually on opposite sides of rivers and canyons. Interchanges have been built in a number of spots, allowing the trains to switch tracks if a rock slide or avalanche blocks the way - not infrequent in either the Fraser or the Thompson valleys. The threat of these natural disasters accounts for the number of slide detectors, tunnels and bridges along the rail route. The stretch between Boston Bar and Kamloops alone boasts some 4.5 miles of slide detector fences, 28 bridges and 23 tunnels and snowsheds.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

For the first 60 miles out of Vancouver, the train carries you through the fertile landscape of the Fraser Delta and the wide Fraser Val-ley. Dutch farmers who settled along the river in 1848 built dikes, which created tracts of low-lying land on the marshy floodplains that resemble the 'polders' of the Netherlands. Dairy farms and orchards are framed by the mountains, with several waterfalls to complete the picture. You'll notice stands of black cottonwood and the distinc-

Maps throughout this handbook are adapted from the Railway Association of Canada's

Atlas of Canadian Railways (Montreal, 1996)

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tively gnarled coast maple. The Fraser River is named for Simon Fraser who in 1808 followed the 850-mile course of the river from its origin in the Trident Range to its mouth on the Pacific Coast.

Mile 87 Watch for the white cone of Mount Baker, 10,778 feet high and 40 miles away in Washington State. Across the river, Mission was settled in 1862 by a Roman Catholic priest who sought to convert the Indians. Silverdale, also on the opposite bank, was the site of Canada's first train robbery: American Bill Minor and two accomplices boarded the westbound train in Mission City on the evening of September 10, 1904. They stopped the train at Silverdale, left the passenger cars behind and quite ingeniously drove off with the locomotive and the baggage/parcel car. The robbery went off without a hitch and the three netted $7,000. Two years later Miner tried again, stopping a CPR train near Kamloops. This time, he and his two cohorts unfortunately uncoupled the wrong car and inside found only $15 and a bottle of liver pills. On top of it, two of their horses ran off, and the three had to make their getaway on a single animal. Some miles away, a police officer three men acting strangely and stopped them. Miner was sentenced to life in prison but escaped to the US in 1907.

Mile 71 Chilliwack is an important farming area, producing fruit and vegetables and a good deal of beef and milk as well. The name stems from the Indian word for 'going back up', referring to the return home from a visit to the mouth of the Fraser.

Mile 40 The Fraser Canyon begins at Hope. For the next 40 miles, until Boston Bar, the Fraser River is forced into a narrow gorge between the canyon walls, surging over and around huge boulders and jagged rocks.

While you contemplate the rapids, think salmon. The headwaters of the Fraser's tributaries are the spawning ground of millions of Pacific Salmon. The newly hatched fry begin their migration down the river to the Pacific Ocean in March. Only a quarter will make it all the way - but the worst is yet to come: two years later, upon reaching maturity, the survivors turn around and swim all the way back upriver to their birthplaces, where they will spawn and die. The fish swim upstream at an average of 20 miles a day, literally leaping over obstacles in their paths.

Lady Franklin Rock lies massively at the very mouth of the Fraser Canyon. When explorer Sir John Franklin disappeared in 1845 during a search for the Northwest Passage, Lady Franklin thought he might have sailed up the Fraser. A search was conducted along the river but its prog-ress was blocked by the rock that now bears her name. Just as well, as it turned out, for Sir John's remains were found several years later far away in the Arctic.

Mile 7 Hell's Gate is an aptly named rock formation where the gorge reaches its narrowest point, creating a spinning whirlpool known as the 'Devil's Wash Basin.' You might see rafters whirling through the water. Overhead are 'air trams' which carry tourists down into the canyon. In 1945, the Canadian and American governments cooperated to build fish ladders here, designed to slow the flow of the water in order to give the spawn-ing salmon a better chance of making it upstream. An old CN locomotive lies upside-down in the river at mile 3.

Yale became a roaring gold rush town after the Cariboo strikes in 1858. It was the starting point of the Cariboo Road that eventually led 400 miles northwards to the boomtown of Barkerville.

Boston Bar was named for the many Bostonians who arrived for the gold rush.

British Columbia is Canada's third largest province in surface area (366,000 square miles), and also comes third in terms of

population. About 70% of the land is covered in stunning but uninhabitable mountains, so the

vast majority of British Columbians live in the southwest corner of the province. These are a

diverse lot, from the very-very British in Victoria, to the lumberjacks of the interior, the cosmopolitan crowd of Vancouver and vibrant

Haida, Kwakiutl and Nootka bands of the northern coast. It's interesting to note that

almost half the people living in B.C. were born elsewhere.

British Columbia produces almost a quarter of the marketable timber in North America (it

supplies the world with chopsticks). Forestry is its largest industry, followed by mining and

fishing.


Mile 109 Jackass Mountain was on the old Cariboo Road route, and was nicknamed 'the hill of despair' by the mule drivers who had to coax the animals up the steepest grade on the trail. One enterprising gold-seeker imported 21 camels in 1862 as a hardier alternative to the mules. They were successful, but only to a degree: the mules were absolutely terrified of them, and in the resulting chaos the owner was forced to ship his camels off to a zoo.

Mile 103 This is the moment for bridge buffs: an 812-foot long, 220-foot high steel bridge over the turbulent Fraser. From the south end of the bridge looking west, you can also see the Cisco Bridge.

Mile 97 The clear blue South Thompson River merges with the Fraser River here at Lytton, the latter muddy from the silt collected on its journey through the mountains; the Thompson remains clear because it has been filtered through a series of lakes. The train follows the South Thompson and its canyon for the next 97 miles into Kamloops. The track is carved into the cliffs of the canyon, and switches back and forth across the river.

Mile 92 The highlight of the trip through Rainbow Canyon are the mauve, pink and rust cliffs near the Cape Horn tunnels and snowsheds.

Mile 90 Watch for the graphically-named Jaws of Death Gorge and Suicide Rapids to the east.

Mile 87 Visible remnants of the Cariboo Road include retaining walls and bridge foundations on the east side.

Mile 86-80 Both railways enter Rainbow Canyon here, named for the extraor-dinary colors of its cliffs. Indictment Hole Bridge on the CPR line at mile 86 was so named after it was said that anyone building a railway here should be indicted.

Mile 75-4 Hoodoos and the waterfall from Murray Creek are visible to the west.

Mile 67-5 The Martel bridges (mile 67) were named for a Frenchman who owned orchards nearby in 1855, and is particularly remembered for having kept his fortune buried in cans in his garden. Antoine Min-niabarriet, from the Basque region of France, founded a huge ranch here in the late 19th century.

Mile 60 Epson is the site of an Epsom salt mine established in 1919.

Mile 59-50 The train twists through gloomy Black Canyon for 5 miles or so, then crosses the South Thompson yet again. The river boasts some dramatic rapids here, and hoodoos can be seen high in the west. A 849-foot bridge crosses 70 feet above the South Thompson at mile 59. The last spike on the Canadian Northern Pacific line was driven in near mile 57 on January 23, 1915.

Mile 48 Ashcroft is the most arid town in Canada, with an average annual rainfall of only 7 inches. Plenty of bridges across the Thompson fol-low over the next 20 miles with terrific photo-ops.

Mile 47-46 Rattlesnake Hill, ravaged by erosion, is visible to the north. A 1950 landslide in this area caused the river water to rise above train height.

Mile 32 Walhachin was the site of a pre World War I 'Garden of Eden,' the creation of the Marquis of Anglesey, whose dream it was to grow orchards in the desert. A number of other upper-class Englishmen joined him to purchase land and settle here, attracted by the promot-ers' vision of genteel prosperity in an adventurous land. Within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, Walhachin became known as having the highest enlistment rate per capita of any Canadian community:

Gold miners riding shotgun along the Cariboo Road.

Public Archives of Canada

The Gold RushesIn 1858 at least 30,000 gold-seekers flooded the banks of the Fraser River on the stretch

between Hope and Lillooet, which lies on the BR Rail tracks to the north of our own. This 'New Eldorado' attracted prospectors

from as far away as California, where by then free gold had been depleted. The

richest discoveries of fine flour gold occurred between Hope and Yale in the

Fraser River lowlands. The aboriginal residents of the area were appalled at the

invasion of large companies of miners, which quickly led to an uprising.

In 1860 prospectors drawn from the Fraser River discovered free gold on the banks of the Horsefly River in the isolated Cariboo

Mountains. International publicity brought on a horde of hopefuls, particularly to

Barkerville which was mined right up until 1930. Access was so difficult that a special

road, the Cariboo, was built by a contingent of Royal Engineers imported from Britain for

the purpose. Much of the road had to be blasted from solid rock, one of the most

difficult stretches being that between Boston Bar and Hope. The Trans-Canada Highway

follows much of the Cariboo's route through the Fraser Canyon.


the orchards had failed due to inadequate soils, and the settlers were in any case fed up with the deprivations of Canada's western frontier.

Mile 28 Deadman's Valley looks every bit the part of a western movie setting, complete with caves, hoodoos, cacti and rattlesnakes. The valley is said to have been named for a North West Company employee killed there in 1815.

Mile 20-0 Three tunnels: Copper Creek at mile 20 (759 feet), Battle Bluff at mile 10 (2,831 feet), and Tranquille at mile 9 (217 feet). The CP tunnels are visible across the lake at mile 11.

The scenery for the last few miles into Kamloops includes Kamloops Lake, with sagebrush-covered hills in the background and oddly-con-trasting orchards up front. There is a good view of city as you cross a 1,338-foot bridge over the South Thompson.

Mile 0/139 Kamloops, at the convergence of the North and South Thompson rivers, is one of British Columbia's biggest cities (pop. 67,057) and its most important cattle centre. It was originally home to the Shus-wap tribe, who called it 'cume-loups,' or 'meeting of the waters.' It later functioned as a fur trading station, with bases established by the Pacific Fur Company in 1812 - the first white settlement in southern BC, followed by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821. The comple-tion of the CPR line in 1885 brought a torrent of new settlers, putting Kamloops on its way as a depot for the region. Ranching and fruit/vegetable growing initially dominated the city's economy, but by the 1960's the forest industry and mining had become more important.


Two tributaries of the Fraser River dominate the first half of this stretch: the South and the North Thompson. The Thompson was named for David Thompson, an explorer and trapper for the North West trading company. Thompson never actu-ally laid eyes on this river - Simon Fraser did the naming - but in the course of his travels, he surveyed more than two million square miles of western North America, and charted the Columbia River from its source to its mouth.

The high point - literally - of this route is the famed Yellowhead Pass, which will carry you through the Rocky Mountains and over the Continental Divide. The Divide is a line following the main ranges of the Rockies: on one side of the line rivers flow west to the Pacific; on the other they drain into the Arctic via the Mi-ette, Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers.

Mile 114 Fishermen once stretched nets across the rapids to the west of the tracks to catch salmon, hence the name Fishtrap Rapids. Ponderosa pines are visible here and there.

Mile 86 The village of Little Fort operated a cable ferry across the Thompson River, powered only by the current. The winter freeze creates a surface layer of ice so thick that a car can be safely driven across.

Mile 72 Watch for osprey nests balancing on the telegraph poles - lovely to see but a nightmare for maintenance.

Mile 68 As the trains swings northwards the terrain will change from ever-green slopes to dry, rugged plateau and lush, artificially irrigated fields. In July Clearwater commemorates the journey taken by 200 men (and one pregnant woman with 3 children) from Quebec and Ontario during the gold rush of 1862. Promised "the speediest, safest route to the gold diggings" by some fast-talking outfitter, these poor people instead spent 4 months travelling on foot, by cart and raft to Fort Kamloops. The Overlander Days, as the festival is known, culmi-nate in a 2-day log raft race down the river, repeating the final leg of the group's trip.

Mile 44 The Vavenby region is one of the few parts of BC where sheep are still ranched in any scale.

Mile 42 Mad River Rapids to the northwest. The sap from the white birches near the river was boiled to make a syrup used on pancakes or for sweetening coffee - similar to maple syrup in the east..

Mile 24 Groves of Western Red Cedar (totem pole trees) are fairly common in this area, the tallest trees reaching 200 feet.

Kamloops to Jasper

The Montane Cordillera EcozoneThis ecozone is dominated by the Rocky and

Columbia mountain ranges. It is largely blanketed by forests, with the trees

depending on climate and altitude - lodge-pole pines are typical at lower elevations;

white spruce, Douglas fir and western hemlock are common throughout. The

drier, warmer valley bottoms of the Fraser and Thompson rivers are populated by

Ponderosa pines. Precipitation ranges from 31 inches per year in the north to 78 inches

in the rainy south. Forest mammals in this ecozone include

moose, wapiti, mule deer, bighorn sheep, beaver, cougar, grizzly and black bears, wolf, wolverine, lynx, bobcat, coyote and badger. Resident birds include blue grouse, Stellar's

jay and black-billed magpie.


Mile 21-20 Watch for the rock slide detectors along the walls of the mountain here.

Mile 8 For the next eight miles the train follows a narrow and turbulent stretch of the North Thompson known as Little Hell's Gate or Porte d'Enfer.

Mile 132 Blue River is best known as a base for heli-skiing into the Monashee Range. The word 'monashee' is Gaelic for 'mountains and peace.' A succession of bridges follows, over the Blue River at 131.7, the Thun-der at 123.4, and the North Thompson at mile 123.1.

Mile 113 Pyramid Falls, to the east, plunge 300 feet from a lake on Mount Cheadle.

Mile 91 To the west you'll have a view of the Albreda Icefields Glacier, which is over 10,000 feet thick.

Mile 80 A 624-foot bridge crosses the Canoe River and offers lovely views in all directions.

Mile 76 The railbed here at Cranberry Marsh had to be built on a 'mattress' of logs to keep tracks from sinking into the muskeg.

Mile 74 Valemount is a little logging town nestled between the Rocky, Cari-boo and Monashee ranges. A bend in the tracks a little further along is known as 'Whiskey Curve' because of a derailment many years ago that deposited a cargo of liquor into Valemount residents' waiting arms.

Muskeg is a sphagnum bog

"Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the loafer."

Rudyard Kipling, Letters to the Family, 1908

Slide detectors are fences with an active wire. If a large rock falls against the fence, it

breaks the wire and automatically signals the train to stop.

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Mile 73 Terry Fox Memorial Mountain was named for the young Canadian cancer sufferer who in April 1980 set out to run across Canada on one leg to raise money for cancer research. He made it from St. John's as far as Thunder Bay - 3,358 miles - before it was discovered that the disease had spread into his lungs, forcing him to abandon. He died in June 1981 having raised $24 million.

Mile 65 A sharp turn northwards, after which the permanently snow-covered Premier Range comes into view to the west. Each of the eleven peaks are named for British or Canadian Prime Ministers. The largest is Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Mile 60-52 To the north, Mount Robson at 12,972 feet is the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The native name for the mountain is 'Yuh Hai Has Hun', 'mountain of the spiritual road.' It's also known as the Dome, but its shape is rarely completely visible because of cloud cover.

Mile 50 Keep your eyes peeled for a quick glimpse of Glacier Creek's roaring waterfall to the south.

Mile 48 The 1,670 foot tunnel here was built after a 1916 avalanche buried a crew of railway workers under 10 feet of snow.

Mile 36 The clear, green waters of Moose Lake are full of rainbow trout. The waterfall seems to have various names (Rainbow, Rockingham, Thunder) but in any case originates in the Selwyn Range. As the name implies, the lake is a likely spot for sighting moose.

Mile 22 Yellowhead Lake appears to the south, framed by Mount Fitzwilliam and Mount Rockingham: one of the Rockies' best views. The con-struction crews of the competing Grand Trunk and Canadian North-ern railways shot at each other across the lake in 1915. The origin of the lake's earliest English name, Cow Dung Lake, is unknown.

ALBERTA

Mile 17 Finally, the Yellowhead Pass (3,718 feet above sea level) which fig-ures so prominently in Canadian railway history.

Yellowhead was used for centuries by the area's earliest inhabitants as a link to the plains and the buffalo hunts. The first white men to cross the Yellowhead were early 19th century fur traders, who called it Leather Pass since so many moose hides and skins were shipped across it. The 1860's saw the passage westwards of gold-seekers on their way to the Cariboo gold fields. In the 1870's, CPR surveyors came to stake out Yellowhead

The Canadian Rocky MountainsThe Rockies form part of the Cordilleran mountain system, which covers most of

British Columbia but does not extend into the Yukon or Alaska (these are the Coast, Alaska and Brooks ranges). Many Rockies

peaks reach up to almost 12,000 feet; the highest is Mt. Robson, west of Jasper,

at 12,972 feet. Between the Rockies and the Pacific Coast

lies the narrow Rocky Mountain Trench, the longest valley in North America, stretching

almost 900 miles from Montana to the Yukon border. The Icefields Parkway runs

along the Trench, offering tremendous views of the Rockies as well as the Cariboo,

Purcell, Selkirk and Monashee ranges which form its western flank.

The Rockies are composed of sedimentary rock deposited by ancient seas some 1.5

billion years ago. Between 120 and 70 million years ago (the Tertiary Era), colliding

tectonic plates caused vast thrust faults, giving the mountains their distinct layered appearance. Glaciation during the last Ice

Age, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, carved the mountains into the U-shaped valleys,

canyons and bowl-shaped cirques you see today.

The province of Alberta comes in like a lamb, out like a lion. The east and centre of

the province are flat, rolling prairie lands, the west climbs into the dramatic Rockies.

The province is less than 100 years old, created in 1905 along with Saskatchewan. It

was named after Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Caroline Alberta, who

was married to a Governor-General of Canada. The two mainstays of the

province's economy are wheat and oil, the latter bringing a great boom in the 1970's to both Edmonton and Calgary, the main cities.

Alberta's population is 2.5 million, and it is the fourth largest province in Canada.


Pass as a possible route through the Rockies for the transcontinental tracks, but opted instead for Kicking Horse Pass to the south. Forty years later, those same stakes were dusted off and put into use when the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railway began laying their tracks in 1912. 'Yellowhead' stems from Pierre Hatsina-ton, a golden-haired trapper known by all as 'Tête Jaune.'

Mile 0/235 Jasper At the east end of the station stands a 65-foot totem pole carved by the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and purchased by the CNR in 1915. The raven on the top shows that its carvers were members of the Raven clan. At the west end of the station is a steam locomotive which hauled transcontinental trains through the Rockies until 1954.

The first tourist facility at Jasper was a tent camp established on the shores of Lake Beauvert in 1915. The CNR took the site over in 1921 and built nine cabins, creating the Jasper Park Lodge, one of the earliest hotels in its chain.

The 4,200 square mile Jasper National Park is the biggest of its kind in Canada, established in 1907.

Left to right: Lodgepole pine, Balsam fir, Sitka spruce, Tamarack and White spruce

Totem polesTotem poles represented a functional art

form for the Northwest Coast Indians, who lived, as their name implies, along the north west coast of British Columbia. They served many purposes: some groups made them as

house posts; for others they served as mortuary poles, supporting large wooden

boxes containing the remains of important people; many served no practical function

beyond welcoming new arrivals, describing a family lineage (like a heraldic crest), or

commemorating an important event.Totem poles were visual statements about

group membership and identity. Each figure carved on a totem was a crest in itself,

depicting an individual, a spirit or an animal such as a bear or even a mosquito or whale. They were carved of red cedar and painted black, red or blue, and sometimes white or yellow. They varied in size, but the largest

had a diameter of almost 4 feet at the base and reached up to 50 feet.

The Columbia IcefieldThe Fraser River, as well as the North

Saskatchewan, the Columbia and the Athabasca, are all fed by the meltwaters of

the Columbia Icefield, a mass of ice covering a high plateau between Mount Columbia and Mount Athabasca. The Icefield is a vestige of

the great shield of ice that once covered most of Canada, and its surface area of about

125 square miles contains about 30 distinct glaciers. Its depth reaches 1400 feet. Tree ring studies have indicated that the icefield

advances and recedes in cycles, the most recent advance occurring around 1840.


Jasper to Edmonton

The first spike on the Grand Truck Pacific tracks you are following was planted on August 29, 1905 at Gregg, Manitoba. It was not an entirely popular project from the outset, for the Canadian Pacific Railway already crossed the prairies to the Rockies, the Canadian Northern had just been granted a charter - and many questioned the need for a third, parallel line. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier allowed himself to be persuaded by six of his cabinet members, who also happened to be directors of the GTP.

The builders of the Grand Trunk Pacific planned a route from Winnipeg over the Yellowhead Pass to Prince Rupert, a point on the Pacific coast to the north of Vancouver. The Canadian Northern's plan followed precisely the same route, but terminated in Vancouver itself. Construction on the western segments of both lines began in 1912, and was so competitive that surveyors for each company tried to fool the others by surveying false routes. In some locations the two lines were built so close together as to seem part of a double-track railway. Water and fist fights were common, as well as night-time raids on competitors' supplies.

In the end, both railway companies defaulted on their loans, and both were absorbed into the Canadian National Railway system. Services were consolidated, which led to almost 100 miles of track being torn up and sent to France for war-time use. The tracks used today are largely those laid by the GTP, except for the section between Wolf Creek and Snaring. The Yellowhead Highway is built on the unused railbeds of the Canadian Northern line.

The search for a fur trade route across the Continental Divide brought North West Company clerk Jasper Hawes to this area in the early 1800's. By 1813 a cluster of three log cabins known collectively as Jasper House stood at the mouth of the Rocky River near Devona. These provided a supply station for voyageurs (licensed fur traders) travelling across what were to become the Yellowhead and Athabasca passes until 1864, when Jasper House closed.

The Athabasca River accompanies us as far as Entrance, so called because it marks the beginning of the Rockies for those travelling westwards. The Athabasca originates in the Columbia Icefield south of Jasper and flows northwards to Lake Athabasca. It was first explored in the late 18th century by Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company, and David Thompson (then employed by the Hudson's Bay Company: he later decamped to the competing North West Company).


Mile 227 Henry House was another, older supply station for trappers and fur traders. It was built in 1811 by William Henry of the North West Company, who had been a member an expedition to the Athabasca Pass led by David Thompson.

Mile 221-197 The Brûlé and Jasper lakes become narrower each year as the Atha-basca continues to fill them with silt from the mountains. Lake Brûlé was named for Etienne Brûlé, the 17th century explorer who was the first Frenchman to live among native Canadians.

Mile 215 The old Jasper House site is at Devona.

Mile 209 To the south, in the Miette Range, are the Miette Hot Springs where the water percolating through fissures in the subterranean bedrock reaches 129°F.

Mile 206 Park Gate marks the end of Jasper National Park.

Mile 204 The train enters a 735-foot tunnel under Disaster Point. Mountain sheep are often to be seen licking the salty mud at the foot of the point.

Mile 201 Folding Mountain is made entirely of limestone and siltstone. When the Rockies were formed, the upwards thrust forced the horizontal beds into folds known as 'anticlines.' The Bosch Range lies to the north, the Miette to the south.

Mile 193 Across the Athabasca River for the last time.

Mile 189 Entrance marks the official end of the Rockies.

Mile 150 By this point you're down to 3,400 feet above sea level, looking over the McLeod River.

Mile 136 A pretty view of Sundance Creek.

Mile 129 The Grand Trunk Pacific reached Edson, 'the gateway to the last great west,' in 1910.

Mile 122 The 130-foot high bridges over Wolf Creek (652 feet long) and the McLeod River (1,066 feet long) slow the train to 50 mph.

Mile 67 A 902-foot bridge over the Pembina River. In 1862 gold seekers pad-dling along the river to the Cariboo gold fields noticed smoke waft-

Henry Houseý EnglishýJasper

Pembina River

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Devona

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Solomon

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Wabamun

LakeWabamun

Chip Lake

Maligne Lake

Little Smoky River

CP Rail Service

Pigeon Lake

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k


ing along the river and expected a volcano. What they were seeing was, in fact, a series of coal seams burning naturally. These deposits are now mined to fuel the power plants at Lake Wabamun.

Mile 55-44 Wabamun Lake Provincial Park is a favorite canoeing and fishing (northern pike, yellow perch, whitefish) spot. 'Wabamun' is Cree for mirror. A less picturesque face of the lake appears at mile 45: coal-powered generating stations.

Mile 32-31 Carvel was named after Richard Carvel, a novel by Winston Churchill. A Russian orthodox church stands to the north of the tracks at mile 32.

Mile 19 The Spruce Grove area was first explored by fur traders in the 1700's, but the Cree inhabitants had absolutely no interest in trap-ping on their behalf. So, in 1825 the North West Company brought in a number of Iroquois hunters from Montreal, led by Louis and Bernard Callihoo. From here they gathered furs by canoe as far as James Bay, Moose Factory, Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan River. The Iroquois married Cree women, and their descendents still live in the area.

EdmontonEdmonton is the provincial capital of Alberta and Canada's most northerly city. The cold winters at this latitude have given rise to a populace that spends months of year indoors: Edmonton boasts North America's largest shopping centre (800 stores, 110 restaurants), and the world's largest indoor amusement park. The city's Brick Warehouse claims it sells more furniture than any other store in the world.

The Hudson's Bay and North West companies arrived here within months of each other to set up their fur-trading bases in 1795. Beaver pelts, otter and muskrat furs were their commodities of choice, which were purchased from the Cree and Blackfoot bands. White settlers arrived after Confederation in 1870, and within ten years were operating coal mines, saw mills and a boat-building factory. Ed-monton was the principal staging point for the Yukon Gold Rush in 1897, and many stayed to swell the city's turn-of-the century population to 4,000. Economic boomlets occurred with the arrival of the two transcontinental rail lines in 1915 and with the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942, but the city's big boom came with the discovery of several oil deposits within a 100-mile radius.

If Calgary is the administrative centre of Canada's oil business, Edmonton is its core. At night a parade of giant storage tanks are lit by gas flares and spotlights, resembling nothing more than a scene out of a science fiction movie.


Much of the Edmonton-to-Winnipeg portion of our route follows the Carlton Trail, the route taken by explorers, settlers and traders before the completion of the Canadian Pacific line in the 1880's. The GTP's assumption was that the new rail line would attract a flood of settlers into a previously inaccessible area, just as the CPR tracks had done. By the time the tracks were completed, however, the human flood had dwindled to a trickle and the new settlers failed to materialize. As a result, even today the 739-mile section between Edmonton and Winnipeg passes through only eight towns with a population greater than 1,500. By 1919 the debt-ridden GTP was put into receivership, to be incorporated a year later into the Canadian National Railway system.

This route has several unusual features. For one, most stations are built on the north side of the tracks with their waiting rooms facing east or south. This design made the uninsulated buildings easier to heat, and meant that the freight areas at the western end of the stations suffered the worst of the cold. Grain eleva-tors - which were highly flammable - are on the opposite side of the tracks from the station, which usually fronted the village, in order to prevent any fires from spreading.

The second quirk was the GTP practice of naming all its stations in alphabetical order. Many of the names have been changed now, but some odd ones remain. Yonker, for example, was the maiden name of the mother of a GTP superinten-dent, and the next stop is creatively called Zeneta.

Edmonton to Winnipeg

Carvel

Spruc

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Ryleyý Holdený Bruce

VikingKinsellaý Jarrowý Irma

Fabyan

WainwrightGreenshields

HeathDunn

Yonker

Manitou Lake

BeaverhillLake

BuffaloLake

SullivanLake

Sounding Lake

Frog Lake

MurielLake

North Saskatchew a n River

Battle River

Sand River

Central Western Railway Corporation

Canadian Pacific Railway Service

Labuma

Camrose

Alix

Stettler

Lloydminster


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Chauvin

Attland

SASKATCHEW

ANALBERTA

EDMONTONClover Bar


So farewell to Alberta, farewell to the westIt's backwards I'll goto the girl I love best

I'll go back to the eastand get me a wife

And never eat cornbreadthe rest of my life.

Prairie folk song

On its way to Winnipeg, the train rolls through some of the most fertile land in Canada. These are the great Canadian prairies, enormous fields as far as you can see, the skyline broken only by farm buildings and towering grain elevators.

Mile 259 In spite of its pretty name, the Edmonton suburb of Clover Bar will stand out only for its huge oil refineries.

Mile 240 You are now passing Beautiful Cooking Lake, origins unknown.

Mile 205 Holden boasts an onion-domed Ukrainian church and convent.

Mile 184 Viking was settled by Scandinavians in 1903.

Mile 150-147 The trestle bridge over the Battle River is 2,911 feet long and sits 200 feet above the water. Watch for the fire tower on Hart Hill to the south and look north for a big view over the river valley.

Mile 140 Wainwright was created by transplanting another settlement - in-cluding houses, stores and even the church - two miles from its original location. Oil and gas were discovered here in 1921 and many wells are still producing. A Canadian Air Force Base lies to the south, on the site of a now-dismantled wildlife preserve for buffalo. The animals were moved up to the Wood Buffalo National Park near the North West Territories border in 1941. Peregrine falcons are bred here by the Canadian Wildlife Service, which has successfully increased the Alberta population from 2 in 1970 to several hundred today.

Mile 131-112 The train crosses Ribstone Creek three times. Two enormous images of bison were carved by Cree in quartzite rocks along the creek about 1,000 years ago. Beads, tobacco and meat were left at the base of the rocks to ensure good hunting.

Mile 101 The Alberta/Saskatchewan border. Central Time Zone.

SASKATCHEWAN

Mile 64-67 The tracks curve as they approach the rolling hills of ranching coun-try. Macklin, just south of Manitou Lake, is the site of the annual World Championship Bunnock Tournament. Bunnock or 'Bones' is a game invented in the early 1800's by Russian soldiers posted to northern Siberia. They tried to play horseshoes to pass the time, but found it impossible to drive the pegs into frozen ground. Some cre-ative soul discovered, however, that the ankle bones of a horse could stand upright on their own, and dreamed up a new game in which each side tries to knock down the opposing team's set of bones.

Mile 56-54 The Killsquaw Lakes on either side of the tracks are said to have been named for an Indian massacre of women long ago.

Mile 247 As the saying goes locally, "New York is big - but we're Biggar!". Mr. Biggar was a corporate counsel for the GTP.

Mile 202 The old Grandora station (allegedly from a homesteader's "Isn't it grand, Dora ?") has been converted to a private home.

SaskatoonSaskatoon was founded in 1882 by a group of Ontario Methodists, temperance men who wanted to establish a teetotaller's paradise. They received a government grant of 2,000 acres which, unfortunately for them, only included even-numbered lots. A problem naturally arose when less high minded individuals settled into the odd-numbered lots in between.

"When I was there [the Prairies] I found their jokes like their roads - very long and not

very good, leading to a little tin point of a spire which has been remorselessly visible

for miles without seeming to get any nearer."Samuel Butler,

Further Extracts from Note-books, 1934

Over two-thirds of Saskatchewan lies within the Great Plains. Known as the bread

basket of Canada, the province fulfils 60% of the country's consumption of wheat and 12% of total world demand. Saskatchewan

belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company for some 200 years, and had no permanent

European settlements until the 1870's. Its original residents were the Cree, Assini-

boine, Chipewyan and Blackfoot bands of the Plains Indians. After Confederation in

1867, the area was initially administered as part of the Northwest Territories, becoming

a fully-fledged province only in 1905 along with Alberta.


It was 1884 before the bureaucrats from the new capital in Ottawa turned their eyes towards the Saskatoon area, and set about surveying the Saskatchewan River lands traditionally occupied by Métis in preparation for the coming of new white settlers. The Métis were understandably indignant, and summoned Louis Riel from his exile in Montana to come to their aid. The fiery, French-speaking Catho-lic Louis Riel, having now promoted himself to the stature of "Prophet, Infallible Pontiff, and Priest King," returned to Canada at the head of a ragtag army to lead his second rebellion. This was quickly crushed by the Canadian militia at Batoche on May 15, 1885, and within months Riel was tried and hanged for treason at Regina.

Saskatoon languished as a little prairie town until the Grand Trunk Pacific brought its northern transcontinental tracks here in 1908. A boom period ensued, during which the town grew and acquired a number of notable buildings and the provin-cial university. Now a small city (pop. 185,000), Saskatoon's economy revolves around wheat and oil production.

Mile 192 -189 As the train leaves Saskatoon, the train crosses a spectacular 1,501-foot bridge 78 feet above the South Saskatchewan River.

Mile 178-140 Many of old GTP stations were converted to other uses as the towns expected to blossom nearby either failed or never actually material-ized. There are several along this stretch.

Mile 129 Manitou Lake at Watrous once attracted thousands of health-seekers from all over the world. The lake's mineral rich water has a specific gravity greater than that of the Dead Sea. Watrous was named for Frank Watrous Morse, VP of the GTP.

Mile 106 Nokomis was a character in Longfellow's poem 'Hiawatha.'

Mile 280-258 Some interesting names: Melville (mile 280) was named for Charles

Sout

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LakeDiefenbaker

North Saskatchewan River

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Veraý Unityý

Artland

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Obaný Biggarý Neola Leney

Juniata

Clavetý Bradwellý Allaný Zelmaý

Youngý Xena

South Saska tchewan River

Canadian Pacific Rail Services

RosetownConquest

SASKATOON


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Farle

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" 'Take a good look at it, Mary,' Dad said quietly. 'You'll never see it this way again.'I did as I was told. I looked at the tall grass and the pea-vine and the soft green silk of the wild barley, but the sad note in Dad's voice puzzled me. How could the prairie

change, I wondered. I did not realize then what an instrument of

change the plough is. The trees and willows are gone now, grubbed out and burned, and the roses and wild mint have been ploughed

under. Wheat now grows where the chock-cherries and the violets bloomed. The wind is still sweet, but there is no wilderness

in it and it no longer seems to have wandered a great way over the grass and

trees and flowers. It now smells of dry straw and bread. The wild keen fragrance the

wind knew in those days has gone forever."Mary Hiemstra, Gully Farm, 1955


The Lord said, 'Let there be wheat,' and Saskatchewan was born.

Stephen Leacock, My Discovery of America, 1937

Plains BuffaloBefore white men arrived in North America,

an estimated 50 to 100 million buffalo roamed the prairies and plains of central

North America. Up to 300,000 Plains buffalo may have been slaughtered annually in the

course of the 19th century to meet the needs of Métis and Indian communities. For

them, the buffalo was the nucleus of life: from it came pemmican (protein-rich dried

meat eaten on the trail), skins used as blankets, clothes and tent coverings, hair

that was dried and woven into ropes or used to stuff moccasins. The animals were hunted

on foot prior to the arrival of the horse in the late 18th century, often by stampeding

the beasts into an enclosure erected around a deep pit. Once inside the buffalo

fell into the pit, breaking their necks or legs, and were shot with arrows.

The route to their extinction began in 1870, when a process for making commercial

leather out of buffalo hides was developed. The herds were gone by the turn of the

century, with only a few scattered buffalo remaining. The word 'buffalo' is the generic term for any type of wild oxen. The prairie buffalo are more correctly called bison, of

the Bovidae family.

Melville Hays, president of the GTP from 1902 until he drowned on the Titanic in 1912, and Bangor (mile 258) was named for the town in Wales from which many new settlers arrived. The Quill Lakes, to the north of the tracks on the map, are a crucial stop-off point for migrating shorebirds from all over the Western Hemisphere.

Mile 245-225 The earth under the wheat fields here is honeycombed with galler-ies built to exploit beds of potash discovered in 1955. The potash is crushed underground then brought to the surface and stored in the dome-shaped warehouses visible from the train. It is used in fertil-izer products. The town of Zeneta (mile 245) owes its name to the GTP's excessively orderly naming system. Esterhazy, just south of Zeneta, has the world's largest potash mine. A 1,152-foot bridge crosses Cut Arm Creek at mile 233. Spy Hill at mile 225 is said to have been named for an unlucky horse thief caught spying on a Sioux camp and hung for his curiosity.

Some sixty miles to the south lie the remnants of Cannington Manor, established in 1882 when Englishman Captain Edward Mitchell Pierce claimed 5 townships to form a model settlement. Knowing little about farming, Pierce nevertheless founded an agricultural college for the sons of wealthy Englishmen. The students were not particularly interested in agriculture, but had sufficient initiative to build themselves a 26-room house complete with ballroom, bil-liard room and servants' quarters, as well as a mahogany-lined stable for racehorses. By 1890 Cannington Manor included an Anglican church, a flour mill, hotel and carpentry, carriage and supply shops. These businesses closed when a new CPR line bypassed the village, but many of the buildings still stand.

Mile 216-181 This is the scenic highlight of the prairies. Here the train follows the north rim of the Qu'Appelle Valley, with a lovely string of lakes. The river was once a glacial torrent with enough strength to carve the val-ley out from the flat lands.

The name of the Qu'Appelle Valley stems from a rather melancholy legend. A young Indian was crossing the valley and heard his name called. He in return called out, "Qui appelle ?" (who's calling ?), but all that came back was the echo of his own voice. 'qu'appelle…qu'appelle' He later discovered that the voice had been that of his lover calling for him with her last dying breath.

Mile 213 The Saskatchewan/Manitoba border.


MANITOBA

Mile 205 Over the Assiniboine River.

Mile 186 The individual in charge of naming stations found Uno in Japan.

Mile 185 The train crosses a 1,533-foot trestle bridge (the prairies' longest) above Minnewashtack Creek.

Mile 143 The bridge into Rivers over the Minnedosa River is 91 high and 684 feet long. Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, for whom the station was named, was the chairman of the board of GTP.

Mile 128 Brandon North Brandon is Manitoba's second largest town, just vis-ible about 5 miles south of the tracks.

Mile 122-91 The Carberry Sand Hills lie between Justice and Firdale. They're dotted with black spruce and Labrador tea trees, home to lizards and hognose snakes. J. Ingelow was an English poetess, and Harte Sta-tion was named for author Brett Harte.

Mile 72 Caye is surrounded with sandy soil, a throwback to the time where it formed part of a sandbar in Lake Agassiz. Mr. GW Caye was a purchasing agent for the GTP.

Mile 58 The Portage Diversion is a floodway designed to channel water from the Assiniboine River into Lake Manitoba. The word 'assiniboine' means 'those who cook by placing hot stones in the water', and was taken from the native band which lived in the area.

Mile 55 Portage-la-Prairie A portage is the stretch of land connecting two

MA

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Qu'Appelle River

LastMountain Lake

Big & Little Quill Lakes

Tate

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Touchw

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Leros

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Jasmin

Hub

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Russell

Yorkton

Humboldt Watson

Wadena

REGINA


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Manitoba is the very geographic centre of Canada. Over half its one million inhabitants

live in its capital city, Winnipeg. While its northern regions are covered with the frozen

Hudson tundra, the south is the flat and fertile wheat belt that provides the province

with most of its wealth.Manitoba was originally part of Rupert's Land,

a vast territory spanning most of the prairies which belonged to the Hudson's Bay

Company. At the time of its purchase by the Dominion of Canada, Manitoba encompassed only a tiny rectangular area around Winnipeg,

and was thus known as the 'postage stamp province.'

The province today is one of Canada's most ethnically diverse, with large groups of

Ukrainian, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian and Scandinavian

extraction.


segments of a water route, over which canoes and their contents have to be carried. For fur traders, this area was the portage between the Assiniboine River and Lake Manitoba. Not much portaging goes on here nowadays, unless you count the trucks and trains leaving the food processing plants.

In 1768, the area became capital of Thomas Spence's short-lived 'colony' of Manitobah, from which the name of the province was taken.

WinnipegThe Cree name for Winnipeg was Win-nipi, Muddy Water, an appropriate name for this flood-prone area. You may still see some of the damage cause by the Red River flooding in April 1997 - the worst this century.

Winnipeg lies almost precisely at the longitudinal centre of Canada, halfway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Its other claim to fame is that the junction of its two main streets, Portage and Main, is said to be the coldest and windiest place on earth.

The first Europeans to build on this site were French fur traders who constructed Fort Rouge in 1783 near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. The rival Hudson's Bay and North West fur-trading companies moved in during the late 18th century, building a series of palisaded forts near the rivers within shoot-ing distance of each other. The year 1812 saw the arrival of Scottish crofters turned out of their homes during the Highland Clearances. Lord Selkirk, a Scottish humanitarian in Montreal, founded the Red River Colony on their behalf, and supplied them with farming implements and a bull and cow named Adam and Eve. The fur traders and the settlers didn't see eye to eye on a number of issues, and their animosities came to a head on June 19, 1816, when Métis employees of the North West Company slaughtered 20 settlers in what became known as the Seven Oaks Incident. When Selkirk heard the news, he promptly marched west with a private army of veterans from the War of 1812, arrested the fur-traders and put the little settlement back in order.

Assiniboine

Zeneta

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Assiniboine River

Lake

Manitoba

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East

Tower

Passing through in 1872, a Reverend Grant wrote:

"Portage la Prairie is the centre of what will soon be a thriving settlement and, when the railway is built, a large town must spring up. On the way to the little village we passed, in

less than ten miles, three camps of Sioux - each of them with about 20 wigwams ranged

in circular form. The three camps probably numbered 300 souls. The men were

handsome fellows and a few of the women were pretty. We did not see many of the

women as they kept to the camps doing all the dirty work., while the men marched

along the road, every one of them with a gun on his shoulder."


With the merger of the two fur trading giants in 1821, Red River began to grow, populated now mainly by Métis of French/Indian extraction. Confederation in 1867 saw the settlement's land purchased by the Canadian government from the Hudson's Bay Company. The government set about reorganizing the settlement without consulting its inhabitants, which prompted Métis Louis Riel to establish a rebel government of his own in opposition. Riel was exiled for his efforts, but his uprising effectively brought about the creation of the province of Manitoba.

Newly renamed, Winnipeg enjoyed a growth spurt with the arrival of the Cana-dian Pacific Railway in 1885, which brought with it hundreds of thousands of mainly European immigrants and a land boom the likes of which have hardly been seen since. In 1871, Winnipeg had a population of 241; only forty years later it was Canada's third largest city, with a population of 136,000. By then the city's Grain Exchange was exporting grain worldwide, and Winnipeg was well entrenched as the transportation, distribution and financial hub of the west.

The glory days ended around 1915, with a recession and a steep decline in im-migration. The Great Depression followed, and by the time World War II was over, Saskatoon and Regina had to a large degree usurped Winnipeg's former prominence.

Nevertheless, the city has always shone like a cultural beacon across the prairies, with its own highly respected opera, symphony and ballet companies, and a wonderfully diverse architecture ranging from turn-of-the-century ecclesiastic to starkly modern.

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The Red River FloodsThe low banks of the Red River have always made it prone to flooding. Works to contain

flood damage began as early as 1844.In 1950, Winnipeg and the area along the Red

River suffered a devastating flood which drove 100,000 people from their homes.

Large scale projects to avoid a repetition of the disaster were initiated, including in 1968

the Red River Floodway, a 29-mile channel just to the east of the city. Nonetheless, this

year in April river waters rushing northwards overflowed dikes and more southerly

floodways to fan out into a 1250 square mile inland sea - dubbed 'The Red Sea.' Once

again, 25,000 people fled their homes, while 8,500 Canadian soldiers were mobilized to

fight the menace and protect the abandoned property (Canada's largest single military

manoeuvre since the Korean War).


W.O. Mitchell is one of Canada's favourite and foremost authors. Born in Saskatchewan in 1914, his occupations ranged from Depression hobo to fiction editor of Canada's Maclean's Magazine and professor at an Ontario university. The Prairies have been home for most of Mitchell's life, and form the setting for much of his written work. His most important book, Who Has Seen The Wind, is a Canadian classic about a boyhood spent in the Prairies. The following is excerpted from a 1961 article published in Maclean's Magazine.

The Shocking Truth About the Undefended BorderI wish that statesmen and public speakers (American and Canadian) would not keep referring to the thousands of miles of unprotected border stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This smooth statement is quite false. I was born and now live just north of it. One way and another I have tried unsuccessfully to breach that border for almost forty years: uniformed guardians in blue or khaki have repulsed me every time.

As a child in southern Saskatchewan I had a vague notion that there was a fence-line running from sea to sea, dead straight along the bottom of British Colum-bia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, taking a southern jiggle down and around the Niagara Peninsula, then looping up rather unfairly under the throat of Quebec. I knew that it wasn't a picket fence or a barbed wire fence, but probably an iron pipe rail fence with quite sturdy cement posts every mile or so. When I was eight I discarded the fence concept as untenable; there was probably just a four thousand mile line like the blue line on the ice at the Weyburn Arena rink. Someone - Fat or Ike or Mate or Hodder - crossed it on a trip with his family and reported back to the rest of us that there was nothing at all to define it; the spear grass and crocuses were the same on either side; a gopher's squeak had identical impudence whichever side he was on; a meadow lark could drop his bright notes from a Canadian haystack and a moment later from an American fencepost; the coyote left a steer carcass on the North Dakota side to trot across to his Saskatch-ewan den with nothing to declare. North Portal and Portal were just one strad-dling town; one batch of children attended a school under the Union Jack and sang God Save Our Gracious King while a few steps away another batch under the Star-Spangled Banner had swiped the very same tune and were singing My country 'tis of thee to it. Under these conditions it was difficult to take the border seri-ously, or to quench a faint distrust of anyone who would steal the tune of another country's national anthem.

Mitchell, Barbara and Ormond, Ed. An Evening With W.O. Mitchell. Toronto. McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1997

* God Save the King was changed to God Save the Queen with the accession of

Elizabeth II. In 1967 Oh Canada ! (in which not a word about Britain appears) became

the country's anthem. It is properly (although not always) sung with both English

and French lyrics.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT


This line was built by the Canadian Northern Ontario Railway between 1908 and 1915. The Continental Limited, Canadian National's first transcontinental rail service, followed these tracks on its maiden run on December 12, 1920.

The next 931 miles of track between Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Sudbury, Ontario, carry you straight across the Canadian Shield, a vast shield-shaped area of very hard Precambrian bedrock. For most of the Manitoban part of the Shield, the rock lies buried under a layer of prairie soil. Moving eastwards, however, it rises towards the surface and begins to block drainage. The result is a rim of marshy flatlands with a few trees - a relief, by now, from the past 900 miles of treeless prairie. By the time you reach Ontario, the rock has broken the surface in great granite outcrop-pings, creating a uniquely rugged landscape which is carpeted with trees. One 19th century railway surveyor, contemplating the obstacles, described it as "a monstrous terrain, empty wasteland as savage as any on the planet, where rocky ribs burst through to scanty soil as in a decayed skeleton. Intervening hollows hold muskeg swamps which gulp down yards of fill before providing firm footing for a roadbed." To lay one 358-mile section of track, this man and his colleagues surveyed more than 9,100 miles of possible route before settling on what must have seemed the lesser of the evils. The visible bedrock explains why it took 20,000 men to blast the tracks through the rocks. The communities lying in this western portion of the Shield remain isolated and sparsely populated, and as a result most of the halts are flag stops for fishermen, trappers and lumberjacks.

The 'world's longest schoolyard' extended from Capreol to Foleyet, the route fol-lowed by a unique schoolhouse on wheels. The schoolhouse was a single rail car, with a teacher on board, which spent four days at each stop. It was then hooked onto a freight or passenger train to carry on to the next point. The students were the children of local Indian bands, trappers, lumbermen or railway employees. The system was launched in 1926.

Southeast of Winnipeg you'll pass through Mennonite country. Two groups of Mennonites totalling about 100,000 people live in Canada, a dutch-Germanic population in Ontario and Manitoba, and Russian Mennonites who settled in the prairies and in the west. These are the descendents of members of a pacifist Protestant sect persecuted in 17th century Europe, and are related to the American Amish groups. The first Manitoba Mennonites arrived here from Russia around 1874, with a second wave in 1917 fleeing conscription in the US.

Lake of the Woods is bordered by three political/administrative areas - Ontario, Manitoba and Minnesota - as well as being the place where three distinct natural environments meet - northern, southern and prairie. The forests are a jumble of species, as is the birdlife - bald eagles, osprey and turkey vultures abound, and white pelicans, hun-dreds of miles beyond their normal range, have established permanent nesting colonies on several islands. Petroglyphs (rock carvings) dis-covered near the lake are believed to be over 5,000 years old, making them the oldest in Canada. Rock paintings attributed to the Black-duck people have also been found in three locations, and are thought to date back some 900 years.

Winnipeg to Sudbury

Boreal Plains EcozoneThe plains in the southeastern corner of

Manitoba show clear signs of the last glaciation. Here the Shield's granite lies a

good mile under a mixture of glacial deposits, including striated areas of moraine, old lake

bed materials and some fluvial deposits. Soils (Brunisol, Luvisol) are deep and productive

for tree growth.


According to one Cree legend, the lake was created by a wen-digo, one of their lesser gods. A mischievous sort, he divided the lake into four parts and gave each a different nature. He took special pleasure in planting 14,632 islands in the northern part of the lake. He was so pleased with his creation that, when he was done, he transformed himself into a rock in order to be able to marvel at his handiwork forever. In actual fact, the Lake of the Woods is a remnant of a much bigger glacial lake, the Agassiz. A link in the old fur trade route, it was dreaded by the transitting voyageurs who frequently lost their way among its islands. It is Ontario's second largest inland lake, and a very popular summer holiday spot.

ONTARIO

Mile 143 Rainy River is the site of several burial mounds constructed by the Laurel and Blackduck peoples. The largest of these, 110 feet long and 23 feet high, is at the Long Sault Rapids. Both within the mounds and in pits underneath are clusters of human bones. Clay pots filled with food were buried with the deceased, as were shell, bone and copper beads. The whole assemblage was sprinkled with red ochre being covered.

Lake ofthe Woods

Eagle Lake

Lac Seul(Reservoir)

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St-Joseph Lake

Wenasaga River

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Lake Agassiz was North America's largest glacial lake, formed 11,500 years ago by the damming effect of the retreating Laurentide

Ice Sheet The lake covered much of Manitoba, northwest Ontario and parts of eastern Saskatchewan. At its largest it was

940 miles long and 670 feet deep. It disappeared about 7700 years ago, leaving remnants such as Lake of the Woods and

Lake Winnipeg behind, as well as a huge area of fertile land.


Mile 89 Fort Frances sits across the bridge from International Falls, Minne-sota. Its importance to the fur trade is evidenced by the fact that no fewer than three forts operated in the area: Fort Saint-Pierre was con-structed in 1731 by La Jemerais, nephew of La Verendrye; Fort Lac La Pluie (literally Rain Lake) was a North West Company settlement from 1776, and not to be left out of the party, the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Frances, named for the wife of the company's governor at the time. As the river of settlers to the west swelled, Fort Frances became a staging point on the Dawson Route, an artery of lakes, rivers and wagon roads linking Lake Superior to the Red River.

Mile 105 Quetico Provincial Park, south of the tracks at Atitokan and extend-ing down to the US border, is arguably the most beautiful of On-tario's park systems for serious canoeists. There are some 930 miles of canoe routes, which link up with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area south of the border. The park was established as a wildlife preserve in 1909 to put a halt to rampant poaching of moose. The name Quetico comes from the word 'quetican', Ojibway for 'spirit of exceptional beauty.'

Mile 22 At Kakabeka Falls, some 18 miles west of Thunder Bay, the Kamin-istikwia River plunges 128 feet over a cliff into a narrow gorge carved out of the Canadian Shield by meltwater from the glaciers of the last ice age. Fossils dated as being 1.6 billion years old have been found here under layers of volcanic rock. The word Kakabeka means 'steep cliffs.' These falls were the first obstacle the North West fur traders faced on the return trip to their winter outposts, and you can follow their climb along the Mountain Portage Trail. Since 1904 the river has been tapped above the falls for hydroelectric power.

Thunder BayThunder Bay is the Canadian lakehead of the Great Lakes - the western termi-nus of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Prairie wheat is the most important commodity arriving from the west on a clutter of rail lines to be loaded into the huge ships of the Seaway. The town's history as a trade centre predates the construction of the Seaway by many years, however, for from 1803 to 1821 it was the centre of North West Company's North American fur-trading empire. Each summer, brigades of canoes with over 1,000 agents, voyageurs and trappers arrived - again from the west - loaded with a year's worth of furs and heading for Fort William, now in the southern portion of the city. Buyers arrived by canoe from Montreal with the trad-ing goods the trappers would need for the next season - including a good deal of liquor. The resulting annual 'rendez-vous' lasted a wild six weeks, much of which was spent in serious discussions as to how to handle the rival Hudson's Bay Com-pany, which took its furs to market by way of Hudson's Bay well to the north.

Opposite Thunder Bay lies the Sleeping Giant, a long peninsula with a rock for-mation at its tip which resembles a prone man. A community known as Silver Islet lies in ruins here, abandoned when the shaft of a mine built to extract silver from a rich vertical vein flooded.

Quimet Canyon is a two-mile gorge, 350 feet deep and 500 feet across, dug into the volcanic rock of Lake Superior's northern shore. The cold and shaded micro-climate at the bottom of the canyon has generated the only community of arctic plants outside the Arctic itself.

The province of Ontario, once known as Upper Canada, sprawls over 400,000 square miles, from the Great Lakes up to Hudson’s

Bay. As an indication of scale, Ontario sits across the Great Lakes from eight US states.*

A large part of the province lies within the Canadian Shield with its boreal forests,

granite outcrops and countless lakes. ‘Ontario’ is an Iroquois word meaning

‘shining waters’, a most appropriate name since the province contains a full quarter of

the world’s fresh water.With a population of 10 million, Ontario

is Canada’s most populated province, and has been so since the first census taken in 1871. It is also the wealthiest and most industrial-

ized, producing half of all Canadian-made goods. The Shield itself, with its huge mineral

deposits, is a major source of Ontario’s revenues.

*East to west: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan,

Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Thunder Bay Harbour is one of the world's largest grain-handling facilities in the

world, fed by the product of the Prairies which is transported here by train. Grain

from the elevators is loaded onto 'lakers', huge container ships, the largest of which

may be some 730 feet long and is capable of carrying a million bushels of grain. This

approximates the yield of 51,000 acres of land and requires 5 trains for its transport to

the Lake Superior shore. Present day Thunder Bay has a skyline dominated by 15

towering grain elevators, with an overall capacity of more than 2 million tons.


Mile 83 After Fairloch the tracks run just inland from Lake Nipigon. Many of the beaches along the lake are made of black sand, the product of a molten rock called diabase which oozed up through cracks in the earth's surface a billion years ago. Nipigon remains in the record books as the place where a fisherman landed the largest brook trout, weighing in at 14.5 pounds.

Mile 0 Longlac was once a gold mining settlement, and still boasts a popula-tion of over 2,000, half of which is French-speaking and virtually all of which is now employed by the logging industry. The residents are descendents of the coureurs de bois who paddled between Lake Supe-rior and Hudson's Bay, as well as of Quebeckers who migrated here last century in search of work in the forests. Long Lake, appropriately named, is 45 miles long, and thus was an important canoe route on the north-south run.

Mile 76 There’s not much left of Caramat, which lost its population once the area was logged. The abandoned sawmill still visible across the lake to the south is unusual in that these structures typically moved with the crew from one logging site to the next.

Mile 295 Hornepayne was once a gold mining town, but now depends largely on the railway and the lumber industry. Hunters fly here from the cities for geese, ducks, partridge, moose (in the spring) and bear (in the fall), fishermen for walleye, speckled trout and northern pike. The town prides itself on its 'Town Centre' complex, an enormous struc-ture containing schools, medical centres, offices, hotels and shopping facilities, conceived with the winter blues in mind.

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Lake Superior (32,383 square miles) is the world's largest freshwater lake, fed by over

200 rivers. Billions of years of geological history are told in its rocks - stromatolites, the oldest fossils anywhere, are thought to be 1.8 billion years old. Etienne Brûlé was likely the first European to see the lake in 1622. In 1855 a ship canal was opened at

Sault Ste Marie, which allowed steamers to pass through carrying grain and iron ore to

the lower lakes. The lake is known for its spectacular storms - over 350 wrecks lie

beneath its surface and autumn waves can reach 40 feet.


Mile 258 Oba (pop. 100) must be one of the most remote railway junctions anywhere, but boasts a little railway hotel.

Peterbell lies just outside the Missanaibi River Provincial Park, known not only for its wildlife and scenery but also for its store of rock paintings dating back to 1000 B.C. The Missanaibi River was used as a trade route for many centuries.

Mile 257-183 The track here forms the northern boundary of the Chapleau-Nemegosenda River Park, where moose and a tremendous variety of waterfowl live among wetlands. The park lies within the 7,000 square mile Chapleau Crown Game Preserve, the largest outside Africa (no hunting permitted nowadays). The Hudson's Bay Company estab-lished a series of fur-trading posts here in 1777, purchasing pelts from Cree and Ojibwa trappers up until World War I.

Above Lake Superior, Oil by Lawren Harris. Harris was a member of the Group of Seven,

an association of modernistic landscape painters. formed in the 1920s

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M I C H I G A N


The Boreal Forest ecozoneThe ecozone of the southern Shield area is

characterized by rocky hills, coniferous forests and an abundance of lakes. Cold air

masses from Hudson's Bay bring on long, cold winters. The most prevalent tree

species are hardy black and white spruce, jack pine and balsam fir, with increasing

numbers of yellow birch, sugar maple and black ash as you move westwards towards the Plains. There is also a colourful array of lichens and mosses where outcrops appear.

Mammals in this ecozone include moose, white-tailed deer, black bear and porcupine,

with beaver, muskrat and mink in the wetlands.

Mile 166-189 Good views at Missonga (mile 166 - Shenango Lake to the south), mile 174 (Shiners Lake to the north) and Elsas (mile 183 - Ka-puskasing Lake to the south). At mile 189 look out for a fire tower atop 1,489 foot Mount Horden.

Mile 148 Foleyet is another logging village, as well as a big game hunter's des-tination. Legend has it that the station was to be called Foley after a popular railway contractor until it was discovered that the name was already taken. A determined supporter cried, "I'll name that station Foley yet !" Foleyet and the surrounding area were threatened in the summer of 1997 by widespread forest fires.

Mile 134 A 1,134 foot bridge spans the Groundhog River.

Mile 81 Gogama, on Minisinakwa Lake, is a typical, very isolated logging vil-lage. The surrounding area is well populated with moose and bears, which has engendered a secondary industry in fly-in hunting and fishing. Note the spur tracks leading off for loading pulpwood. The name Gogama means 'leaping fish.'

Mile 0 Capreol serves as a distribution centre for Sudbury’s mines. It was named for Frederick Chase Capreol, a railway promoter in the 1850's. The tracks follow the Vermillion River, crossing it four times.

SudburyThe Sudbury Basin - a depression some 35 miles long and 16 wide - is a meteorite crater formed some 1,700 million years ago. The mineralization resulting from the impact is responsible for the extraordinarily rich mineral deposits in the region. These were discovered during the building of the trans-Canada railroad in 1883, and have made the Sudbury area the world's nickel capital. A century of ruthless mining and smelting ravaged the countryside and raised the acid content of its lakes to the point of killing off any marine life. It is only over the last 15 years or so that serious and successful efforts have been made to repair some of the dam-age, earning Sudbury a United Nations Local Government Honors Award at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Still, the countryside is naturally so barren as to be almost moon-like.

Sudbury has the largest French-speaking population in Ontario, and is home to the fully bilingual Laurentian University.

The Sudbury area is the largest single source of nickel in the world, and Canada's

largest copper producer. Sudbury's nickel accounts for 66% of Canada's total

production, of which over 70% is exported to the US. Platinum, copper, cobalt, silver,

gold, selenium, sulphur compounds and tellurium are also extracted from the ore.

Inco Ltd. (for International Nickel) and Falconbridge Nickel Mines are the two

major presences in the mining industry here.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, visited Canada four times in 1894-1923. On his second trip, in 1914, the Grand Trunk Railway offered Doyle and his wife a cross-Canada tour in a private car. The following is taken from the resulting book, Memories and Adventures.

"The true division between the east and west of Canada is not the Great Lakes, which are so valuable as a waterway, but lies in the 500 miles of country between the Lakes and Winnipeg…

And now one reached the west of Winnipeg and on that prairie which means so much both to Canada and to the world. It was wonderfully impressive to travel swiftly all day from the early summer dawn to the latest evening light, and to see always the same little clusters of houses, always the same distant farms, always the same huge expanse stretching out to the distant skyline, mottled with cattle, or green with the halfgrown crops. You think these people are lonely. What about the people beyond them and beyond them again, each family in its rude barracks in the midst of the 160 acres which form the minimum farm ? Not doubt they are lonely, and yet there are alleviations. When men or women are working on their own property and seeing their fortune growing, they have pleasant thoughts to bear them company. It is the women, I am told, who feel it most, and who go prairie-mad. Now they have rigged telephone circles which connect up small groups of farms and enable the women to relieve their lives by a little friendly gos-sip, when the whole district thrills to the news that Mrs. Jones has been in the cars to Winnipeg and bought a new bonnet. At the worst the loneliness of the prairie can never, one would think, have the soul-killing effect of loneliness in a town. "There is always the wind on the heath, brother." Besides, the wireless has now arrived and that is the best friend of a lonely man.

So much about farms and farming. I cannot see how one can write about this western part and avoid the subject which is written in green and gold from sky to sky. There is nothing else. Nowhere is there any sign of yesterday - not a cairn, not a monument. Life has passed here but has left no footstep behind. But stay, the one thing which the old life still leaves is just this one thing - footsteps. Look at them in the little narrow black paths which converge to the water - little dark ruts which wind and twist. Those are the buffalo runs of old. Gone are the Cree and Blackfoot hunters who shot them down. Gone, too, the fur traders who bought the skins. Chief Factor McTavish, who entered into the Great Company's service as a boy, spent his life in slow promotion from Fort This to Fort That and made a decent Presbyterian woman out of some Indian squaw, finally saw with horror in his old age that the world was crowding his wild beasts out of their pastures."

To the Rockies in 1914. Memories and Adventures. (London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1924)

Canadians reeled when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ("the Mounties") sold Disney exclusive control over the right to use their image worldwide.Canada in the movies: Hollywood produced 575 films between 1907 and 1975 in which the plot was set entirely or mainly in Canada.Cartoon by Roy Peterson, Maclean's Magazine


Mile 260 The most evident feature of the landscape as you leave Sudbury is the towering (1,250 foot) Inco smokestack ('The Super Stack').

Sturgeon Falls was once a key Hudson’s Bay Company outpost, and now has a caviar cannery and pulp mills.

Mile 117/1 North Bay is the site of one of the world’s largest fur auctions, which at one point took place five times a year with sales totalling some $3 million. Nowadays the auctions for beaver, muskrat and marten pelts take place during the months of July and August. In 1882, a Methodist clergyman, Reverend Silas Huntington, paddled up Lake Nipissing to hold the town’s first church service in a wooden boxcar at the railway station. North Bay's greatest claim to fame may be as the birthplace of the Dionne Quintuplets - their home is preserved as a museum, complete with the bed in which they were delivered. Lake Nipissing, 40 miles long by 10 miles wide, is best known for its giant pickerel, and in winter its frozen surface is dotted with ice-fishing huts.

Petawawa has been the site of a Canadian Armed Forces base since 1905. Built astride historic fur-trading routes, it had roles in both

Sudbury to Montreal

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Lake Kipawa

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Few people know that gangster Al Capone spent his last years in an isolated cabin just

south of the Ottawa River, in the old mining town of Quadeville. He died there in 1947.

world wars as a staging and training base, and as an internment cen-tre.

To the southwest of Pembroke lies Algonquin Park, 2,934 square miles of lakes and rivers set aside as a provincial park in 1893. More than 250 species of birds have been recorded in the park, but its emblem and favourite winged resident is the Common Loon. There are also 40 types of mammals and 1,000 species of plants. Algonquin is a favourite spot for canoe trips and summer camps.

Mile 93 Pembroke was the first Canadian town to install electric lighting. Long associated with the lumber trade, the city still produces many wooden products, from matches to furniture. The town was called, consecutively, Sydenham, Moffat and Miramichie before adopting its present name for Sidney Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, who was secretary to the Admiralty at the time when the name was chosen.

Continuing eastwards from Pembroke, our route follows the Ottawa River (Rivière des Outaouais), which for more than 200 years was the major marine route linking Montreal to the Great Lakes. Etienne Brûlé travelled along the river in 1608, returning with Samuel de Champlain in 1613. Radisson, Groseilliers, Alexander Mackenzie and

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David Thompson all used this route, as did the Hudson’s Bay and North West Company fur traders. Then came the lumber barons. Philemon Wright founded the city of Hull in 1800, and brought oceans of squared timber floating down all the rivers of the area, including the Ottawa, as far as Quebec City. E.B. Eddy, whose name is still synonymous with wooden matches, made his fortunes here, along with J.R. Booth, whose sawmills were once the largest in North America and who, from a 7,000 acre holding, produced a yearly 120 million board feet of lumber by 1896.

Permanent settlements appeared here only with the construction of the Rideau Canal (1826-32). The first houses and mills were built of local limestone, and can still be seen from the train today. Over the years, however, the St. Lawrence gradually overtook the Ottawa as the principal river trade route, and much of the subsequent develop-ment took place to the south. This was particularly true after the St. Lawrence was broadened during the construction of the massive St. Lawrence Seaway system.

Mile 10 Nepean was named for Sir Evan Nepean (1751-1822), undersecre-tary for the Colonies.

Lake Champlain covered the entire area to the south of these tracks during the last ice age, leaving behind it an area of rich and fertile farmlands.

Mile 7 Hugh Bell of Bell's Corners was a pioneer who planned the village in 1832.

This stretch of line into Ottawa was opened by the Canada Central Railway in 1870.

OttawaThe city was named 'adawe' ('to trade') by the Algonquins, who controlled the trade along the river. Its original European name was Bytown after Colonel John By, builder of the Rideau Canal.

Queen Victoria's choice of Ottawa as the site for her capital in the Canadas was greeted with shock. Not only was it isolated, to say the least, from the relative comforts of Montreal, but it was also at that time the most notorious work camp in North America. This was lumberjack country, where gangs of ill-paid, ill-fed and often violent labourers lived in shacks and tents and spent their free time on drunken binges. Nonetheless, the Queen had spoken, and between 1859 and 1865 the Parliament Buildings rose between the shanties in all their ponderous Gothic splendour.

The muddy streets are long gone, and in their place sparkles a small, largely mod-ern jewel of a city.

The rails beneath you (until Coteau) were laid by the Montreal and City of Ot-tawa Junction Railway (later the Canada Atlantic Railway) beginning in 1881 and opening for business on September 13, 1882.

Mile 67 Carlsbad Springs once had ambitions of achieving the same renown for its therapeutic mineral baths as its namesake in the Czech Repub-lic.

Mile 47 Casselman is bisected by the railway tracks, a great convenience in the glorious first days of rail travel but now perhaps a bit of a nui-sance. M. Casselman was an 1843 pioneer and lumberman, who owned a sawmill on South Nation River.

Mile 40 At Moose Creek look north to see a pretty stone church among tall trees.


The American answer to Canada's sovereignty problem ? This cartoon was published in the year that the Separatist

Bloc Québecois won the provincial elections in Québec.

Duncan Macpherson, Toronto Star, 1976

Mile 34 Maxville is the site of the annual Glengarry Highland Games, one of the largest Scottish gatherings in North America with an audience of 20,000. The name is a corruption of 'Macsville', a tongue-in-cheek reference to the predominance of settlers whose names began with 'Mac…'

Mile 23 Alexandria was initially called Priest's Mills, then renamed for the priest in question, the Reverend Alexander MacDonell, who built the first grist mill.

Mile 15 The first station in Ontario is Glen Robertson, the name a clear hint as to the ancestry of the first settlers.

Mile 13 The Ontario/Quebec provincial border.

QUEBEC

Mile 6 DeBeaujeu was named for G.S. de Beaujeu, seigneur (landowner) of Soulanges.

Mile 37/0 Coteau is a small agricultural village, and the southwest terminus of the Soulanges Canal, part of the St. Lawrence Seaway system. Our route swings northwards here. From this point to Montreal, the train will travel over the same tracks as the first passenger train to make the journey from Montreal to Toronto on July 27, 1856 - a grand occasion indeed. Three draughty wooden coaches and a bright yellow baggage car were pulled by a Grand Trunk Railway steam locomotive, which burned a cord of wood every 35 miles. The trip took 15 hours (now four) and involved 64 stops. The windows were tiny, encrusted with soot and if opened, would hail cinders upon the passengers.

Mile 21/23 The tracks cross the Ottawa River twice, the first bridge being 1,370 feet long. Look north from the second bridge and you’ll see the Lake of Two Mountains studded with little islands in front of the Lauren-tian Highlands. This was once a stopping place for the fur traders heading west, and was also the scene of several conflicts between the Iroquois and the French.

Quebec is Canada's largest province, covering 594,860 square miles but with a

population of only 6.5 million, or 11 people per square mile. The province stretches right

up to the Hudson Strait, not far from the Arctic Circle, but as most of the land is

covered with rough Canadian Shield, it is totally unsuited to agriculture and virtually

uninhabitable. Subsequently most Quebeck-ers - or Quebecois - live in the St. Lawrence

Valley, with over a third in Montreal alone. About 80% of Quebec's inhabitants are

French-speaking, and this as well as its cultur-al differences from the other Canadian

provinces have given rise to a strong separatist movement. In a 1995 referendum

the pro-Canada/anti-separatist voters won by a very narrow margin, indicating the extent

to which Quebec's future as a province lies in the balance.


This where the wings on your ankles come in handy, to fly down to Old Montreal for lunch. The crowd is jovial, loud, the food

delectable. The discussion is ebullient, wide-ranging, the wine flows - café life is

one of the great reasons to live here.Trevor Ferguson, from Solid Ground: A Walking Tour

Mile 11 Dorval is the site of Montreal’s very modern but very controversial international airport. Hundreds of acres of active farmland were purchased by the government to make room for its runways, which all too often - according to those displaced by the project - lie idle.

MontrealThere's a certain something to Montreal that is hard to pin down. The city, at its best, offers a wonderful amalgam of the best of French joie de vivre and cheerful North American practicality.

The site of present-day Montreal was first occupied by the Iroquois Indians who called their settlement Hochelaga, or 'place of the beaver.' The first European to arrive was Frenchman Jacques Cartier, who stopped in the area in 1532 during an early search for the North West Passage - the water route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. About 80 years passed before the French returned in the form of Samuel de Champlain, who established a fur trading post here in 1611.

The first permanent settlement was erected by Paul Chomedey, Sieur de Maison-neuve, for the purpose of bringing Christianity to the Iroquois in 1642. With 53 French colonists, including a female nurse, he built a mission called Ville Marie. In spite of a justified fear of attacks from the Iroquois, the population had swelled to 1200 by 1672, and grew rapidly after a system of land grants enticed new set-tlers from France. Montreal's was in those days an oddly mixed population: fur traders and evangelists made uneasy neighbours, and the contrast is still visible in many parts of Old Montreal.

The Seven Years' War in Europe soon spread to the North American colonies, and in 1760 the British took control of Montreal. Three years later the Treaty of Paris granted the whole of New France to the British, unleashing a flood of immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. The French fur merchants were nudged out, to be replaced by the British Hudson's Bay Company and the new Scottish-founded North West Company. Outnumbered in terms of population and outmanoeuvred in business and politics, the French inhabitants of Montreal grew increasingly resentful towards the British. In 1837 Louis-Joseph Papineau led the 'Patriotes' in an uprising against the British, which was brutally crushed and sowed the seed for the continuing conflicts in Quebec today.

In 1825 Montreal, now part of Lower Canada, had some 22,000 inhabitants; twenty years later the figure had doubled. By Confederation in 1867, it was the social, economic, financial and transportation centre of the new Dominion. The focus of trade had shifted by this time from furs to a full range of commodities, including banking, manufacturing, maritime shipping and the railways. Industry flourished, and thousands of rural French Canadians poured into Montreal in search of work. By the end of the 19th century, francophone Montrealers were again in the majority.

With the widening of the St. Lawrence and the construction of the Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific railways, Montreal's position as the economic hub of Canada seemed assured. It was only this century that other Canadian cities rose to chal-lenge and finally, in the 1970's, overtake Montreal. This loss of momentum - both in the growth of its population and in its economic standing - can to a large degree be attributed to the continuing uncertainty surrounding Quebec's status as part of Canada.

Montréal today is, after Paris, the world's second largest French-speaking city. It's also a very three-dimensional city, in a modern sort of way, from the summit of Mount Royal (all of 820 feet up) down to the maze of subterranean shopping cen-tres and passages which shelter downtowners from the bone-chilling winter winds.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Michel Tournier is a well-known French author, whose works have been translated into seventeen languages. The following is an excerpt from his novel Les Méteores.

"The lessons I learned in Japan before I crossed Canada have not been wasted on me. In fact, the two countries throw light on one another, and I am usefully apply-ing the Japanese graph to the Canadian chart.

Like the Japanese, the Canadian suffers from a space problem. But while the first is cramped into a tiny, scattered archipelago, the second is reeling with vertigo in the midst of his vast plains. This contrast, which makes Canada an anti-Japan, is responsible for more than one characteristic feature. The Japanese is not afraid of wind or cold. In his paper house, quite unsuitable to any form of heating, the wind comes and goes as it likes. Here, on the other hand, even in summer, one is constantly reminded that the winters are formidable. The roofs of the houses have no gutters because slides of snow and ice would rip them off. Shops, garages and shopping centres are built underground, suggesting that for eight months of the year the citizens live molelike lives, going from homes to cars, to shops and places of work without ever putting their noses out of doors. To get into the houses one passes through hall-cloakrooms with four doors, airlocks for the prolonged dress-ing up before going out and the patient undressing before coming in. And even the morbid hunger which has the Canadian stuffing himself at all hours of the day and night, even that is only a defence mechanism against the surrounding vastness and the icy winds howling across it.

To counter the terrors of the besieged, the Japanese invented the garden, the miniature garden and also ikebana, the art of flower arrangement. All are ways of making openings in over-crowded spaces, openings inhabited by structures which are light, witty and detached.

To counter the horizontal abyss, the Canadians dreamed up the Canadian Pacific Railway. What else could they do, indeed, but try and innervate their vast territory, to cover it with a network of nerves, at first very loosely woven but drawing tighter and tighter, closer and closer together ?"Les Méteores (Gallimard, 1975); translated by Ann Collins as Gemini (London: Collins 1981)


Canadian basicsGovernment(Details given were correct at the time of printing, June 1997).

Canada's head of state is the British monarch (Queen Elizabeth II), whose author-ity within the country is exercised by the Governor-General. The 'Gee-Gee' is nowadays largely a ceremonial figure and many Canadians would be hard put to name the person presently in office (Romeo LeBlanc). The Queen is provincially represented by Lieutenant-Governors. Actual power lies in the hands of the Prime Minister (Jean Chrêtien), the leader of the majority party in the Canadian Parlia-ment (Liberal) which is seated in the national capital, Ottawa (Ontario). The Opposition to the governing party is provided by the party which won the second largest number of votes in the last federal election (June 1997), and is presently the Reform Party led by Preston Manning (up to the last election the separatist Bloc Quebecois held the title). The Parliament consists of an elected legislature called the House of Commons (295 seats), and a Senate, whose 104 members are appointed for life by the governing party. The Senate in Canada has relatively little power and acts more as an advisory council to the government. The Prime Minister rules through a cabinet drawn from the elected representatives (as well as the occasional Senator). Federal elections must take place within a five year period, but may be called sooner if the Prime Minister chooses to do so or if he or she is defeated by a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons (this has occured twice in the past 20 years).

Canada is a federal state, with shared powers between federal and provincial governments. The federal government oversees national defence, trade and foreign affairs, banking, criminal law, fisheries, etc. The federal and provincial concur-rently assume responsibility for unemployment insurance and agriculture.

There are ten provinces in Canada, each of which has its own elected legislature overseeing regional affairs. In addition, there are two territories, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories (which, despite its name, is only one territory), ad-ministered directly by the federal government. Provincial governments are also parliamentary, although their legislatures have no upper house. The provinces have complete jurisdiction over their health and education systems, as well as over regional natural resources and highways, thereby enjoying a far greater degree of power than a US state. You'll find that various laws differ from province to prov-ince, among the more obvious are speed limits and tax codes.

PopulationBig country, few people.

Canada's population of 5 million in 1900 mushroomed to 12 million by the end of World War II, and to almost 27 million in 1991 (slightly less than the state of California), due almost entirely to immigration. There are 7 people per square mile in Canada, as against 70 people per square mile in the USA, and 605 people per square mile in the United Kingdom.

Most of Canada's inhabitants are concentrated in a band about 100 miles wide along the US/Canada border.

There are presently five principal political parties in the Canadian political system:

The Liberal Party is most closely equated to the US Democrats, with a slightly more

left-leaning tendency.The Conservative Party might be compared

to the US Republicans, although again somewhat more to the left. The current party

leader is Jean Charest.The Bloc Québecois, until recently under

the leadership of ex-diplomat Lucien Bouchard, is wholly concerned with creating a

separate and sovereign nation in Quebec.The Reform Party reappeared on the

Canadian political scene some ten years ago after several decades' silence. The party

leader is Preston Manning, whose philosophy is somewhat to the right of the Conservatives' but whose platform rests largely on creating a

leaner, more responsible government. The New Democratic Party (NDP) is

Canada's answer to socialism. Heavily supported by the trade unions, this party's leaders on both the provincial and federal

levels tend to be women.


Distribution by province (1991 census)

LanguageCanada is officially a bilingual country, a fact noticeable on tube of toothpaste or bag of chips you might buy. The majority of French-speaking Canadians live in Quebec, but francophones, as they are known here, are found throughout the country.

Distribution by province(1991 census) English French speaking speaking only

Quebec 6,896,000 4.2%% 81.2%Ontario 10,084,000 75.1% 4.6%Manitoba 1,092,000 73.3% 4.3%Saskatchewan 988,900 94.2% -Alberta 2,545,500 81% 2.1%British Columbia 3,282,000 67% -

Time zonesCanada spans six time zones (two more than the USA), with a coast-to-coast difference of only 4 hours and 30 minutes because Newfoundland time is 30 minutes in advance of that of the Maritime provinces.

The metric systemCanada has been wrestling with dual systems of weights, distances, volumes and temperatures since the government opted to convert from the British Imperial Measures in 1971. Early attempts to enforce strict adherence to the metric system were abandoned, but it is in any case now in general use.

1 kilometre (km) = 0.6 miles 1 mile = 1.6 kilometres

1 metre (m) = 3.3 feet 1 foot = 30.4 centimetres

1 centimetre (cm) = 0.39 inches 1 inch = 2.54 centimetres

1 kilogram (kg) = 2.2 pounds 1 pound = 0.45 kilograms

1 litre (l) = 1 quart (more or less)

Media: newspapers and magazinesAll the principal US publications are available in Canada - too available, many Canadians feel. The Globe & Mail is Canada's national newspaper, Maclean's Magazine is the national weekly news magazine.

TaxesCanadian merchandise may seem cheap at first glance, but you'll find that the prices can shoot up by some 15% at the cash register. The problem stems from the 7% General Sales Tax (GST) levied by the federal government some years ago,

A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.

Attributed to Pierre Berton, 1973

The Canadian $1 coin was introduced in 1987 and almost immediately nicknamed the

"Loonie" after the bird depicted. The $2 coin followed suit in 1995 and is

generally known as the Toonie - nothing to do with the polar bear on its face.


Canada is said to have got its name from the two Spanish words 'Aca' and 'Nada', as

signifying 'there is nothing there.'RB Cunninghame Graham, Mogreb-el-Acksa, 1898

which more often than not sits atop a provincial sales tax of 4-7% (although not in Alberta). Non-Canadian residents can claim a tax rebate for pricier goods which they will be taking out of the country - ask for the form at the time of purchase, or at the airport at the end of your trip. KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS.

Note also that cigarettes and alcohol are heavily taxed in Canada, and that quanti-ties permitted for entry are restricted.

FoodAlthough it can't really be said that there's anything like typically Canadian cook-ing, most regions have certain dishes they call their own.

Quebec Tourtiére is a delicious savoury pie made with spiced ground beef, typically eaten in winter. Poutine is essentially a dish of gravy-soaked French fries.

Ontario The province is trying very hard to produce fine wines, with some success. Nota-ble are its 'ice wines', sweet dessert wines which should be drunk very cold.

Manitoba Winnipeg gold-eye is a delicacy served for breakfast, with champagne.

SaskatchewanGood home baking is the logical product of a region blanketed in wheat fields. Saskatoons are blueberry-like berries native to the province.

AlbertaBeef, of course.

British ColumbiaFish and shellfish, particularly salmon and king crab, are among BC's culinary high points, as well as lamb in any shape or form.

The separatist movementThe possibility of Quebec leaving Canada has been much in international news in recent years, but the roots of the discord are found far back in history. From the beginning, French and English settlers arriving in Canada brought the ancient animosity between their countries with them. Even in the face of such a hostile environment, and such a huge amount of empty space, the groups isolated them-selves and quickly drew up boundaries.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the first French Canadians were effectively abandoned by Mother France and left to fend for themselves on an overwhelm-ingly English continent. The British, on the other hand, still had their crown behind them - as well as all its capital - and were rapidly increasing in numbers with each wave of arriving settlers. The French had little choice but to accept the new balance of power.

By 1867 a clear socio-economic division existed. While the English in Quebec dominated the white-collar world - banking, business and politics - the French were the labourers and the farmers. The English spoke English, the French spoke French, and neither was particularly interested in the other - except, of course, when it came to hockey. And so it continued until the 1950's.

The revolution tranquille, the 'quiet' revolution, was a movement led by a group artists, journalists and politicians - among them Pierre Trudeau - seeking to create an awareness and pride in the culture and language of Quebec. By the late 1960's, the movement had gained in prominence to the point of giving birth to its own political party, the Parti Québécois. Perhaps infected by the terrorist activities in so many parts of the world at that time, Quebec suffered its own dark moments


with the terrorist FLQ (Front du Libération du Québec) group, which in 1970 set off bombs and kidnapped a British diplomat and a Québec minister, whom they later murdered. In 1976 the Parti Québécois won the provincial elections but suffered a resounding defeat in 1980 in the first province-wide referendum on sovereignty-association.

Twenty years down the road, Canada has watched the margins on subsequent referen-dums grow narrower and narrower. The Bloc Québécois, as the Parti is now known, was even, for a while, the official opposition party to the Conservatives in the Federal government.

In the October 1996 referendum, Quebeckers were asked to say Oui if they wanted to separate from Canada, Non if they didn't. The Non side won, but by a margin of just over 1%. Two weeks after the referendum, Maclean's Magazine - Canada's answer to Time - conducted a poll which showed that more Quebeckers would have voted Oui had known that theirs might have been the deciding vote.


Pictographs & petroglyphs Pictographs are paintings on cliffsides or vertical rock faces, usually executed in red ochre with a finger or a stick. The image(s) in a petroglyph are carved rather than painted, in similar locations. The two are collectively known as 'rock art.'

Both forms are generally associated with shamanism, a religious tradition in-volving a witch-doctor type figure whose major tasks and skills include healing, prophesy and communication with the spirits.

The Canadian Shield is the richest repository of pictographs in Canada (notably Agawa Rock, Quetico and Lake of the Woods), although other sites are sprinkled across the country. Petroglyphs are also prevalent in the Shield area, tending to be somewhat larger and more complex than their painted counterparts. The oldest known petroglyph, discovered at Lake of the Woods under an Archaic period archeological deposit, has been dated to about 3000 BC.

The prairies of southern Saskatchewan and Alberta are another important area for rock art - surprisingly, because of the area's relative dearth of large rock surfaces. A number of these are just over a century old, and depict scenes from the early days of European contact.

Rock painting in the Canadian ShieldThe cliff-side pictographs of the Canadian Shield are stories in picture writing, created as far back as 2000 years ago by Algonquin-speaking people. The sites chosen were the homes of a special spirit, or manitou, who is usually represented in the picture.

The paintings are on vertical rock walls immediately beside water. Some are situated at the base of the cliff, easily reached by a person in a canoe, others are 60 feet off the ground, in locations only a superb athlete could reach. They are almost exclusively rendered in red ochre, a ferrous oxide that appears in veins throughout the Shield. The mineral was powdered and mixed with glue and oil from sturgeonfish to create a paint far more durable than anything in com-mon use today. Ochre also was believed to be a medicine with inherent spiritual powers, which the painter absorbed as he worked and conveyed to the surface on which the paint was being applied. A song from the Sault St. Marie area of Ontario evokes the potency of the mineral by saying, "My painting makes me a manitou."

Proof of the ochre's durability came when someone defaced a rock painting near Lake

Superior with store bought paint in the 1930's. Sixty years later, the modern paint has weathered away, while the Great Lynx

(below) is still there.

The Mishipizheu (Great Lynx) at Agawa Rock on Lake Superior.

Early Canada

Petroglyph thought to depict a shaman's voyage in response to a vision. Thunder Bay, Ontario


Rough distribution of rock paintings within the Canadian Shield area.

The stories depicted were often, it is thought, intended as lessons. They might describe the manitou residing in that spot, or record an event or situation from which the viewer is intended to draw a moral conclusion.

Dating rock paintings has long been a ticklish problem for archeologists, as no ap-plicable scientific method exists. Most frequently the date attributed reflects that given to artifacts unearthed from excavation sites nearby. The historic journals of explorers, traders and missionaries sometimes offer clues.

ManitousManitous were the spirits who dwelt in men, in every living creature and even in certain rocks and minerals. Special places could have manitous as well. These were the spirits to whom Algonquins turned when a little more than human power was needed to help with the hunt, with a battle or a cure. Yet manitous were not per-ceived as supernatural beings, rather as the 'grandfathers' of men and their brother animals. The most powerful humans, those able to communicate best with the manitous, could actually become manitous themselves at will, at least temporarily.

There were good manitous and bad manitous. According to the Algonquin's circular view of the world, the medicine wheel, the good manitous lived in the top half of the circle - in the heavens and on earth, the bad manitous in the bottom half - underwater and below ground. The Algonquin universe was layered, with Sky, Earth, Underwater and Underground being distinct worlds which con-nected in places such as deep lakes, whirlpools, caves and crevices. Here a man or manitou could travel from one realm to another. But the most important places, home of the manitous, were the bases of lakeside cliffs, where sky, earth, water and underground actually touch.

The highest manitou was Kitche (or Gitche) Manitou, the Great Spirit, who was responsible for the creation of all things. Among the good manitous were the Four Winds and Thunderbirds (Pinasiwuk) of the sky realm, and Bear (Makwa) and Wolf (Myeengun) of the earthly realm. The evil manitous included Great Lynx (Mishipizheu) and Horned Snake (Ginebik).

Every creature - bird, mammal, reptile or fish - was represented in the manitou world by a master animal. If a hunter killed a moose, for example, he had to thank the Moose Manitou for providing him with a meal for his family.


A hand, a bird and a communication line to the sky from a pictograph at Picture Rock

Island, Lake of the Woods.

Between the manitous and the people was Turtle (Mikinak) who acted as a mes-senger between the manitous and the people.

The handprintOne of the most frequent images in pictographs, the handprint had several mean-ings in the Algonquin world, and it is often difficult to know which is intended unless the context is very clear.

For example, a black hand print on a garment indicated that the wearer had killed an enemy and was worn as a badge of strength and courage. A buckskin cut-out of a hand filled with moss and tobacco and smeared with red paint was intended - and recognized as - a declaration of war. Without the toppings, however, the cut-out was used to seal agreements, and stood for the honor and integrity of the Ojibway nation.

In the sign language of many North American Indian cultures, the flat hand pressed to the lips then raised, palm upwards, indicated prayer.

The handprint was also used in clothing patterns to denote the hand of the Kitche Manitou in the sky.

The buffalo jump at WanuskewinWanuskewin, which translates to 'seeking peace of mind' in the Cree language, was a meeting place and hunting ground for the nomadic Plains people for more than 6,000 years. It is located just north of present-day Saskatoon.

An archeologist's paradise, the area is riddled with sites documenting human activities through the centuries. Further, periods of occupation are neatly separated into distinct cake-like layers by the fine silts deposited during successive spring floodings of the South Saskatchewan River. And, best of all, the area has never been under cultivation.

Wanuskewin's sheltered valley offered a host of culinary possibilities. The creek was home to waterfowl, beavers and otters, and nuts and berries were abundant in the late summer and fall. Bison herds roamed nearby during the summer, and the steep embankment near the creek provided an ideal jump site.

The buffalo jump was a central event in the lives of the Plains people, and was conducted very systematically. To begin with, young men on foot would search out a decent-sized herd, and place themselves downwind so as to nudge the animals in the right direction. Strategically placed piles of brush or boulders on either flank created a drive lane which helped to guide the herd along. Other men would appear at intervals, increasing the tension within the herd until the nervous animals would set into a trot, then a full gallop. The stampede would head straight over the cliff, moving too fast and in too tight a cluster for any individual animals to be able to stop themselves at the cliff's edge. The first to land were crushed by those following - the last to fall would suffer only broken legs. It was then a relatively simple, if bloody, matter for men to finish the animals off with bows and spears.

The Wanuskewin jump was used for more than 2,300 years, as indicated by the different styles of weapon points found from one level to the next. A wide variety of butchering tools has also been unearthed, notably heavy stone choppers for breaking bones and stone knives for skinning and cutting up the meat. The last jumps were probably held in the 1870's, by which time the local herds were virtu-ally depleted.


Another method used for hunting bison in the Wanuskewin area involved stam-peding the animals into a strong wooden corral, which was cleverly placed so that the animals couldn't it until they were already trapped. The corral at Wanuskewin lies south of the valley, and was also used for many generations.

The women were largely responsible for processing the results of the hunt. Some meat was cooked and eaten immediately, but most was sliced and sun-dried for winter, or ground and mixed with fat and berries to make pemmican. Buffalo hides and sinew were used for robes, tipi covers, moccasins and shields. Tools and utensils were made from the hooves, hair and bones. The dung was burned as fuel in treeless areas.

The bison answered so many of the Plains peoples' needs that it came to be viewed as the provider, a link between the creator and humans.

The highest ridge at Wanuskewin, south of the creek, features a stone medicine wheel thought to be some 1,500 years old. It comprises a circle of stones around a central cairn, and was used as a place to communicate with the spirits who brought rain, good forage and large herds of bison.

Tipi rings, the circular arrangements of stones which held down tent covers, have been found on several hilltops. These are thought to have been the sites of sum-mer camps, ideally situated for sweeping views of the plains (ie bison-spotting), and for cooling winds. Another tipi ring, off by itself near the bison corral, may have been that of the shaman.

Many places in Wanuskewin are still held sacred to this day - the medicine wheel among them.

8000 BC 6000 BC 5000 BC 4000 BC 2000 BC 1000 BC 0 AD 500 AD 1000 AD 1500 AD 1880

The stages of northern Plains prehistory are marked by changes in the styles of stone projectile points. The larger points of the Palaeo-Indian period were probably used with spear-throwers. The decline in

point size when side-notches appear may reflect a change in spear size. The small, notched points of the late prehistoric period are arrowheads. These points come from a variety of cultural groups,

and are shown at about 95% original size.


10,000 to 8000 BC

There is clear evidence that there were people in much of North America by 10,000 BC, despite the fact that the northern regions were largely blanketed by a massive ice sheet. The Alaska/Yukon area was an exception, and modern theory holds that the first immigrants to the New World crossed into these unglaciated regions some time before 12,000 BC via the land bridge connecting Asia and North America.

The gradual melting of the Cordilleran ice sheet created a narrow north-south corridor, opening the way for a southwards migration into the British Columbia area. By 8,000 BC the Cordilleran sheet had broken into many sections and the Laurentide sheet, although still dominating the northeastern quarter of the conti-nent, had retreated from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Fluted PointNamed for the distinctive projectile points (chipped stone spearheads). The culture spread quickly across the habitable portion of the Western Hemisphere, and derivative forms reached the east coast and South America. These people used primarily stone tools and weapons. Spear foreshafts of mastodon and mammoth bone have also been found. MicrobladeLimited to Alaska/Yukon area. Identified by blades made of thin, razor sharp flakes of stone struck from prepared cores.

8000 to 4000 BC

As the land opened up various groups moved eastwards, developing cultural traits in response to the different environments in which they settled. Migration and settlement was greatly influenced by a rapidly changing physical environment: the melting glaciers formed huge pro-glacial lakes which drained as the ice receded, causing dramatic shifts in the location of vegetation regions. In the west, the eruption of Mt. Mazama in Oregon in 4800 BC deposited volcanic ash over an enormous area - conveniently providing a dated horizon marker for archeological sites in the region.

PlanoDescendents of the Fluted Point people, often occupying the same sites. Major diagnostic characteristics include a distinctive style of stone flaking, a range of new projectile points and cremation burial. Migrating eastwards, they reached the St. Lawrence Valley and the Maritime provinces.Early ArchaicAnother group descended from the Fluted Points, but closely associated with the eastern woodlands. Most significant innovation is a new method of side-notching points and the intro-duction of the spear-thrower.Laurentian ArchaicDeveloped from the Early Archaic culture, the Laurentian Archaic is characterized by stone burial mounds under which the deceased were buried with a useful set of tools. They

The cultures listed here are those of southern Canada. With the exception of the early prehistoric groups, cultures of

the Northwest Territories, Yukon and the Arctic are excluded.

Ancient and modern indigenous cultures


occupied an area from New England to the Ohio Valley, including the upper St. Lawrence Valley and much of southern Ontario.Early PlainsBuffalo-hunting descendents of the Plano people from the central Plains, distinguished by a notched projectile point. Their appearance coincides the onset of the Altithermal, a long pe-riod of dry weather during which the landscape was much changed by erosion.Shield ArchaicA culture developed from the southeastern Manitoba Plano group which came to occupy nearly all the Canadian Shield area. Stone tools included chipped stone scrapers, knives and side-notched projectile points.CordilleranThought to have occupied southern British Columbia from about 8000 BC. Mainly settled in coastal areas near the best salmon fishing sites. Distinguished by leaf-shaped projectile points.

4000 to 1000 BC

By 4000 BC the pace of environmental change had slowed, as did migration. The now geographically almost stable groups were thus able to develop and fine tune technologies adapted to their surroundings. Population growth and consistent or repeated seasonal occupation of favoured regions contribute to a clearer archeolog-ical record. Basic cultural patterns emerge, and all cultures considered henceforth are effectively descended from groups which existed by about 1000 BC.

Laurentian ArchaicEmerging distinctive traits include a diet of deer, fish and nuts, as well the use of ulus (a crescent shaped knife) and polished stone spear-thrower weights - both borrowed from cultures to the east. Around 3000 BC cemeteries appear at larger campsites containing graves provided with red ochre and objects made of native copper.Shield ArchaicStill expanding eastwards, now into sub-Arctic Quebec. By 4000 BC native copper from Lake Superior was being exploited, and finished tools and raw nuggets were traded east and west. Tools made from carved chert, a flint-like form of quartz, began to appear in 1500 BC. Fami-ly-sized dwellings were made of skins held down by stones distributed evenly around a sunken floor, and contained hearths and stone-lined pits.Middle PlainsThe hunt for the all-important buffalo was characterized by elaborate social organization. The stone weights used to hold down tent skins have survived in several locations in their original circular arrangements, called tipi rings. The influence of the Middle Plains people stretched north to the Mackenzie Valley and east to Lake Superior. Dogs were likely used to pull travois,* as evidenced by slightly deformed dog skeletons. Ceremonial stone arrangements known as medicine wheels appear, and are thought to be associated with rites involving buffalo. Some of these wheels were added to over thousands of years, indicating an remarkable continuity of beliefs. Similarly, a cemetery in southwestern Saskatchewan seems to have been used by the same population for over 2000 years. Eagle talons, Lake Superior copper and shell beads from the Atlantic have been found with the dead.Early NesikepAppears in the southern interior of British Columbia between 5500 and 4500 BC. Their pro-jectile points were large and either corner or side-notched. By 2000 BC semi-subterranean pit houses had become common, clustered in villages along salmon rivers.

1000 BC to AD 500

Technological diffusion and innovation became the major stimulants of cultural change: pottery, for example, reached eastern Canada from the south in about 1000 BC, and the bow and arrow came into widespread usage only slightly later.

Point Peninsula/ Meadowood/SaugeenThe Laurentian Archaic group is typically reclassified as Point Peninsula/ Meadowood/Saugeen once the knowledge required to make pottery cooking vessels had arrived in eastern Canada

Stone medicine wheels, such as the one above from southern Alberta, ringed the

northern summer range of bison. This one was added to over a period of 5000 years.

* A travois was a transportation device used to carry household goods and the tipi cover

from camp to camp. It consisted of two long poles dragged by a dog (later, horse).


from the south - around 1000 BC. Soapstone vessels were already in use by several groups. The different names identify regional and, in part, temporal subcultures, each with somewhat different styles of pottery and tools. The bow and arrow are adopted, and fishing is on the increase. Earth mound burials come into practise, the most impressive example of which is the 180-foot Serpent Mound north of Lake Ontario. Smoking pipes appear, as do beads, ear spools and other ornaments made from native silver from the deposits at Cobalt, Ontario.Shield ArchaicTechnology in use by Shield Archaics throughout most of Quebec north of the St. Lawrence did not undergo much change - the bow and arrow was adopted around 1000 BC but pottery was not.LaurelThe Laurels comprise those Shield Archaic groups of western Quebec, northern Ontario and Manitoba who adopted pottery and other technologies. Beaver incisor knives, snowshoe needles and detachable harpoons are some of the more remarkable findings at sites where campfire ash has neutralized normally acidic soil. Populations along the Ontario and Minne-sota borders buried their dead under earth mounds. The Ontario Laurels made their tools from native copper, and traded them for obsidian from Wyoming, chalcedony from North Dakota and pottery from other groups in southern Ontario. The Laurel culture expanded into Saskatchewan late in this period.Middle PlainsMedicine wheels, travois and tipis continued to be in common use. Pottery and the bow and arrow arrived among these people about 2000 years ago, at which time burial mounds began to appear in southwestern Manitoba. Middle NesikepWhile dependence on salmon continued, the gathering of bitterroot, mountain potato and wild onion and balsam root became common after 500 BC. Tubers were roasted in large pits. Stone bowls make an appearance, and the microblade rejoins the tool set.

AD 500 to European Contact

Populations are growing and agriculture is widely but not generally adopted. The effects of European contact, notably on eastern cultures, becomes increasingly evident after the 16th century.

People of the Eastern WoodlandsSt. Lawrence IroquoisBy the 13th century, corn, squash, sunflowers and later tobacco and beans were being grown by these people. The rich fishing in the St. Lawrence - particularly for eels - apparently led to rapid population growth. Large palisaded villages indicate warfare, but smaller summer fishing camps were also established along the river. The Iroquois in this area made very fine quality pottery smoking pipes and vessels. Bone was used for arrowheads, awls, pipes (from deer scapulae), beads and hoes. Corn grinding tools, metates and manos, were of stone. These Iroquois actively opposed the presence of the French in their traditional area. Society was ordered on a matrilineal basis, with the women selecting the male chiefs.

Laurel pottery vessel


Ontario IroquoisThe adoption of agriculture marks the beginning of the Ontario Iroquois culture. Corn appears after AD 500, sunflowers by the late 12th century and tobacco is in extensive cultivation by the mid-14th century as evidenced by the number of pottery pipes found dating to this period. The introduction of beans in the 14th century seems to have the most profound effect of any new crop, judging by the subsequent rapid increase in population and the shift of village sites from sandy soils to richer loams. By the 8th century these people lived in multi-family dwellings in small, palisaded farming hamlets. Seven hundred years later, some of these hamlets had grown to include up to 2000 people. The Ontario Iroquois - including Huron, Petun and Neutral - likely numbered 60,000 people at the beginning of the 17th century. The Hurons were the first group to encounter the Europeans.Central Algonkian or AlgonquianA second language group with the eastern woodland Indian population, Central Algonquians - including Cree, Ojibway (or Ojibwa), Algonquin and Montagnais - expanded into southern Ontario in the 17th century. The Algonquians traded with the French until their withdrawal from New France in the mid-18th century, then sided with the English during the American Revolution. These are the creators of the rock art in the Canadian Shield. Algonquin crops included corn, beans and squash. Wild rice and maple syrup were commonly harvested. Birchbark was used extensively in the construction of sophisticated canoes and conical tipi dwellings.

Loyalist groupsThe Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy came to Canada from the northern US during the American War of Independence (from 1775). Also called the League of the Iroquois, it com-prised the Mohawk, Onandaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida and Tuscarora groups who were loyal to British rule. In Canada they warred repeatedly with the early French settlers, and decimated the Hurons.

People of the PlainsLate PlainsSeveral groups living within the Plains region came to adopt the culture, developing close connections in spite of language differences. The Eastern Canadian Plains were gradually set-tled by the Siouan-speaking Assiniboine (from Minnesota) and Algonquin speakers from the Shield (Blackfoot, Gros Ventre). Other connected groups included the buffalo-hunters of the northern Plains and the farmers of the Missouri Valley. Horses reached the Canadian Plains in the early 18th century, well before there was a significant European presence in the area.

People of the PlateauKootenay and Salishan (Shuswap, Interior Salish)Pit houses became more abundant after AD 750, suggesting a growing population and a more sedentary way of life dependent upon salmon. Polished stone tools and rock art become more common. Pit cairn and cist (wood-lined) burials were widespread. Cultural variations are evident from valley to valley.

Iroquois longhouse


Modern history:Cartier to Chrêtien


Explorer Samuel de Champlain using an astrolabe on the shores of Lake Huron.


10 c. ? Norse explorers reach Canadian waters and are believed to have estab-lished the first known European settlement in North America around AD 1000. The site of 'Vinland' has been the subject of much debate, but current theory has placed it at l'Anse aux Meadows in Newfound-land.

15 c. Basque and English fishermen regularly fish off Grand Banks, New-foundland, trading with the Algonquin and Montagnais people of the Eastern Woodlands cultures.

1497 Italian navigator John Cabot explores the east coast on behalf of England's Henry VII.

16TH CENTURY

1534 French navigator Jacques Cartier claims Canada for France and King François I. Having crossed the Atlantic in search of riches and a new route to the Orient, he first landed on Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula in 1534 and returned in 1542.

[1565 St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the US, is founded by the Spaniards].

1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for England.

17TH CENTURY

1605 Samuel de Champlain establishes Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia). At its peak, Acadia ('Acadie' in French) covered a vague area encompassing Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Maine. The settlements came under constant attack from New England during the Anglo-French wars of the 17th century. Today the descendents of the French colonists who arrived to settle the area between 1632 and 1651 still form a visible French-speaking group known as Acadians.

1608 Champlain travels up the St. Lawrence and founds Quebec City. The first structure was a rudimentary fortress cum fur-trading post known as the habitation, which was repeatedly attacked by the Iroquois. The hostilities, eventually known as the Iroquois Wars, continued until 1701 and kept settlement in the area to a minimum.

The French colonial possessions in eastern Canada became col-lectively known as New France. The colony was administratively organized according to the feudal system that existed in France until the Revolution in 1789: a seigneurie or piece of land was granted to a seigneur or landowner who swore loyalty to the king. He in turn granted parcels of his land to tenant farmers who paid him various dues. Water access being a necessity for transportation, the land was divided into rangs - long thin strips extending inland from the river bank. At its peak in the early 18 c., New France stretched from Hud-son Bay to New Orleans (Louisiana), and from Newfoundland almost to the Rockies.

Champlain eventually travels as far as Lake Huron, along the way exploring by canoe the Ottawa River, Lake Champlain, Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario.

1610 Henry Hudson arrives in Hudson's Bay.

[1620 Pilgrims found Plymouth, Massachusetts].


1650/60's Frenchmen Pierre Radisson and Sieur des Groseillers travel through the Great Lakes, bringing home a cargo of furs and reports conveyed to them by Cree Indians of richer fur country further to the north, in Hudson Bay. The French crown, however, is simply not interested in funding further exploration, believing that the new colony would be better off concentrating on farming.

1668 The British crown, to whom Radisson and Groseillers apply, finances the two on an a highly successful expedition to Hudson Bay. The following year Radisson is sent back to the area to establish a perma-nent post, and claim the lands for Britain.

1670 The Hudson's Bay Company is formed under a charter signed by Charles II. The 'Governor and Company of Adventurers' was given monopoly trading privileges and the right to colonize all the lands drained by waters flowing into Hudson Strait and Bay. This vast area, named Rupert's Land, included modern northern Quebec, northern Ontario, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta and a portion of the Northwest Territories. The chartering of the Hudson's Bay Company is thus one of the great ironies of Canadian history: one of the most successful British trading empires was actually founded through the efforts of two citizens of an enemy country.

18TH CENTURY

1701 The Montreal Peace Treaty is signed, formally but not definitively, ending the Franco-Iroquois hostilities.

1713 Since the establishment of their first colonies in Canada, the British and the French had fought over the richest fur-trading territories in a series of battles known as the Anglo-French Wars. One of the first of these led to the British occupation of Quebec City from 1629 to 1632. The expanding activities of the Hudson's Bay Company aroused tremendous resentment in the French, who launched a series of attacks against the British posts. To the south, the French were engaged against the British in New England, whose settlers were attempting to encroach upon the Acadian lands. Animosities were further fuelled by hostilities at home in Europe. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht secured a temporary peace by formally carving up North America among European powers. Under the terms of the treaty the French ceded Acadia to the British and recognized their claim on Hudson's Bay.

1739 The population of Canada reaches 48,000, up from 19,000 in 1713.

1731-38 Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, explores much of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and sets up a series of trading posts. His sons travel further west, becoming the first Europeans to reach the Rockies in 1742.

1756-63 Territorial conflicts involving European powers' claims in North America and India lead to the declaration of the Seven Years' War, pitting France, Spain, Austria and Russia against Britain and Prussia. This global conflict was mirrored in Canada by the resurgence of Franco-British hostilities, building again since 1744. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (Quebec) in 1759, with the French army led by the Marquis of Montcalm and the British by General James Wolfe, was the decisive moment in the Franco-British struggle for Canada. The defeat of the French here, and in other battles to the south, forced them to cede, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris,


Excerpted from letters written home in 1819 by James Laidlaw, a Scottish settler in

Ontario (spelling intact)."There is a great number of people landed

here this season but wages is good. The land is very extensive and very thin peopled. I

think we have seen as much land as might serve all the people in Britain uncultivated

and all covered with wood.I write you this to let you know that we are

stil alive which is a great mercy… We are mostly all Scottsmen and has got a township

to be together or what is called a parish in Scotland. Government bought a Large Tract

of Cuntry from the Indians last year… We have eighteen months to do our settling

deuties in where we have to clear five acers each and put up a House and then we get

our Deed for evr to our Selvs and hirs. Robert, I will not advise you to Come hear as I am afraid you will not Like this place…

indeed I can do very Little for the support of a Family for the work is very heavy and it is not a place for old men Lik me altho it is a

fine country."Quoted in Changing Places, an essay by Alice Munroe.

all territories east of the Mississippi (including Canada) to Britain.

1775-83 An estimated 80,000 Loyalists (or 'Tories') - American colonials loyal to British rule - arrive in Canada, fleeing the American War of Inde-pendence. They settle in the Maritimes, the St. Lawrence River valley and the Niagara Peninsula. Among them are the Indians of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (including the Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Tuscarora), who had fought for the British. The largest mass movement of the time, the arrival of the Loyalists creates the province of Upper Canada (Ontario) almost overnight. The province's status, as well as that of Lower Canada (Quebec), is formalized in the 1791 Constitutional Act. The arrival of the Loyalists was in many ways fortuitous to the British, whose Canadian colonies had hitherto been populated overwhelmingly by French-speaking settlers. On the flip side of the coin, the Americans favoured a decidedly more democratic form of government than the British…

1778 Captain James Cook becomes the first European to set foot on the western coast of Canada. He, like so many others, was convinced that a waterway existed across North America. Cooks sells pelts obtained in British Columbia at great profit in China, bringing the area to the notice of Britain and Spain.

1789 Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company travels the entire length of the Mackenzie River (all 2,630 miles) to the Arctic Ocean. By 1793, he had completed the first crossing of the continent north of Mexico - predating Lewis and Clark by 12 years.

1792-94 Captain George Vancouver (midshipman on Cook's voyage) lands in British Columbia to claim it for Britain as New Caledonia, and spends two years mapping the coastline.

19TH CENTURY

1812-1814 The War of 1812 is declared, the result of an attempted American invasion of British lands from Lake Erie to the eastern seaboard. President Thomas Jefferson was convinced that the Loyalist newcom-ers would gladly shrug off the yoke of British authority and rally to the American flag. Furthermore, the British had by then reduced their Canadian garrison to a mere 2,200 soldiers. However, circum-stance, a handful of brave individuals and a good deal of luck gave the victory to the British. The Battle of Queenston Heights (near Kingston on Lake Ontario) in October 1812 pushed the invaders back across the lake, but it was not until after two more years of fighting - which included the British burning of the White House in Washington, DC - that the conflict ended, with the border re-estab-lished along pre-war lines. The 49th parallel was established in 1817 as the southern boundary of British territories all the way from the Lake of the Woods (Manitoba) to the Rockies.

1821 Forced merger of the Hudson's Bay and North West companies.

1837 Rebellions in both Upper and Lower Canada stem from settlers' disenchantment with the political structure of their colony. Executive powers were wielded by an exclusive - and apparently not entirely ethical - Council appointed by the king. The Patriote Party led by Louis-Joseph Papineau spearhead the uprising in Quebec, while a fiery Scotsman, William Lyon Mackenzie, led the rebellions in On-tario. Both leaders fled to the US after facing the British militia, but Britain nonetheless recognized the need for constitutional reform.

The War of 1812 produced two of Canada's most enduring heroes:

Laura Secord, whose name and picture grace a chain of ice cream and chocolate stores across Canada. Overhearing plans

discussed by American soldiers billeted at her house, she quickly carried word of them

to the British garrison. Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief whose

people had earlier been crushed by the Americans at Tippecanoe on the Wabash

River, and whose subsequent support proved invaluable.


"I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found instead

two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races: and I perceived that it would be idle

to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions, until we could first succeed in terminating the deadly animosity that now separates the inhabitants of Lower Canada

[Quebec] into the hostile divisions of French and English."

Lord Durham, from his Report on the Affairs of the British North, 1839

Accordingly John George Lambton, Earl of Durham was dispatched to the colonies as Governor-General, with the responsibility of determining 'the form and future government' of Canada. 'Radical Jack' quickly decided that the French Canadians formed the major impediment to the establishment of order, and privately called them 'backward.' The Durham Report recommended unifying Upper and Lower Canada on the grounds that in combining their populations the pesky French would be reduced to an ineffective minority. This unification, he argued, would also lead to a strengthened economy that would allow the new province to exist tranquilly alongside the aggressive and influential United States. He also advocated the creation of representational municipal governments and a supreme court. The 1841 Act of Union, which created the United Province of Canada, adopted many of Durham's suggestions. Newly renamed, Canada East (Lower Canada) and Canada West (Upper Canada) each received equal representation in a new legislature which, by 1849, formed an administration for the Province as a whole.

1846 The 49th parallel is established as the US frontier in British Colum-bia after many years of dispute. Vancouver Island is declared a British Crown Colony in 1849. Hudson's Bay Company retains control of the balance of New Caledonia (British Columbia) and the Yukon region.

[1848 California Gold Rush begins].

1858-1861 British Columbia's gold rushes.

[1861-1865 American Civil War].

1867 The British North American Act brings the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia into the Canadian Confedera-tion. The grouped provinces, including the (again) newly renamed Ontario and Quebec, are given the collective name of the Dominion of Canada. A parliamentary system of government is adopted, and federal and provincial powers are separated. The first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, is elected. July 1, 1867, is considered the founding date of Canada and is still celebrated as a national holiday, Canada Day.

1868 Even as Confederation was being negotiated, Macdonald and oth-ers were imagining a dominion which included not only the four existing provinces but also the fledgling colony of British Columbia far to the west. Unfortunately, the lands in between belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. After much pressure from the British government, the Hudson's Bay Company finally agrees to sell its vast Rupert's Land holding to the Dominion of Canada for $1.5 million in cash, as well as land concessions amounting to one-twentieth of the prairie region. The company retains any developed lands around its trading posts.

1869-1870 Having regarded Rupert's Land as the sole property of the Hudson's Bay Company, the government had neglected to include the area's indigenous population in its plans. The Métis, French-speaking Catholic homesteaders descended from French colonials and Assini-boine or Cree Indians, reacted by promptly setting up their own gov-ernment under the leadership of the charismatic Louis Riel (25 years old, one-eighth Indian and seven-eighths French Canadian, Catholic and educated in Montreal). In what became known as the first of the Riel Rebellions, the British HBC outpost of Fort Garry on the Red River (south of Winnipeg) was seized without bloodshed, and held until the Dominion of Canada was forced to negotiate terms. The

They move between the jagged edgeof the forest and the jagged river

on a stumpy patch of cleared land

my husband, a neighbour, another manweeding the few rows

of string beans and dusty potatoes.

They bend, straighten; the sunlights up their faces and hands, candles

flickering in the wind against the

unbright earth. I see them; I knownone of them believe they are here.

They deny the ground they stand on,

pretend this dirt is the future.And they are right. If they let go

of that illusion solid to them as a shovel,

open their eyes even for a momentto these trees, to this particular sun

they would be surrounded, stormed, brokenin upon by branches, roots, tendrils, the dark

side of lightas I am.

Margaret Atwood, The Planters, from The Journals of Susanna Moodie

which describe the life of an early Plains settler.

The Province of Canada's first postage stamp, designed by Sir Sanford Fleming

and issued in 1851.


strategy worked, resulting in the creation in 1870 of a minuscule new province, Manitoba, 140 miles wide by 110 miles deep, where the Métis and the French enjoyed special rights. The episode might have ended with little antagonism had not a passionate young easterner, resentful of the Métis, tried to throttle Riel. Riel acted equally rashly by having the prisoner tried in a Métis court and shot. The subse-quent arrival of troops from the east sent Riel into hiding in the US.

1871 British Columbia's entry into the Dominion of Canada was a case of negotiation. With little financial support from the British gov-ernment and the gradual ebb of revenues from the gold rushes, the colony by 1865 was deeply in debt. Its total European population was 11,000, among them only a smattering of staunchly British, as against 26,000 Indians. The established provinces of the Dominion were thousands of miles away. America, on the other hand, lay just to the south across the 49th parallel and, since the purchase of Alaska in 1867, to the north as well. The only way of getting a letter to Ottawa from the colony was via the post office in San Francisco, which re-quired an American stamp, and as far as travelling east oneself went, the route was again overwhelmingly American. All in all, there would be a certain logic, British Columbians felt, in annexing themselves to the enthusiastic Americans… Nonetheless, their sympathy was more Canadian, so in the spring of 1870 a delegation went east for the Confederation talks in Ottawa, having decided to demand a guarantee of at least a wagon trail from Winnipeg to the Pacific as a condition to their joining the Dominion. When the government of the Dominion proposed instead to build a transcontinental railway, the offer was accepted with gusto.

Canada's population soars to 3.7 million (America's in 1870 is 39 million).

1872 The Dominion Lands Act is passed, offering new settlers 160 acres of virtually free land, in return for a $10 registration fee and a prom-ise to stay on the land for at least 6 months of the year for 3 consecu-tive years. Posters were printed in a dozen different languages and distributed throughout Europe.

1873 Prince Edward Island becomes the seventh province. As an entice-ment, the government has to agree to financing the construction of an island railway, guaranteeing a ferry service to the mainland and permitting the new province's debt to rise to double that of any other province's. The joke of the day was that the Prince Edward Islanders seemed to think that it was the Dominion of Canada that was being annexed to them.

1881 Canada's population stands at 4.3 million.

1884 Louis Riel resurfaces in Saskatoon to lead the second Riel Rebellion. Riel is stried and hanged for treason the following year.

1885 Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway completed. First transcontinental passenger train arrives in Vancouver in 1887.

1898 Creation of the Yukon Territory and entry into the Dominion.

20TH CENTURY

1901 Canada's population stands at 7.2 million.

1905 The provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta are created, in response to the flood of new immigrants.

Métis rebels on the march during the Riel uprisings.

From Archives Canada, C.W. Jeffreys

Riel's death sentence was controversial, to say the least. French Canadians demanded that the sentence be commuted, but Prime Minister Sir

John A. Macdonald upheld the decision of the courts. (The writing on the left horse's belly

says 'English influence'; the flank of the right-hand horse reads 'French').

Engraving published in Grip, August 29, 1885


1931 The Statute of Westminster, a British law, gives Canada control of external affairs.

1949 The citizens of Newfoundland vote to join the Dominion.

1959 St. Lawrence Seaway is completed.

1961 With an influx of 2 million immigrants, Canada's population grows 50% from 1946 to reach 18 million.

1968 The Parti Québecois is founded. Quebecker Pierre Trudeau is elected Prime Minister. His resignation in 1984 marked the end of a Liberal rule which had lasted 42 of the previous 49 years.

1969 The Official Languages Act establishes bilingualism at the federal level. All federal and provincial government publications and forms must henceforth be issued in both English and French, and any product sold in Canada must bear a label in both languages.

1976 The Parti Quebecois wins its first provincial elections.

1980 Defeat of the first Quebec referendum on separation.

1987 Defeat of the Meech Lake Accord, a proposed legislation which called for special status for Quebec.

1990 Manitoba refuses to sign the Meech Lake Accord before the deadline.

1992 The federal government commits itself to the creation of Nunavut, a self-administered Inuit homeland within the Northwest Territories region, after a seven-year transitional period.

1996 Defeat, by a margin of 0.1%, of a national referendum on Quebec separatism.


The fur-traders:The Hudson's Bay Company& the North West Company

In the 17th century, all entrepreneurial eyes were turned to the Orient. The European craving for spices and silks was driving sea-faring traders thousands of miles across unfriendly seas, and many thought a shorter, safer route must exist through the barely touched Americas. There had been talk of gold there, but gen-erally speaking interest in the continent had dwindled after first Italian navigator John Cabot then Frenchman Jacques Cartier returned with empty pockets and disappointing reports. And when 16th and early 17th century explorers Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson failed to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, Canada was, as it were, put on ice.

Had it not been for another European craze - beaver pelts, one wonders how much less of a history Canada might have.

The man who was in many ways responsible for establishing the fur trade in Canada was French explorer Samuel de Champlain. By the very fact that Cham-plain is often referred to as the 'father' of Canada, one can see how integral a role the lust for pelts played in the country's creation.

The indigenous people encountered by the Frenchmen and the handful of other European visitors quickly saw the benefits of the metalware they brought with them - particularly the axes and knives, which represented an enormous techno-logical improvement. All they had to offer in exchange was fresh meat and fur. The meat was consumed immediately, but the furs travelled back to Europe and eventually found their way into the hatmakers' workshops, where it was found that the soft underfur of a beaver pelt made a far better quality felt than anything previously available. The pelts could also be shaved into a very becoming texture. Wide-trimmed beaver hats became the rage, engendering an immense market for Canadian furs which lasted almost 200 years. The Huron, Iroquois and Ojibway hunters who first supplied the pelts never came to appreciate the hats themselves, but were happy to indulge the European tastes in exchange for the manufactured goods on offer. A 17th century writer noted that these people had developed a new respect for beavers, the little animals which had mysteriously brought them kettles, fabrics, axes and knives and gave them food and drink without their hav-ing to cultivate the land.

By the early 1700's the fur trade in Canada was booming, and the English had arrived to garner their share of the business as well. Alliances were formed with the indigenous groups - the French with the Hurons, the British with the Iroquois - an action that greatly exacerbated existing hostilities between the two. The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 transferred French territorial claims in Canada to Britain, effectively granting the English a monopoly over the fur trade.

The beaver becomes Big BusinessThe Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was chartered in 1670 by Charles II of England for the purpose of trade and settlement in Hudson's Bay in reaction to the findings and subsequent lobbying of Pierre Radisson and the Sieur des Gro-

Coureurs de bois and VoyageursReluctant to remain too dependent on the fur

trade, the French crown early on expanded their trade in Canada to provide raw

materials for French industry, including lumber as well as foodstuffs for their colonies in the West Indies. Thousands of immigrants

were shipped to Canada at the crown's expense to put the land into production. It

was soon discovered that the young men stayed on the farms only a short time before

disappearing inland - sometimes for years - to trade with the various tribes, mainly for fur.

Profit was certainly one motive, for the renegade traders dodged licensing require-

ments and middlemen, but an unquestionably important reason was the lack of women in the French settlements. The coureurs de

bois, as these men became known, eventually began to undermine the colonial merchants

who wound up being forced to hire them in order to stay in business. Thus legitimized,

the voyageurs were usually associated with a particular interior post. These two groups

were the fathers of the Métis, the name given to people of mixed European/Indian descent.


seillers. Posts were established along the shores of the bay, and over the years the 'Great Company' expanded its territory to include Rupert's Land - now the prairie provinces.

With the departure of the French, a group of Scottish merchants in Montreal formed the North West Company in 1783. The Nor'westers were an aggressive group: it was not their style to sit and wait at coastal posts for the indigenous people to bring to them. Instead, they pushed their way inland along the rivers, us-ing the Indian birch bark canoes scorned by HBC men who preferred the broader York boat. The company made extensive use of the voyageurs, and unlike the HBC, permitted employees of all ranks to marry native women. The 'preferred trading partner' of many tribes, the North West Company enjoyed de facto monopolies in several areas, notably the fur-rich Lake Athabasca region. The quantity and qual-ity of the staple (beaver) and fancy (mink, marten, fisher) furs shipped from Fort Chipewyan to Fort William (Thunder Bay) on Lake Superior were enormously profitable despite the labour-intensive transportation system. The annual dash of the North West canoe brigades along this route to the great Rendez-Vous at Fort William is legendary. Ever in search of new trading areas, Alexander Mackenzie carried the company flag to the Arctic Ocean in 1789, and in 1793 reached the Pacific travelling overland. Later explorers such as David Thompson (an ex- HBC employee) and Simon Fraser opened up the fur lands west of the Rocky Moun-tains.

The culture of the HBC was dramatically altered when the Earl of Selkirk assisted a number of Scottish Highlanders to settle in Manitoba, and in 1812 set them up in a colony on the Red River where Winnipeg now stands. The land he chose for the purpose belonged to the HBC, and Selkirk set about purchasing enough stock in the company to place four friends on its 7-man governing committee in order to guarantee support for the project. The Métis settlers in the area, many of the North West Company employees, resented the new colony as an incursion on their territory. In the Seven Oaks Incident of 1816, the Métis attacked and killed the colony's governor and 20 others. Fear of further confrontations led the British government to force the two trading giants to merge in 1821. It is interest-ing to note that a majority of officers in the HBC after the merger were former Nor'westers.

A period of true monopoly with undreamed-of profits followed under the leader-ship of Sir George Simpson. However, his death in 1860 and the sale in 1863 of the HBC to the International Finance Society, a British investment group looking for profit in settlement, marked the beginning of the end of the historic fur trade. Confederation in 1867 wiped out the HBC's territorial monopolies, and in 1870 its vast territories were sold to Canada by governmental order for £300,000. The company was now a free trader just like any other.

The influx of thousands of new immigrants to its erstwhile hunting grounds pushed HBC's trading activities northwards to the Arctic. Here it founded a chain of retail stores which it continued to operate until fairly recently. Under the leadership of Sir Robert Molesworth Kindersley (1915-25), HBC expanded its retail activities into a nation-wide chain of department stores, known today simply as 'The Bay.' Company headquarters were transferred from England to Canada in 1970, and most non-retailing activities were sold off in 1983.

Lower Fort Garry, now just outside Winnipeg, served as the district headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company from the time

of its construction in 1830.


‘It can be argued that November 7th 1885 - the day on which the last spike was driven on the [Canadian Pacific Railway] line at Craigellaghie - is a more appropriate day from which to date the existence of Canada than July 1st, 1867.’

There are few countries which do not have, at the heart of their national lore, an treasured archive of stories relating to the construction of their railway system. This is particularly true for Canada and its Canadians:

As historically pivotal as the building of the trans-Canada railway may have been, it is surely the sheer drama of the process that has made it such a national preoccupation for so long, spawning countless books, at least one epic poem and, inevitably, a TV mini-series.

Early DaysThe story begins in 1840, when Canada - or British North America, as it was then - consisted of an incoherent jumble of seven colonies clustered in the east. Travel and the transportation of goods was mainly by water, and therefore ground to a crunching halt for the four frozen months of winter. Furthermore, ships from Europe carrying the linens, china, clothing and machinery essential to the lives of Ontario settlers could only travel up the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, where they met the impassable Lachine Rapids. A solution existed, however, for back home in Britain the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, which began operations in 1830, had proven the viability of rail transportation by carrying in its first year not only regular shipments of freight but also well over 70,000 pas-sengers.

Railway history The building of the transcontinental railway


There was no lack of initiative to bring the ‘age of steam and steel’ to Canada, but there was a serious lack of capital. From their first meeting in 1832, an enterprising group of Montreal businessmen took three years to raise the local funds needed to purchase a steam locomotive from England and build the 14 miles of track which would circumvent the rapids to the south. In July 1836, the Dorchester made its first official run pulling four coaches from La Prairie, opposite Montreal on the St. Lawrence, to St-Jean on the Richelieu, and thus was born the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railway Company, an instant commercial success.

If railway track was not laid more rapidly during the following decade, it was again due to a lack of investment capital. Local businessmen simply hadn’t the wherewithal to fund railway construction, and investors elsewhere doubted that the sparse population of the Province of Canada, as it had since become known, was sufficient to make the endeavour profitable. This was not the case south of the border, where the states of Massachusetts and New York had amassed huge sums of capital through heavily subscribed railway bond issues - the deciding factor being the government’s guarantee on the interest. The Province of Canada needed the railway, in part as a means of spurring commercial development, but also as a means of binding the disparate components of its territory together. Recognis-ing that the rails would never built without government support, the Province’s Railway Guarantee Act of 1849 offered guarantees similar to those in the United States, but with conditions: the interest would be guaranteed to a maximum of 6 percent on half the bonds of any railway over 75 miles long. Railway companies thus still had to find investors willing to risk their money without guarantees until the first half of the rail bed was complete.

This, again, was no easy task. Railway companies by the dozens sprang to life, obtained the legal charter required to begin construction, then disappeared before even reaching the survey stage, let alone laying a rail or building a locomotive. Between 1850 and 1853, the legislature granted 56 railway charters. Twenty-seven lines were actually built, but only three survived for any time as independently viable businesses: The St. Lawrence & Atlantic, The Great Western and the Grand Trunk.

The St. Lawrence & Atlantic (Canadian) was built in conjunction with the At-lantic & St. Lawrence (American), to run between Montreal and the ice-free port at Portland, Maine. This was the world’s first international railway, and offered inland merchants a means of shipping and receiving goods year-round.

The Great Western had originally been chartered back in 1834 to cover the Niagara Falls-Windsor route, but not a shovelful of earth was turned until 1849, and a further 5 years beyond that before the first locomotive actually completed the journey. After that, however, there was no stopping the company, as tracks were laid to Toronto and shore points along Lakes Huron and Erie. Wherever they went, land doubled or tripled in value and towns and industries sprang up. Every-one wanted to be on the railway, and municipal bonds were used to persuade the company to bend the tracks in the right direction. The pressure to open sections of track which had been too hastily built or with untested signalling systems led to 15 collisions and derailments within a year, with over 100 passengers killed. To its credit however, The Great Western was the first railway to organise the sorting of mail on the trains, and introduced the world’s first sleeping cars. The world’s first railway suspension bridge was a Great Western undertaking, connecting the United States and Canada in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. In spite of all this, The Great Western was never profitable and was eventually swallowed by its growing - and politically better connected - rival, The Grand Trunk Railway.

The Grand Trunk RailwayThe Grand Trunk Railway grew out of plans for a railway connecting the Mari-time provinces with cities along the Great Lakes, and involved the purchase of both the St. Lawrence route and the Great Western, with new tracks laid to fill the

From the statement announcing regular service between Montreal and Toronto:The trains will be run on Montreal time,

which is:8 1/2 minutes faster than Brockville time;

12 minutes faster than Kingston time;14 1/2 minutes faster than Belleville time;

23 minutes faster than Toronto time.


In 1859, twelve-year old Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor, began his short-lived

first career as a newsboy and candy seller on the Chicago, Detroit & Canada Grand Trunk

Junction Railroad on the Port Huron to Detroit run. He used his free time during

layovers to experiment in a chemistry laboratory he had built in a baggage

compartment, but substituted the chemicals for a printing press in 1862 when he

accidentally set fire to the car, writing and printing the first newspaper ever published on a moving train, The Weekly Herald, for

which he charged three cents a copy. It was a grateful station master, whose small son

Edison rescued, who taught Edison the use of a telegraph machine, leading to a two-year

job as a telegrapher and a lifetime’s work in circuitry.

gaps between them. The project’s promoters and financial backers included both Englishmen and Canadians, among the latter a member of the Canadian cabinet who subsequently became the new company’s first president. The government agreed not only to provide guarantees, but to legislate against the construction of competitive lines. The construction was to be undertaken by a most eminent British contracting firm, and when complete, the proposed amalgamated network would comprise 1112 miles of railway track.

Capitalized at $47.5 million, the Grand Trunk proceeded apace. By 1856 the line was virtually completed all the way to Toronto, and an enormous banquet was held for over 4,000 guests from Toronto, Quebec, Boston and Portland. By the end of the same year, the Grand Trunk had reached as far as Stratford, Ontario, thus becoming the longest railway in the world. Three years later it had stretched to London, Sarnia and Rivière du Loup, comprising over 1,400 kilometres of lines. It connected all the major cities of Canada, and provided links to the Ameri-can railways in the Midwest as well as access to the Atlantic at Portland. Expansion continued over the next years, and by the time Queen Victoria signed the British North America Act on July 1, 1867, creating the Dominion of Canada, all four of its provinces - Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia - had estab-lished railway networks.

Yet there was still not a single track west of Ontario. Even four years later, when the Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land (the prairie provinces and the northwest) to Canada and the Métis had finally, after much negotiation, agreed to join the Confederation, the military expedition dispatched from Ottawa to bring law and order to the new province had to paddle countless lakes and rivers and cross fifty portages to reach their destination. And British Columbia on the Pacific coast, although long a British colony, could be reached much more rapidly by fol-lowing a route south of the border on the American railways.

Certainly one of the main sticking points was the difficulty in attracting investors, for none of the existing Canadian lines had ever been a financial success, and most teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Backers of the Grand Trunk, for example, had been assured that operating expenses would not exceed 40% of earnings. In reality, they varied from 58 to 85 percent of the gross receipts, and not a cent of dividend was ever paid on ordinary shares. To date, only the contractors had benefited financially from the railway business - if they got paid. This was not the case in the United States, however, where the Pacific railroads had proved gold mines for their promoters.

The Birth of The TranscontinentalThe fear of American territorial incursions had always been present, but it was their purchase of Alaska in 1867 which brought the threat into sharper notice. Af-ter all, British Columbia was now sandwiched between two American states, and its few settlers had a good deal more in common with the communities immedi-ately surrounding than they did with their nominal compatriots so far to the east.

Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, sought a means of bringing the western colony firmly under his wing by inviting them to join the Confedera-tion. The westerners responded in the form of a demand put to the government as a condition of accepting: a railway. Not just a local network, but one that could carry new settlers and goods all the way across the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a transcontinental line.

Debate raged in Ottawa, but Macdonald espoused the idea with passionate enthu-siasm, and carried the vote with his vision of a nation that, bound and fostered by the railway, would stretch ‘ad mari usque ad mari.’ Alexander Mackenzie, leader of the government’s Liberal Opposition Party, was apoplectic, and denounced the project as ‘an act of insane recklessness.’ The primary issue was, naturally, money:


Shortly after the beginning of Macdonald’s second term as Prime Minister, a clerk in Sir

Allan’s office found a telegram from Macdonald to his employer reading “I must have another ten thousand. Will be the last

time of calling. Do not fail me.” The clerk sold this and other incriminating documents

to the Liberal Party, which lost no time in passing them on to the media.

such a project was an absurdly vast undertaking, he maintained, for a nation of three and a half million people, only 23,000 of whom lived west of Lake Superior. Nonetheless, when British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, the government in return pledged to complete a railway line following an all-Canadian route to the Pacific Coast., and which would be complete and operating within a mere ten years. The estimated cost: $100 million.

As a first step, the Canadian Pacific Survey was formed, headed by Sanford Flem-ing, to survey the land and determine the best route. Over the next six years, twenty one teams comprising over 800 men would traverse a staggering 46,000 miles of wild and inhospitable land. Mountain ranges often had to be climbed several times before a viable passage was found. Fleming, after the reports came in, decided to go over the entire proposed route himself, and set off from Toronto with two friends, his son, a botanist and a photographer. They completed the journey and reached Victoria in 103 days.

The survey was one thing, but how was the actual construction to be financed? Mackenzie’s constant criticism ensured that Macdonald’s government would topple if it sought to raise funds through taxation, so clearly the project needed to funded and operated by a suitable private company - and a Canadian one at that. Two companies emerged in competition for the charter, but unfortunately the one headed by multi-millionaire Sir Hugh Allan was backed by a group of Americans. Macdonald successfully persuaded the two to join forces and exclude the Americans, and the charter was granted in March 1873 with Allan as president of the new company. The agreement involved the railway company raising $10 million to begin construction of the line within two years and complete it within the agreed ten. In return, the government promised $30 million in cash and large grants of land.

Scandal !Macdonald’s satisfaction over his arrangements was sadly short-lived: Sir Hugh, it turned out, had his own agenda and was entangled in a web of secret agreements with the dreaded Americans. It was brought to light that as part of his initial appli-cation for the charter he had agreed with his American partners that together they would deliberately delay construction along the all-Canadian main line in order to boost the building and profitability of their own connecting American North-ern Pacific Railway track. The Liberals - again led by Mackenzie - also unearthed the fact that Allan had helped to fund Macdonald’s reelection campaign in 1872, which of course led to the accusation that Allan had effectively purchased his position. The Pacific Scandal, as it became known, gained momentum as charges of corruption spread through Parliament and the newspapers, and Macdonald’s government was dissolved in 1873.

Over to The Liberals… BrieflyMackenzie, like it or not, was saddled with the transcontinental project. His ap-proach was to reduce the scale of the undertaking by using steamships instead of railway lines to cross the Great Lakes, and regain total control of construction by turning it into a public works project, with contracts awarded to the lowest bidder for each section of track. Ironically, the first section to be completed was a branch line going south from Winnipeg to the American border, a process characterised by costly incompetence and blunder. The Pacific Survey was advancing at an agonisingly slow pace, and it was not until 1875 that construction even began on the main line, the section between Lake Superior and Winnipeg, with a formal sod-turning ceremony on June 1.

By 1876, British Columbia was fed up with the slow progress and threatened to leave Confederation. Two years later the country as a whole ousted the Liberals and brought Macdonald back into power with a landslide victory. His vision of Canada and its great railroad sparkled anew, and in a move to get the project roll-

A cartoon ridiculing Sir John A Macdonald during the Pacific Scandal. The caption reads:

"I admit I took the money and bribed the electors with it.

Is there anything wrong with that ?"JW Bengough, Grip Magazine



Other elements of the CPR contract included exemptions from import duties on construction materials, from land taxes for

20 years and taxes on stock and other property in perpetuity; Exemption from

regulation of rates until 10% per anum was earned on the capital

ing along as rapidly as possible, he at first maintained the Liberals’ public works approach and awarded contracts for the 125-mile section west of the Rockies to Kamloops. However, when a group of private capitalists with impeccable creden-tials, ample financial backing from indisputably Canadian or British sources and - to boot - experience in running a railroad, presented itself, Macdonald knew he had his men. Negotiations, cautiously entered and lengthy, yielded the incorpora-tion of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in February 1881. Macdonald pledged a $25 million cash subsidy and 25 million acres of surveyed land to the new CPR, as well as agreeing to turn over all government-contracted lines to the company when they were completed - about 710 miles. A final clause promised that no other railways could be built south of the CPR’s main line for twenty years.

The Canadian Pacific Railway CompanyBy 1881, the year of the CPR’s incorporation, the transcontinental was to have been complete, yet fully 1,900 miles of track still had to be laid. In keeping with a format devised by Fleming for the Pacific Survey, the transcontinental’s construc-tion zones were divided into three regions: the eastern region comprised the lands between Lake Nipissing and the Red River; the central region covered the prairies, and the western region was British Columbia.

Central RegionDespite the new management, the first building season - limited by the weather from May to November - was disappointing, with only 130 miles of track laid leading westwards from Winnipeg, the easiest section of the entire line. The sec-ond season’s 418 miles were considered an extraordinary achievement and credit was laid at the feet of the company’s new General Manager, William Cornelius van Horne of Illinois (a.k.a. ‘Czar of the CPR’). The record set by these crews for manual track-laying - 6 miles per day - has never been broken.

Even as the track advanced towards the Rockies, the old Pacific Survey’s routing recommendations (north through Fort Edmonton, over the Rockies at Yellowhead Pass) were being questioned and were finally rejected. Van Horne wanted a more southerly route, partly to shorten the line and partly because he saw that it would be easier to control and profit from an area that was as yet unpopulated. Major A.B. (“Hell’s Bells”) Rogers was dispatched, returning one and a half years later to sketch a route that would lead the tracks through Kicking Horse Pass in the Rock-ies and what is now known as Rogers Pass in the Selkirks.

In the prairies, where no other means of communication existed, the routing of the railway line could arbitrarily determine which communities would grow and which would languish. Winnipeg was particularly worried about the recommenda-tion to route the tracks through Selkirk, 56 km to the north, and promptly offered to build a bridge over the Red River at its own expense, provide right of way and land for a station and railway yards, as well as exemption from municipal taxes in perpetuity. The CPR agreed to the bargain, brought the main line through Winni-peg and built its maintenance shops on the free land provided. As a result, the city was to enjoy an economic boom, principally due to the flood of immigrants which subsequently arrived, closely followed by speculators. At one point there were 45 hotels and 300 boarding houses in the little city, but even these couldn’t accom-modate the swarms arriving on each train. The tax-free status was maintained until 1965.

The other source of discontent vis a vis the CPR in the prairies was the twenty-year non-compete clause, which forbade the building of any rail lines south of theirs. This effectively created a monopoly and the CPR took advantage of this by charging farmers and manufacturers in the west exorbitant rates for the transport of their merchandise. The monopoly was finally struck down in 1888, after which Manitoba was given the right to issue charters but only for the construction of


From his base in Winnipeg, van Horne personally oversaw the railway construction

in the central prairie region, delegating the eastern and western areas to contractors

responsible to him as General Manager. Supplies and equipment - rails from England and Germany, rail ties from the forests and

stone from the quarries of Manitoba, lumber for trestles from Minnesota - had to be collected and transported on time. Ten

thousand men and seventeen hundred teams of horses had to be sheltered and fed.

Once the surveyors had established the route, teams with ploughs and scrapers

prepared the roadbed. This done, locomotives steamed to the end of the

existing track pushing the cars laden with building supplies. Horse-drawn wagons then

hauled the ties along the graded sections, dropping them at regular intervals. Gangs of

men then positioned the ties and attached the rails, fish-plates (which joined the lengths

of rail) and the iron spikes. When each half-mile section was complete, the

locomotive would chug up to the end and the whole process would repeat itself.

Because the building proceeded at such a fast pace on the prairies, the workers, or

navvies, as they were called, lived in three storey boarding cars which were continually

moved along the track as it advanced. As many as eighty men would eat and sleep in

one car, which also housed offices and accommodation for company officials. Food

was nutritious but monotonous - stew, bread, bacon, pork and beans.

railways that did not cross provincial boundaries. A charter was quickly granted for the construction of a privately-owned railway to compete with the CPR, but this new line, the Red River Valley Railway, faced a problem when its proposed route would require an intersection with the CPR’s tracks. The CPR refused to allow this, and the province, including the Lieutenant Governor, rose to the chal-lenge by recruiting Winnipeg men to secretly travel on provided flat cars to the crossing point one night, rip up enough CPR track to put in a piece of cross-track known as a diamond. This was done, but the CPR countered by ripping up the diamond the following morning. The confrontation almost led to an armed battle, but was resolved through the courts in Manitoba’s favour and the CPR was forced to back down.

Western RegionConstruction in this area had started as early as 1880 under the direction of Andrew Onderdonk, a private contractor from New York. Besides the physical obstacles encountered in laying tracks through the Rockies - not to mention the constant danger of avalanches - Onderdonk had to overcome a chronic short-age of workmen The little labour available locally was already engaged in the railway construction east of the Rockies, and sheer necessity drove him to follow the American railway company’s example of recruiting in China. Hundreds of Chinese from the province of Kwantung were brought to Canada to work for ridiculously low wages while living in squalid conditions. Many died in accidents, others from poor nutrition and disease.

The CPR built numerous snowsheds to protect the railway’s passage through the Selkirks, but nonetheless, avalanches were to cause the deaths of two hundred people between 1885 and 1909, prompting the construction of the remarkable Connaught Tunnel.

Trains passing through the mountain areas had to cross three major summits - Kicking Horse Pass, Rogers Pass and Eagle Pass - each presenting an engineering nightmare. Tunnels had to be blasted through rock, bridges strung over chasm-like gorges, track laid next to vertical drops. It took twelve thousand men to build the line through Kicking Horse Pass alone. The Mountain Creek Bridge on the eastern slope of the Selkirks is 164 feet high and 1086 feet long, and required two million board feet of lumber in its construction.

The section between Yale and Kamloops, overseen by Onderdonk, required the drilling of tunnels through the Fraser Canyon and the track advanced at the agonising rate of no more than 6 feet a day. Men frequently had to be winched down to the track on ropes. Scores of deaths resulted from rockslides as well as the careless handling of explosives, and the nearby hospital at Yale had to be expanded in order to cope with all the injuries.

Eastern RegionNext to the Rockies, the most expensive and laborious section of the transconti-nental’s construction was the stretch north of Lake Superior, through the Canadi-an Shield. Van Horne had once referred to this as ‘two hundred miles of engineer-ing impossibility.’ Although the government had always stipulated that the railway should take an all-Canadian route north of Lake Superior, many - including some of the CPR directors - had believed that this would never be enforced given how much cheaper and easier it would be to connect the line with existing American tracks south of the lakes. When George Stephen, president of the CPR, made it clear that he was determined to keep to the original mandate, two of the directors resigned.

Nine thousand men worked on this stretch of rail bed alone. Crews had to dy-namite a route through the Shield’s solid granite, some of the hardest rock in the world, often finding that the rock wall continued well below the level expected. Track-layers had to contend with muskeg and sinkholes so treacherous that in one


James Ross, head of construction in the mountain division, wrote to van Horne:

"I find that the snow-slides on the Selkirks are much more serious than I anticipated, and I think are quite beyond your ideas of their magnitude and of the danger to the line…at one point, ten slips came down

within six days, piling the snow 50 feet deep and 1800 feet in length along the located

line… The great trouble we are labouring under at present is that the men are

frightened. Seven have already been buried in different slides, though fortunately only

two were killed…"

area three locomotives and several miles of completed track were swallowed. In another seven layers of CPR rail still lie buried, one on top of the other. One mile of rail bed cost $700,000 to build, and several cost half a million. The hard and lonely lives of the workers made them prey to illegal whiskey peddlers, who would reach the work teams through the woods, instigate drunken free-for-alls which often resulted in the destruction of railway property and supplies, then rob them of everything they had. By the end of 1883, only 250 km of track were completed, and it was decided not to break for the winter. Track had to be laid in snow that was sometimes up to five feet deep and in temperatures which dipped down to minus fifty. This posed a technical problem as well, for when the warmer weather came, the rails expanded and it was found that the track was out of gauge.

Although the railway builders seemed to finally be making serious headway, the company was facing a growing financial crisis. Building costs had soared, scaring investors away both at home and in London. In January 1884, the CPR’s debt ran to $15 million and the directors had no choice but to turn to the government for help. Macdonald braved a Parliament riddled with hostile Liberals and unsup-portive easterners - those fortunate ones who already had their own railways - to obtain, after a long period of debate, a loan of 22.5 million which, it was hoped, would be sufficient to see the project through to its completion. The transconti-nental’s detractors predicted that the railway would be ‘an idle, ice-bound, snow covered route for six months of the year,’ and that the mountain section ‘would not pay the grease on the axles.’ Time would prove both the directors and the Parliamentarians wrong.

By 1885, the construction problems in the mountains and around Lake Superior had swallowed the entire government loan. George Stephen and one other CPR director had sunk their entire personal fortunes into the railway. Macdonald, again approached, refused his help this time for fear of risking his political career a sec-ond time. Crews went for weeks without pay, violent strikes ensued but repeated appeals fell on deaf ears.

It took a full-fledged insurrection to save the railway and van Horne’s skin. At Duck Lake in the far northwest, the Métis under Louis Riel had risen in an armed revolt and routed a Mounted Police detachment. The news reached Ottawa in March that troops were urgently needed to restore peace, and van Horne saw his chance. He immediately offered to move the troops by railway from Ottawa to Qu’Appelle, the nearest rail point to the scene of the rebellion, within ten days. In point of fact, there were four large gaps totalling 86 miles in the line north of Lake Superior and the soldiers, with their equipment and supplies, would have to use primitive, snow-covered roads to connect from one completed stretch to the other. Van Horne was taking a tremendous risk, but in all honesty there was no other way of getting the troops to Duck Lake within any useful time frame and, further, he hoped that government and public support would rally when it was seen how well the tracks, such as they were, could serve the nation.

All van Horne’s administrative skills went into ensuring success. Officers travelled in first class accommodation, and while the foot soldiers were obliged to travel in open cars, they at least were provided with plenty of hot food. It was no pleasure trip, but troops from Ottawa and Winnipeg reached their destination on time. Fifteen years earlier, during the first Northwest Rebellion, the same journey had taken three months. By the time the troops returned, the gaps were closed and they were able to travel the entire route by rail.

Van Horne’s gamble paid off, although not before a further wait of several months. As the summer approached, the CPR’s credit could stretch no further. Van Horne telegrammed George Stephen: “Have no means of paying wages, pay car can’t be sent out, and unless we get immediate relief we must stop. Please inform Premier and Finance Minister. Do not be surprised, or blame me, if an immediate and


most serious catastrophe happens.” Stephen went once more to beg Macdonald to bail them out, arguing that the funds could quickly be repaid once the line was operational. Parliament finally accepted that it could hardly fail to back the CPR, given its crucial role in dealing with the rebellion, and a final relief bill was passed in July.

Only two gaps in the transcontinental tracks remained by then: Onderdonk’s in the Gold Range and James Ross’s in the Selkirks. The tracks met on November 7, in Eagle Pass at a spot named Craigellachie, 50 miles west of Revelstoke. The last spike was driven in by Donald A. Smith, president of the Bank of Montreal and a CPR director, without much pomp or ceremony, despite the importance of the occasion. Van Horne flatly eschewed the tradition of the golden spike: “The last spike will be just as good an iron one as there is between Montreal and Vancouver, and anyone who wants to see it driven will have to pay full fare.”

As each section of the line had been completed, local trains had run to fairly regular schedules, but the first truly transcontinental passenger train set off from Montreal on June 28, 1886, destined for Port Moody, British Columbia. Train No. 1, the Pacific Express, left promptly at eight o’clock in the evening on a signal from the Mayor of Montreal and to the accompaniment of a gun salute. At virtually each town along the way the passengers were entertained by local bands, fireworks and bonfires. Winnipeg was reached on July 1, Canada’s Dominion or Victoria Day, in honour of the Queen’s birthday. The Pacific Express pulled into Port Moody on July 4th, one single minute late after crossing the continent. The Canadian transcontinental was at the time the longest scheduled passenger train trip in the world, and with the extension of the line from Port Moody to Vancou-ver in May, 1887, the main line was 4675 km long.

Following the completion of the main line, branch lines were built to the numer-ous prairie settlements that were growing up. In the east the company bought sev-eral smaller railway networks. It established its own telegraph service, built grain storage facilities for the prairie farmers, and carried the mail which was sorted on board and delivered at the stations along the line.

Until 1899, transcontinental trains ran on a daily basis; the westbound was known as the Pacific Express, the eastbound as the Atlantic Express. First class carriages were extremely luxurious, with all sleeping cars boasting bathtubs, unheard of in North America at that time and certainly a rarity today. These passengers took their meals in dining cars which featured international cuisine and vintage wines. Coach passengers usually dined in the much cheaper Canadian Pacific restau-rants at division points along the line while the train was undergoing servicing or a change of locomotive. These restaurants proved so popular that the company eventually expanded the business into the Canadian Pacific hotel chain, which still flourishes today.

As Macdonald had predicted, the railway carried droves of settlers to the west, en-couraged by the special ‘land seeker’ tickets offered at reduced rates. By the 1890’s harvest specials were providing low-fare railway tickets for field workers travelling west to help in the prairie harvesting.

Two weeks after the last spike was driven in, the train's greatest supporter, the Prime Minister, fulfilled his dream and rode across

the country in a private carriage. His wife, more adventurous, made herself a seat on the cow-catcher in front of the engine and

remained there while the train travelled through right through the steep grades and

curves of the Rockies and Rogers Pass.The 1886 dining car menu offered a choice of

fish and meat dishes, soup, salad, cheeses, puddings and a variety of teas - all for 75

cents. The accompanying wine list included ales, red and white wines, and three different champagnes. Choice Cuban cigars were also

offered at 10, 15 or 25 cents.


The Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad& Canadian National Railways

The Grand Trunk's plan was beautifully tailored to meet the needs of the thousands of new immigrants expected to fill the seats

on board: a railway station was built every 15 miles along the line so that farmers would

have no more than half that distance to travel in order to deliver their goods, and branch

lines were envisioned to service as yet non-existent communities. To simplify future administrators' toils, the stations were given

names in alphabetical order from east to west, and in many cases the towns that did spring up adopted the station’s name. You can still see Atwater, Bangor and Cana, as

well as Unity, Very and Winter all neatly in order along the line.

Railways, as someone once remarked, became the national genius.

Alistair Horne, Canada and the Canadians, 1961

"Consult the annals of Canada for the past fifty years at random and whatever party may be in power, what do you find ? The government is building a railway, buying a railway, selling a railway or blocking a railway." Paul Lamarche, speech in Mon-treal, 1917

The financial success of the CPR bred any number of hopeful copycat railway entrepreneurs. As a result, the early twentieth century saw a tangled skein of new lines spread across the country, many of which were ill-conceived and doomed to quick failure.

The floods of primarily European settlers making their way westwards were filling the CPR trains to the point of overflowing, and it was felt that the country needed a second transcontinental line. Two companies put themselves forward for the task, and somewhat irrationally, the Liberal government under Sir Wildfrid Laurier granted charters to both. Thus were born the Canadian Northern Railway and the Grand Trunk Pacific.

The Canadian Northern already operated a number of rail lines across the north-ern prairies, and proposed to extend their network to the Pacific via the Yellowhead Pass, already surveyed by the CPR. The western terminus would be Vancouver.

The Grand Trunk was one of Canada's oldest railway companies with an estab-lished network in the east and a reputation for cautious planning and careful execution. The new general manager, Charles Hays, was determined to capture a share of the westbound market. He too wanted a route over the Yellowhead, but envisioned a western terminus well north of Vancouver at Prince Rupert, the clos-est Canadian port to Asia.

The Canadian Northern's line was completed in April 1914, the Grand Trunk Pacific in January 1915, both just in time to see immigration figures lunge in the face of World War I, and both were dismal failures almost from the start.

When the figures were tallied up, it came to the fore that there were, in fact, over 200 private railway companies operating at a loss, most or all of which were going to require reinvestment of some kind in order to continue service. The time for rationalization had come, and in 1916 a Royal Commission was formed to chart a course for the future. The Commission set about investigating the viability of each one of the private lines, and by 1921 determined that a good number of them could never achieve anything close to profitability. These were closed, while the remainder were nationalized under the banner of the Canadian National Railways (CNR).

The CNR trimmed, restructured and generally overhauled Canada's railway system - not, however, interfering with its chief competitor, the CPR. It was an impressive achievement, credited to CNR's first president, Sir Henry Thornton: despite an inherited debt of $1.3 billion and gross earnings that barely covered operating expenses, Thornton managed within a few years to generated annual sur-pluses and tremendous loyalty from the company's 99,000 employees. He promot-ed community service, supporting branch lines and introducing school cars and Red Cross units to serve children and the sick in remote areas. Thornton also used CNR facilities to develop a network of radio stations ('Hockey Night in Canada' was born !), and led to the formation of the Canadian Broadcasting Service (the 'CBC'), the country's very prominent (but currently very troubled) national radio


and television stations.

As motor cars became more and more affordable, passenger traffic on the railways declined, forcing both companies to offer faster, more efficient services, especially on the transcontinental routes: the CPR launched 'The Canadian', matched by CNR's 'Super Transcontinental.' But still the numbers went down, and finally the CPR opted out of the passenger business to concentrate on freight transport.

Meanwhile CN (the 'Railway' was dropped as the company diversified), saw an opportunity of expanding its transportation business and in 1937 launched Trans-Canada Airlines, the forerunner to Air Canada.

Even as the sole operator in the passenger rail business, the CN was still losing money over most of its network. A second major rehaul in 1976 saw the closing of many 'non-essential' lines, effectively depriving large but sparsely populated areas of the country of any rail service whatsoever. A new government-owned body, VIA Rail, was created to operate the remaining passenger lines, leasing the tracks they used from CN or CPR while these companies concentrated on the freight busi-ness.

VIA for some years continued to operate over both the northern and southern routes through the Rockies, but discontinued its southern service through Calgary and Banff in 1989.

The Canadian National is still the longest rail system in North America, control-ling more than 31,000 miles of track in Canada and the US. A crown corporation, its holdings have expanded since the 1920's to include ferries and marine opera-tions, hotels, as well as telecommunications and resource industries.


Index

Acadia 50Act of Union 53Alberta 51, 55ALBERTA 16Anglo-French Wars 51Assiniboine River 19, 20Athabasca Pass 12, 13Athabasca River 8, 12Basque 50Battle of Queenston Heights 52Bison. See BuffaloBloc Quebecois 37Boreal Plains 23BRITISH COLUMBIA 10,

52, 53, 54, 60British North America 58British North American Act 53Brûlé, Etienne 13, 26, 31Buffalo 10, 16, 18, 29, 46Buffalo jump 43Burial mounds 24, 45, 47Cabot, John 50, 56Canada East 53Canada-US border (49th paral-

lel) 22, 52Canada West 53Canadian Confederation 53Canadian National Railways

(CN) 12, 15, 66Canadian Northern 12Canadian Northern Ontario 23Canadian Northern Pacific 6Canadian Northern Railway 66Canadian Pacific Railway (CP)

12, 54Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR)

21, 34, 62Canadian Pacific Survey 61Canadian Shield

23, 25, 41, 46, 48Cariboo gold fields 10, 13Cariboo Gold Rush 6Cariboo Road 4, 6Carlton Trail 15Cartier, Jacques 34, 50, 56Champlain, Samuel de

34, 50, 56Chomedey, Paul, Sieur de

Maisonneuve 34Chrêtien, Jean 37Columbia Icefield 12Columbia River 11Confederation 14, 57Constitutional Act 52Continental Divide 8, 12Cook, Captain James 52Craigellachie 65Dawson Route 25

Dominion Lands Act 54Dominion of Canada 53Durham, John George Lambton,

Earl of 53Durham Report 53Fleming, Sir Sanford 61Fort Frances 24Fort William 25, 57Fraser Canyon 3, 5, 63Fraser River 3, 5, 6, 8, 11Fraser River Gold Rush 6Fraser, Simon 3, 57Fraser Valley 4Frobisher, Martin 56Fur trade 56–57General Sales Tax (GST) 38Government 37Grand Trunk Pacific 12, 17, 66Grand Trunk Railway (GTR)

33, 34, 59Groseilliers, Sieur Des

31, 51, 56House of Commons 37Hudson, Henry 51, 56Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)

7, 14, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27, 34, 51, 56

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) 32, 60

Icefields Parkway 10Indigenous peoples/ancient

culturesCordilleran 46Early Archaic 45Early Nesikep 46Early Plains 46Fluted Point 45Laurel 47Laurentian Archaic 45Microblade 45Middle Nesikep 47Middle Plains 46Plano 45Point Peninsula/ Meadowood/

Saugeen 46Shield Archaic 46Indigenous peoples/recent

culturesEastern woodlands 47Eastern woodlands/Algonkian

48Eastern woodlands/Ontario

Iroquois 32, 48, 50, 52, 56Late Plains 16, 48Plains 51Plateau 48Jasper 11Kakabeka Falls 25

Kamloops 7, 63Kicking Horse Pass 62Lake Agassiz 19, 24Lake Athabasca 57Lake of the Woods 23, 41Lake Ontario 51, 52Lake Superior 26, 46, 63LeBlanc, Romeo 37Liberal Party 37Lower Canada 34, 52Lower Fort Garry 57Loyalists 52Macdonald, Sir John A. 54, 60Mackenzie, Alexander

12, 31, 52, 60Mackenzie River 52Mackenzie, William Lyon 53MANITOBA 46, 51, 54, 55Manitou 41Manning, Preston 37Medicine wheel 44, 46Meech Lake Accord 55Mennonites 23Métis 20, 53, 56Metric system 38Mileage markers 4Montane Cordillera Ecozone 8Montcalm, Marquis of 52Montreal 34, 59New Caledonia 52New Democratic Party 37New France 50North Saskatchewan River 11North Thompson River 9North West Company 7, 12, 13, 14,

20, 25, 32, 34, 57Northwest Passage 56Northwest Territories 37, 51Nunavut 55Official Languages Act 55Ontario ONTARIO 24, 33, 52, 53Ottawa 32, Papineau, Louis-Joseph 34, 53Parti Québecois 55Patriote Party 53Petroglyphs 16, 23, 41Pictograph 27, 41–43Plains of Abraham 52Population 37Portage 19Province of Canada 59Qu'Appelle Valley 18QUEBEC 55Quebec City 50Quetico 41Quetico National Park 25

Radisson, Pierre 31, 51, 56Railway Guarantee Act 59Red River 21, 62Red River Colony 20, 57Riel, Louis 17, 21, 54, 64Rock carving. See PetroglyphsRock painting. See PictographsRupert's Land 51, 53, 57SASKATCHEWAN 19, 51, 55Saskatchewan River 17Saskatoon 16, 21, 43Seigneur 50Seigneurie 50Selkirk, Lord 20, 57Serpent Mound 47Seven Oaks Incident 20, 57Seven Years' War 51South Saskatchewan River

17, 43Statute of Westminster 55St. Lawrence River 34, 58St. Lawrence Seaway 25, 55St. Lawrence Valley 46Sudbury 30Thompson, David 12, 32, 57Thompson River 8Thompson Valley 4Thunder Bay 57Time zones 38Tipi rings 44, 46Tourtière 39Transcontinental railway

11, 14, 17, 23, 54, 60–65Travois 46Treaty of Paris 34, 52, 56Treaty of Utrecht 51Trudeau, Pierre 55United Province of Canada 53Upper Canada 25, 52Vancouver 3Vancouver, Captain George 52van Horne, William Cornelius

62Vérendrye, Pierre Gaultier de

Varennes, Sieur de l 51Verendrye, Sieur de la 25VIA Rail 67Wanuskewin 43War of 1812 52Winnipeg 20, 21, 57, 62Wolfe, General James 52Yellowhead Pass 10, 12, 62York boat 57Yukon 37Yukon Gold Rush 14Yukon Territory 54

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