Canada by Sir John George Bourinot (e ink ebook reader TXT) 📖
- Author: Sir John George Bourinot
Book online «Canada by Sir John George Bourinot (e ink ebook reader TXT) 📖». Author Sir John George Bourinot
Mr. George Brown died from the wound he received at the hands of a reckless printer, who had been in his employ, and Canadians have erected to his memory a noble monument in the beautiful Queen's Park of the city where he laboured so long and earnestly as a statesman and a journalist. Sir George Cartier died in 1873, but Sir John Macdonald survived his firm friend for eighteen years, and both received State funerals. Statues of Sir John Macdonald have been erected in the cities of Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Kingston. In Ottawa on one side of the Parliament building we see also a statue of the same distinguished statesman, and on the other that of his great colleague, Sir George Cartier. It was but fitting that the statues of these most famous representatives of the two distinct elements of the Canadian people should have been placed alongside of the national legislature. They are national sentinels to warn Canadian people of the dangers of racial or religious conflict, and to illustrate the advantages of those principles of compromise and justice on which both Cartier and Macdonald, as far as they could, raised the edifice of confederation.
XXVIII
CANADA AS A NATION: MATERIAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT--POLITICAL RIGHTS.
Up to the dissolution of the 1904 Parliament in October, 1908, the Dominion had had ten Parliaments. During the first thirty years the Conservatives were almost continuously in office. They were defeated in the general election of 1874, owing to some grave scandals in connection with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway; but were again returned to office in 1878. In the election of 1878 they were returned on a platform of protection for Canadian industry, and in 1879 Parliament enacted a National Policy Tariff, which was at once vehemently attacked by the Liberal Opposition. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before the Liberals had the opportunity of revising the tariff, and it was not until 1897 that there was any modification in the protective duties. In 1896, however, after several years of profound depression in trade in the Dominion, the Liberals succeeded in obtaining a large majority, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier succeeded to {414} the premiership, which after the death of Sir John Macdonald had been held successively by Sir J. J. C. Abbott, Sir John Thompson, who died at Windsor, where he had gone to take the oath of office of privy councillor, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and Sir Charles Tupper.
The following year (1897) the Liberal Government revised the tariff, retaining the protective features, and enlarging the system of bounties for the encouragement of industry which had been commenced in 1883. The tariff was modified, however, by the establishment of a preference for Great Britain, which, beginning at a reduction of one-eighth from the general tariff, was increased to one-fourth, and finally in 1900 to one-third. This reduction remained in force until 1906-7, when the tariff was again revised and arranged in three lists--general, intermediate, and British preference. The intermediate tariff was intended as a basis of negotiation whereby Canada might obtain concessions from foreign countries. After the concession of the British preference in 1897, Great Britain, at the request of Canada, denounced her commercial treaties with several foreign countries, under the terms of which concessions granted by the colonies to the mother country would have had to be extended to the treaty countries. Germany was one of these countries, and on the expiration of the treaty Germany showed her resentment by applying her maximum tariff to Canada. Canada retaliated by the imposition of a surtax on German goods, and a tariff war ensued, which resulted in a much higher degree of {416} protection for Canadian manufacturers whose products came into competition with imports from Germany. The British preference was extended by Canada to other British colonies, which in return granted advantages to Canada, and in 1908, with the consent of Great Britain, Canada negotiated a commercial treaty with France on the basis of the intermediate tariff, though with numerous further concessions.
Railway building in Canada had begun as far back as 1836, when a short length of line from La Prairie to St. John's, in the Province of Quebec, was opened for traffic. The first link in what is now known as the Grand Trunk Railway was constructed in 1845, when Montreal was connected with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railway, now the Portland (Maine) Division of the Grand Trunk System. In 1851 the Grand Trunk Railway Company was incorporated, and took over about a hundred miles of constructed line. Soon afterwards the Legislature of the United Provinces of Quebec and Ontario passed the measure which is now known as the Guarantee Act. Under this enactment Government aid was given to railways of not less than seventy miles in length; and it was with this aid that the great development of the Grand Trunk system began. In 1854 the Grand Trunk line from Toronto to Montreal was opened. By 1856 Toronto was connected, _via_ Sarnia, with the State of Michigan. In 1859 Toronto was brought into railway communication with Detroit; and by 1869 the Grand Trunk had leased the International Bridge across the Niagara River, and by this means {417} its system was connected with the State of New York and the numerous centres of population in the Eastern States, which are reached _via_ Buffalo.
Most of this development of the Grand Trunk system had preceded Confederation; but at Confederation the greatest need of the Dominion was easy means of communication between the provinces heretofore known as Upper and Lower Canada. One of the first undertakings of the new Dominion Government was the construction of the Intercolonial Railway, the object of which was to connect the maritime provinces with each other and with Quebec, and the building of which by the Government was one of the conditions on which the maritime provinces had consented to Confederation. It still remained to push out a railway to the far west, and in 1881 work was begun on the Canadian Pacific Railway. In four years this great highway across the continent was ready for use, and in 1887 the Canadian Pacific Railway established a line of steamships across the Pacific in connection with its Pacific terminals.
With the opening of the great North-west and the creation of the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905,[1] the railway communication was found to be insufficient, and a new line to the Pacific was begun by the Grand Trunk Railway, which had been the pioneer in railway work in Ontario, and which before the beginning of the new line had already over 3,000 miles of road. {418} The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is divided into two sections. The eastern runs from Moncton to Winnipeg, a distance of 1,875 miles, and is being built by the Government. On its completion it is to be leased to the Grand Trunk Railway Company for fifty years. The western section runs from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert on the Pacific, a distance of 1,480 miles, and is being constructed and equipped by the Company, the Government granting a subsidy, and guaranteeing the Company's bonds up to 75 per cent. of the cost of construction. The first stretch of the new line to be completed was that from Winnipeg to Wainwright, a distance of 666 miles. It went into service in September, 1908, and was completed by the end of 1915.
At the same time, the Great Northern began to push out to the North-west, for the sake of the immense trade in grain which the opening up of the new provinces had created. A little later work was also begun on the Hudson's Bay Railway, which was intended to connect the more northern waters with Ontario and the Great Lakes. In 1908 the Dominion had twenty-two thousand miles of railway completed, in addition to
Comments (0)