This is an original copy of the Crow's Nest Pass Agreement signed by the Canadian government and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Dated September 6, 1897, the railway was given a cash subsidy of $3.3 million and title to extend a line through the Crow's Nest Pass into the Kootenay region of southern British Columbia where rich mineral deposits were being developed. In return, the railway agreed, in perpetuity, to reduced freight rates on eastbound grain and westbound "settlers' effects." Over time the freight rate represented an ever-smaller fraction of the railway's costs and it was eventually cancelled in 1993.