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Transportation
The introduction of railway transportation to
western Canada was crucial to the settlement of
the landscape by European immigrants and to the
very act of nation
building itself. The railways played an integral
role in western development by tying Prairie communities
together and by opening distant markets to western
produce. The railways not only had a significant
impact on the physical characteristics of Prairie
communities - the right-of-way, station, and yard
works were central features around which other
community businesses and industries were often
integrated - but they impacted local employment
as well. A community's proximity to railway facilities
could mean the difference between economic prosperity
and paralysis (Grouard, Alberta, is a case in
point). Given this reality, it is no wonder news
of impending rail construction often had western
communities competing with one another for the
privilege of gaining direct access to the railway's
life-giving steel artery.
Great Britain also took an interest in western
Canada's railway construction, but for entirely
different reasons than those expressed by authorities
in Ottawa or by homesteaders on Prairie farms.
Reports prepared by the War
Office in London, for example, saw the potential
of a transcontinental railway for the movement
of imperial troops to destinations in the Far
East.
The two transcontinental railways, the Canadian
Pacific Railway and the Grand Trunk Pacific (which
was later merged into the Canadian National Railways),
wielded considerable economic clout in the Prairie
West. The companies undertook their own surveys,
maintained their own immigration
offices, and hired photographers
to help plan railway construction, document their
engineering achievements, and promote the image
of their companies at home and abroad.
Although ostensibly private companies, the railways
sought and received generous incentives from the
federal government in the form of land
grants, tax concessions, cash infusions, and
freight rate
agreements. Whether or not the public has
been adequately compensated in return through
proper rail service has been hotly debated for
decades. Yet the railway remains one of the most
profound icons of Canadian culture. The photograph
of Donald
Smith, with his top hat and white beard, driving
the last spike
in front of railway labourers at Craigellachie
is probably one of the most enduring Canadian
images from the nineteenth century.
Further
Readings
See also
A
Town Bypassed: Grouard, Alberta, and the Building
of the Edmonton, Dunvegan and British Columbia
Railway
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