Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
terrain, in particular an area north of the Great Lakes known
as the Canadian Shield, where engineers had to blast their way
through hundreds of miles of some of the oldest and hardest rock
on earth. Then it was across the prairies, through the Rockies,
into the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest, and finally to the
sea. In terms of the difficulties involved, the Canadian Pacific
overcame natural barriers and weather conditions at least as for-
midable as those encountered by Americans 20 years earlier.
Two other railroads, the Great Northern and the Grand Trunk
Pacific, came a few years later. By the 1920s they had completed
another route farther to the north. The Grand Trunk struggled
financially for many years—for this and other reasons, the two
companies were eventually combined and became the Canadian
National (CN) Railway.
As had been expected, cities and towns sprang up along both
of the transcontinental routes. The Canadian Pacific (CP) in par-
ticular took a decidedly paternal approach to the communities it
had literally created. In fact, after deciding that the CP's western
terminus would be the town of Coal Harbour, a company official
evidently felt the name was uninspired and dreary and decreed
that the community should instead be named for the British sea-
man who first explored the area, George Vancouver. And so it
was.
By 1924, the Canadian Pacific was claiming to have settled
55,000 families on 30 million acres of land between the Great
Lakes and the Pacific. While it's possible to argue those numbers,
it is considered a fact that the CP created some 800 cities and
towns in three provinces along its route. Farther to the north, the
Canadian National laid claim to 132 towns, although for many
of those dots on the map, the word “town” was probably an
exaggeration.
For many years, the CP and the CN competed vigorously for
passengers as well as freight. The CP took the additional step of
Search WWH ::
Custom Search