HUDSON BAY ROUTE,

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 259, 25 July 1908, Page 9

HUDSON BAY ROUTE,

OPENING UP SUB-ARCTIC CANADA. The next largo transportation project to which the Dominion of Canada will bend its enorgies is tho opening •of a • railway route from tho Prairie Provinces to Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay. Preliminary , surveys - havo alrea.dy been mado of tho line, in question— from Churchill ,to tho Pas, on the River Saskatchewan, a distahco of 480.miles; and one of tho foremost engineers in tho country is now engaged in tho preparation of plans of Churchill' Harbour. ■ ■ . Churchill itself is no farther away from Liverpool than Montreal or New York, whilst tho opening of this-new outlet for export traffic with as good a harbour as exists ,on the Atlantic Coast would cut 1000 miles off ■the distance which Western grain and cattle now havo to travel • to reach the Eastern seaboa.rd. Hudson' Bay was the route by which the first settlors found their way into tho Canadian West, ;i and successive Government expeditions havo declared that the Bay and Straits, despite their northern latitude, are available for commercial purposes for from three to four or four and a half months in each year. As to the safety of tho route it is further observed, that, in the course of the. last 175 years, 750 vessels, ranging from seventygun ships to ten-ton pinnaces, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, • passed through the Straits, and Bailed tho Bay in tho/service of the Hudson Bay Company, with a record of but two vessels lost. Apart from its use for export traffic—and this is the reason for its building—the Hudson Bay Railway will open up a, region possessed of much timber and mineral wealth, as well as 10,000 square milos ol land suitablo to agriculture. The Hudson Bay Railway is to lie'the Western farmer's provision against the fast appraochirig day of 500,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 grain crops, for which _ the existing moans of transport would bo insufficient. Tho Dominion Government has decidcd to grant a casli subsidy to and to guarantee bonds of tho Canadia.n Northern Railway for the construction of a lino to Hudson Bay.