DRY DOCKS FOR CANADA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 82, 8 April 1910, Page 7

DRY DOCKS FOR CANADA.

WOfiES TO BE COMMENCED AT END OF YEAR. By Telegraph.— Prenu Association.— Copyright. LONDON, 7th April. A company is being promoted to provide three (? two) dry docks at Levis (opposite Quebec) and at St. John (Ne-re-BiJiiswiok). Each dock will be 900. feet long, 100 feet wide, and 55 feet deep. £ir Robert I'erks (whose firm has recently completed the trans-Andine railway tunnel, and who is' also a promoter of the Georgian Bay canal project) is the chief promoter of the company. It is also pioposed to erect a firstclass steel shipbuilding plant at St. John. The Belfast shipbuilding firm of Messrs Uarland and Wolff and the Canadian r.teamship companies ' are cocperating, being satisfied with the increased subsidy now offered by the Government. The works will be commenced at thg end o£ the year. Negotiations between the Canadian Government and representatives of several of the world-famous British shipbuilding firms, including Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, and Vickers,"Sons, and Maxim, for the establishment of Canadian shipyards and dry docks, capable of constructing and repairing the largest ocean-going vessels, and of building the proposed new vessels of the Canadian navy, have been under way for several months past. It was expected that an announcement would be made that arrangements had been completed for the establishment by one or other of ihese companies, of a s'ieel shipbuilding plant at Montreal, or ona of the Atlantic coast ports, which would rival in capacity anything in North America. By way of farther encouraging the establishment of such an industry ih Canada thus completing the scheme of Canadian naval defence, the Oovernment recently decided to a?k Parliament to increase by half per cent, the present subsidy granted for building dry docks. It is now three per cent, per annum for twenty ?1?™\ on a maximum expenditure of 1,500,000 dollars. Parliament will bo asked to make it three and a-half per cent, per annum for twenty-live voars, on a total expenditure of probably* thieo millions. A steel shipbuilding plant for the Pacific coast is also contemplated by a, v » .C. C . at ,' a °l ia , n «pitrfati at Eiquima{t, British Columbia,