WESTERN CANADA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 117, 19 May 1914, Page 2

WESTERN CANADA

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE CANAL "A WORLD METROPOLIS" VISION OF A WONDERFUL FUTURE (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 9th April. A most interesting paper on the economic effect of the Panama Canal on Western Canada was read before the Royal Colonial Institute by Mr. F. B. Vrooman. who contended that the all-rail trans-con-tinental haul for the products of West Canada would soon be a thing of the past. The all-rail route was not only prohibitive as to expense, but inadequate as to capacity. Pointing out that Liverpool sets the world's price on the world's wheat, he said that in any given point in Canada, the price of wheat, whether for export or for home consumption, was the price at Liverpool less the cost of getting it there. • The economic advantage of the new Pacific drainage system was the startling fact that grain rates from Vancouver to Liverpool, ua Panama, would be less than half the rate from Albertan points to Vancouver. Mr. Vrooman considered the suggested rates, and translating these into cash, he said : "It all means that had the Canal been finished and had there been proper i and adequate dock and harbour facilities at Vancouver to handle it, this Canal would have meant a clear gain to the farmers of, Alberta alone of about £4,000,000 on the crop of 1912. This serves to illustrate the grain value of the Canal to the farmer alone. It says nothing for the miner or manufacturer, who equally will share in the unearned dividend. It is easy to see not far hence for the farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan a free gift from this Canal of something in the neighbourhood of £50,000,000 a year in freight rates saved. "There are two other points working towards and two spinet the future shifting of the divide trom east to west, or from west to east of where the present rates locate it to-day. The Hudson's Bay route and the Mississippi route will tend to draw grain away from the Pacific coast. It must be remembered, however, that these routes never will influence shipments for the Pacific Ocean itself. Only grain destined for European ports will" be drawn this way at all. With the opening of the Pacific Hinterlands with their billion mouths to feed — already learning the uses of wheat bread — it is not at all unlikely that the world's price for the world's wheat will be named at Shangai or Hong Kong or Vancouver instead of Liverpool. Then the great divide will be driven eastward. ULTIMATE ECONOMIC BACKBONE "Another tendency to keep it eastward in spite of the northern and southern routes is the delay after harvest in hauling the grain to the railroad in the remoter districts of the prairie. Owing to the- state of the roads and the cheapness and facility of hauling, the farmer is. disposed to wait for the ice or snow, which he pi'efers to mud. Whatever grain in the debatable belt, or rather on the dividing lines, is thus left over into the winter is thrown into the winter zone— that is the larger Pacific drainage system, and becomes tributary to the Pacific Ocean. It is certain that our economic divide will be shifting from summer to winter ; and that eVery year. It is also certain that the mean annual divide will be shifting every decade, but I , have no disposition to believe other- , wise than that the opening and development of the lands and peoples within and around the' Pacific Ocean, the ultimate economic backbone of the Dominion, will coincide with the present geographic dividing lino between Canada East and Canada West — the Laurentian Plateau, north of Lake Superior." Mr. Vrooman prophesies that when settlers in any considerable numbers havo moved into this last and vast North-West the rigours and dangers of its climate will be greatly modified. He found N the finest vegetables he had ever seen on the Yukon steamers, and these were grown at Dawson City, where men had experienced lOOdeg. in the shadp. With 30,000 square miles of agricultural land in the whole Canadian Yukon basin j they had, nn important economic element to consider. British Columbia, too. had the best soil in Canada and 6ome~bT the J best in the world. He estimates the arable land of Pacific Canada at easily 333,000,000 acres, against 160,000,000 in j Atlantic Canada. Just as there will bo enormously-in* creased Canadian exports through the j Pacific gateway, so there will be increases \ in imports through the same gateways, j FUTURE OF VANCOUVER. Speaking of the competition of Seattle and Vancouver, the lecturer said : " It j is at this point that this whole matter i becomes one of Imperial interest. The problem is whether the shuttlecocks of commerce are destined to pass back- ! wards and forwards between the North American _ continent and the Pacific Ocean in its main bulk at least north of San Francisco, through the port of Seattle or the port of Vancouver. Let l it be remembowd that not only hag ! every great Canadian railway determined Vancouver for its terminal, but three great American railroads also. Vancouver, therefore, is the only Pacific port of Canada which Has or ever will have every great railroad coming to the North Pacific Coast converging in one metropolis. Therefore, this city is to be the metropolis of the British Empire on tho Pacific Ocean, and nothing can ever stop it if the people of Vancouver exercise tlie same foresight and energy in the matter of their dock and harbour development that the people of Seattle are doing and have been doing for several years. Simultaneously with the birth and growth of Vancouver, three great world movements have been making headway which never have been seen before and never will be seen again. They are of the kind that can happen but once. Tho first is the cutting of the Panama Canal, the second is the awakening of Asia ; the third is the peopling of the prairies. " With seven great railways coming to the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver, three through the United States, and four through Canada; with the ships of the Pacific Ocean under necessity of coming here to get their traffic, and with ono of Che greatest dock and harbour developments in the world about to furI nish the key to the situation in making it possible for ships and railroads to transact their legitimate business with each other, we find in this city one of magnificent coincidences. We have here a city growing simultaneously with three great world movements out of a mud village into a world metropolis, but it is no mean coincidence that the emj blems of Imperial might and power may | be seen from our doorways grizzled in I the morning light with the early snows — two crouching lions keeping guard over the Gateway of Empire, wber# the seven railways meet tho shipping of the seven seas."