HUDSON BAY ROUTE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17437, 8 April 1931, Page 5

HUDSON BAY ROUTE

NOW ALMOST READY CANADA'S NORTHERN SEAPORT WINNIPEG, Feb. 10. The first practical test of the Hudson Bay grain route to Europe will be made in September of the present year, anil it is expected that at, the opening of navigation in 1932 nil the facilities of the now Atlantic port will be available for whatever business may oiler. Contracts provide for the completion bv September of the grain elevators at Churchill, terminus of the now Hasson Bay Railway and of the new Atlantic route, while dfcdgiijg and dock extension will be finished in tlie spring of llt.'lg. The authorities have decided that it will be possible to make a, lest shipment of two or three cargoes, or about 75(1.000 bushels of wheat, in the present autumn, from which valuable lessons will be learned in respect to freight and insurance rates. Shipping companies are prepared to coupe ta-te heartily in the venture. For many years the producers ot Western Canada have looked forward to the opening of the Hudson Bay route to Europe, and now that the project is so near completion they are watching each step with intense interest. They expect that, a considerable part of the Western wheat crop, particularly that originating in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will find its wav to market .through the Churchill elevators ami they will be greatly disappointed if the route does not reduce materially the freight charges on grain. For the moment at least the long controversy over the possibilities of the route is stilled. All parties, <ivon those who opposed most vigorously the expenditure of many millions on the railway and on port, terminals, now are agreed that, it must be tested not by theory and deduction but through the hard decisiveness ot practical experience.