CANADIAN CANAL SCHEME.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43117, 23 July 1907, Page 4

CANADIAN CANAL SCHEME.

The big 'Canadian canal scheme mentioned In the cable messages the other day has ben talked about for years past. The Hon. J. Israel Tarte, who was Canadian Minister of Public Works six or seven years ago, was an enthusiastic advocate of the proposal, which he considered would divert l most of the Ohicago-Atlantici trade to the Canadian route. The scheme, briefly, is to deepen and widen the French River, which connects Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, with Lake Nipissing, to connect. Lake Nipissingi with the Ottawa River .and to use the Ottawa as far as possible in the construction, of a safe and deep waterway to Montreal. Of course the plan has its engineering difficulties. Lake Huron is fifty or sixty feet below Lake Nipissing, and there are four difficult, rapids to be removed or circumvented on the French River. The Dominion Government is spending a million, sterling on this river alone, however, and in time there will 'be a. waterway forty feet deep all the way from: Georgian: Bay to North Bay on Lake Nippissing. Good quays at North Bay will facilitate the transference of goods to the Canadian-Pacific line, and if the scheme goes no further it. will unquestionably cheapen freights from the Great Lakes to tihe Atlantic Coast. The trade, it is believed, could be induced to follow the Nipissing-Montreal route to New York 1 , for the full canal scheme by no- means, stops at Montreal. In summer the .St. Lawrence gives a waterway more than thirty feet deep at low water all the way to Montreal, and the present dredging scheme is gradually increasing the depth. Ultimately the scheme will carry Chicago trade by water right, through to New York. Mr R. W. Perkis, who is apparently offering to undertake this tiwenty-million-pound canal, is a member of a great contracting firm which has carried out dock' and canal schemes in many partß of the world.