Canada's Canal Problem

Mr. President and Gentlemen,-

First I want to thank you for the opportunity of speaking to you this afternoon on a subject which I believe will be of great and especial interest to this Club. A club named the Empire Club must naturally view all these matters to some extent in their relation to the Empire. You, I take it, think Imperially on such matters as this. Now, Canada is standing, if you will pardon an expression which got a little tiresome a little while ago, "at the parting of the ways."--We must make up our minds now quickly, and we must make them up decidedly, as td what we are going to do to maintain for Canada the control of the water-borne trade of the west and the northwest. I do not expect -I would not like to believethat any canals we can build in the east, or any railways we can maintain in the east will ever be able to carry more than a moiety of the teeming products of the great northwest of the future, but for that part of it which is naturally contributary to the great lakes it is wise to see that every bushel goes by way of our canals and railways to find its way to the world's markets. Now, Canada has a problem, of course, in this canal question. If we make a mistake now, we may make a very serious one which we will not be able to rectify in the future.

There are three ways proposed for its solution, perhaps two, but I will say three, by which we can deal with the position in which we find ourselves. That position is this: Ever since almost the dawn of settlement on this continent, or certainly since the division between the United States and Canada, we have had what we might call a battle of canals. Our neighbours to the south have been trying to get the trade their way, and we have been trying to bring it our, way. We started off by building a small Welland Canal. We enlarged that twice. They built their Erie Canal. As things stand now we have the advantage, a very decided advantage, but our position is by no means absolutely secure. Keep that in your minds. So insecure is that position that a few years ago when our government put a toll of half a cent a bushel on wheat going through the Welland and the St. Lawrence canals it transferred the trade to New York, and absolutely destroyed the trade through the Welland Canal. Now, we must have free tolls through the Welland, but the Welland Canal must be so constructed, so improved, that no possible improvement that can be made on the Erie will be able to make it a match for the Welland. In the United States they are spending $100,000,000, or to be accurate $101,000,000, to improve the existing Erie Canal, and they are spending $19,000,000 in improving the terminals. What will that mean when it is finished? It will be a 12-foot canal, a barge canal to be sure, but a barge canal is not to be despised. This barge canal will be able to take vessels carrying 35,000 bushels of wheat through it, and the cost of navigating barges is only one half as compared with vessels. Now, we must meet that by something with which it cannot compete; and nothing short of a Welland Canal which will take the largest vessels that navigate the lakes and take them, not into Lake Ontario only, but clean down to Montreal will suit the purpose. (Applause.)

The first proposition I shall consider is that the Welland Canal should be enlarged and deepened and made straighter, safer, and shorter, and then let it stand at that. That might be quite sufficient if we were thinking of nothing but carrying the wheat of the northwest to the seaboard, because you know the ocean liners and the ocean vessels do not carry wheat as exclusive cargo. They take wheat when they can get nothing that pays better, and a vessel lying in Montreal would not wait thereto get a full cargo of wheat from a vessel coming down the lakes. So some argue that you could transfer that wheat, say at Kingston or Prescott, and by that means you could have it within easy reach of Montreal when it is wanted. That would be all right- possibly if we were only thinking of the wheat, but we have a right to think of something more than that. We have untold mineral wealth around Lake Superior and 'Lake Huron; and down here in Old Ontario along the 'shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario we have locations most favourable for manufacturing industries, and we have a right to expect that great manufacturing industries will be built up which will make use of those Ores, and manufacture them into finished products. I know just now there is a kind of tendency in some quarters to make it appear that the manufacturer is not the friend but the enemy of the country. I never could so regard him. We hear a great deal about the consumer now-a-days. I don't think the; consumer is the important man; I think the producer is the important one, whether he produces with his hands or his brain. That is the man I think we ought to be looking after. At- any rate, if we are going to make this a great country, we have got to build up our manufacturing industries in the best possible way. Now, lake freights are important, and we should be able to take the largest vessels going down the lakes through the Welland Canal-we should be able to. I don't know what it will cost. No, man knows today what it will cost. The plan's are not all prepared as yet, though I understand they are almost ready for presentation to Parliament. But I will assume, to make that canal sufficient for what it ought to be able to do-to take the very largest vessels that navigate the lakes, or are likely to navigate the lakes-I will assume it will cost from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000. I may be right or I may be wrong in that, but the question is not what it will cost. Canada is now able to build public works if they are profitable and in the public interest-and if the money goes for the building of the works. (Laughter.) That is one proposition.

If you will permit me, I will follow the example of ' our friend Sherlock Holmes and adopt the method of elimination. I will take that first proposition now and strike it out. I do not think there is a man here who would be satisfied with that proposition. We do not want Lake Ontario to be the foot of the waterways system of Canada. We want it to go through to Montreal.

Another proposition is to build a canal from the Georgian Bay by way of the trench River, Lake Nipissing, the Mattawa River, and the Ottawa River to Montreal. Now, that route has its advocates. They are strong and very much in earnest in advocating that route, and I am not going to suggest that they do not believe in the route. You listened to Mayor Hopewell, of Ottawa, here a few days ago, and while I didn't have the pleasure of hearing his speech I had the pleasure of reading a report of it, and I agree with him in one thing at any rate. He says this matter should not be discussed, or should not be considered, from a sectional standpoint. With that I thoroughly agree. Not what is best for some particular section or sections, but what is best for all of Canada is what we want the one that will solve our canal problem and will put us permanently in the lead so that our rivals to the south cannot catch up with us. Will the proposed Georgian Bay Canal do that?

I want to state this as fairly and as clearly as I can, and I take from the report of the engineers who have reported to the Government on that scheme. They say it is going to be 282 miles shorter than the Welland route, that it will be from a day to a day and a half faster than the Welland route, and that it will have a much greater carrying capacity than the Welland route. It is to cost $100,000,000--so they say-I am not going to suppose that they are intentionally inaccurate at all. But it just so happens that in Canada we have had rather disagreeable experiences with the difference between estimated cost and actual cost of-public works. (Laughter.) And I am not sure how this may come out. But we will assume it will cost $100,000,000, and we will assume it will do what these men claim it will do, effect a quick and cheap transportation from the north of the great lakes to Montreal; to tide water. It would be well worth $100,000,000, or more than that, if it would do this. Let us see if it is likely to do it. If you will take the report of those engineers, they tell you one of their difficulties is from Lake Nipissing across the summit to the Mattawa River, and they tell how they are going to get over that difficulty. You know sometimes there have been canals where the difficulty is to find water. (Laughter.) They say they can find plenty, and they are going to find it in this way. They will dam a certain number of rivers and raise the level of a certain number of lakes, and in that way they are going to get up to 540 cubic feet per second, and that will take 24 vessels per day, through the locks, or 5,040 vessels during the season. That is their scheme. But they say, if we find this is insufficient, by damming certain other rivers, by another expenditure of $900,000, we can increase that flow of water by 700 cubic feet per second. Figuring it out, that would mean they could take 55 vessels per day, or 11,550 vessels per season through that canal. Now, keep those figures in your mind, because I will refer to them again later on. That is the proposition put in, the most favourable light. If all these claims be correct, the thing looks good, and you know it does look good-on a map, but canals are not built on maps. You have got other difficulties to overcome that you cannot overcome with a ruler and pair of compasses, and you will find it much more difficult to build a canal than to mark it out on a map. I have no doubt Mayor Hopewell showed it, and that you just learned again what you had learned at school; that any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third, and they are giving the one side and we have two the other way, and so it is that the distance is shorter by theirs than by the Welland route. There has been a good deal of eloquence expended in the support of this canal, but we know canals, as I said, are not built on maps, nor are they built by rhetoric. We are talking of a canal now, not of an airship line, and wind won't carry that canal through.

Now, let us look at the whole thing from the standpoint of practical men. Let me call your attention to this fact, that up to the present they have not been able to produce one man, one vessel man with experience in lake and canal navigation, who will say that the Georgian Bay route is a feasible one; not one vessel man so far. On the contrary, these practical vessel men tell you that no sane owner would allow his vessel to pass through such a route. There are 120 curves on that route, and some of them three percent curves, where ships would have to go at a snail's pace. They say they will go through in 7o hours. That is a little more than six miles per hour. Let me just call your attention to the fact that the Suez Canal, where there are no locks, can only take vessels through at a rate of five miles per hour, and the Manchester Canal can only take vessels through at five and a half miles. Now, how can they go through better than that in the Georgian Bay Canal; better than those slow speeds through those canals? Practical vessel men say, if you take into consideration the conditions, the tortuous route, the dangerous route, the fact that you would have to have either a double crew with double expense or else tie up at night, the fact that during the part of the year when it would be most in use the route is very much subject to fogs-taking all these matters into consideration-our practical vessel men say they could not keep up more than two miles an hour, and instead of going through in three days it would take them fully nine. -So that, even on the face of it, they cannot go as fast as on the Welland. But now the engineers make an admission. They say, while it is a day and a half or a day faster than the existing Welland route, yet if the Welland route were improved to a 22-foot channel, and certain other improvements made, there would be no difference in the time. You have all heard the old adage that the longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home. In this case they admit the shortest way home is not one bit shorter than the longer way round. So there you are. There is no advantage between the two so far as time is concerned.

Then look; at this summit proposition. As I say, if they use every available drop of water, all that can be got by every means conceivable, their utmost capacity will lie to take 11,050 vessels through in a year. They Soo canals in 1910 took 20,669 through, so that, if we aim at getting a fair share of the possible future traffic

of the great lakes, we may as well leave that out of the question. Then they say in the report that the locks ate to be 600 feet long by 6o feet wide, but further on T, gather they are estimating the cost of the canal on larger locks than that, 660 feet long by 65 feet wide: Why already in the great lakes, vessels are being built that would not go through such a canal as that. The Colonel Shoemaker being built at Detroit could not squeeze through them at all, and vessel men tell me the tendency in the future will be wider vessels rather than narrower, so, if you will excuse a bull, the canal is obsolete before it is begun.

But you say Mayor Hopewell told you that you are going to have return cargoes through the Georgian Bay Canal. You are going to take Nova Scotia coal up trough the Georgian Bay Canal. Now, after paying 'one dollar freight per ton on coal from Lake Erie ports to Montreal, that coal is sold for less in Montreal than Nova Scotia coal can be bought for. So you see there is no return cargo in coal. Mayor Hopewell was right in this that return cargoes are very, very important, absolutely esseritial in a proposition of this kind, but you must search in vain for return cargoes at Montreal. A vessel delivering grain say from Fort William to Montreal would have to go back empty through the Georgian Bay Canal, down the Georgian Bay, down Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, and Detroit River, and down to a Lake Erie port to get a return cargo. So that, commercially, instead of the canal being 282 miles shorter than the Welland it is about 1,300 miles longer. That is the commercial proposition, fairly stated I think.

Then let us turn to another phase of it. They say, if you do build the St. Lawrence canals and the Welland Canal, the Americans will tap your trade at Lake Ontario, at Syracuse, and Oswego, and Mayor Hopewell quoted an eminent engineer of the State of New York in support of that statement. I do not know who this eminent engineer may have been, but I do know that the State of New York appointed a commission of engineers to enquire into the feasibility and practicability of that route, and they reported that nothing better than a r2-foot canal was possible owing to well nigh unsurmountable difficulties in the Albany River, so that a ship canal from Lake Ontario to New York may be fairly said to be an absolute impossibility. A r2-foot canal is the best they can do, and that is what we have got to compete with; just that 12-foot canal. But ,whatever we do, we must not make the mistake of delaying long or attempting some other proposition which will throw us into $100,000,000 or $1550,000,000 of expenditure, and then have to begin over again when we are through.

Let us see now what about the ocean freights on these vessels. I do not share the views of men who see those ocean liners coming up the lakes. I do not agree with them, because the vessels that navigate the ocean are not suitable for lake traffic, and the lake vessels could not cross the ocean, so we will have to take the cargoes down to tide water and transfer. Then, after we get our cargos on the liners going across the ocean, we will depend for the safety of the route throughout on the British fleet, and if you will pardon me for suggesting it, I would like to believe that Canada will not long be content to take the trivial, almost the shameful share, which she has been taking in the past in the maintenance of that fleet. (Applause.)

We have then come down to the last proposition, the 'Welland Canal. Now, nobody suggests that it is not feasible. Nobody suggests there is not water enough for that. You can make a 3o-foot canal, and I believe it would be the part of national wisdom to do that at once, so that we will never have to deepen it again. I believe also that the canal should be concreted from end to end, along the bottom and sides, so that vessels can go through at full speed. That would cost more but it might be money well spent. Let me repeat that I do not think the Canadian people are at all afraid of a wise expenditure of money for national purposes if only the expenditure be honest as well as wide. (Hear, hear.)

Your president of the Board of Trade, in his address, spoke of an important thing in connection with this matter. You will develop a lot of power no doubt at Thorold because the intention, I believe, is to bunch all the locks at Thorold, and from there down it will be a level reach to the lake. There will be a reach from Lake Erie to Thorold without any lock, and then from Thorold down to Lake Ontario without any lock, and you can go full speed in those two stretches. At Thorold you would have the whole height of the escarpment for waste water and the development of power, but, as Mr. Somers very properly said, that is not such an immediately important question in view of the great development at Niagara. But along the line of the St. Lawrence a very conservative estimate is, without especially trying to develop water power at all, but just doing what you would have to do to improve the navigation properly, you would create a development of more than a- million horse-power. Now, a million horse-power of publicly-owned energy along the St. Lawrence Canal would solve the power problem of eastern Ontario and western Quebec, even after making a fair division with our New York neighbours, and I think that would be a very wise expenditure for that purpose. Oh, they say, there will be a million horsepower on the Georgian Bay--these public spirited gentlemen who want to get the charter renewed. They say 100,000,000 horsepower, but anyway there will be a million horse-power, and it is worth $5 a horse-power they tell us. Well, that would be $5,000,000 there, as against five millions down close to Montreal where it is badly wanted. The best place to produce anything is near the market, isn't it? So you would have the horse-power right where it is wanted in one case, and a good many miles away in the other. I would not attack the Georgian Bay Canal project if I thought it had merits. I know our friends of the Georgian Bay who advocate it, and Mayor Hopewell did that here, take pains to say they are not hostile to the Welland at all, but I always notice they give it a sly knock in passing, just like that character in the Bible, you know, who, just merely to show his friendship, took his friend by the beard and inserted a bit of cutlery under his fifth rib, just in a friendly way to show his friendly feeling. (Laughter.) Now, I think it is as well to face things as they are. Do not let us live in a fool's paradise. We are in a dangerous position, if we give the Americans time to build their Erie Canal while we stand with folded arms, or attempt another project to counteract that that we cannot complete for five years after theirs is built. Your traffic will go by way of New York, and you will have the time of your life to get it back again. They say they can build that Georgian Bay Canal in ten years, but practical men who have experience say it cannot be done in twenty. But suppose it could be done in ten years, still there remain five years after the Erie is finished that you would be at the mercy of our American competitors.

But you say what benefit is it to old Canada? Will it do any good seeing these vessels pass by? It will do us this much good, aside from the patriotic feeling we all have in seeing the great west built up, and seeing every other part of Canada prosper. I think Toronto has got beyond the stage when she is wondering how her neighbours are getting on. She is willing they should get on well, and she is going to get on well herself. We are not worried about anybody else being prosperous. The more prosperous they are the better for us. But will it do us any good in a more direct way? As I said, I don't look for ocean liners coming up the lakes, but I do look for small ocean freight-carrying vessels, and these are the ones that make the railway managers very reasonable when they come to fixing through freight rates. Let me give you an illustration. A gentleman over in Buffalo, connected- with the Western Elevator Company-Mr. Hiram Smith is his name found, as he thought, that the railways were over clinging for carrying oil, and so he got a barge built to carry oil. through the Erie Canal. It was built for the purpose; but he never sent it once, for the moment he had. it finished the railways cut the rates down, and though he never used that barge he points to it as his Permanent insurance against railway extortion.

The ocean tramps coming up the lakes would be a permanent insurance to us against railway extortion. We are all willing to pay fair rate to the railways, but while you are in favour of water-borne traffic you are not in favour of paying profits on watered stock, and we will keep the water for our canals. Some of our canals had to be abandoned because we didn't have enough.

I thank you gentlemen for having listened so patiently. 14 want to be brief because I am speaking to busy men in their working- hours, but allow me to remark this, you members of the Empire Club. You are Imperialists I take it. I do not mean in a political sense, but in that sense that you take an Imperial view of things, and that you wish to be behind every project that promises Well for the Empire. If you think this does, then I ask you to help the public spirited men of the Board of Trade of Toronto who are doing so much to educate 'public opinion on this question and to influence our publicmen in favour of the Welland Canal project, I do not think you could be better employed than in assisting these gentlemen in the work they are doing. I thank you very heartily for your patient hearing, and let me say my own belief is that none, at least not many, some certainly will not, I notice, because they cannot, will become as gray as I am, before the Welland Canal is built and a permanent success. I think you will see that Toronto will be, in the best sense of the word, an ocean port, and that within a very short time. The Welland Canal can be completed in five years' time, Sir, so practical men tell me, and, if it can, then, we can match the Erie, and there never will be one hour when we cannot carry the grain of the northwest, yes, and the Western States as well, to the ocean more cheaply;than our American rivals can do it, and more speedily, and, if we do that, we control the situation, and control it in no niggardly spirit, because the canal is as free to them as to us. We charge no tolls; we give them the same advantage as we have; but we do want a Canadian route which will be controlled entirely by Canada, and in which no other power will have any say. (Applause.) That is the Imperial view I have of it, and I think it is a view that most members of an Imperial Club will be likely to agree with.

Again I thank you, Mr. President and Gentlemen, and I may say that the last time I saw your President was over at an Imperial meeting in England, and he seemed to be just as much at home there as he is here. He tells me this Club is affiliated with the Royal Colonial Institute, and, as I am a Fellow of that Institute, I might almost consider myself a member of this Club as well. (Applause.)