THE NORTH VIEW THE CPR

One of the defining acts of nation building for Canada was the creation of a trans-continental railway. It was from the beginning ridiculed as an outrageous feat of engineering that couldn't be done, given the tremendous distances and difficult geography of the emerging country. The mountains of British Columbia were projected to be the most formidable obstacle for the line, yet little did the architects of the Canadian Pacific Railway expect that an even more difficult challenge lay in Algoma and Northern Ontario! While mountains had passes that ultimately could be negotiated, the ancient granite hills of Northern Ontario stretched on for thousands of kilometers, with no way through except by blasting a path. Worse still was what lay between the hills; thick bush and peat bogs that seemed bottomless, that would swallow whole engines and tracks together! It is not generally appreciated that Algoma and Northern Ontario's section of the CPR was one of the last to be completed and it almost destroyed the railway in the process. Even more amazingly, this section of the line was also responsible for saving the CPR since, at the time of it's apparent death throes due to lack of funds, Louis Riel's Metis uprising threatened, so the country diverted emergency funds to this incompleted section in order to quickly transport troops to the Red River Valley, thereby saving the whole railway from extinction.