Thousand Railway Charters Issued But Only Chosen Few Ever Started Published 14 July 1954 By Austin F. Cross Citizen Staff Writer Ever hear of the Ottawa and Lake McGregor Railway Company? No, and you never will either. But this is just one of the 1,000 odd railways incorporated in Canada under Dominion charter since Confederation. It is hard to realize that Canada ever started out to build something like a thousand railways but the proof is there. Dr. Maurice Ollivier, QC, LLD, FRSC, and erudite law clerk of the House of Commons, is elbows-deep these days compiling what he calls "part of an index to all public and private legislation." He finds himself opening up a brand new file on pipe lines but he has long become reconciled to the endless railways charters, most of which died a-borning. Patient Dr. Ollivier in his index is going to have the co-operation of that publisher of best sellers, the Queen's Printer. In his perpetual porings over old papers and musty charters, Dr. Ollivier has pages and pages and pages of railways. They start with Abltibi and Hudson Bay 1907 and they end up with Zenith Mining Railway, Company, 1899. Giant Spider Web If all the railways incorporated by federal statute ran today, Canada would look like giant spider's web. Who recalls for instance the Beersville Coal and Railway Company, 1903? If you dig away back you get such ventures as the Manitoba Junction Railway, 1872. Or such modern items as "CNR Montreal Terminal" dated 1929. You find such ancient labels as Bessemer and Barry's Bay. Whether it ever got : to Bessemer is moot . but' it' certainly never got to Barry's Bay and anyway the Canadian National got both of them. Old B & BB No. 5 lay around Trenton's Canadian Northern bone yards in 1917 for weeks. Bytown And Prescott Of interest to local people would be the Bytown and Prescott, 1867, and now metamorphosed into "the Prescott local" Gone is the brave Brockville, Westport and Sault Ste. Marie which actually reached Westport in wood burner days but gave up when it faced a big hill beyond Westport. The old B and W never even started beyond Westport for the Soo. There is an entry under the CPR's list of "Lease of Shushwap and Okanagan subsidy for Crow's Nest Lease of $3,630,000, AD 1897." Under some railways there was the added entry "subsidy" or "term extended." Neither "subsidy" nor "term extended" ever did much, apparently, for the Ottawa and McGregor Lake, for no railway has as yet profane that lake's chaste shores. But Ottawa is mentioned 23 times in the ancient tomes. Yet, nothing survives today except the Ottawa Electric which somehow made the 1894 entries. It's something about getting money. Gone With The Wind Gone with the wind then were the Ottawa and Arnprior Junction, 1882; the Ottawa and Gatineau; and this strange delineation, the Ottawa and Ungava. That was unwrapped in 1912. Other non-start railways were the Ottawa, Waddington and New York Railway and Bridge company. As yet there is neither such a railway or such a bridge. The Montreal, Ottawa and Western, 1875 became the Montreal and Western and was subsequently gobbled up by that amiable octopus the CPR. Thus was created the Montreal-Ottawa line via north shore and the start of a transcontinental line from Montreal to Vancouver. This Montreal and Western was part of the CPR's main line to Vancouver from 1885 to 1900. "These" said Commons Law Clerk Ollivier, "are only the railways incorporated by the federal government. Heaven only knows how many the provinces have incorporated." |