Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1907 — THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC RAILROAD AND WESTERN CANADA. [ARTICLE]

THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC RAILROAD AND WESTERN CANADA.

Will Open Up Immense Aren of Fro* Homestead Lands. , The railway facilities of Western Canada have been taxed to the uttermost in recent years to transfer the surplus grain crop to the eastern markets and the seaßoard. The large influx of settlers aud the hdd|tional area put under crop have added largely to the grain product,- and notwithstanding .the increased railway facilities that have been placed at the disposal of the public,i the question of transportation has proved to be a serious one. It will, therefore, be good news to everyone interested iu Western Canada to know’ that an authoritative statement has been givqp. out by Mr. C. M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, that tliat railway will do Its share towards moving the crop of 1907 from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to tidewater, and thus assist in removing a serious obstacle which has faced the settler during ren cent years. Mr. Hays, who has just completed a trjp from Portage la Prairie to Edmonton in a prairie schooner, a distance of 735 miles, which was covered 4a eighteen day’s, is enthusiastic about the ; This will be gratifying to settlers in The Canadian West, even if Mr. Hays declines to be, bound to a time limit with the exactitude of a stop-watch. The Grand Trunk Pacific road will be la a position to take part in the transportation of the crop of 1907, and that will he... satisfactory. ,to,..the. settlers im that country when the harvest la garnered.

The wheat crop of 1906 In Western Canada was about 90,000,000 bushels and wiill tlie increased acreage which is confidently expected to be. put under crop next year it is safely calculated that fully 125,000,000 .bushels will be harvested in 1907. The necessity for increased transportation facilities are, therefore, apparent, and the statement made by Mr. Hays will bring encouragement to the farmers of the Canadian West, new and old. The opening up of additional thousands of free homesteads is thus assured by the agent of the Canadian government, whose address appears elsewhere.