E. B. Osborne, who has been making a tour of the Dominion as special commissioner for “Canada,” the illustrated London weekly, and is a regular contributor to the Times and other English and American journals, has returned to Winnipeg from a journey over the Winnipeg-Wainwright section of the Grant Trunk Pacific. He gave the following account of his experience to a Free Press representative:—
“Certain people seem to have been “knocking” the G. T. P. for political purposes. I should say, speaking from the standpoint of a strictly disinterested observer of Canadian politics, that this was a blunder in tactics. At any rate it was bound to be resented by the settlers along the 666 miles of recently opened line and also by all those—the vast majority of the people living on the prairies—who want to see the factor of competition introduced into railway business. The west has long required a second transcontintental road. Western Canada has grown too big to be held by the ball-and-chain of a single through line with the setting sun at the end of it.
“The opening of the line has been a great boon to the settlers in its territory and the inhabitants of the busy towns—some of which will soon be cities—which have grown up here since the spring. I was amazed at the volume of freight and passenger traffic along the whole line. Some considerable experience of newly-opened railways, both here and in the United States, had not prepared me for the large amount of business—three or four times as much as I had expected to find. The line is still being operated by the ocnstruction department and naturally full facities for the handling of freight etc., do not as yet exist though every effort is being made to press on construction work at all points. But the willingness to oblige and unremitting energy of the company’s employees form a sufficient compensation, and I did not hear a single complaint.
“The roadbed is excellent throughout, and the track all the way from Winnipeg to Wainwright is being rapidly put into shape. Here I should like to dwell on the criticism sometimes heard from those who are ignorant of what may be called railway strategy.
“The critics say that the line ought to keep away from other lines in the neighborhood, turning to this side and that in order to avoid patches of inferior country or to develop areas of good unsettled land. They forget that the G. T. P. line is not intended to be a local freight collector in the first instance—secondarily, of course, it acts as such—but a trunk line which will throw out freight-collecting tenacles as occasion requires.
“Nearly all the land, however, through which it passes is good farming—most of it very good—and even where sandy soil is seen there are pockets of good land near the railway and the fine farming areas a short distance back. But the G. T. P. from Winnipeg to Edmonton must be primarily judged as a trunk line, a portion of a great thoroughfare from the Atlantic and the great Lakes to the Pacific.
“Unquestionably there will be no more picturesque route across the prairies. Many beauty spots are passed. People talk of the “monotony” of the prairies, but that is because they have no eye for the subtleties of line and coloring. To me, at all seasons of the year, the prairies have a singular allurement, comparable with the fascination of the ocean’s “little sister,” Lake Superior. The traveller who is disappointed with the scenery of those illimitable unfenced plainswith their seas of grain or grasses ‘sighting unto no shore’ are not better, in my judgement, than the famous—or unfamous—degenerate who was disappointed with the Atlantic.
“No doubt, the day will come and come soon, when there will be cities with populations running into five figures along the prairie section of the G. T. P. mainline. And at least two of the towns I visited will become favorite resorts of the tourist. Watrous has a beautiful salt water lake within three miles of town, wither sufferers from rheumatism and kindred ills will resort. This is little Manitou lake, and long before the white man entered the west the Indians had their sweating lodges there and recognized the medicinal qualities of its azure waves. The breeze blowing from it to the town has a flavor which suggests the proximity of the sea. A chunk of the old ocean in the heart of the prairie—that is a notable asset for a town not six months old.
“Again near Wainwright is the great park where the Pablo-Allard herd of buffalo is to be located. The herd is expected up shortly and I wish I could have been there to see them turned into their new reservation, so far from their old one in Montana. A number of deer have been enclosed in the process of building the many miles of buffalo proof fence.
“It is just as well to tell you that I don’t own town lots in either Watrous or Wainwright. At the latter place I was introduced to a lady named Wainwright Marguerite, the first citizen of the city born there, who, by western usage, is certainly entitled to a free town lot. No doubt she will get it—and the G. T. P. vice-president, whose name she bears ought, I think, ante up to the extent of a silver mug or a spoon or some other appropriate trifle.
“I went as far as the great bridge at Battle River. It should be finished in about a month. In conclusion, I should like to thank, through your columns, all the railway employees who helped to make my trip a pleasant one. Everybody was very kind, and I think them as nice a bunch of boys as ever preferred railroading to the other learned professions, such as being millionaires, or professional baseball players, or journalism.”