BOUNDARY COMMISSION.
It has been said that the politics of Can ada are railways. In a country so vast, means of transportation are of vital moment. Thus it happened that, after the Canadian Pacific Rail way was completed, plans were soon on foot for other transcontinental lines. Since the Ca nadian Pacific Railway ran near the southern frontier, new lines, it was thought, should open up regions farther north. In 1903 Sir Wilfred Laurier announced that the govern ment of Canada had plans for a new trans continental railway. The government was to complete the railway from Moncton, New Bruswick, to Winnipeg, while from that point to the Pacific Coast, at what is now Prince Ru pert, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Com pany was to build the line and it was to oper ate this section and also that from Winnipeg to the Atlantic to be leased to the company by the Canadian government. A little earlier a private firm, Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann, had matured plans for a similar line to cross the Rocky Mountains farther south. The firm had only the capital of remarkable energy. It was by means of government bonuses and guaran tees of its bonds that the necessary money was to be obtained. In the end it secured guaran tees of this kind amounting to about $250, 000,000. Efforts to unite the two plans and to build a single new line were, unhappily, not successful. At the present time (1918) both lines have been nearly completed. Their cost has been very great and it came at a time when taxation grew heavier as the great war ap proached. Three transcontinental lines in a country with a population of less than 8,000,000 were a heavy burden. In 1917 the Canadian government took over the Canadian Northern which could not meet the interest on its bonds and there is, at the moment of writing some prospect that, to promote economy and effi ciency, the government will, for the duration of the war and, it may be, as a permanence, control also the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Pacific with its parent company, the Grand Trunk. The government of Canada will then direct three vast railway systems, each of them stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The growth of the Canadian West was ob vious in 1905 when, from a part of the former Northwest territories, were created two new self-governing provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, which together fill the gap between Manitoba on the east and British Columbia on the west. In the background of Canadian poli tics lurks always religious and racial strife, since two-fifths of the population are Roman Catholics and form a minority so powerful as to keep alive the suspicions of the Protestant majority. In creating the two new provinces, Sir Wilfrid Laurier proposed to allow the majority in a school district to determine the religion, if any, to be taught in the school, the minority to have separate schools with the same privilege and each school to be kept up by taxes on its supporters. Any government grant was to be equitably divided. Since 1875 the Roman Catholics had had the right to sepa rate schools in the territory affected. The policy of the Prime Minister secured the strong support of the Catholic clergy of Quebec but it was as firmly opposed by a larger number of Protestants. A crisis in the government followed and, in the end, the bill was so modi fied as to place the proposed schools under effective state control. All through the West the demand for sectarian and racial privileges regarding education was pressed. Ruthenians, Poles, Germans and others, besides French in Manitoba, demanded the right to have schools conducted in their own language and declared that this was a sacred heritage, not to be denied to their children without gross injustice. For a time in Manitoba some half dozen languages were used in the schools with official sanction. The need was urged of requiring English in all the schools, if a common Canadian national sty to be fostered. In 1915 the former Conservative government of Manitoba was de feated and in 1916 the new Liberal government passed a measure requiring the use of Eng lish as the teaching language in all the schools and, for the first time, making elementary education compulsory.