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Arctic Survey Part V. Transportation in the Canadian North1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The development of a region can obviously not proceed faster than transportation facilities will permit. In an area of the vast extent of the Canadian northland, isolation remains the predominant characteristic in nearly all portions, and no part can expect to advance economically unless it has efficient and cheap transportation to the outside world.
The present transportation facilities in the western part of sub-arctic Canada are surprisingly good when one considers the limited volume of traffic they handle, yet the transportation routes follow in the main only the major water routes running northward. Great stretches of country to the east and west of these waterways are without transportation. However, in the present state of our knowledge there has been little if any thought of development in these large “dead” areas.
The first question to be asked, probably, is whether existing traffic can be handled adequately by the existing means of transportation. Before the war the answer would undoubtedly have been “yes.” American activities in Yukon Territory and the Mackenzie District since the United States entered the war have increased the volume of tonnage moving in the North enormously. Transportation has been improved by highway construction, the addition of railway rolling stock, water craft, and aeroplanes, and by the introduction of tractor trains. For the handling of a special commodity, oil, the Canol pipe-line has been built. Despite these improvements northern transportation is still under a strain, but is meeting its difficulties with about the same degree of success as is wartime transportation elsewhere.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , August 1945 , pp. 450 - 466
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1945
Footnotes
1
Most of the information about the Route was obtained from Mr. C. J. Rogers, President and General Manager of the system, supplemented by conversations with other employees of the Route and with officials in Yukon Territory. An account of the effects of the building of the Route on the Yukon mining industry together with the essential facts of its early history can be found in InnisH. A., Settlement and the Mining Frontier (“Canadian Frontiers of Settlement” ed. MackintoshW. A. and JoergW. L. G., vol. IX; Toronto, 1936), chap. II.
References
2 For instance, the number of locomotives has been increased from ten to thirty-three.
3 Dawson Board of Trade v. White Pass and Yukon Railway Company, 5/219; 6/346; 7/216; 9 C.R.C. 190; 11 C.R.C. 402; 13 C.R.C. 527. An account of the case may be found in MacGilbbon, D. A., Railway Rates and the Canadian Railway Commission (Boston, 1917), pp. 101 ff.Google Scholar
4 For example, the first-class rate Edmonton to Waterways is $1.70. For the same distance, 310 miles, on the Prairie Standard Tariff it is $1.34.
5 The most fantastic of these was undoubtedly the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Railway (originally the Hudson's Bay and Yukon Railways and Navigation Company), chartered in 1897 (60-61 Vict., c. 46) to build from Chesterfield Inlet to a point on the Yukon or Porcupine Rivers.
6 Most of the information in this section was obtained in numerous interviews with officials and employees of the two major companies.
7 Until the past few years the far North posts were served by water from Vancouver.
8 Chiefly the assertion that the barges used to be loaded to about 5 feet thirty and more years ago, a depth never possible in recent years.
9 Various proposals have been made for overcoming this, the chief being the building of a canal making use of the Salt River. But the cost that would be involved makes this impracticable.
10 Numerous press and booklet articles have appeared describing this highway, but official documents are not yet available to the public. Cost figures quoted differ widely and are at best guesses.
11 The Grimahaw-Hay River road is used by trucks, but except for the southern hundred miles is very rough.
12 Oil to Alaska, with Canol Unveiled, a descriptive booklet, contains about as much information about the pipe-lines as can be obtained from printed sources in the absence of official publications.
13 Most of the information about tractor trains was obtained from Mr. Harry Ingraham of Ingraham Brothers of Yellowknife, the principal tractor train operators.
14 The placer mining of the Klondike is closed down for the winter.
15 For instance, only one R.C.M.P. post in Yukon still uses dogs, that at Old Crow in the far North. They have a wider use in the North West Territories.
16 A charge of $1,000 was quoted as typical for the hire of a dog team and driver for a trip from Fort Resolution to Fort McMurray, about four hundred miles. This, of course, was before the coming of the aeroplane.
17 Numerous writings of a journalistic sort dealing with the aeroplane in the North have appeared in recent years. Books and articles dealing with the economics of air transportation are relatively few. What has been attempted here is the discovery of the peculiarities of air transportation in the North as compared with such transportation in settled areas, with the primary attention being directed to costs. Published sources of this information seem to be non–existent. Numerous officials and employees of the Canadian Pacific Air Lines were most helpful in answering questions, as well as Mr. G. T. Simmons, Managing Director of Northern Airways, Limited.
18 Such natural landing fields are plentiful in the North West Territories, but are not so numerous in Yukon.
19 Undoubtedly the Department of Transport safety rules are responsible far many flight cancellations. The requirement that the weather must be suitable at both the point of departure and point of destination is a very different thing from the “if you can see across the lake, chance taking-off” rule of bush-pilot days. The D.O.T. rules are very necessary despite the low flying-accident rate of the old days.
20 The resourcefulness required to keep a small air line with seven or eight employees operating is perhaps suggested in the fact that Northern Airways is building its own airframes in “spare time.”
21 Not radio range stations.
22 For example, in stewardess service.
23 Examples of fares and rates are:
