History
At the beginning of the 20th century, the GTR planned a second Canadian transcontinental rail route with a terminal on the Pacific that would be nearer to Asia than Vancouver. It would follow one of the routes surveyed by Sandford Fleming from Winnipeg to Port Simpson at the end of the Portland Canal which formed part of the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska. In 1903 there was resentment in Canada over the Alaska boundary decision which favoured US interests after a British commissioner sided with them. As a result of the clamour in Canada, US President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to send an occupation force to nearby territory. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier considered a new location at Prince Rupert would be more easily defended and decided to build the terminal there rather than at Port Simpson.
Turning of the first sod for the construction of the GTPR, took place at an official ceremony, September 11, 1905, at Fort William, Ontario, by Prime Minister Laurier. From there a 190-mile section of track was built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Construction Company, connecting with the NTR, near Sioux Lookout.
Construction began on the Canadian Prairies in 1905, the year that the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were established. Construction proceeded west to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1907, Edmonton, Alberta in 1909, and through Jasper, Alberta into Yellowhead Pass crossing the Continental Divide in 1910-1911. The last spike ceremony heralding completion of the rail line across the prairies, and through the Rocky Mountains to the newly constructed seaport at Prince Rupert, British Columbia was held one mile east of Fort Fraser, British Columbia on April 7, 1914.
In 1910, the company also built a dock in Seattle, the Grand Trunk Pacific dock, which was the largest dock on the west coast at the time it was built. On July 30, 1914, the dock was destroyed by fire.
Read more about this topic: Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)