by Harry Giles
It is not my intention to get into a controversy over the merits of the Peace and Pine Passes for the extension of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway to the Peace River District. I do think, though, that the advantages of the Pine Pass route should be placed before the readers of the Digest. Let me make it quite clear that I have no intention of saying anything opposing a railway to the North Side of the peace but will endeavor to show how the Pine pass route would serve the majority of the residents in that area. Those of us on the South side realize the urgent necessity of a railway for the economic development of the North.
The question of passes for both highway and railway has been a political football for years. I cannot help thinking the politicians and the railways may have fostered – or at any rate been pleased with – the dissension that gave them an excuse for postponing what they knew would eventually be inevitable.
The editorial in the January-February issue of the Digest contains a number of misstatements, no doubt received from what was considered to be well-informed sources but which were misleading. The statements of distances and altitudes of the passes are approximately correct. The statement of grades is however very incorrect. I have talked to different engineers during the past twenty-five years and find an almost complete accord with the statements, which follow. The maximum grade against heavy traffic between Dawson Creek and Prince George would be 0.5% not 1% as stated.
I have heard many conflicting reports regarding snowfall in these passes and am not prepared to dispute the statement that there is some more snow in the Pine than in the Peace. Although I do not know of any official figures I do know that the Hart highway had been kept open for cars and trucks which does not seem to indicate a 20 foot snowfall.
True, Dawson Creek is served by the Northern Alberta Railway. It is also true that the mileage by N.A.R. and C.N.R. from Dawson Creek to Vancouver [by way of Edmonton] is 1,276 whereas the mileage by P.G.E. via Pine Pass would be approximately 781. Surely we are entitled to a short route equally with the north seeing the population and farm production is considerable greater. The following figures from the 1951 census returns will, I think, debunk the statement about where most of the Peace River (B.C.) wheat comes from:
| North |
|
|
| Wheat |
29,670 acres |
41,341 |
| Barley |
7,731 acres |
14,191 |
| Oats |
19,570 acres |
38,300 |
| Rye |
331 acres |
401 |
| Flax |
3,466 acres |
3,146 |
| Other grains |
155 acres |
448 |
| Cultivated Hay, Alfalfa, Clover and Grasses |
11,090 acres |
26,636 |
| Other Fodder |
2,326 acres |
1,282 |
| Potatoes |
73 acres |
121 |
| Other Field Crops |
0 acres |
1 |
| Other Field Roots |
1 acres |
8 |
| Total all field crops |
74,415 acres |
125,875 |
The livestock picture is similar:
|
|
|
|
| Cattle Beef |
1,638 |
1,938 |
| Milk |
857 |
1,701 |
| Others |
1,634 |
2,492 |
| Sheep |
423 |
929 |
| Swine |
5,539 |
4,578 |
| Hens & Pullets | ||
| 6 mos. or over |
7,587 |
14,608 |
| Other Poultry |
22,162 |
30,534 |
Total value of farms (Lands, buildings, machinery and livestock: North $6,590,514, South $11,727,873.
Number of occupied farms North 538, South 993.
Farm population North 2,114, South 3,521.
Improved land North 109,538 acres, South 176,248 acres.
Unimproved North 160,622 acres, South 232,234 acres. (apparently there is still a lot of unimproved land south of the river). These figures will show how biased are some of the statements in the editorial.
Settlers were lured into this part of the country by political promises of a rail outlet. Not by the Social Credit party at whom you made a dirty and unwarranted crack but by the Liberal and Conservative. These settlers, both north and South of the river, believed there would be a railway on the North and South years ago. Had the Canadian Northern weathered the financial storm the Edmonton-Whitecourt line would have been extended to Stewart and there would have been no “Battle of the Passes” and everybody except possibly the C.P.R. and Vancouver would have been happy. When the N.A.R. stopped at Dawson Creek on the South side and Hines Creek on the North (with no road by which the residents of the North could get to Hines Creek) the people North of the river were anything but pleased. They faced the task of having to haul gain and livestock 50 to 100 miles over a dirt road that was impassable at times, and be dependent on a ferry that could be out of use for as much as a month at a time in the spring and fall. These people were getting a rotten deal. If our politicians had to sit on a load of wheat for two days each way – or longer – in our winter weather and then get 15 to 20 cents per bushel for it, I think a way would have been found to remedy the situation.
The logical route to serve the most open country is undoubtedly the one through the Pine Pass connecting with the N.A.R. at Dawson Creek. This would serve the Peace River Districts of B.C. and Alberta South of the river. A line branching off near Little Prairie [Chetwynd] between the Moberly and Pine Rivers could cross the Peace to the Fort St. John. From there it could, in time, be extended to Montney and on to the present railhead at Hines Creek in Alberta.
These lines, besides giving an economical grade, would gather all commercial traffic from both Alberta and British Columbia Peace River Districts and would service completely all the present developed country and an enormous tract of undeveloped land. A line through the Peace Pass would service very little of the developed country as it would be impossible to connect directly through the pass to the Fort St. John area owing to adverse grades and having to cross such places as the Halfway River and numerous other streams and deep ravines.
The line would of necessity, from an engineering standpoint, have to cross the Halfway near the confluence with the Cameron River and then go North to the Blueberry and would not be of practical service to any of the developed country.
This country is now old enough and big enough to forget its earlier jealousies. Let us pull together for the good of the whole. No one ever grows happy or prosperous by trying to keep his neighbor poor.