c, a distance of 1,480 miles,
and is being constructed and equipped by the Company, the Government
granting a subsidy, and guaranteeing the Company's bonds up to 75 per
cent. of the cost of construction. The first stretch of the new line
to be completed was that from Winnipeg to Wainwright, a distance of 666
miles. It went into service in September, 1908, and was completed by
the end of 1915.

At the same time, the Great Northern began to push out to the
North-west, for the sake of the immense trade in grain which the
opening up of the new provinces had created. A little later work was
also begun on the Hudson's Bay Railway, which was intended to connect
the more northern waters with Ontario and the Great Lakes. In 1908 the
Dominion had twenty-two thousand miles of railway completed, in
addition to the long stretches then under construction. In 1918 it was
38,879 miles.

Almost as important to Canada as her railways are her canals and her
waterways. In 1897, on the accession of the Liberal Government to
office, it was determined to deepen the St. Lawrence canals and enlarge
the locks sufficiently to allow the passage from the great lakes to the
sea of vessels {419} drawing not more than fourteen feet of water.
These canals afford a through water route, with a minimum depth of
fourteen feet, from Montreal to Port Arthur on Lake Superior, a
distance of 1,223 miles, 73 of which are by canal. The total
expenditure of the Dominion on canals up to 1919 amounted to over
$127,000,000.

Alongside the improvement in the means of communication--railways and
canals--has gone a considerable growth of Canadian manufacturing
industries. The iron and steel industry was scarcely in existence at
Confederation. The Marmora plant at Long Point, Ontario, and a smaller
plant at Three Rivers, Quebec, had been in existence since the forties;
but the iron and steel industry, as it exists to-day in Canada, is
largely the creation of the national policy of protective tariffs and
bounties. The bounty system was instituted in 1883, chiefly for the
benefit of a blast furnace of 100 tons capacity at Londonderry, Nova
Scotia, which was then in difficulties. Besides this furnace, only two
others--charcoal furnaces with an aggregate capacity of fifteen tons,
at Drummondsville, Quebec--came on the bounty list in 1884. In 1897,
when the Liberals came into office, furnaces had also been erected at
New Glasgow, Radnor, and Hamilton, and the