odicum of trouble. Electric
railways connect communities and settlements. The telephone is in
almost everyone's home. So that with the pianola, the gramophone, and
other means of diversion, the winter nights are not what they were to
the people in the years of the nineteenth century.

In railroad facilities Canada, if anything, is fifty years ahead of her
time, so well are they developed. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway,
from Monckton, New Brunswick to Winnipeg and thence to Prince Rupert,
B.C., which was commenced in 1905, and finished in 1915, was leased on
its completion to the Grand Trunk Railway Company for fifty years.
Owing to the war, and the financial difficulties in which the
constructing company found itself, the system of 22,000 miles of line
was taken over by the Government in 1921, after an arbitration which
excited much comment on both sides of the Atlantic. The decision
regarding it was given by the Canadian Grand Trunk Arbitration Board at
Montreal, headed by Sir Walter Cassels, and one of the members of the
Board was no less a person than ex-President Taft, now Chief Justice of
the United States. As a conspicuous result of political action the
{478} construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is still more the
subject of politics than of history, and it is quite likely to remain
in that phase for some time.

The year 1921 will also be memorable for the work of the joint
American-Canadian Commission appointed to investigate the possibility
of the proposed Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Waterways. It was estimated
that the initial cost of canalising the St. Lawrence River,
constructing six dams in the rapids and improving the St. Claire and
Detroit Rivers will be 253 million dollars, the up-keep requiring 2 1/2
million dollars annually. Fortunately considerable revenue can be made
through the sale of the five million horse-power obtained from the dams
which will pay a large part of the carrying charges. The great value
of such a public work is in the relief from congestion on the railways,
particularly the American, at crop-moving time. One of the most
important results will be that Port Arthur, Ontario will virtually
become a seaport.

In all this work of expansion and progress the women of Canada have
taken their place. This was recognised when the War Committee of the
Borden Cabinet called a Conference of representatives of women's
organisations in February, 1918. The initiative was rewar