led the reform ranks, gradually
securing for the Assembly control of all revenues, abolishing religious
inequalities, and effecting some reform in the Executive Council, until
at last in 1855 the crowning demand was tardily conceded.

From the Great Lakes to the Atlantic the political fight was won,
and men turned with relief to the tasks which strife and faction had
hindered. Self-government meant progressive government. With organized
Cabinets coordinating and controlling their policy the provinces went
ahead much faster than when Governor and Assembly stood at daggers
drawn. The forties and especially the fifties were years of rapid and
sound development in all the provinces, and especially in Canada West.
Settlers poured in, the scattered clearings; widened until one joined
the next, and pioneer hardships gave way to substantial, if crude,
prosperity. Education, notably under the vigorous leadership of Egerton
Ryerson in Canada West, received more adequate attention. Banks grew and
with them all commercial facilities increased.

The distinctive feature of this period of Canadian development, however,
was the growth of canals and railroads. The forties were the time of
canal building and rebuilding all along the lakes and the St. Lawrence
to salt water. Canada spent millions on what were wonderful works for
their day, in the hope that the St. Lawrence would become the channel
for the trade of all the growing western States bordering on the Great
Lakes. Scarcely were these waterway improvements completed when it was
realized they had been made largely in vain. The railway had come and
was outrivaling the canal. If Canadian ports and channels were even to
hold their own, they must take heed of the enterprise of all the cities
along the Atlantic coast of the United States, which were promoting
railroads to the interior in a vigorous rivalry for the trade of the
Golden West. Here was a challenge which must be taken up. The fifties
became the first great railway era of Canada. In 1850 there were only
sixty-six miles of railway in all the provinces; ten years later there
were over two thousand. Nearly all the roads were aided by provincial or
municipal bonus or guarantee. Chief among the lines was the Grand Trunk,
which ran from the Detroit border to Riviere du Loup on the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and which, though it halted at that eastern terminus in the
magnificent project of connecting with the railways of the Maritime