om the
provinces and municipalities, the Dominion as yet confining itself to
works of inter-provincial concern. Outright gifts for the most part
took the place of loans, since experience had proved that direct
returns upon the money invested were not to be looked for. Curiously
meandering were the routes which promoters mapped out in the endeavour
to follow the shortest line between two bonuses.[1]

{104}

Governments could help to build roads, but could not ensure for them
traffic. It took very few years to show that the interests of the
public were not best served by scores of petty isolated roads, and that
the interests of shareholders were not secured by the cut-throat
competition which prevailed in certain areas. This competition was
keenest between the roads which were intimately connected with the
lines in the United States and dependent upon through traffic. The
Grand Trunk had cut into the territory of the Great Western by
acquiring the Buffalo and Lake Huron line, and the Canada Southern and
the Great Western were disputing for every ton of freight between the
Niagara and the Detroit. All were involved in the rate wars which
marked this period in {105} the United States. In 1867 the Grand Trunk
and the Great Western agreed to maintain rates, pool certain traffic
receipts, refrain from competitive building, and co-operate in service.
The agreement broke down; another was made in 1876, only to fail in
turn. More effective measures had to be adopted.

The outstanding achievement of the period, however, was the building of
the Intercolonial. It had been projected largely in order to make
closer union between the provinces possible, but, as it turned out, it
was Confederation that brought the Intercolonial, not the Intercolonial
that brought Confederation.

After the breakdown of the negotiations in London in 1852, each
province had turned to its own tasks. But each in building its own
roads had provided possible links in the future Intercolonial chain.
In Canada the Grand Trunk ran to a point 120 miles east of Quebec; in
New Brunswick, St John was connected with both the east and west
boundaries of the province; in Nova Scotia, a road ran north from
Halifax as far as Truro. A gap of nearly five hundred miles between
Riviere du Loup and Truro remained. To bridge this wilderness seemed
beyond the {106} private or public resources of the divided provinces.
Unanimous on one point only, they once mor