.
Lawrence--has simply resolved itself into an effort to move seaboard
inland, on the principle that the farther inland the port the shorter
the land haul and the lower the traffic toll. Owing to the enormous
increase in the cargo capacity of lake freighters in recent years,
grain ships reach Buffalo carrying three hundred thousand bushels of
western wheat, and Canada's Welland Canal has worked at a handicap.
Until the Canal is widened, the big cargo carriers can not pass through
it, and the necessity to break bulk here is one explanation of more
than half Canada's western traffic going to seaboard by way of Buffalo
instead of Montreal.

For years the proposal has been under consideration to connect the
Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence by way of a canal from Georgian Bay
through Ottawa River. This would be a colossal undertaking; for the
region up Mattawa River toward Georgian Bay is of iron rock, and to
build a canal wide enough for the big cargo carriers would out-distance
anything in the way of canal construction in the world. Both parties
in Canada have endorsed what is known as the Georgian Bay Ship Canal;
and estimates place the cost at one hundred and twenty-five millions;
but traffic men of the Lakes declare if the big cargo carriers are to
have cheap insurance on this route, the canal will have to be wide
enough to guarantee safe passage; and the cost would be twice this
estimate.

On no section of her national transportation has Canada expended more
thought and effort than improving navigation on the St. Lawrence.
This, in its way, has been as difficult a problem for a people of seven
millions as the construction of Panama for a people of ninety millions.
Consider the geographical position of the St. Lawrence route! It
penetrates the continent from eight hundred to nine hundred sixty
miles. Montreal, the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence, is the
farthest inland harbor of America with the exception of two
ports--Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico and Port Nelson on Hudson Bay.
Galveston is seven hundred miles from the wheat fields of Kansas. Port
Nelson is four hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba.
Montreal is--roughly--a thousand miles from the head of the Lakes, one
thousand five hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba, two
thousand two hundred miles from the wheat fields of Alberta.
Montreal's great advantage is in being situated so far inland. Her
disadvantages are from the n