“Two towns stand on the shores of the Lake less than a mile apart. What Lloyd’s is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that they are to the Wheat.”
Rudyard Kipling, Letters of Travel
Just in time for July 1st, there was a short ceremony and plaque unveiling today at the Western Grain By-Products Elevator Site on Kingston Street in Thunder Bay held by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and Parks Canada. The elevator is the former Fort William Elevator No. 10 which was built in 1913 at the peak of the Canadian wheat boom. The plaque is the outcome of a long period of lobbying and work by the Friends of Grain Elevators (check out the site for some spectacular overhead shots) and commemorates the role of the grain elevators and the grain shipping industry at the Lakehead twin cities of Fort William and Port Arthur in facilitating Canada’s role as a leader in the international grain trade.
The Canadian wheat boom era spans the years from 1896 (when world wheat prices began to rise) to 1914, although more liberal interpretations of the period extend it to 1929. GNP estimates assembled by Mac Urquhart show the period 1901-1911 to indeed be one of substantial economic growth. During the thirty year-period from 1896-1926, Canada’s population rose from 5.1 to 9.5 million people, real gross national output (1900 dollars) from 681 million to 2,612 million and real per capita income doubled rising from 134 to 276 dollars. The settlement of the Prairies had a dramatic impact on the economy of Canada, the Prairies as well as northwestern Ontario and the Thunder Bay District in particular. The population of the district grew rapidly with the greatest expansion between 1901 and 1911 when the population nearly tripled to approximately 40,000. The Lakehead grain transportation nexus of railways, steamships and grain elevators was the crucial linchpin in the development of Canada’s economic potential.
The European settlement of the Thunder Bay District has a long history rooted in the fur trade when the District was home to Fort William, the inland headquarters of the Northwest Company of Montreal. The decline of the fur trade led to the region being marginalized and regarded as a barrier to western settlement but the opening of the Great Lake canals began the evolution from barrier and zone of transit to a region with its own economic opportunities. In the 1870s, there came a mining and prospecting boom as well as the timber trade and the coming of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s linked the region to the Prairie wheat economy and central Canada. The Dominion government’s decision to route the CPR through the Lakehead made it a transportation node on the east-west economic axis that was being created by the National Policy. The National Policy was a triad of policies - land settlement, commercial policy and railway building - designed to create an east-west economic flow that would offer an alternative to north-south economic arrangements. The west was to be settled so it could provide a market for eastern manufactures with the railway and the Great Lakes waterways providing the transportation link. The Thunder Bay District was uniquely juxtaposed between the Prairie wheat economy, from which it would benefit by having its major metropolitan centers - the twin cities of Fort William and Port Arthur - serve as a gateway, and central Canada, where it was part of Canada’s wealthiest province.
At the Lakehead, the rail and water components of the grain transportation system came together in a transportation node that linked together the economy of Canada. Along with the fleets of grain transport steamers, the twin cities also became key points for the three national transcontinental railways that were completed during the boom era. As well, at the Lakehead, the grain transport sector played the role of a booming sector in the city's economic development. Between 1905-1929, grain shipments at the Lakehead increased seven-fold and for the remainder of the 20th century The Lakehead was the largest grain port in the world and Canada accounted for the bulk of the world’s grain exports. At its peak, some 32 grain terminals lined the harbour with a storage capacity of nearly 100 million bushels. Today, fewer than a dozen of these giant “Castles of Commerce” (as they were so aptly named by Rudyard Kipling) remain along the waterfront. Many of the key players in the development of the Lakehead’s grain transportation role and the Canadian grain industry in general such as C.D. Howe and N.M. Paterson also went on to contribute their expertise to the national political stage.
Grain shipping at the Lakehead is an economic event of national historic significance in that it played the cementing role in the east-west grain transport infrastructure of the Wheat Boom era, a key stage of Canada’s development. It represents a fulfillment of the key ideas of the National Policy economic strategy and represents a tangible application of those ideas in Canadian economic and historical development. Without the Lakehead, there would have been no east-west economic flow. Today's ceremony was a great Canada Day present for Thunder Bay.
Thanks for the post, it was quite informative.
Posted by: Luke I | July 04, 2018 at 08:38 AM