and Trunk to secure capital in such
abundance.

But this was for the future to disclose. At once construction began in
Canada. A. M. Ross was appointed chief engineer, and S. P. Bidder
general manager, both on the nomination of the English bankers and
contractors. Plant was assembled in Canada, orders for rails and
equipment were placed in England, and navvies came out by the thousand.
At one time 14,000 men were directly employed upon the railways in
Upper Canada alone. In July 1853 the last gaps in the St Lawrence and
Atlantic had been filled up, though not {80} in permanent fashion. In
1854 the Quebec and Richmond section was opened; in 1855, the road from
Montreal to Brockville and from Levis to St Thomas, Quebec; in 1856,
the Brockville to Toronto and Toronto to Stratford sections. Not until
1858 was the western road completed as far as London. The year 1859
saw the completion of the Victoria Bridge, the extension from St Mary's
to Sarnia, and a new road in Michigan, running from Port Huron to
Detroit. By 1860 the eastern section extended to Riviere du Loup,
where a halt was made.

From the outset difficulties undreamed of had developed. Money was
hard to get and early traffic returns were disappointing, so that the
company found it almost impossible to secure the balance of the capital
required. The road from Montreal to Portland was found to require
heavy expenditure to bring it up to the standard. The contractors, for
their part, were embarrassed by the company's shortage of funds and by
the great rise in the prices of land, materials, and labour. Their own
activities, the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 with the United States, the
Crimean War, had combined to bring on a period of inflated prices such
as Canada was not to experience {81} again for half a century. With
wheat at two dollars a bushel, and 'land selling by the inch,' even
liberal margins of profit on contracts vanished.[2]

In these straits the company turned to the government for aid. It had
many supporters in the House. No one could deny the benefits which its
operations had conferred upon the province. The government guarantee
of interest and the government nomination of a part of the board of
directors were plausibly held to involve responsibility for the
solvency of the company. It was not surprising, therefore, that for a
decade after 1855 scarcely a year passed without a bill to amend the
terms {82} of the Grand Trunk agreement