t
fifteen millions, Toronto was at last actually located on a Mackenzie
road and had a right to be made the headquarters of the system. A deer
in some places could have jumped from that line to the new line of the
C.P.R. built at the same time--and about the same cost. There was no
farmer in Ottawa to prevent the C.P.R. from getting a charter to
double-track this line. It was the same year that Mackenzie
inaugurated the Canadian Northern line of steamships, the two Royals,
and for lack of tidewater was compelled to dock them at Montreal under
the shadow of the C.P.R., who of course did not join in the civic
welcome. And in the same year people were talking--as they are now
again--about Toronto and Port Arthur becoming ocean ports. The wonder
was that Mackenzie did not see to it. But he was fairly busy, tying
Halifax to Vancouver by the Yellowhead Pass, and giving Provincial
Cabinets new ideas about government.

Without a doubt William Mackenzie had a mandate from this country to do
a great work--and he overdid it. Bankers and other financiers agreed
that he had found new ways of investing creative money. Scarcely a
teacher of geography but admitted that Mackenzie was changing the map
of this country so fast that a new one became necessary every three
years. New towns sprang up at the rate of a mile a day of new railway
built by Mackenzie. Every new town became a monument to this man's
faith in the future of Canada. Even the old city of Montreal, preserve
of the C.P.R., lent its mountain to Mackenzie for a tunnel and a "Model
City" on the hinter side.

There was always money to be had. A map of Canada in Mackenzie's
satchel when he went to England to see money lenders seemed under his
talk as big as the whole British Empire. It was not common Empire
patriotism to refuse either the money or the guarantees for the bonds.
The whole of Canada backed Mackenzie's notes. It was he, not Sir
Thomas White, who invented the principle of Victory Loans whereby the
nation becomes your banker. Between building a new line and operating
a line built last year, there was no system of accounting that could
audit his books. The centipede became so vast and complex that no
banker could begin to understand it. Mackenzie never made the effort.
He was developing Canada.

The Saskatchewan valley was the one great trunk Eldorado, the greatest
discovery of natural resources ever made in Canada. The settlers in
that valley wan