1 2

______Borers in oaiation Research Proect 1

Railroads and Borderland Spaces: The Canada-U.S Case

Rand illia iddis University of Regina Superised istor inal ersion ACSUS Presentation including Alexander Paul PoerPoint Presentation

Introduction

Transportation has played a decisive role in transforming the economic and social geography of both the United States and Canada and in this context, railroads have been prominent. Their extension in both the American and Canadian hinterlands was designed to organize territory, increase the number of settlements, support resource exploitation, and facilitate the development of regional and national markets. Yet, as history has demonstrated, while geopolitical protectionism played a somewhat more prominent role in the development of railroads in Canada than the United States, railroad expansion in both countries was not circumscribed by the international boundary. In fact, in many cases the border actually transcended such development. In other words, the Canada-United States border has historically presented both limitations and opportunities to railroad interests. This paper presents an historical overview of cross-border railroad networks, focusing on key elements such as nodes, hubs and corridors. The paper also develops the argument that because such networks responded to changes in technologies, regional development and market forces, their role in shaping the

Canada-United States borderland zone varied over space and time.

Framing Arguments

Networks of exchange and flows of people, capital, goods and information shape borderland spaces and, in part, are determined by them. As such, transportation systems have played, and will continue to play, an important role in the development of borderlands. Flows, gateways, hubs, corridors, and networks and their variable arrangements through time and over space together form a kind of spatial grammar and constituent syntax which directs this

1 discussion of railways and their impact on the emergence of cross-border spaces within the

Canada-United States borderland zone.1 This approach is sensitive to the view that sees borderlands as more than places linked across a geopolitical boundary by economic, social and cultural forces. The discussion assumes that borderlands are evolutionary regions where constituent components are both integrated and differentiated by dynamic and complex local, regional, national and international forces. Furthermore, while the borderland is primarily a territorial concept, the temporal factor is of fundamental importance in defining its role as place.

The Canadian-American borderland zone as “place”2 was fundamentally altered when railways emerged as the dominant form of transportation towards the middle of the nineteenth century.

The constituent borderland regions of the larger zone were further changed when subsequent transportation and communication technologies reduced, but did not eliminate, the relative impact of this mode of transportation.3 Finally, we contend that cross-border rail transportation has in recent history re-emerged as a major force in reconfiguring borderland regions.

Transportation Technologies, Railroads and Borderlands

1 Briefly, spatial grammar is an approach to the study of borderland evolution that is influenced by the perspective of postmodernism and the concepts of time-space compression/extension and de- and re-territorialization. For greater discussion of the concept of spatial grammar and it constituent syntax, see: R. Widdis, “The Spatial Grammar of Migration Within the Canadian-American Borderlands at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” in A. Freund and B. Bryce, eds., Entangling North America: Space and Migration History (forthcoming 2014), 61-96; R. Widdis, "Looking Through the Mirror: A Historical Geographical View of the Canadian-American Borderlands,” (forthcoming The Journal of Borderland Studies, 2014). 2 We contend that the Canadian-American borderland is not a singular homogeneous region but rather, is a complex heterogeneous zone composed of several international regions that, while sharing functional similarities resulting from cross-border interaction, nevertheless retain distinct identities arising from local settings. Further, we maintain that these borderlands are organic; they evolve over time to become different kinds of places. 3 Based on the arguments of McKinsey and Konrad (1989) and economic evidence on cross-border relationships Policy Research Initiative, 2005), the following groups of provinces and states are associated with these international regions: Atlantic (Newfoundland after 1949, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick, eastern Québec [Gaspé], Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut); St. Lawrence (Québec, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut ); Great Lakes (Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota); Plains and Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana); Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon). See: L. McKinsey and V. Konrad, Borderland Reflections: The United States and Canada, Borderlands Monograph Series # 1 (Orono: Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 1989); Government of Canada, Policy Research Initiative, The Emergence of Cross-Border Regions Interim Report (November 2005). 2

Time-space compression, a term first coined by David Harvey,4 is used by geographers when considering how societies have used transportation and communication technologies to reduce the friction of distance and facilitate the interaction among places.5 While geographers understand that space- and time-adjusting technologies have existed for centuries, they also recognize that the nature, impact and pace of such developments have rapidly accelerated during the transition to modernity and post-modernity. Before the major technological transformations brought about by the industrial revolution, transport technology was limited to harnessing animal power for land transport and wind power for maritime transport. This meant that human movement and trade for the most part were local in scope. As a result of and in addition to limited transportation, communications were restricted between human communities; few had the opportunity to see or hear beyond their own village or town. At the turn of the nineteenth century, certain flows and networks, some in place for centuries for both aboriginal and non- aboriginal peoples, crossed the newly created Canada-United States border, but life for most people was circumscribed by the shared spatial and temporal context of the local. In general then, people, at least those of European descent, lived on the farm or in villages and small towns, working the land and relying upon the local community to provide for them. Indeed, it was more likely at this time that certain indigenous groups, especially those involved in pursuing the buffalo and participating in the fur trade, were the most mobile people on the North American continent. At this point, a non-native borderland zone did exist but it was more or less a territory

4 The idea of annihilation of space and time through new transportation technologies first emerged during the Industrial Revolution. As early as 1844, the New England philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared: “Not only is distance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and employment, and bind them fast in one web, an hourly assimilation goes forward and there is no danger that local peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved.” See: R. Emerson, “The Young American, “a lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844. from American Transcendentalism website. http://transcendentalism- legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/youngam.html (accessed September 12, 2013); D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). 5 For example, see: B. Warf, Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies (New York: Routledge, 2008). 3 characterized by a limited degree of interaction between people, businesses and communities that were geographically proximate.

Industrialization developed vehicles of communication and transportation which triggered a shift in the capture of space-time relationships, expanding the experience and cognition of space and time and, by default, increasing the size and reconfiguring the shape of the borderland in spite of any impediments (e.g. tariff policy) that might serve to hinder interactions taking place across the border. Increasingly, people and communities were drawn out of their spatially confined and familiar worlds into one that was more connected, integrated and mobile. During the nineteenth century, turnpike roads, followed by canals, steam boats, and railroads, along with the telegraph, not only reduced time-space and extended space among communities and regions within Canada and the United States, they also operated to develop and strengthen connections within the borderlands. This increased the capacity of people, businesses and communities to orientate themselves with other people and places beyond the local, the regional, and even the national. This “annihilation” of time and space, in turn, increased the ability of capitalism to expand markets, overcome the costs of distance, and, most importantly, increase profits.

During the drive to modernity, the railroad played a major part in extending space as well as compressing time, thus creating, in essence, a space paradox by reducing the friction of distance, therefore shrinking space, and expanding the scope of interaction, thus extending space.

The railway thus functioned as one of the most important processes of time-space compression/space-extension reconfiguring cross-border spaces as well as nations, regions, communities and individuals. However, the nature of such transformations and the relative impact of railroads on borderlands varied because they occurred in different settings and

4 involved different kinds of connections. The impact of railroads in the shaping of borderlands decreased when the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, the radio, and other inventions accelerated human interaction and further unbounded space and time. Yet somewhat ironically, towards the end of the twentieth century within the context of globalization and increasing trade liberalization, cross-border rail traffic has increased. Once again, railways play a major part in reconfiguring Canadian-American borderlands even though their impact is by no means identical throughout the cross-border regions.

Railroads and Borderlands in the Age of Modernity i) A Broad Overview a) The United States - Developments in transportation technology and the resulting acceleration of time-space compression/space-expansion played a decisive role in transforming the economic and social geography of the United States and British North America during the first half of the nineteenth century, although the pace and extent of such change was greater south of the border.

During the colonial era, maritime networks became a significant tool of trade, exploitation, and political control, which was later on expanded by the development of new technologies and resultant modern transportation networks that allowed people to transcend nature’s limits and go faster, go further, and carry more than ever before. During the first few decades of the nineteenth century, thousands of miles of roads and canals were built linking the eastern seaboard with the rapidly expanding trans-Appalachian west. Also significant was the impact of steamboats which facilitated transportation on the Great Lakes, Atlantic coastal waters, and rivers. But most important was the railroad. “Beginning with 100 miles in 1830, by 1860 there were over 27,000 miles of railroad track covering the United States. This transportation revolution turned the

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United States into a single massive market for the manufactured goods of the Northeast, the early center of American industrialization.”6

At mid-century, most railroad lines were concentrated in the Northeast, and many of them ran only short distances. But that would change as the larger and more successful companies competing for hinterland trade swallowed up smaller ones and built lines that carried freight between the Great Lakes region and the eastern seaboard, thus integrating the northeast ecumene with the newly opened Midwest. “New York's Erie Railroad opened between Piermont and Dunkirk on Lake Erie in 1851;” the following year, “the Pennsylvania Railroad and the

Baltimore and Ohio had opened lines to the Ohio River;” and in 1853, “ten small railroads along the Erie Canal merged to form the New York Central Railroad (NYC), which provided service between Albany and Buffalo.”7 The Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroads reached

Chicago and St. Louis that same decade. By the end of the 1850s, Chicago was served by eleven railroads and was emerging as the "central hub" of the industry (Figure 1).8 “These railroads formed a powerful circulating system with Chicago at its heart: a western network of capillary lines that assembled the products of western farms in bits and pieces, to form the bulk shipments that flowed east along the thicker arteries of the trunk lines.”9 The time-space compression/space expansion resulting from such development “turned the Great Plains and

Prairies into a giant agricultural bread basket, a process that established Chicago as the premier center of capital accumulation in the continental interior.”10 Finally, on May 10, 1869, the tracks

6 W. Duiker and J. Spielvogel, World History, Vol. II, 6th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth Publishing; 2008), 553. 7 The History of Railroads in the United States. http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/histprof/misc/railroads.html (accessed August 29, 2011). 8 http://voteview.com/Political_Parties_UCSD_21_February_2006.htm (accessed December 6, 2013). 9 "The Railroads: Expansion and Economic Transformation in the Midwest." American Eras. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601342.html (accessed February 16, 2010). 10 Warf, Time Space Compression, 95. 6 of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah, and the United

States was connected by rail from coast to coast (Figure 2).11

Figure 1. The U.S. Railroad Network, 1850-1860

Upon the end of a bloody and divisive Civil War, the United States was set to continue its rapid path of development predicated on the foundation established during the first half of the nineteenth century. This period also marked a transition in the trajectory of American imperialism as the country increasingly redirected its focus from colonial to national expansion.

While European powers built overseas colonies during the nineteenth century, the United States, as Donald Meinig so richly details in the first three volumes of his great work, directed its efforts

11 This map is included in the website run by Brian Altonen entitled Public Health, Medicine and History. http://brianaltonenmph.com/gis/historical-disease-maps/zoonoses/1866-1885-the-texas-cattle-drives-and-texas- fever/ WordPress.com (accessed July 12, 2012). On the basis of their county-level data set that documents the spread of railroads in the Midwestern United States during the mid-nineteenth century, Atack et al. find that more than half of Midwestern urbanization during this decade is explained by the expansion of the rail network. See: J. Atack, F. Bateman, M. Haines and R. Margo, “Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth? Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850-1860,” Social Science History 34, 2 (2010), 172. 7 to conquer space and develop institutions and infrastructure to stabilize and extend that territorial control.12

Figure 2. The U.S. Railroad System in 1870

It was this focus on national, or what may more appropriately be termed transcontinental, expansion that, in Jason Moore’s opinion:

“... gave American capital tremendous advantages. National- continental expansion was considerably cheaper than overseas colonial expansion. More significantly, the creation of a continental economy—unprecedented in modern world history— gave the U.S. a distinct competitive advantage in the struggle for

12 D. Meinig, The Shaping of America: a geographical perspective on 500 years of history, Vol. 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Meinig, “Interpreting Canada,” 27-42; D. Meinig, The Shaping of America: a geographical perspective on 500 years of history, Vol. 2: Continental America, 1800- 1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); D. Meinig, The Shaping of America: a geographical perspective on 500 years of history, Vol. 3: Transcontinental America, 1850-1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); D. Meinig, The Shaping of America : a geographical perspective on 500 years of history, Vol. 4, Global America, 1915-2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 8

world supremacy that attended the crisis of British hegemony in the later 19th century.”13

It was the west, an “ecologically rich contiguous space,” he argues, that was the key to a national expansion characterized by imperialistic practices.14

Transportation, and, in particular, rail transportation, was the key to the development of the new space economy with a manufacturing and population core in the Northeast and Midwest and agricultural and resource peripheries elsewhere. Eventually, however, the westward movement of population and economic activity made possible by agricultural and industrial resources and aided by an expanding railroad system would result in a redistribution of population and income that narrowed the gap between east and west. The railroad was seen as the means by which those with large amounts of money could further their own material designs and make a mark in the development of the country. It gave capitalists an “unrestrained opportunity ... to carve up a continent, parceling out large territories, creating intercity axes and interregional connections, defining the trade areas and therefore the commercial prospects of the towns, setting the basic network, and controlling the pulse of circulation for the internal body of the nation.”15 Indeed, one could argue that the only truly multinational companies in the United States before the 1890s were those engaged in the building of railroads and the extraction of natural resources.16 But, as

Richard White contends, this kind of development came with a cost.17 Ruthless competition among the railroad imperialists, supported by backers in Washington, he argues, led to the

13 J. Moore, “Remaking Work, Remaking Space: Spaces of Production and Accumulation in the Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1865Ð1920,” Antipode 34, 2 (2002), 190. 14 ibid, 191. 15 Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol. 3, 245. 16 M. Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914, Harvard Studies in Business History 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 17 R. White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011). 9 overbuilding of railroads which, in turn, annihilated regional markets, generated bankruptcies, and disturbed ecosystems.

As a result, the pace of construction, so impressive at the mid-century period, accelerated even more towards the end of the century, even though disappointing financial performances at times slowed growth:

“Whether the measure be quantitative, such as construction activity or output, or qualitative, such as the speculative performances of the great railroad entrepreneurs, the postÐCivil War decades make the earlier epoch pale by comparison. By 1890 an additional 140,000 miles of railway were in place, and the extent was destined to reach over 250,000 miles by 1916. The 2.6 billion tonmiles of 1859 escalated to 80 billion by 1890, and trebled again by 1910.”18

The depression of 1893, however, ended the era of extensive railway construction (Table 1).19 At that point:

“...about two-thirds of the extant mileage and 85 percent of earnings in the hands of seven groups. The Vanderbilt roads monopolized movement between New York and Chicago; the Pennsylvania interest dominated the lines running westward from Pennsylvania and Maryland; Morgan controlled the Southeast; Gould interests and the Rock Island group were paramount in the Mississippi Valley; Hill railroads functioned in the Northwest; and Harriman’s lines were made up largely of the southern and central transcontinental routes. Moreover, these seven were in reality only four, since Morgan was associated with the Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, and Hill groups, and assured a commonality of interest.”20

Table 1. Main Line Railroad Track in Operation in the US, 1870-1900 Percentage Increase Over a Year Miles of Track Five-Year Period 1870 53,000 ---- 1875 74,000 40 1880 93,000 26 1885 128,000 38 1890 167,000 30

18 A. Fishlow, “Internal Transportation in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in S. Engerman and R. Gallman, eds. The Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Histories Online, 2008), 583. (accessed February 6, 2011). 19 “Economic Growth in the United States, 1870-1900,″ Focus: Understanding Economics in United States History (New York: National Council on Economic Education, n.d.), 305. http://ushistory.councilforeconed.org/visuals/lesson26_visuals.pdf (accessed November 13, 2011). 20 Fishlow, “Internal Transportation in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” 599. 10

1895 180,000 8 1900 207,000 15

Eventually the railroad barons' halcyon days would end with increasing public outrage over unpredictable ticket prices and fluctuations in the stock market resulting from their conduct.

Increasing federal pressure, through the actions of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and various laws, regulation, and court orders, ended their reign. By the end of the First World

War, the automobile was well on its way to revolutionizing transportation and land use and a new group of corporate leaders led by Henry Ford would emerge. Yet the end result of this era of railroad tycoons was a country joined by the most extensive network of railroads in the world and a space economy through which the railroad had managed to overcome many of the challenges that America’s geography had previously presented (Figure 3).21

The U.S. rail system established in the nineteenth century served as a major instrument in the realization of America’s Manifest Destiny and the developing interstate system in the next century was seen as a compliment to that mission. As a result, east-west routes in trade and transportation were emphasized much more than north-south ones. Yet despite the dominance of the east-west axis, depression, war and retaliatory tariffs in both countries, cross-border trade continued to grow and a North American economic space continued to evolve. As Canadian-

American economic integration intensified, so did-cross-border transportation links, thus ensuring a continuing role for borderland railway connections.

21 Source: J. Schmitt, “The Commodore and the Commerce Clause,” American Thinker (June 3, 2012). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Railroads_of_the_United_States_in_1918_- _Project_Gutenberg_eText_16960.png (accessed March 18, 2013). Public Domain. 11

Figure 3. The U.S. Railway System in 1918

b) Canada - While railway development in the United States during the nineteenth century was viewed primarily through a nationalist lens, right from the beginning in Canada, Ralph

Heintzman contends, it was more oriented beyond the border towards the dominant American space:

“All of the great pioneer railway projects of the day -- the Champlain and St. Lawrence, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic, the Grand Trunk -- were conceived within this mental or geopolitical framework. They were designed to strengthen the roles of Montréal and the St. Lawrence as transit routes between the nodal points of a largely American economic space. Even railways such as the Montréal and Bytown, or Joseph Cauchon's beloved North Shore, turning their faces northwest up the Ottawa valley as if to escape from the American orbit, were actually designed to snake around Lake Huron and down into the middle western states, to tap all the traffic of the western states before it could be siphoned off through the lower Great Lakes to New York and Baltimore. They were as American in orientation as any of the others. It was still the

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old southern empire that beckoned, though now by a more northerly route."22

Heintzman’s argument mirrors that made in 1937 by Colonel William Wilgus who, in his contribution to the Carnegie Series on Canada-U.S. relations, emphasized that because of the northward course of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system, Canadian railways would inexorably seek eastern outlets in the United States.23 Wilgus also argued that the “natural” railway connections between eastern Canada and the prairies lay south of the Great Lakes and it was only the National Policy of Macdonald’s Conservatives (1879) and its associated commitment to build transcontinental lines north of the border that prevented this from happening. However, despite such policy, economics would ensure that a north-south orientation would not disappear in the face of political east-west forces.

While the U.S. completed its first transcontinental line in 1869, it took longer for the same project to be completed in Canada, even though the desire to develop such a connection was shared by many. “Railway fever," as John Marsh states, "came a little later to British North

America, which had a small population and much of its capital tied up in the expansion of its canals and inland waterways.”24 Realizing that railroads were superior to canals in carrying goods and necessary to compete with the Americans for the trade of the interior, the British did construct a number of lines, including the debt-ridden Grand Trunk (GTR), which would eventually connect centres along the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes littoral. While a harsh climate, challenging physical geography, and a small and dispersed population base hindered

22 R. Heintzman, " Political space and economic space: Quebec and the empire of the St. Lawrence," Journal of Canadian Studies 29, 2 (1994), 27. 23 W. Wilgus, The Railway Interrelations of the United States and Canada (Toronto: The Ryerson Press. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937). 24 J. Marsh, “Railway History,” The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=a1ARTA0006655 (accessed February 17, 2011). 13 development, the British North American/Canadian railway system, just like the more developed one south of the border, extended agricultural and timber frontiers, stimulated the growth of geographically favoured centres such as Toronto, and played an essential role in the process of industrialization.

It also brought the transportation system and the colonies north of the border into closer contact with the rapidly developing transportation system of the United States. Such movement of goods was facilitated by two provisions of the tariff legislation of 1846:

“Goods which were the product of the United States, and which had been exported to a foreign country and had been brought back to the United States in the same condition as when exported, if no drawback or bounty had been allowed, were to be admitted duty free. When the owner of the goods gave sufficient security that the goods would be landed out of the jurisdiction of the United States the collector was to permit them to be shipped for re-exportation free of duty. Under these two provisions the custom grew up of regarding cars loaded with commodities, entered at United States' ports, and destined for Canada as forming an extension of the warehousing system."25

This "extension" of the American system made sense as the core of the rapidly expanding

American industrial economy was already in geographical proximity to the centers of Canadian population. The continuing development of a rail network both to and across the international border further reduced the hurdles of distance and, as a consequence, facilitated economic integration and emigration from Canada as well.

With Confederation and then the National Policy, the railroad took on even greater importance in Canada. “In 1867 Canada had only 3,644 kilometres of railways. By 1900 this had risen to 28,251 kilometres, and in 1914 to 49,272 kilometres.”26 Transportation was a key feature

25 S. McLean, “Canadian Railways and the Bonding Question,” Journal of Political Economy, 7, 4 (1899), 504. 26 J. Dickinson and B. Young. Diverse Pasts, a History of Québec and Canada (Mississauga: Copp Clark, 1995), 234. 14 of Confederation and railroads were the most valued mode in the building of a Canadian territorial space. To draw the Maritime colonies into Confederation, a railroad connection was promised and eventually realized with the construction of the Intercolonial Railway (ICR). The same assurance was made to invest heavily in rail transportation throughout the Dominion.

“Hundreds of railway charters were granted in Canada before 1891, as entrepreneurs vied to

British Columbia in 1871. As in years past, government continued to serve the major transport corridors, complement navigation on the Great Lakes and the Maritime coasts, and fuel the ambitions of growing cities...[but] most [of these] lines were consolidated into a few large corporations during the 1880s."27

As in the U.S., the railway in Canada was viewed as one of the most important vehicles for national political and economic expansion across the continent. And once again, Canadian policy, in this case the decision of the state to support the construction of a transcontinental railway, was directed by American frames of reference; that is, it was driven by defensive national political concerns and in support of competition with American railway companies for emerging western freight.28

Yet as Andy den Otter points out, more often than not, Canadian politicians welcomed

American investment, American technology, American expertise, and American railway connections.29 Americans chose to invest in this enormously risky venture in order to take advantage of the monopoly granted to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) by the government.

In fact, John A. Macdonald originally accepted the company's plan to extend the system south of

27 T. McIlwraith, “Transport in the Border Lands, 1763-1920,” in R. Lecker, coordinating ed., Borderlands: Essays in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: ECW Press, 1991), 93. 28 O. Skelton, The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways. The Project Gutenberg EBook, #30509 (2009), 232- 233. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30509/30509-h/30509-h.htm#chap12 (accessed January 13, 2014). Public Domain. The original book was published in 1916 by Glasgow, Brook and Company of Toronto. 29 A. den Otter, The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Idea in British North America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

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Lake Superior through American territory in order to avoid the incredible expense and delay associated with building the line through the Canadian Shield. This position was quickly dropped once it became clear that both the opposition and the public objected to the possibility of a

Canadian transcontinental line passing through a foreign country. In time, two new transcontinental systems - the Canadian Northern (CN) and the Grand Trunk/Grand Trunk

Pacific/National Transcontinental (GTR/GTP) - emerged to challenge the monopoly of the CPR.

After 1900, a growing population separated by great distances and physical barriers and the expansion of agricultural settlement in western Canada led to a further development of railway space. Table 230 shows that the pace of railway construction and use expanded tremendously towards the end of the nineteenth century and continued to do so right up to the beginning of the Depression where it remained relatively constant at about 43,000 miles until

1960 when mileage started to decrease with the abandonment of the branch lines.

Table 2. Growth of Canadian Railways, 1845-1969 Year Mileage Train Miles Locos Passengers Tons of Freight 1845 16 - - - - 1850 66 - - - - 1855 877 - - - - 1860 2,065 - - - - 1865 2,240 - - - - 1870 2,617 - 485 - - 1875 4,804 17,680,178 - 5,190,416 5,670,836 1880 7,194 22,427,449 - 6,462,948 9,938,858 1885 10,773 31,623,689 - 9,672,599 14,659,271 1890 13,151 40,849,329 1,771 12,821,272 20,787,469 1895 15,977 40,418,324 2,023 12,520,585 21,524,421 1900 17,657 42,647,684 2,273 17,122,193 35,764,970 1905 20,487 65,934,114 2,906 25,288,723 50,893,957 1910 24,731 85,409,241 4,079 35,894,575 74,482,866 1915 34,882 93,218,479 5,486 46,322,035 87,204,838 1920 38,845 107,053,735 6,030 51,318,422 127,429,154 1925 40,350 109,289,865 5,752 41,458,084 111,251,241 1930 42,047 107,620,076 5,451 34,698,767 115,229,511 1935 42,916 79,452,417 4,795 20,031,839 93,374,494

30 Source: http://www.railwaybob.com/Overview/OverviewPage7.htm (accessed December 10, 2013). 16

1940 42,565 94,282,567 4,308 21,969,871 125,167,291 1944 WW II 130,140,335 - 60,335,950 155,326,332 1945 42,352 127,780,196 4,431 53,407,845 147,348,566 1950 42,979 125,141,312 4,655 30,167,145 144,218,319 1955 43,444 124,228,545 4,714 27,229,962 167,862,156 1960 44,029 98,380,182 3,752 19,497,233 158,466,368 1965 43,157 99,132,185 3,323 23,610,374 225,356,167 1969 43,613 99,106,175 3,316 23,694,748 231,217,882

Both the CN and the GTP were formed to take advantage of western expansion. But

World War I ended immigration and retarded British financial investment which, in turn, resulted in severe financial losses, thus triggering a restructuring and consolidation of the national system. The Royal Commission of 1917 recommended that all Canada’s railways with the exception of the CPR and the American lines be brought together into one government- owned system.31 In 1919, the Canadian National Railways (CNR) was incorporated and by 1923, it had amalgamated the GTR, the GTP, the ICR, the CN and the National Transcontinental.32 The war brought an end to the highly expansive phase of railway development even though the system continued to grow at a decidedly more modest pace. Competition from automobiles and trucks had less of an effect in Canada than in the United States but eventually this would change. c) Cross-Border Activity - Despite a later start, the Canadian lines would in due course compete more vigorously with their American counterparts and in this regard, the border became both permeable and fixed - permeable in the sense that in their plans to expand operations, railway companies on both sides made a number of penetrations into each others′ territories; fixed in the

31 Marsh, “Railway History.” 32 A. Tucker, “Canadian National Railways,” The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=a1ARTA0006655 (accessed February 17, 2011).

17 sense that both Canadian and American lines operated within tariff-protected home markets

(Figure 4).33 Throughout the period of national expansion in Canada and the United States,

Figure 4. North American Railroad Lines, 1887 those railways built on both sides paralleling the international boundary were as much borderland railways as those that crossed this same geopolitical boundary. Even though these railways did not cross the border, they were often built in response to what was transpiring on the other side. At the same time, a number of lines were built specifically to tap cross-border flows

33 Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum, Diagram of the Transcontinental lines of road Showing the Original Central Pacific and Union Pacific And their Competitors. Prepared for the United States Pacific Railway Commission, 1887. http://cprr.org/Museum/Maps/USPRC_Map_2_1887.html (accessed May 22, 2011). This map shows cross-border rail connections between Fargo and Winnipeg (the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Manitoba line), Buffalo and Detroit via southwestern Ontario (New York Central Railroad and its subsidiary the Michigan Central and the Erie Railroad), Utica and Ottawa (Utica and Central New York Railroad and the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Railway).

18 of resources and goods or to take advantage of shorter distances and paid little attention to the geopolitical division. And in this effort, Canadian companies, backed by foreign capital, took the lead.

As American investment in Canada increased dramatically during the turn of the twentieth century period, it was the railroads, Penelope Hartland (1960: 729) argues, that constituted the only Canadian industry to undertake direct investment to any significant degree before 1900:

“Railroad mileage owned by Canadian companies in the United States increased from 227 miles in 1860 to 2,435 in 1900. After the completion of its main line in 1885, the Canadian Pacific, in consolidating and improving its position, acquired mileage there both by construction and purchase. About half the investments were by the Canadian Pacific, mostly in the 1890's, to acquire control of the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie, and the Duluth, South Shore, and Atlantic. Among other Canadian railroads that acquired mileage in the United States, the Grand Trunk spent $1.5 million in 1878-79 to purchase 330 miles of existing road from Port Huron to Chicago."34

This investment, as shown in Table 335 compiled by Cleona Lewis, would continue after the beginning of the new century.

Table 3. Canadian Railway Investment in the United States, 1914, 1919 (million dollars) 1914 1919 Canadian Railways Capital Stock Debt Capital Stock Debt Canadian Grand Trunk 18.6 4.5 25.2 10.4 Atlantic & St Lawrence 5.5 3.0 5.5 3.0 Chicago, Detroit & Canada Grand Trunk Junction .5 -- .5 -- Central Vermont 2.2 -- 2.2 -- Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee 1.5 -- 1.5 4.2 Grand Trunk Western 6.0 -- 6.0 -- Michigan Air Line .3 1.5 .3 1.5 Pontiac, Oxford & Northern 1.0 -- 1.0 -- Toledo, Saginaw & Muskegon 1.6 -- 1.6 1.7 Southern New England Railroad Corporation -- -- 6.6 --

34 P. Hartland, “Canadian Balance of Payments since 1868,” in Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (University of Michigan: The Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, 1960), 729. 35 C. Lewis, America’s Stake in International Investments (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1938), 567. 19

Canadian Northern 5.5 .2 5.5 .6 Duluth, Rainy Lake 2.0 -- 2.0 -- Duluth, Winnipeg 3.1 -- 3.1 -- Minnesota & Manitoba .4 .2 .4 .6

Canadian Pacific 31.1 22.1 35.0 22.1 Duluth, South Shore 11.2 18.1 11.2 18.1 Aroostook River .8 -- .8 -- Minneapolis, St Paul 19.1 4.0 19.1 4.0 Spokane International -- -- 3.9 --

Total 55.2 26.8 65.7 33.1

As Oscar Skelton informs us, by 1914, “Canadian railways controlled four miles in the

United States for every mile in Canada controlled by railways of the United States. The Canadian

Pacific alone owned or leased over five thousand miles in the United States, chiefly in the northwest, while it had close working agreements with the Wabash and the New York, New

Haven and Hartford. The Grand Trunk controlled over seventeen hundred miles, two-thirds in the Michigan peninsula and the remainder in New England, while the Canadian Northern ran for some forty miles through the United States, south of the Lake of the Woods.”36 In contrast,

Skelton adds, “the American interests in Canada were more scattered, but the Great Northern

(GN), the Michigan Central, the Père Marquette, and the NYC all developed important Canadian extensions.”37

Such investment was not always welcomed. Continentalists such as Joseph Nimmo Jr., one-time Chief of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Statistics, complained incessantly about what he and others perceived to be an unfair advantage held by Canada in terms of cross- border transportation. Specifically, Nimmo Jr. referred to the 1871 Treaty of Washington that gave “Canadian railroad companies the right to transport goods from one point in the United

36 Skelton, The Railway Builders, 232- 233. 37 ibid, 233. 20

States, through Canadian territory, to another point in the United States, without payment of duty, but omit[ted] to give to American companies the reciprocal right of transporting goods from one point in Canada, through the United States, to another point in Canada, without payment of duty.”38 A fellow continentalist, the British-born Canadian journalist Goldwin Smith, went so far as to accuse the CPR, by connecting Canada with the American system at Sault Ste.

Marie, as having “a manifest tendency.”39 At the same time, Canadian companies also benefited from charging much higher freight rates for transportation than their American counterparts, a practice, Tom Naylor argues, that reduced the competitiveness and the development of Canadian manufacturing and agriculture.40

While cross-border railway investment increased towards the end of the nineteenth century, its history can be traced to before Confederation when the GTR and Great Western

(GWR) took the first steps to expand their operations beyond the international border. The former, incorporated in 1852 to build a line between Montréal and Toronto, soon extended its charter to Sarnia in the west and Portland, Maine in the east. Portland was viewed as a more desirable Atlantic terminus for Montréal than Maritime ports because it was both closer and ice- free in the winter. The GTR realized its plans when it purchased the St. Lawrence and Atlantic

Railroad from Montréal to the Québec-Vermont border and the Atlantic and St. Lawrence

Railroad from the border to Portland in 1853.41 That same year the GTR purchased the Toronto and Guelph Railroad and three years later opened the line from Toronto to Sarnia, the latter designed to be a hub for Chicago-bound traffic. In 1853, the GWR, British-owned and

38 J. Nimmo Jr., A Canadian Scheme of Aggression upon American Commerce, how it should be treated (Washington: Gibson Brothers, 1889), 3-4. 39 G. Smith, “Introduction,” in G. Mercer Adam, ed. Handbook of Commercial Union: a collection of papers read before the Commercial Union Club of Toronto with speeches, letters and other documents in favour of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States (Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Co., 1888), xv. 40 R. Naylor, The History of Canadian business, 1867-1914, Vol. 2 (Toronto: J. Lorimer, 1975), 27. 41 Montréal interests built the former while American interests built the latter, with both lines meeting at Island Pond Vermont. 21 headquartered in Hamilton, opened a line for traffic between Niagara and Detroit designed to carry produce from the newly opened Midwestern frontier to the American seaboard across

British North American territory. A few years later, the company constructed a number of branch lines such as the Ontario, Simcoe & Lake Huron and The Brockville and Ottawa to transport lumber from Ontario sawmills to American markets.42

Such activity continued and actually increased as Canadian interests, financed often by foreign, and especially British, capital, overbuilt railroads during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because they hoped to compete with American companies. In doing so, they often ignored the international border and extended operations into the United States, thus strengthening north-south ties. Increasingly, American railway interests adopted the same philosophy, recognizing that expansion north of the line could potentially generate great profits.43

By 1900, there existed a significant number of cross-border connections, including CPR short lines linking Maritime centres with Vanceboro, the Central Vermont Railway (CVR) purchased by the GTR linking Montréal with New York City and Boston (Figure 5),44 the NYC linking Buffalo and Detroit via southern Ontario, the New York and Ottawa Railway connecting

Tupper Lake in upstate New York with Ottawa, the CPR-controlled Soo line connecting the main and tributary lines in western Canada with Chicago via Minneapolis, the NWSR and

Fairhaven & Southern Railroad companies (both purchased by the American-based GN) along the Pacific coast, and the James J. Hill-financed Kootenay Railway and Navigation Company

42 This information comes from: The St. Lawrence Parks Commission, Upper Canada Village, “Transportation (2011). http://www.uppercanadavillage.com/index.cfm/en/activities/1860s-life/transportation/ (accessed December 14, 2011); D. Hofsommer, Grand Trunk Corporation: Canadian National Railways in the United States, 1971-1992 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995). 43 Den Otter, The Philosophy of Railways. 44 1879 map of the Central Vermont Railroad from http://www.davidrumsey.com/ davidrumsey.com (accessed October 13, 2013). Public Domain. 22 and Hill-controlled Spokane Falls and Northern Railway connecting the main line of the GN with the newly opened mining areas of southern British Columbia. While the respective federal governments were negotiating reciprocity in trade, there was, in effect, a reciprocity in the use of territory among railway companies on both sides of the border. Cross-border rail operations developed even as American companies were becoming more agitated over what many viewed as an unfair advantage enjoyed by the heavily subsidized Canadian companies, particularly the

CPR and the GTR.

Figure 5. Central Vermont Railroad, 1879

23

In addition to the issue of freight being carried through foreign territory, the “bonding question” raised the hackles of many Americans. The placement of the international boundary ensured that the southwestern part of Ontario constituted the most direct line between New York

State and Michigan. As well, the most direct route between the northwestern states and New

England was via Sault Ste. Marie and Canadian territory. The conditions were reversed in the east where the most direct line between Montréal and the Maritimes was through Maine. Even though article 30 of the Treaty of Washington (1871), which provided for the transport of goods, by water and land route, free of duty between one point in the United States and another point in the United States through Canadian territory, was abrogated in 1883, cross-border trade, carried mostly by rail, continued to develop. In his statement to the U.S. Congress-Senate Committee on

Interstate Commerce in 1890, William Van Horne, President of the CPR, supplied the following statistics on CPR-carried freight crossing the border for the year 1888: European freight via

United States to Canadian points Ð 14,740,320 pounds; United States freight to Canadian points

Ð 359,132,990 pounds; Canadian freight to Europe via United States Ð 17,714,860 pounds;

Canadian freight to United States Ð 583,036,618 pounds. Most of the Canadian freight carried to the U.S., Van Horne stated, consisted of lumber.45 Simon McLean (1899: 509, 513), a student of railways during this time, estimated that approximately thirty percent of the total traffic of the

Grand Trunk in the late 1890s involved state-to-state traffic (Figure 6).46

45 U.S. Senate, Statements Taken Before the U.S. Committee on Interstate Commerce of the United States Senate with reference to the Transportation Interests of the United States and Canada (Washington: G.P.O., 1890), 226. 46 Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, Map of the Grand Trunk and Great Western of Canada, and their connections. The Great International Route (1885). This historical cartographic image is part of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection http://www.davidrumsey.com. Creative Commons Licence (accessed May 19, 2013). 24

Figure 6. The Grand Trunk and Great Western Railway System 1885

U.S. interests, as represented by the ICC, were concerned “with the effect of foreign competition on American railroads, in particular the ability to attract long haul business originating in the U.S. through unlawful discounted rates offset by short haul rates in Canadian territory."47 (Berkowitz, 2009: 164). They directed most of their criticisms towards the GTR who conducted considerable cross-border business. As Christine Berkowitz explains, for Joseph

Hickson, the general manager of the GTR:

“The issue of sorting out that portion of the business conducted by the Grand Trunk that was international and not solely American or Canadian was not a simple task. Hickson demonstrated the complex cross-border traffic connections in his description of the various flows of traffic across the Grand Trunk system: the importation of goods from Europe on through shipment from the ports of Portland or Boston to points in Canada; traffic that

47 C. Berkowitz, Railroad Crossings: The Transnational World of North America, 1850-1910, Ph.D diss., University of Toronto, 2009, 164. 25

originated in Canada for transport through the US to other points in Canada; traffic that originated in the US for transport through Canada to other points in the US and finally direct trans-border shipments from Canada to destinations in the US or the US to destinations in Canada. The Commission struggled at length with the issue of what constituted American or Canadian or international business and the border again was a defining factor.”48

Berkowitz argues persuasively that the GTR operated as a borderlands railway in order to seek access to ocean trade, something made possible only by crossing the border. The prospect of raising revenue from local American freight traffic was secondary but American competitors feared that such an “invasion” would seriously hurt their own business.

One example of such a view is that offered by a Mr. Albert Fink, commissioner of the

American-based Trunk Lines Association, who, upon being called upon to testify to the 1890

U.S. Congress - Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, argued that the American railroad industry had more to fear from the Canadian Pacific than the Grand Trunk (U.S. Senate, 1890):

“I can only speak in a general way of the Canadian Pacific. So far it has not been felt seriously, but it has the power of disturbing the whole American system, and in a measure reducing the profit and the income of the American railroad system. It can do a great deal of harm, but I cannot say whether it will do it or not. There is less restraint upon the Canadian Pacific than upon the Grand Trunk. They are almost altogether in Canadian territory and have a long line tapping the American railroads at many points, and can be an element of great disturbance in American railroad operations. They have perhaps not the same reason to be as conservative as the Grand Trunk. The Canadian Pacific was created by the Canadian Government, in a great measure, and they can better afford to fight than can the Grand Trunk.”49

48 ibid, 164-165. 49 U.S. Senate, Statements Taken Before the U.S. Committee on Interstate Commerce, 24.

26

Despite such concerns, economic forces that facilitated the movement of people, capital and goods triumphed over political obstacles that impeded such flows. Yet such activity was by no means spatially uniform and varied among borderland regions. ii) A Borderland Regional Focus i) The Atlantic Borderland - Railway development within this international region occurred earlier and much more intensely on the American side. Transportation by sail and then by steamer was the key to the development of trade during the first half of the nineteenth century but eventually individuals on both sides of the border entertained the idea of building railway lines. New England capitalists were among the first in the U.S. to recognize that railroads offered a faster and cheaper transportation alternative to canals. Boston, the major metropolis of the region, led the way in developing rail links with the interior that were designed to circumvent the trade advantage its major rival, New York City, had with its Hudson River-Erie Canal-Great Lakes corridor. Starting small, Boston capitalists built the Boston & Worcester, the Boston &

Providence, the Boston & Lowell, and the Boston & Newton railways in the early 1830s. Within a few years, lines were built connecting Boston to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Springfield,

Massachusetts, Stonington and New London, Connecticut, as well as New York City via steam boat lines on Long Island Sound.50 By 1860, Boston established further links to Portland and

Bangor, Maine; Concord, New Hampshire; Albany, New York; New Haven, Connecticut;

Plymouth, Massachusetts; and Burlington, Vermont.51 A decade later, there were 6,684 miles of railway in New England - 2,531 in Massachusetts, 1,240 in Maine, 1,010 in Connecticut, 888 in

50 R. Kerr, “Railroad History in the Boston States Migrations.” http://bostonstates.rootsweb.ancestry.com/RonaldDaleKarr.htm (accessed May 10, 2013). 51 R. Parks, Roads and Travel in New England 1790-1840 (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967). This reference (without page number) to Parks is included in: TeachUSHistory.org, “Roads and Travel in New England 1790-1840.” http://www.teachushistory.org/detocqueville-visit-united-states/articles/roads-travel-new-england- 1790-1840 (accessed May 5, 2013).

27

New Hampshire, 865 in Vermont (again included in the St. Lawrence borderland region in this study), and 150 in tiny Rhode Island.52 Boston, the major gateway fed by maritime and rail corridors, also served as the central hub in the larger Atlantic borderland trade network. Economic and social intercourse within the international region was based primarily on the connections made possible by maritime linkages through trade and migration but increasingly governments, communities, businesses and individuals believed that an inland cross-border transportation network would complement the already existing maritime system. As we shall see, it was Boston's much smaller rival, Portland, which most aggressively pursued the cross-border strategy.

The transportation story for Atlantic Canada prior to Confederation was very much different than that for New England. There was, in effect, no canal era in the Atlantic colonies and roads were slow in coming. At first, railway advocates in the Maritimes focused on developing local connections within the region in order to facilitate the movement of staples to ports and to provide an inland infrastructure that would make possible eventual connections with lines connecting the region to New England and beyond and central Canada. Their shared vision saw

Maritimes ports as gateways and entrepȏts whereby goods from within and from without would exit and enter North America and be transferred from one mode of transport (rail) to another (ship).

Saint John, New Brunswick already functioned in such a fashion as the point where river and ocean transportation corridors intersected.Although the Albion Railway, a coal mining railway in Nova

Scotia's Pictou County, was built in the mid-1830s, it wasn’t until the 1850s, Robert MacKinnon shows, that railway construction began in earnest:

“Nova Scotia’s first commercial railway line linked Halifax and Windsor in June 1858; six months later a second line was operational between Halifax and Truro. In New Brunswick, the Saint Andrews-Québec Railway, planned since the late 1830s, had only 34 miles of track completed by the mid-1850s. New

52 Engineering News 20 (October 13, 1888), 290. 28

Brunswick’s second railway led in another direction - towards Shediac and Major Robinson’s proposed northern route for the planned Intercolonial, which bypassed the most heavily settled and travelled portions of the colony. Although construction began in 1853, it was not until almost two decades later that the urban centres of Halifax and Saint John were linked by a railway.”53

For pre-Confederation Maritimers, opinion differed as to what direction the creation of railroads should follow. Some favoured construction of lines to New England and beyond to the grain-producing American Midwest, others advocated building a rail connection to the St. Lawrence and the cities of central Canada, still others supported both. Nova Scotia looked more favourably on developing the St. Lawrence connection as the proposed intercolonial system would make Halifax the eastern terminus when the line was eventually completed. Yet most were still open to the idea of making an American connection. New Brunswick on the other hand was more enthusiastic about developing ties with the United States although it too looked towards connection with Canada.

While schooners and then steamers dominated commerce within the Atlantic world, the railroad made it possible for dominant gateways and hubs to develop and increase their hinterlands, an expansion which would also strengthen their relative positions within a growing global marketplace.

A hybrid of continental and Atlantic visions produced a symbiotic relationship of rail and ship.

While much discussion in Nova Scotia centered around building a line to connect Halifax to the St. Lawrence, to provide an all-weather connection between the Maritimes and the

Canadas, little action was taken and eventually support was thrown behind the E&NA, a line that was envisioned to extend the New England rail network eastward through the Maritimes to an ice-free harbour closer to the shipping routes to Europe (Figure 7).54 Such a railway would

53 R. Mackinnon, “Roads, Cart Tracks, and Bridle Paths: Land Transportation and the Domestic Economy of MidNineteenth-Century Eastern British North America,” The Canadian Historical Review 84, 2 (2003), 199-200. 54 The idea of a line that would link Portland and Boston with Montréal, Saint John and Halifax was first discussed at an international conference held in Portland, Maine in 1850. Figure 6 shows the completed, in progress, and 29 connect Maine through Saint John and Moncton and eventually link with the future ICR, thus bringing to fruition the idea, first discussed at an international conference held in Portland,

Maine in 1850, of a rail system that would allow manufacturers from Halifax, Moncton, and

Saint John a faster way to ship goods to American markets while at the same time allowing Saint

John business to ship goods to Western Canada over the future ICR route.

proposed railroads. The inset map shows the plan for shortening the transit between New York and London. Source: Map of the European and North American Railway, showing its connection with the railways of the United States & Canada; made by direction of His Excellency John Hubbard, Governor of Maine under the resolve of Aug. 20th 1850 (Philadelphia, 1850). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C., G3721P Rr001050 http://Hdl.Loc.Gov/Loc.Gmd/G3721P.Rr001050 (accessed June 10, 2013). Public Domain. 30

Figure 7. Map of the European and North American Railway, 1850

In addition to business, the governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick favoured the plan. Joseph Howe, Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, and a loyal supporter of the Crown, argued that even if it further strengthened the connection with the U.S., it would, at the same time, result in economic growth that would enable the province to resist more effectively any threat of annexation. D.A. Sutherland contends that the backing for such a plan was consistent

31 with the growing commercial interaction taking place between Nova Scotia and the United States in the face of the repeal of the Corn Laws and Britain’s adoption of free trade.55 Maritimers were not the only ones interested in constructing a rail connection across the border; there were parties in

Maine who also wanted the E&NA, which at the time was still expected to connect with Portland, to extend eastward to Halifax. This was the message contained in an 1860 report of the Committee of

Railroads, Ways and Bridges presented to the Maine legislature in which the authors argued that without such an extension, “we may find the line connecting Canada with the Atlantic seaboard [the

Intercolonial] circling our state by the St. John valley, and its trade carried off into a foreign territory.”56 The proposed Intercolonial, they argued, will “drain the business of one-third of our

State into a foreign country, and eventually change the present route of transit between Canada and the Atlantic sea shore.”57 To counter this, they proposed an act that would enable Maine railroad companies to unite and form a trunk line across the state and assist its construction from

Bangor to the eastern border and to the Aroostook and St. John rivers. This strategy was endorsed by Governor Morrill who in his January 6, 1860 address to the legislature stated: “This policy also embraced the plan for a continuous line eastward through the central part of the State, to the boundary line of New Brunswick; thence connecting with a line to be continued through this Province and Nova Scotia, to Halifax, affording an avenue through the State for transatlantic travel, and bringing at once into intimate commercial relations with the British North American

Provinces. This line is already extended to Bangor [from Portland]…To the Nation it will furnish a great avenue of travel between Europe and America, while it connects the State with the British

55 D. Sutherland, “Nova Scotia and the American Presence: Seeking Connections Without Conquest, 1848-1854,” in S. Hornsby and J. Reid, New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons (Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006), 146-148. 56 Report #22 of the Thirty Ninth Legislature, 1860, Reports of the Committee on Railroads, Ways & Bridges, in Documents printed by order of the Legislature of the State of Maine, 1860 (Augusta: Stevens & Sayward, 1860), 7- 8. 57 ibid, 8. 32

Provinces in intimate commercial and friendly relations.”58 Yet no rail line was built connecting coastal Maine with the New Brunswick border during his time in office. The E&NA remained solely a Saint JohnÐShediac connection and never reached a port in Nova Scotia or connect with a railway in Maine.59 Eventually, the line became part of the Intercolonial Railway in 1869, which was not completed until 1876.

And so in terms of transportation and trade, “greater” New England” remained primarily a maritime borderland. Overland trade did exist at the local scale, for example in Madawaska where residents exchanged goods across the river both before and after the border was established. But it was minute in comparison to maritime trade. Rail links were built between Canada and New

England but they were, for the most part, connections that linked the latter with central Canada, thus contributing more significantly to the development of the St. Lawrence borderland.60 ii) The St. Lawrence Borderland - A fundamental reorientation occurred within the St.

Lawrence borderland with the coming of the railroad. Until this point, the American component of the St. Lawrence borderland was largely restricted to the Champlain valley of Vermont and

New York State. But the development of cross-border railway links extended Québec's spatial reach to more distant states in New England.

Canada’s first railway line, the Champlain & St. Lawrence, was completed in 1836 connecting La Prairie to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu on Montréal’s south shore. This and other small lines in the area were designed to facilitate portage around river rapids.61 Montréal capitalists viewed a railway connection to the east coast as necessary to the city and the colony’s

58 Address of Governor Morrill to the Legislature of the State of Maine, January 6, 1860 (Augusta: Stevens and Sayward, 1860), 8-9. 59 D. Soucoup, Railways of New Brunswick: A History (Halifax: Maritime Lines, 2010). 60 McIlwraith makes the interesting argument that trunk-line railroads in the Atlantic borderland such as the International Maine Railway, a CPR affiliate, connected bridgehead ports such as Portland, Halifax and Saint John with the Great Lakes heartland, bypassing the Maritimes and New England. See: McIlwraith, “Transport in the Borderlands,” 75. 61 G. de T. Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1938), 152. 33 development as such a link would do much to counter the business lost because of the reduced shipping season on the St. Lawrence. In this context, they had different options from which to choose: a line to the Maritimes, one to New England, or making connections with both. Both government and Montréal merchants initially supported the first option; it was especially favoured by those who feared the threat of American invasion and saw such a railway as a major instrument in creating a stronger union among the British North American colonies. Yet the cost of the project proved to be too high for the British Parliament and no movement was made on this project until after Confederation. This resulted in colonial government and capitalists looking for alternatives.

Such an option presented itself when a group of entrepreneurs from Portland, Maine approached Montréal businessmen with a proposition to build a railway that would link the

Québec metropolis with their city. Such a connection, they hoped, would enable Portland to challenge Boston's railway monopoly in New England. In 1844, a committee headed by William

Preble of Portland began exploring the construction of a railroad linking their city with Montréal.

The committee recognized that they could benefit from being the Atlantic port for Montréal which faced the long freeze-up of the St. Lawrence during the winter months and the spectre of losing the Great Lakes trade to rail lines and canals on the American side. The committee argued that "in this great enterprise, the interests of Maine on the one part, and of Canada on the other, are mutual, reciprocal, and in perfect harmony."62 They also recognized that they lacked the capital to compete with Boston in tapping the New England hinterland and so welcomed the prospect of working with Montréal-based partners to create a situation whereby both could take advantage of a vast and growing North American hinterland.

62 ibid, 7. 34

The major player in rallying support for this venture was John Poor, a Maine lawyer, newspaper editor and entrepreneur, who convinced Montréal capitalists to throw their support behind a rail connection with Portland rather than Boston, using the geographical arguments that the former was 100 miles closer to Montréal than the latter and that Portland was closer to

Europe and its markets than Boston.63 Poor often referred to geography in his arguments in favour of a Portland-Montréal connection. In 1848 he wrote:

"The State of Maine, from its geographical position, has, naturally, less connection with the neighboring states than with the British Provinces. Her railway system, now partially developed, based upon the natural laws of trade, has but few relations to the other railways of New England, and has been projected upon a plan of complete independence to them all. Instead of following the lead of Boston Ð which city originally held all New England in commercial subjection, and now controls the railways of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and a portion of Connecticut, - the state of Maine entered upon a railway system of her own in 1844, making the Portland and Montréal road the base line of her operations. Portland is the natural seaport of the Canadas (my italics).” 64

Upon the incorporation of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad in 1845, Preble was named its President, assigned with the task of negotiating with governments in England, Canada and the United States to obtain rights of way and other concessions needed to complete the

Portland to Montréal rail link.65 Shortly thereafter, the Atlantic & St. Lawrence chartered the St.

Lawrence & Atlantic to build the part of the line in Québec. The two lines met at Island Pond,

Vermont in 1853 after which regular service began between Portland and Montréal. Later that same year, the GTR, which had been incorporated the year before, leased the two companies, thus extending the Toronto-Montréal line across the border to the seaboard. Within a short period

63 In this project, Poor worked closely with Canadian entrepreneur Alexander Tilloch Galt. For greater discussion of this alliance, see: Marsh, “Railway History.” 64 J. Poor, The First International Railway and the Colonization of New England: Life and Writings of John Alfred Poor, edited by L. Poor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892), 50-51. 65 "William Pitt Preble," Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pitt_Preble (accessed October 13, 2013). 35 of time, one branch was built to Lévis, across from Québec City, and on to Rivière-du-Loup, and another branch reached as far west as Sarnia. By Confederation, the GTR had become the largest railroad system in the world (Figure 8).66 Upon making connections with Chicago via the Grand

Trunk Western Railroad, the GTR system would cover three of the constituent regions of the

Canada-United States borderland zone. And so while the GTR was a British and then Canadian corporation, albeit financed mostly by British capital, it covered a transnational territory and as such served as an agent of a new economic order that promoted a more porous border.

Figure 8. The Grand Trunk Railway, 1867

Berkowitz points out that the rail connection between Montréal and Portland had both positive and negative effects for Québec:

"The increased speed of rail transportation reduced costs and stimulated the lumber and dairy industries almost immediately. Industrial and commercial agricultural development was

66 Hofsommer, Grand Trunk Corporation. The map comes from: Rolly Martin Country, a website written and maintained by D. Gagnon. http://members.kos.net/sdgagnon/te3.html (accessed October 14, 2013). Public Domain. 36

encouraged, and land values and population centers along the line increased dramatically. Existing market towns fortunate to be located along the rail line would benefit from access to wider markets, while others reliant solely on agriculture would suffer or be forced to adapt to the increased competition from cheaper western products. The border itself remained secondary to economic interests. Access to faster more efficient transportation also increased mobility facilitating out migration from the region to the south and west. For some the rail line did lead to happiness, but the promise of prosperity was not the reality for all within this cross-border corridor."67

While earlier in the century, Québec provided the major market for northern tier counties of

Vermont and New York State, the railroad provided a means whereby the former could compete with the latter for growing American markets, especially during the period of reciprocity.

Reciprocally, because of the railroad connection, a growing Montréal market was now within reach for Vermont and New York producers specializing in perishable dairy items. But with the opening of the Grand Trunk system, the commercial focus of Québec expanded beyond that of the immediate cross-border region of Vermont and northeastern New York State to include the wider New England region and beyond as well.

While Montréal interests were actively pursuing inclusion within a continental system heavily oriented towards rapidly expanding American markets, Québec City capitalists and politicians threw their support behind a strategy that favoured east-west connections with the rest of British North America. Disadvantaged in terms of location, at least in terms of north-south connections that transcended the international border, Québec City had little alternative but to pin their hopes on an "Intercolonial" Railway that would connect the city with the Maritimes and a rapidly growing Canada West.

Yet within a short period of time, Montréal businessmen would join their provincial counterparts in supporting the construction of such an east-west link. As Heintzman explains,

67 Berkowitz, Railroad Crossings, 54-55. 37 this change in focus was more the result of a failure to attract American business than any prospect for increased traffic presented by the Intercolonial project:

"Even for Montréal the American dream, the lure of the old southern empire, had proven a vain thing. Despite all of the capital poured into the St. Lawrence transportation system linking the American west to the American east, American traffic had not opted for the northern route. Montréal was struggling to hold on even to Upper Canada's export and import trade, and the Grand Trunk was in serious difficulty. In these circumstances the management of the Grand Trunk was driven to conclude that the only means to salvage the railway was to link it eastward through the Intercolonial to Halifax, and westward by means of a railway running north of Lake Superior and across the northern prairie to the Pacific ocean."68

Thus, Québec at mid-nineteenth-century found itself in a situation whereby it could not count on cross-border trade connections to rescue a struggling economy. Traditional links with nearby Vermont and northeastern New York were weakening and the expectation that the GTR would capture a considerable portion of the growing Midwest-Eastern seaboard trade within the

U.S. proved to be unrealistic. Limited cross-border trade combined with minimal cross-border investment at this time to curb economic integration. In fact, it was the movement of people, predominantly from Québec to New England, rather than the flow of goods and capital that served to connect individuals, families and communities within the St. Lawrence borderland region. iii) The Great Lakes Borderland - Mention was made previously of the bevy of railroad activity that took place in the Midwest after 1850, with Chicago emerging as the major hub of an increasingly dense system. Southern Ontario, by virtue of its proximity to the Midwest, reaped the benefits of this expansion. Along with the development of its own internal network of railway lines, Ontario, particularly the southern peninsula, served as an extraterritorial appendage

68 ibid, 28-29. 38 of American lines connecting the East with the Midwest.

In fact, the transnational character of transportation within the Great Lakes borderland was apparent even before mid-century when an established canal system combined with rapidly developing rail lines to create a cross-border transportation network that facilitated the movement of goods. In 1846, a Mr. Barton (first name unknown) remarked about this system:

"Much lake traffic passes on the railroad between Buffalo and Albany; via Erie, through the

Pennsylvania canal; Cleveland and Toledo, through the Ohio and Indiana canals, and Erie and

Kalamazoo railroad; Monroe and Detroit, by the Michigan railroad; and yet more through the

Welland canal to Canadian markets; and to New York via the Oswego canal. These canals and railroads not merely carry off the down commerce of the lakes, but, like the Erie canal, they furnish a very large amount of up commerce."69 As early as 1851, Israel Andrews, Consul of the

United States for Canada and New Brunswick, noted that Ontario, or Canada West as it was then known, had a much greater interest in trade with the U.S. than other parts of Canada and in this context was advantaged by superior rail connections to American markets.70

In the early 1850s, lines were built that paralleled the lakes. Toledo and Buffalo were connected by rail in 1852 and in 1854, the GWR, linking Buffalo and Detroit via southern

Ontario, was finished. The GWR carried American freight across the border while the GTR transported Canadian goods to the U.S. Certain branches of the GTR such as the Buffalo & Lake

Huron line, played a key role in this passage. The Erie & Ontario Railway, beginning and connecting with the GTR at Fort Erie, linking with the GWR at the Suspension Bridge, and

69 Quoted in: J. Mansfield, ed., History of the Great Lakes. Volume I, (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1899), page unknown. 70 United States. Department of the Treasury , Communication from the secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of March 8, 1851, the report of Israel D. Andrews, Consul of the United States for Canada and New Brunswick, on the trade and commerce of the British North American colonies, and upon the trade of the Great Lakes and rivers; also notices of the internal improvements in each state, of the Gulf of Mexico and straits of Florida, and a paper on the cotton crop of the United States (Washington: Robert Armstrong, printer, 1853)., 32. 39 terminating at Niagara-on-the-Lake, served, in the opinion of Freeman Blake, U.S. Consul at

Fort Erie Ontario, as "an important link in the railway system of this province for carrying merchandise to Buffalo, the most convenient port of entry, to be conveyed from thence without changing of cars or breaking of bulk over the various railways diverging from that natural center of trade, to the principal cities of the United States."71 Even those lines not designed to carry trade back and forth across the border were in many cases built in order to compete with railways on the other side. For example, according to James Little, the Welland Railway, running parallel to the Welland Canal, and carrying goods between Lakes Ontario and Erie, was built exclusively to secure the western trade to and from the St. Lawrence route.72

Little also held the opinion that Hamilton, located at the head of Lake Ontario, was better situated as a hub within the Great Lakes transportation system than Buffalo at the foot of Lake

Erie:

"Property can be transported from Hamilton to the Cities of Albany, New York and Boston, at much less rates, and with greater expedition by Lake Ontario to Oswego, and Ogdensburg, and thence by canal or rail, than from Buffalo to Albany and those Atlantic Cities, and, so soon as the proper class of screw Propellers are put on the Lake Ontario route, which the enterprising citizens of Oswego and Ogdensburg will not fail to provide, both the Great Western and the Road in question, if built on the route to make it available for this business, will secure as much freight traffic as they can possibly do. The Great West, though but yet in its infancy, is pouring out its products in large volume, and is increasing them at the rate of about fifty percent every six or seven years. These products will, as a matter of course, seek the cheapest and most expeditious channels of communication to the Eastern Markets, and unquestionably, make this their chief route, if opened to them, both to the American seaboard and Quebec…All these products can be taken up where they are manufactured, and be

71 National Library of Canada,. Sessional Papers Vol. 5, No. 6, Report of the Minister of Agriculture for the Calendar Year 1889, Freeman Blake, U.S. Consul, Fort Erie, to William Seward , Secretary of State, July 5, 1865 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1890),

72 J. Little, A Warning to Capitalists, Railway Brokers, and Investors in Canadian Railway Securities: The Great Southern or; Niagara and Detroit Rivers Railway (Caledonia, Canada West: Thomas Messenger, printer, 1859), 22. 40

deposited at those American points, for, at least, thirty percent less than by way of Buffalo, and at a cheaper rate, and with more expedition and safety, to Montreal and Quebec, than by the Welland Canal or any other route whatever.”73

The building of railways within the Great Lakes basin provided competition for shipping interests and led to the demise of many companies. The cost of seasonal lake shipping and transshipment through canals was no match for year-round rail traffic. In particular, the Grand

Trunk, which stretched along the north shore of Lake Ontario, took business away from a number of shipping companies.74 Yet as Dana Ashdown argues, the railway companies:

"... discovered that there were many advantages to owning and operating their own shipping lines on the lakes. Steamships could extend a railway’s influence far beyond its own limited sphere and thereby tap sources of traffic otherwise out of reach .... Steamships could also feed traf fic to a railway too ill-conceived to generate enough of its own on-line business."75

On the American side in particular, a number of rail companies branched into the marine freight trade. One such firm was the Cape Vincent Railway Company, which in the early1850s purchased three steamers—the Mayflower, the Champion, and the Highlander, which were used to connect Montreal with the New York City-bound trains at Ogdensburg—to form a daily line from Hamilton to Cape Vincent, calling at Toronto and the intermediate ports. The increasing demand for Canadian lumber prompted certain lines, such as the Ogdensburg and Boston

Railroad Company, to charter all the schooners they could obtain on Lake Ontario.76 The NYC, which ran inland and served to support the Erie Canal by directing traffic away from the St.

73 ibid, 24. 74 B. McKelvey, “The port of Rochester: a history of its lake trade,” Rochester History 16, 4 (1954), 1-24. 75 D. Ashdown, “Afloat on the Great Lakes: a short history of the New York Central’s Great Lakes steamship services,” Central Headlight 19, 3 (1989), 13. 76 “The Lake Travel and Commerce for 1853,” St. Catharines Journal (March 17, 1853). 41

Lawrence River and toward the Hudson River, constructed spurs connecting the main line with

Rochester’s port, Charlotte, and Lewiston.

Several lines of steamers were formed to link Cape Vincent, which became the Great

Lakes terminus for the Watertown & Rome Railroad, with the Canadian owned GWR at

Hamilton and with the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railroad (later the Northern Railway of

Canada) at Toronto.77 More and more, businessmen and politicians on both sides of the border recognized the basic geographical fact that in some locations American outlets formed the best corridors for Canadian trade, whereas in others, Canadian outlets formed the best corridors for

American trade. And nowhere was this basic geographical fact recognized more than in the Great

Lakes borderland. The serve and volley pattern of response on both sides of the border to canal expansion continued during the railroad era. After the Americans built the Erie Railroad in the early 1850s, the British constructed the GTR which operated as a direct channel into America’s most expansive market at the end of the nineteenth century, much of it based in New York, and served to further link Ontario with its neighbours.

By the 1870s, railroads dominated transportation in the region and several lines, including the London & Gore, the Erie & Niagara, the Erie & Ontario, the Canadian Southern, the Michigan Central, the Penn Central, the Buffalo & Niagara, the Lewiston, the Niagara &

Lake Ontario, and others, too numerous to recount here, connected communities within and between Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota and beyond. The spread of railroad transportation right up to the First World War played a major part in the growth of the international region's population, agriculture, urban development and industry. By the turn of the twentieth century, Ontario was emerging as the primary target for

American investment in resources and branch plants. Sometimes this investment resulted in the

77 Ashdown, “Afloat on the Great Lakes.” 42 construction of rail lines. For example, the Cobourg, Peterborough and Marmora and the

Belleville and North Hastings railways were built in order to service American financed mining ventures north of Lake Ontario.78 Conversely, Ontario capitalists invested in railways in order to ship resources highly valued in American markets. For example, J.R. Booth, the major stockholder in the Canada Atlantic Railway that ran from Ottawa to the CVR, felt that the railway was not large enough to generate sufficient freight and passenger revenue so he incorporated the Ottawa, Arnprior & Renfrew and the Ottawa and Parry Sound railways to act as feeder lines. In 1892, Booth purchased control of the Parry Sound Colonization Railway which in combination with his other lines gave him a route from Georgian Bay through Ottawa and all the way down to New York City.79 As Tom McIlwraith informs us: “The New York Central built a line to Ottawa, and the city of London [Ontario] purchased a Lake Erie railcar ferry and facilities in Ohio for importing coal from the Appalachian fields. The Grand Trunk,” he adds,

“started branching out in lower Michigan.”80 Canadian and American railways connected at a number of locations along the Ontario-New York-Michigan border but cross-border rail links were most intense during this period in the Niagara Peninsula/Niagara Frontier border region of

Ontario and New York (Figure 9).81

By the turn of the twentieth century, transportation and communications technologies were key instruments in the integration of the North American market and railroads, especially those that operated from and within the Great Lakes borderland, played a major role in this

78 H. Marshall, F. Southard Jr. and K. Taylor, with an excursus on The Canadian Balance of Payments, by F. Knox Canadian-American Industry: A Study in International Investment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), 9-10. 79 R. Brown, In Search of the Grand Trunk: Ghost Rail Lines in Ontario (Dundurn, 2011). 80 McIlwraith, “Transport in the Borderlands,” 68. 81This map, which highlights railways associated with or annexed by the Canadian National Railway system except for the Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railroad, comes from the website http://home.cogeco.ca/~trains/rrcn.htm. (accessed May 15, 2013).

43 transformation. A maze of railway connections facilitated cross-border flows of capital investment within this international region, leading to what Neil Brenner terms reterritorialization, i.e., the reconfiguration and rescaling of forms of territorialisation occurring under specific features of globalization.82 Despite protective tariffs, cross-border investment, primarily from the United States and particularly from within American states comprising the

Great Lakes borderland, served to “thin” the border and extend socioeconomic, if not geopolitical, territory. Gateways (Detroit-Windsor, Buffalo-Niagara) and corridors created in part by cross-border rail connections enabled market expansion and access to resources and in this context operated as key components of functionally integrated supply chains within the cross-border region. In particular, railways helped create the Toronto-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago transborder trade corridor that is so prominent today.83

82 See: N. Brenner, "Global cities, ‘glocal’ states: global city formation and state territorial restructuring in contemporary Europe," Review of International Political Economy, 5, 1 (1998): 1-37; N. Brenner, "Globalization as reterritorialization: the re-scaling of urban governance in the European Union," Urban Studies, 36, 3 (1999): 431- 451. 83 Cross-border rail connections also linked communities of the northern Great Lakes. For example, the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway Company, originally incorporated in 1883 as the Thunder Bay Colonization Railway Company, was built during the Thunder Bay silver mining boom of the 1880's to serve the mining region southwest of Port Arthur and to tap the Mesabi iron ore deposits of northern Minnesota. Renamed the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway Company in 1887, it was financed mainly by subsidies and bond issues and when completed in 1893 it ran some 130 kilometres from Port Arthur to its Canadian terminus at Gunflint Lake, and then continued ten kilometres into Minnesota. The collapse of the silver boom terminated the company's hopes and in 1899 the line was purchased by the Canadian Northern Railway Company. See: D. Battistel, The Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway website. http://www.padwrr.ca/about.html (accessed January 9, 2014). 44

Figure 9. Niagara Railways, 1907

Yet over time, trucks replaced trains as the dominant mode of transportation for cross- border commodities. This resulted in railway rationalization within the borderland. For example, the NYC, which operated the Canada Southern, Michigan Central, New York and Ottawa, and

Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo lines in Ontario faced financial difficulties in the 1950s and was forced to merge with the Pennsylvania Railroad, thus becoming Penn Central. Penn Central fell into bankruptcy by 1970 and four years later, the U.S. government formed Conrail to continue operating Penn Central’s lines until they could be sold off. In due course, NYC’s Canadian assets were purchased from Conrail by CN and CPR. Eventually, the highway system, combined with the automobile industry, surpassed all other transportation modes and served to increase the growing dominance of the Great Lakes borderland. Here a well established system of

45 transportation corridors linked the most populated Canadian province with major American centres. The construction of road (e.g. the Queen Elizabeth Highway and the MacDonald-Cartier

Highway) and bridge (e.g. the Ambassador and Peace bridges) infrastructure provided significantly greater access to major north-south U.S. highways and facilitated the movement of goods in this busiest of borderland regions. Yet after the signing of the free trade agreements, railroad traffic would increase significantly. iv) The Plains/Prairies Borderland - While settlement of the northern American plains did not begin in earnest until the 1870s, the preconditions that would facilitate the flood of migrants were being put into place. Railroads beyond Chicago began bridging the Mississippi River in the

1850s at St. Paul and served to direct rather than follow settlement.84 The first railroad, the

Northern Pacific, reached Dakota Territory in 1872. And unlike Canada, where the population was small in number and the physical barrier of the shield was immense, there was a huge impetus already in place south of the border to settle the region. During the Civil War, settlement crossed the Mississippi into eastern Kansas and Nebraska. Previously, westward migrants bypassed the Great Plains on their way to Oregon and California, influenced by the common perception of the area as constituting the “Great American Desert”. But that would change as people came to believe that the region was indeed suitable for farming. Free homesteads also proved to be an attractive incentive.85 Dakota had to wait until the land boom taking place in eastern Nebraska and Kansas waned somewhat but with the growing presence of the military to

84 Quoting Isaiah Bowman, David Wishart argues “the railroad became ... ‘the forerunner of development, the pre- pioneer, the baseline of agriculture’.” D. Wishart, “Settling the Great Plains, 1850-1930: Prospects and Problems,” in T. McIlwraith and E. Muller, eds. North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 238. 85 For different interpretations of the settlement of the Great Plains, see: W. Webb, The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment (Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company, 1931); R. Billington,. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1982); P. Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987); R. White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own:" A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 46 deal with the Sioux and the arrival of the Illinois Central Railroad at Sioux City in 1868, the stage was set for the first onslaught of settlers.86

It was during this time that St. Paul and Chicago capitalists competed for control of the northern plains and in this contest, the border did not seem to matter too much. Politicians and businessmen in both centres wanted to extend their empires into Canada and viewed the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company as a barrier to realizing their dreams. Some, including the following editorialist in the January 20, 1864 edition of the NewYork Daily Tribune, believed that rail transportation was the key to tapping the resources of the northwest and ensuring American control of the borderland region: “The great northern thoroughfare across the

American continent must be upon our own soil. Nothing else can so assure our political and commercial dominance, and hasten the assimilating process through which British America will ultimately drop into our hand like a ripe pear.”87 While St. Paul capitalists were most directly concerned with commercial intercourse with the Red River settlement in Manitoba, Chicago interests also dreamed of a northwest empire with their city serving as the primary gateway.

“With this in mind,” Paul Sharp tells us, “the Chicago Daily Democratic Press bitterly attacked the Hudson's Bay Company as ‘that great monopoly which now holds the Northwest in its grasp’ and noisily urged that it be ‘driven out of existence’ so that the ‘whole country [could] be thrown open to settlement.’”88

Support for Manifest Destiny was strong in Minnesota in the 1860s especially among those who sought to exploit the strong commercial ties linking Minnesota with the Red River settlement as a means of acquiring northwestern Canada for the United States. It was only

86 Wishart, “Settling the Great Plains,” 243. 87 New York Daily Tribune, January 20, 1864. As quoted in P. Sharp, “The northern Great Plains: A study in Canadian-American regionalism,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39 (1952), 68. 88 ibid, 66. The quote comes from the Chicago Daily Democratic Press, March 17, 1856. 47 natural, supporters argued, that Minnesota’s economic dominance over Red River should lead to political annexation.89 Certain individuals including former governor Senator Alexander Ramsey and treasury agent and future U.S. consulate at Winnipeg, James “Saskatchewan” Taylor, lobbied hard for such action. In 1866 Taylor, an agent of the U.S. Treasury, presented the draft

“of an act for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, Canada

West, and for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia”.90 The key to the whole venture, Taylor believed, was building railway links between east and west through British territory. His proposals were introduced as a bill the next month by General N.P.

Banks, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, but it was not considered in

Congress.91 Taylor also envisioned the day in which a railroad would link St. Paul to what was then called the “Saskatchewan country” and continued to press the matter in a number of communications written to the state department. 92 In 1868, he and other citizens of Minnesota sent a petition to Congress in which they expressed interest on behalf of inhabitants of

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington for building a railroad from Lakes Michigan and Superior to the Columbia River and Puget Sound which would set the stage for subsequent annexation of the Canadian Northwest.

Following the purchase of Rupert’s Land by the Dominion government in 1870, the

Canadian prairies were still isolated from points east and west and continued to function primarily as a declining fur trade frontier awaiting settlement. In contrast, the northern U.S. plains were about to be invaded by a large-scale migration of railways and settlers that would

89 A. Gluek, Minnesota and the Manifest Destiny of the Canadian Northwest: a study in Canadian-American relations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). 90 U.S. Congress, Serial 1263, 39:1, House Executive Document 128, pp. 2, 31, 32. As quoted in R. Sanborn, “The United States and the British Northwest, 1865-1870,” North Dakota Historical Quarterly 6 (1931), 13. 91 Sanborn, “The United States and the British Northwest, 14. 92 Sharp, “The Northern Great Plains,” 67. 48 effectively terminate its position as a frontier within the borderland region. Demographic processes pushing people westward combined with the rapid growth of the railroad network and the manifest proclivities of the government to advance settlement to the eastern margins of the

Great Plains. In 1870 the Dakotas and, to a much lesser extent, Montana, were about to become less peripheral and more connected to the expanding American empire. River corridors, oriented mostly north-south, were superseded by railroad corridors that ran primarily east-west. The same kind of railway transcontinental corridor would not occur in Canada until later in the century.

Yet while the east-west orientation of railway development in both countries was uppermost, this did not preclude certain individuals from investigating opportunities for expansion across the

49th parallel.

A transplanted Canadian, James J. Hill, along with John Kennedy, a New York City banker, Donald Smith, chief commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, George Stephen,

Smith’s cousin and president of the Bank of Montréal, and Norman Kittson, a wealthy fur trader, built the first railway infiltrating the Canadian prairies, the St. Paul, Minnesota and Manitoba

(StPM&M). While the StPM&M was designed to serve the needs of wheat growers in the Red

River Valley, Hill and his associates, all with strong Canadian connections, wanted to tap the potentially rich agricultural hinterland north of the border. Wilgus contends that this syndicate entered into the scheme because of a monopoly clause that prevented United States railways from crossing the 49th parallel.93 Hill, Smith, Stephen and Kittson were also heavily involved in the CPR at this time and developed a plan to link their railway with the Pembina branch line of the CPR, financed largely with Manitoba money, at Emerson, Dakota Territory. The line was

93 Wilgus, The Railway Interrelations of the United States and Canada. 49 completed in November 1878 and provided Winnipeg with a direct connection to St. Paul and points east.94

In 1888, the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) allied with the Manitoba government to develop the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway (NP&MR.). The provincial government was frustrated with the CPR’s inability to provide branch lines to the developing wheat lands and pursued other means to secure better access to markets. The NP&MR ran east-west from Morris to Brandon and south from Winnipeg to Emerson where it connected to the main line of the NP that extended from Duluth to Puget Sound (Figure 10).95 That same year, a branch of the

StPM&M reached Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.

Figure 10. Northern Pacific Railway Map, circa 1900

94 R. Hidy, M. Hidy, and R. Scott, with D. Hofsommer, The Great Northern Railway: A History (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1988). 95 Source: Map created by L.L. Poates Engraving Co., New York, 1900. Image from the Library of Congress map collection, call number G4126.P3 1900 .L55 RR 502. From Fourth Annual Report of the Northern Pacific Railway company, for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1900. Signed in ms: "W. Lowery." Reference: LC Railroad maps, 502. Scale not given. Taken from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_Pacific_Railroad_map_circa_1900.jpg. Public Domain. (accessed January 9, 2014). Within a relatively short period of time, the NP experienced financial difficulties and in 1901 the N.P.&M.R.was absorbed into the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) system. 50

While the Canadian Pacific was originally safeguarded by the monopoly clause that prevented American railroads from crossing the 49th parallel, a change in public opinion compelled the cancellation of that clause, forcing the railway to protect itself by controlling and directing the alternative routes of the "Soo Line” into the United States.96 The Soo Line, founded by a group of Minneapolis millers and originally named the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie &

Atlantic Railroad, was built between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie in order to connect with the growing Canadian Pacific Railway system. This, in turn, provided Minneapolis shippers with an alternative shipping route exclusive of Chicago, thus making rates more competitive. On June 11, 1888, the CPR acquired a majority share of the Minneapolis, Sault Ste.

Marie and Atlantic Railroad, consolidating it with the Minneapolis and Pacific Railroad, the

Minneapolis and St. Croix Railroad and the Aberdeen, Bismarck and North Western Railroad to form the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. This acquisition, which was spurred initially by their desire to keep it out of the GTR’s hands, gave the CPR access to

Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago and their surrounding hinterlands. And in 1893, the completion of the Portal line from Hankinson, North Dakota to Pasqua Junction gave the CPR a direct route through to the Pacific in direct competition with the GN, which connected eastwards with the Burlington line, and the Northern Pacific railroads. Soon after that it would also serve as the major conduit for U.S.-resident European- and American-born immigrants and returning

Canadians intent on settling in western Canada.97

96 Wilgus, The Railway Interrelations of the United States and Canada. 97 This information is taken from: H. Innis, "Canadian Pacific Railway", in W. Wallace, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. 1 (Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948), 369-374; A 100-year Timeline History of The Soo Line Railroad and Its’ Predecessors http://www.kohlin.com/soo/soo-hist.htm (accessed August 8, 2009); and G. Salmers, “Soo Line Railway,” in D. Gauthier, general manager, The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2005), 882. 51

CPR investment didn’t end there. The Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway route running south of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, and on to Sudbury via the CPR, was acquired by the latter immediately upon its construction. With such action, the CPR established connections with Wisconsin and the Dakotas. The irony of this extension into American space,

McIlwraith notes, is that “the Canadian Pacific, supposed to be the staunch axis of nation- building, was displaying its true continental business stripes.”98

The CPR and the GN, the successor to the StPM&M, emerged as the two most important transcontinentals in the borderland and yet still managed to compete vigorously in each others’ backyards, turning the grassland borderland into what McIlwraith astutely terms “a region of provocation and response.”99 Ironically, for much of this formative period, the president of the

GN was Hill, a Canadian turned American, while the president of the CPR was William

Cornelius Van Horne, an American turned Canadian. Both Hill and Van Horne, as key architects determining the roles that transcontinental railroads would play in national development, were well aware of and open to the limitations and opportunities made possible by the international boundary and their actions, both at home and in the neighbours’ “yard”, did much to shape the evolution of the shared borderland, particularly in the western part of the continent. While Hill and Van Horne agreed on certain issues and disagreed on others, they recognized that securing freight revenue was the primary motivating factor behind rail expansion and, as a consequence, viewed the international border as both a protective shield and a porous membrane. While the

CPR made the most significant move across the border, the GN also invested in railway

98 McIlwraith, “Transport in the Border Lands,” 76. A century later, in 1985 to be exact, the railway, through its Soo Line Railroad subsidiary, purchased the bankrupt Milwaukee Road, extending its reach into the Louisville and Kansas City areas. However, facing serious financial difficulties in the 1990s, the Soo Line sold most of its lines in Wisconsin and northern Michigan, along with its Kansas City and Louisville lines and branch lines in North Dakota and Montana to emerging U.S. short line railways. See: “Subsidiaries,” Canadian Pacific Website (nd). http://www.cpr.ca/en/in-your-community/living-near-the-railway/Pages/subsidiaries.aspx (accessed July 10, 2012). 99 McIlwraith, “Transport in the Borderlands,” 76. 52 development in the prairies. In 1903, Hill built the Brandon, Saskatchewan and Hudson’s Bay

Railway connecting St. John’s. North Dakota and Brandon, Manitoba and in 1909 the GN took over operations of the Midland Railway of Manitoba, with lines running from Portage la Prairie,

Manitoba to Neche, North Dakota and from Morden, Manitoba to Walhalla, North Dakota.100

The result of their shared vision was the development of a limited, yet important number of lines that crossed the border throughout the west, including the Pacific Northwest borderland (Figures

11 and 12).101 v) The Pacific Northwest Borderland

While the promise of a transcontinental rail link proved to be the major lure drawing

British Columbia into Confederation, rail connections to the south also played a major role in the economic growth of the province. Even though much of the investment in rail lines in British

Columbia’s interior came from Canada’s federal government and eastern capitalists, U.S. interests also participated in this development with James J. Hill leading the way. Hill's first

100 Source: http://www.canada-rail.com/alberta/railways/BSHB.html#.UtTMCPRDuYI; http://www.canada- rail.com/alberta/railways/midland.html#.UtTMb_RDuYI (accessed January 13, 2014). 101 The source for Figure 11 is: Canadian Pacific Railway and connecting lines (Chicago : Poole Bros., c1912). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650. http://www.loc.gov/item/2006627697 Public Domain (accessed January 14, 2014). The source for Figure 12 is: Skelton, The Railway Builders, 233.

53

Figure 11. The CPR System, c. 1912

Figure 12. The GN System, 1914

54 entry into B.C. began with the NWSR in 1891, running from the south side of the Fraser River opposite New Westminster to the American border east of Blaine, Washington, where it connected with another Hill line, the Fairhaven & Southern Railway. But it was further east in the Kootenays where Hill devoted most of his attention. American capital and mining technology was initially prominent in the Kootenays after gold was discovered there in the early 1890s.

Discoveries of coal, silver, and base metals in the region further attracted U.S. capital. The GN built lines (e.g. Kaslo & Slocan Railway) into southern B.C. to tap this valuable mining frontier and for a time asserted their control over the industry in the region. Another American, D.C

Corbin, a railway operator and mine owner from Montana, built a series of lines connecting southeastern British Columbia with the railways passing through Spokane.102 Trade and commerce in the Kootenays was mostly dependent upon the GN and Spokane which were closer to the mines than the main CPR line located to the north.

In response to this perceived threat, the CPR under Van Horne succeeded in negotiating an agreement with the federal government to construct the Crows Nest Pass Railway from

Lethbridge, Alberta, through the Crow’s Nest Pass to the lower end of Kootenay Lake. This strengthened the position of the CPR in the region and supported the connection with eastern

Canada which in turn resulted in increased Canadian investment. Yet the CPR was slow to extend the line to the coast, a delay that opened the door for Hill to further expand his empire in

B.C. by building branch lines into the mines and smelters of West Kootenay and the coal fields of the Elk Valley. As well, Hill acquired the provincially chartered Vancouver, Victoria and

102 J. Mouat, “Nationalist Narratives and Regional Realities,” in J. Findlay and K. Coates, eds., Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, The Emil and Kathleen Sick Lecture-Book Series in Western History and Biography, 2002), 127.

55

Eastern Railway in 1901 as part of his plan to develop a Vancouver-Spokane link.103 Hill’s actions concerned Thomas Shaughnessy, who took over from Van Horne in 1899, and in response, the CPR increased its investment in rail construction in southern B.C. (e.g., the construction of the Columbia & Western Railway through the Crow’s Nest Pass to Midway) .

Jeremy Mouat poses the argument that the GN enjoyed certain advantages over the CPR in the competition to secure Kootenay rail traffic, including the fact that much of the population and capital invested in the region was American and that much of the ore moved across the border to American smelters. But it wasn’t too long, he points out, before the Crowsnest Pass

Railway addressed the issue of access from eastern Canada and investment in Kootenay mining from eastern Canadian and British capitalists increased.104 The CPR strengthened its efforts in the region, acquiring several branch lines in the early 1890s and purchasing the Trail smelter built by an American capitalist, Fritz Heinze, in 1898. While the CPR was driven by capitalist motives, it was fortunate enough to be financially supported by Canadian governments who viewed the railway as a key instrument in nation-building, thus presenting an alliance that Hill and the GN could not defeat.

The story of the war waged by the GN and CPR over control of the region is too detailed to account here but suffice to say that this fierce rivalry, which sometimes resulted in physical violence, produced a small but significant network of railway lines in the borderland, particularly on the B.C. side. American branch lines penetrated as far as one hundred miles north of the border by 1910, serving Canadian mines at Trail, Crowsnest, and Cranbrook. However, with government assistance, the CPR completed its’ southern mainline and trade and commerce in southern B.C. had all but ceased to flow across the border to the U.S. The GN’s appetite for

103 D. Wilson, “Rock Creek, B.C. : History,” Virtual Crow’s Nest Highway website (n.d.). http://www.crowsnest- highway.ca/cgi-bin/citypage.pl?city=rock_creek#4 (accessed January 13, 2014). 104 Mouat, “Nationalist Narratives and Regional Realities,” 135. 56

British Columbia space dissipated after Hill’s death in 1916 and a decline in metal prices following the war spurred both companies to abandon routes.105

While southern British Columbia and Washington State was the setting for most trans- border railway development early in the twentieth century, the border between British Columbia and Alaska was traversed by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway which was built toward the end of the Klondike gold rush to transport miners and equipment over the mountains. Even though the gold rush died out before this 110 mile railroad connecting the port of Skagway,

Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory was finished, upon its completion it served as a vital link for various mining ventures. It ceased operation in 1982 when the bottom fell out of the

Yukon mining industry, but it reopened as a tourist train in 1988.106

Global shifts in imperial power, technological revolutions and social transformations, as well as national and continental development, all play an important role in the evolution of borderlands. Railways certainly facilitated commerce and exchange between Canadian and

American communities and regions and thus served as a major force in configuring borderland regions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century period. But, as we have seen, the differences among borderlands and in the manner in which they evolved meant that railways varied in the degree to which they operated within and acted to transform the international regions comprising the borderland zone.

Despite the loss of business to truck transportation and the economic decline resulting from the Depression, freight continued to flow by rail across the border, particularly through what Wilgus describes as the three great series of gateways: the northeastern, the Great Lakes,

105 M. Pennock, “The Kootenay Railway Wars,” Fernie.com website http://fernie.com/about-fernie/history/the- kootenay-railway-wars/ (accessed January 12, 2014). 106 White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, “History.” http://www.wpyr.com/history/ (accessed February 10, 2014). 57 and the northwestern.107 Even before the free trade agreements were signed, Canadian companies continued their practice of investment in American railways. In 1985, CP, through its Soo Line

Railroad subsidiary, purchased the bankrupt Milwaukee Road, extending its reach into the

Louisville and Kansas City areas. However, facing serious financial difficulties in the 1990s, the

Soo Line sold most of its lines in Wisconsin and northern Michigan, along with its Kansas City and Louisville lines and branch lines in North Dakota and Montana to emerging U.S. short line railways.108

CN, Canada’s largest rail company, displayed more interest in expanding its operations in the United States than its major rival, CP. After the Canadian government amalgamated the GTR and other financially troubled companies in 1923, the former subsidiaries of the Grand Trunk,

Grand Trunk Western, operating in Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, and the CVR, operating down the Connecticut River valley from Québec to Long Island Sound, became subsidiaries of the newly formed Canadian National Railway (CN). CN also came to control the Duluth,

Virginia and Rainy Lake Railway of Minnesota which had previously been incorporated by the

Canadian Northern Railway, one of the companies that were amalgamated by CN. In 1970, these companies were grouped together under a CN subsidiary named the Grand Trunk Corporation. In

1985, CN joined forces with CP to take over the Canada Southern Line through southern

Ontario.109 This line, opened in 1868 as the Erie and Niagara Extension Railway and financed by

American capital, was built to secure rail bridge access to Buffalo and Detroit and provide rail access in Canada between both cities. Over the next century, it was owned by the Michigan

Central Railroad, the Pere Marquette Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, the Penn Central

107 Wilgus, The Railway Interrelations of the United States and Canada. 108 “Subsidiaries,” Canadian Pacific Website (nd). http://www.cpr.ca/en/in-your-community/living-near-the- railway/Pages/subsidiaries.aspx (accessed July 10, 2012). 109 “Significant Dates in Canadian Railway History.” (nd) http://www.railways.incanada.net/candate/candate.htm (accessed November 6, 2012). 58

Railroad, and finally Conrail before it was purchased by the Canadian companies.110 Yet while cross-border rail traffic continued, the volume and nature of such flows would change considerably after FTA and NAFTA came into effect.

Postscript: Postmodern Transformations in Railroads and Borderlands

What of railways in the Canada-U.S. borderlands today? Freight dominates although passenger trains may undergo some resurgence in certain locations. There are fewer trans-border rail connections now, but many of them are still important, at least in some of the borderland regions. The most important change taking place is the expanded geography of distribution well beyond the traditional borderlands. A restructuring of North American transportation corridors following the free trade deals and deregulation has occurred in response to increased trans-border freight traffic (Table 4) and a strengthening of north-south regional corridors that were established previously. These include in terms of rank: the Toronto-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago corridor, the Vancouver-Seattle corridor, and the Montreal-New York corridor, which connects the Quebec-Winsor corridor to the Boston-Washington megalopolis. Key to this development has been the creation of an intermodal transportation system designed to more efficiently transfer goods, usually within containers, and people between different systems of transportation during the course of movement between origin and destination. While earlier railways usually were designed to carry freight and people from specific origins to destinations, often within borderland regions, modern companies operate large networks that cover great distances and connect many

110 “Canadian Southern Railway.” (nd) http://www.canada-rail.com/ontario/railways/CASO.html (accessed November 6, 2012). 59 places, something that rail transportation does particularly well because of its fuel efficiency over long distances and its ability to carry significantly large volumes of goods.111

The continent’s largest companies, including CN and CP, have extended their spatial reach through purchases and mergers and the net result has been a much more integrated system with Kansas City and Chicago consolidating their positions as key hubs. Much of the traffic coming from Canada via the CN and CP is exchanged between carriers in Chicago. With their purchase of Illinois Central in 1999, CN extended its reach southwards to New Orleans. CP has moved beyond its traditional Midwestern base and extended its operations into the northeastern

U.S.112

This paper has discussed the broad parameters of transformations in railroads in the

Canada-U.S. borderlands but to really gain an in-depth understanding of what these changes have meant at the regional and local level, it is necessary to focus on specific case studies. While a detailed discussion of the many relevant examples involved in such an endeavour is beyond the scope of this paper, two brief illustrations are offered to demonstrate the transformations that have occurred in borderland railways over time.113 i) The Flaxton (ND)-to-Whitetail (MT) Line of the Dakota Missouri Valley & Western Railway (DMV & W) Born in a competitive era of exorbitant railway construction prior to the First World War, this line in (mostly) North Dakota survived due to a century of cooperation between CP’s Soo

Line (SL) and the Great Northern (GN). SL and GN initially built competing branches one mile apart during the rapid settlement of the northern Great Plains. The SL branch off what is now the

CP Moose Jaw-Chicago main line at Flaxton ran parallel seven miles south of the 49¼ N

111 This information comes from: J. Rodrigue, C. Comtois, and B. Slack, The geography of transport systems (London and New York: Routledge. 2009). 112 ibid. 113 The author wishes to thank Alec Paul, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Geography at the University of Regina, for detailed explanation of these two case studies. 60

ACSUS Presentation Version

Randy William Widdis and Alexander Paul

Introduction

Transportation has played a decisive role in transforming the economic and social geography of both the United States and Canada and in this context, railroads have been prominent. Yet railroad expansion in both countries was not circumscribed by the international boundary; in many cases the border actually transcended such development. This paper presents an historical overview of cross-border railroad networks and develops the argument that because such networks responded to changes in technologies, regional development and market forces, their role in shaping the Canada-United States borderland zone varied over space and time.

Framing Arguments

Transportation systems have played, and will continue to play, an important role in the development of borderlands. Flows, gateways, hubs, corridors, and networks and their variable arrangements through time and over space together form a kind of spatial grammar and constituent syntax which directs this discussion of railways and their impact on the emergence of cross-border spaces within the Canada-United States borderland zone. The Canadian-American borderland zone as “place” was fundamentally altered when railways emerged as the dominant form of transportation towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The constituent borderland regions of the larger zone were further changed when subsequent transportation and communication technologies reduced, but did not eliminate, the relative impact of this mode of transportation (read list of regions on slide).

Transportation Technologies, Railroads and Borderlands

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During the drive to modernity, the railroad played a major part in extending space as well as compressing time, thus creating, in essence, a space paradox by reducing the friction of distance, therefore shrinking space, and expanding the scope of interaction, thus extending space.

The railway thus functioned as one of the most important processes of time-space compression/space-extension reconfiguring cross-border spaces as well as nations, regions, communities and individuals. However, the nature of such transformations and the relative impact of railroads on borderlands varied because they occurred in different settings and involved different kinds of connections. The impact of railroads in the shaping of borderlands decreased when the automobile, the airplane and other inventions accelerated human interaction and further unbounded space and time. Yet towards the end of the twentieth century within the context of globalization and increasing trade liberalization, railways once again played a major part in reconfiguring Canadian-American borderlands.

Railroads and Borderlands in the Age of Modernity i) A Broad Overview a) The United States - During the first few decades of the nineteenth century, roads and canals were built linking the eastern seaboard with the rapidly expanding trans-Appalachian west. As well, steamboats facilitated transportation on the Great Lakes, Atlantic coastal waters, and rivers.

But most important was the railroad. Beginning with 100 miles in 1830, by 1860 there were over

27,000 miles of railroad track covering the United States. This transportation revolution turned the United States into a single massive market for the manufactured goods of the Northeast, the early center of American industrialization.

At mid-century, most railroad lines were concentrated in the Northeast and ran only short distances. But that would change as the larger and more successful companies competing for

2 hinterland trade swallowed up smaller ones and built lines that carried freight between the newly settled Great Lakes region and the eastern seaboard. By the end of the 1850s, Chicago was served by eleven railroads and was emerging as the "central hub" of the industry.

Upon the end of the Civil War, there occurred a transition in the trajectory of American imperialism as the country increasingly redirected its efforts to conquer space and extend territorial control. Transportation, and, in particular, rail transportation, was the key to the development of the new space economy with a manufacturing and population core in the

Northeast and Midwest and agricultural and resource peripheries elsewhere. The railway gave capitalists an unrestrained opportunity to carve up a continent, parceling out large territories, creating intercity axes and interregional connections, defining the trade areas and therefore the commercial prospects of the towns, setting the basic network, and controlling the pulse of circulation for the internal body of the nation.

Eventually the railroad barons' halcyon days would end. By the end of the First World

War, the automobile was well on its way to revolutionizing transportation and land use. Yet the end result of this era of railroad tycoons was a country joined by the most extensive network of railroads in the world. b) Canada Ð Right from the beginning, railway development in Canada was more oriented beyond the border towards the dominant American space. Early lines were designed to strengthen the roles of Montréal and the St. Lawrence as transit routes between the nodal points of a largely American economic space. While the U.S. completed its first transcontinental line in

1869, it took longer for the same project to be completed in Canada. Realizing that railroads were superior to canals in carrying goods and necessary to compete with the Americans for the trade of the interior, the British did construct a number of lines, including the debt-ridden Grand

3

Trunk (GTR), which would eventually connect centres along the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes littoral. While a harsh climate, challenging physical geography, and a small and dispersed population base hindered development, the British North American/Canadian railway system, just like the more developed one south of the border, extended agricultural and timber frontiers, stimulated the growth of geographically favoured centres, and played an essential role in the process of industrialization. It also brought the transportation system and the colonies north of the border into closer contact with the rapidly developing transportation system of the United

States.

With Confederation and then the National Policy, the railroad took on even greater importance in Canada. In 1867 Canada had only 3,644 kilometres of railways. By 1900 this had risen to 28,251 kilometres, and in 1914 to 49,272 kilometres. As in the U.S., the railway in

Canada was viewed as one of the most valued modes in the building of a territorial space. And once again, Canadian policy, in this case the decision of the state to support the construction of a transcontinental railway, was directed by American frames of reference; that is, it was driven by defensive national political concerns and in support of competition with American railway companies for emerging western freight.

Yet as Andy den Otter points out, more often than not, Canadian politicians welcomed

American investment, American technology, American expertise, and American railway connections. In time, two new transcontinental systems emerged to challenge the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). World War I brought an end to the highly expansive phase of railway development even though the system continued to grow at a decidedly more modest pace. The competition from automobiles and trucks had less of an effect in Canada than in the

United States but eventually this would change.

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c) Cross-Border Activity - Despite a later start, the Canadian lines would in due course compete more vigorously with their American counterparts and in this regard, the border became both permeable and fixed - permeable in the sense that in their plans to expand operations, railway companies on both sides made a number of penetrations into each others′ territories; fixed in the sense that both Canadian and American lines operated within tariff-protected home markets. Throughout the period of national expansion in Canada and the United States, those railways built on both sides paralleling the international boundary were as much borderland railways as those that crossed this same geopolitical border because they were often built in response to what was transpiring on the other side. At the same time, a number of lines were built specifically to tap cross-border flows of resources and goods or to take advantage of shorter distances and paid little attention to the geopolitical division. And in this effort, Canadian companies, backed by foreign capital, took the lead.

As American investment in Canada increased dramatically during the turn of the twentieth century period, it was the railroads that constituted the only Canadian industry to undertake direct investment in the U.S. to any significant degree. Canadian interests, financed often by foreign, and especially British, capital, overbuilt railroads during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because they hoped to compete with American companies. In doing so, they often ignored the international border and extended operations into the United States, thus strengthening north-south ties. Increasingly, American railway interests adopted the same philosophy, recognizing that expansion north of the line could potentially generate great profits.

However, such activity was by no means spatially uniform and varied among borderland regions.

5

Because of time constraints and a desire to say something about current trends, I will only say a few words about railway development in one of the borderlands, thus leaving out most of what constitutes a very complex story that is told in the larger paper. ii) A Borderland Regional Focus a) The Great Lakes Borderland - Southern Ontario, by virtue of its proximity to the Midwest, reaped the benefits of Midwestern U.S. expansion. Along with the development of its own internal network of railway lines, Ontario, particularly the southern peninsula, served as an extraterritorial appendage of American lines connecting the East with the Midwest. The transnational character of transportation within the Great Lakes borderland was apparent even before mid-century when an established canal system combined with rapidly developing rail lines to create a cross-border transportation network that facilitated the movement of goods. In the early 1850s, lines were built on both sides that paralleled the lakes; in many cases they were built in order to compete with railways on the other side. Businessmen and politicians on both sides of the border recognized the basic geographical fact that in some locations American outlets formed the best corridors for Canadian trade, whereas in others, Canadian outlets formed the best corridors for American trade.

By the 1870s, railroads dominated transportation in the region and several lines connected communities within and between Ontario and adjacent states. By the turn of the twentieth century, Ontario was emerging as the primary target for American investment in resources and branch plants and often this investment resulted in the construction of rail lines

(e.g. the Cobourg, Peterborough and Marmora and the Belleville and North Hastings railways were built in order to service American financed mining ventures north of Lake Ontario).

Conversely, Ontario capitalists invested in railways in order to ship resources highly valued in

6

American markets. Gateways (Detroit-Windsor, Buffalo-Niagara) and corridors created in part by cross-border rail connections enabled market expansion and access to resources and in this context operated as key components of functionally integrated supply chains within the cross- border region. In particular, railways helped create the Toronto-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago transborder trade corridor that is so prominent today. Yet over time, trucks replaced trains as the dominant mode of transportation for cross-border commodities resulting in railway rationalization within the borderland.

Cross-border rail links played very different roles in configuring and re-configuring these two borderlands over time. The same can be said for the other four borderlands as well. The following five slides provide just a brief glimpse into the kind of connections that existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries within the other three transnational regions.

Postmodern Transformations in Railroads and Borderlands

What of railways in the Canada-U.S. borderlands today?. The most important change taking place is the expanded geography of distribution well beyond the traditional borderlands. A restructuring of North American transportation corridors following the free trade deals and deregulation has occurred in response to increased trans-border freight traffic and a strengthening of north-south regional corridors that were established previously. Key to this development has been the creation of an intermodal transportation system designed to more efficiently transfer goods, usually within containers, and people between different systems of transportation during the course of movement between origin and destination. While earlier railways usually were designed to carry freight and people from specific origins to specific destinations, often within borderland regions, modern companies operate large networks that cover great distances and

7 connect many places, something that rail transportation does particularly well because of its fuel efficiency over long distances and its ability to carry significantly large volumes of goods.

The continent’s largest companies, including CN and CP, have extended their spatial reach through purchases and mergers and the net result has been a much more integrated system with Kansas City and Chicago consolidating their positions as key hubs. Much of the traffic coming from Canada via the CN and CP is exchanged between carriers in Chicago. With their purchase of Illinois Central in 1999, CN extended its reach southwards to New Orleans. CP has moved beyond its traditional Midwestern base and extended its operations into the northeastern

U.S.

In order to really gain an in-depth understanding of what these transformations have meant at the regional and local level, it is necessary to focus on specific case studies. I’ll finish with two brief illustrations that demonstrate to some extent the changes that have occurred in borderland railways over time. i) The Flaxton (ND)-to-Whitetail (MT) Line of the Dakota Missouri Valley & Western Railway (DMV & W)

Born in a competitive era of exorbitant railway construction prior to the First World War, this line in (mostly) North Dakota survived due to a century of cooperation between CP’s Soo

Line (SL) and the Great Northern (GN). SL and GN initially built competing branches one mile apart during the rapid settlement of the northern Great Plains. In order to more economically share the limited low-value grain traffic originating in this region, they negotiated a deal whereby they would split the costs of construction of a line to which they both had access. DMV

& W regional railroad has run the Whitetail branch for almost forty years now. It was a hand-to- mouth existence until the Baaken oil boom which has given the line a new lease on life.

8

ii) The Montréal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MM & A) On July 6, 2013, a catastrophic series of oil tanker explosions on the Montréal, Maine &

Atlantic Railway destroyed the heart of Lac Mégantic, Québec and killed 47 people. The MM &

A was a classic borderland railway, crossing from Canada into the U.S. and then by trackage rights on two Irving family lines back into Canada. Ironically, it was initially built by CP as its main line from Montréal to the Atlantic port of Saint John, New Brunswick. By the 1990s the line was reduced to serving local industries and handling a daily through train of containers in each direction. CP sold it to an American company who shortly thereafter turned it over to Rail

World Group, headquartered in Chicago, who named it the Montréal, Maine & Atlantic. The sudden boom in shipping crude oil by rail from North Dakota’s Baaken oilfields to refineries in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada went a considerable way in helping MM & A pay off its debts. But that dream went up in flames when a CP train destined for Irving Oil’s refinery at

Saint John ran away with no-one at the controls and derailed at high speed on the curve in Lac

Mégantic town centre.

The impoverished MM & A was left holding the bag. Who could the town sue? Where would the case be tried: in a Canadian court or an American court? Lac Mégantic became a borderlands issue and a railway issue of the first importance, turning the spotlight as never before on the transport of hazardous materials by rail, especially over regional and short lines. CP gained most of the revenue from the change in fortunes but it was the MM & A which faced the brutal consequences of the disaster. The company filed for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bangor on Aug. 7, a month after the explosions. At present, Railroad Acquisition Holdings, the affiliate of New York-based investment firm Fortress Investment Group, is in the process of filing additional paperwork before finalizing its purchase of the MM & A. Railroad Acquisition

9

Holdings plans to change the name of the railway to Central Maine and Quebec Railway.

Fortress Investment group has said very little as to why they are interested in making the purchase but experts believe that they, like many in the past, see potential in a 500 mile cross- border corridor that continues to be the shortest route between Montréal and Saint John. That route, Fortress believes, would be profitable again if the Québec government would allow the return of crude oil shipments from the Baaken and other cargo on the line.

These two case studies are illustrative of several trends, too many to discuss here.

Perhaps most importantly, they reveal that at least in terms of transportation spaces, in this case the spaces defined by railways, borderlands and the borders that define them, are no longer as relevant to North American railway businesses as they once were. Two railway borderlands, once distant and seemingly largely separate from each other, are now interconnected by railways and product. These two case studies show how Canadian and American companies view themselves as belonging to and competing within a North American rail network where national borders play only a minor role. In this regard, North American railways are continuing with a philosophy that has long been in practice but is now much easier to realize given advancements in technology and developments in political and economic spheres.

10

Railroads)and)Borderland) Spaces:)The)Canada4U.S.)Case!

Randy)William)Widdis)) University)of)Regina! Introduc@on! ¥ decisive)role)of)railroads) ¥ extension)in)both)the)American)and)Canadian) hinterlands)was)designed)to)organize)territory,) increase)the)number)of)seGlements,)support)resource) exploita@on,)and)facilitate)the)development)of) regional)and)na@onal)markets) ¥ railroad)expansion)was)not)circumscribed)by)the) interna@onal)boundary;)in)many)cases)the)border) actually)transcended)such)development) ¥ paper)presents)an)historical)overview)of)cross4border) railroad)networks) ¥ because)such)networks)responded)to)changes)in) technologies,)regional)development)and)market) forces,)their)role)in)shaping)the)Canada4United)States) borderland)zone)varied)over)space)and)@me) ) Framing)Arguments)! ¥ transporta@on)systems)have)played,)and)will)con@nue)to)! play,)an)important)role)in)the)development)of)borderlands) ¥ flows,)gateways,)hubs,)corridors,)and)networks)and)their) variable)arrangements)through)@me)and)over)space) together)form)a)kind)of)spa$al&grammar)and)cons@tuent) syntax)(Widdis)2015))which)directs)this)discussion)of) railways)and)their)impact)on)the)emergence)of)cross4border) spaces)within)the)Canada4United)States)borderland)zone)) ¥ Canadian4American)borderland)zone)as)“place”)was) fundamentally)altered)when)railways)emerged)as)the) dominant)form)of)transporta@on)towards)the)middle)of)the) nineteenth)century)

) ) ) ) Framing)Arguments!

¥ cons@tuent)borderland)regions)of)the)larger)zone)were)further) changed)when)subsequent)transporta@on)and)communica@on) technologies)reduced,)but)did)not)eliminate,)the)rela@ve)impact)of) this)mode)of)transporta@on) Ð Atlan$c)(Newfoundland)aVer)1949,)Nova)Sco@a,)P.E.I.,)New)Brunswick,) eastern)Québec)[Gaspé],)Maine,)New)Hampshire,)MassachuseGs,)Rhode) Island,)Connec@cut)) Ð St.&Lawrence&(Québec,)Vermont,)Maine,)MassachuseGs,)New)Hampshire,) New)York,)Rhode)Island,)Connec@cut))) Ð Great&Lakes&(Ontario,)New)York,)Pennsylvania,)Ohio,)Indiana,)Michigan,) Illinois,)Wisconsin,)eastern)Minnesota))) Ð Plains&and&Prairies&(Manitoba,)Saskatchewan,)Alberta,)western) Minnesota,)North)Dakota,)Montana))) Ð Pacific&Northwest&(Bri@sh)Columbia,)Alberta,)Idaho,)Washington,) Oregon)) Transporta@on)Technologies,)Railroads)and) Borderlands!

¥ $me>space&compression&(Harvey)1989))is)used)by) geographers)(eg.)Warf,)2008))when)considering)how) socie@es)have)used)transporta@on)and)communica@on) technologies)to)reduce)the)fric@on)of)distance)and)facilitate) the)interac@on)among)places) ¥ idea)of)annihila@on)of)space)and)@me)through)new) transporta@on)technologies)first)emerged)during)the) Industrial)Revolu@on) Ð Ralph)Waldo)Emerson)(1844):)“Not)only)is)distance)annihilated,)but) when,)as)now,)the)locomo@ve)and)the)steamboat,)like)enormous) shuGles,)shoot)every)day)across)the)thousand)various)threads)of) na@onal)descent)and)employment,)and)bind)them)fast)in)one)web,) an)hourly)assimila@on)goes)forward)and)there)is)no)danger)that)local) peculiari@es)and)hos@li@es)should)be)preserved.”)& Transporta@on)Technologies,)Railroads)and) Borderlands!

¥ nature,)impact)and)pace)of)such)developments)have)rapidly) accelerated)during)the)transi@on)to)modernity)and)post4 modernity) Ð pre4industrial)revolu@on:))transport)technology)was)limited)to) harnessing)animal)power)for)land)transport)and)wind)power)for) mari@me)transport,)meaning)that)human)movement)and)trade)for) the)most)part)were)local)in)scope)and)that)communica@ons)were) restricted)between)human)communi@es) Ð life)for)most)people)was)circumscribed)by)the)shared)spa@al)and) temporal)context)of)the)local) Ð Industrial)revolu@on:)industrializa@on)developed)vehicles)of) communica@on)and)transporta@on)which)triggered)a)shiV)in)the) capture)of)space4@me)rela@onships,)expanding)the)experience)and) cogni@on)of)space)and)@me)and,)by)default,)increasing)the)size)and) reconfiguring)the)shape)of)the)borderland) Transporta@on)Technologies,)Railroads)and) Borderlands!

Ð Industrial)revolu@on:)people)and)communi@es)were)drawn)out) of)their)spa@ally)confined)and)familiar)worlds)into)one)that) was)more)connected,)integrated)and)mobile) Ð during)the)nineteenth)century,)turnpike)roads,)followed)by) canals,)steam)boats,)and)railroads,)along)with)the)telegraph,) not)only)reduced)@me4space)and)extended)space)among) communi@es)and)regions)within)Canada)and)the)United)States,) they)also)operated)to)develop)and)strengthen)connec@ons) within)the)borderlands) Ð increased)the)capacity)of)people,)businesses)and)communi@es) to)orientate)themselves)with)other)people)and)places)beyond) the)local,)the)regional,)and)even)the)na@onal) Ð this)annihila@on)of)@me)and)space,)in)turn,)increased)the) ability)of)capitalism)to)expand)markets,)overcome)the)costs)of) distance,)and,)most)importantly,)increase)profits) ) Transporta@on)Technologies,)Railroads)and) Borderlands! ! ¥ space¶dox&created)by)railroads) ¥ railway)func@oned)as)one)of)the)most)important)processes) of)$me>space&compression/space>extension) ¥ the)nature)of)such)transforma@ons)and)the)rela@ve)impact) of)railroads)on)borderlands)varied)because)they)occurred)in) different)seings)and)involved)different)kinds)of)connec@ons) ¥ decreasing)impact)of)railroads)in)the)shaping)of)borderlands)) when)other)inven@ons)accelerated)human)interac@on)and) further)unbounded)space)and)@me) ¥ yet)towards)the)end)of)the)twen@eth)century)within)the) context)of)globaliza@on)and)increasing)trade)liberaliza@on,) railways)once)again)play)a)major)part)in)reconfiguring) Canadian4American)borderlands) ! Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920! ¥ i))The)United)States) Ð importance)of)roads,)canals)and)steamboats)but)most)important)was) the)railroad) ¥ 1830)–)100)miles;)1860)4)over)27,000)miles)of)railroad)track)which)turned)the) United)States)into)a)single)massive)market)for)the)manufactured)goods)of)the) Northeast,)the)early)center)of)American)industrializa@on) Ð extended)market)for)the)Northeast) Ð more)successful)companies)compe@ng)for)hinterland)trade) swallowed)up)smaller)ones)and)built)lines)that)carried)freight) between)the)Great)Lakes)region)and)the)eastern)seaboard,)thus) integra@ng)the)northeast)ecumene)with)the)newly)opened)Midwest) Ð emergence)of)Chicago)as)central)hub)by)the)1850s)

The)U.S.)Railroad)System)in)1870) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview,)183041920!

¥ aVer)the)end)of)the)Civil)War,)the)US)directed)its)efforts)to) conquer)space)and)develop)ins@tu@ons)and)infrastructure)to) stabilize)and)extend)territorial)control) ¥ transporta@on,)and,)in)par@cular,)rail)transporta@on,)was) the)key)to)the)development)of)the)new&space&economy& ¥ railroad)gave)capitalists)an)unrestrained)opportunity)to) carve)up)a)con@nent,)parceling)out)large)territories,)crea@ng) intercity)axes)and)interregional)connec@ons,)defining)the) trade)areas)and)therefore)the)commercial)prospects)of)the) towns,)seing)the)basic)network,)and)controlling)the)pulse) of)circula@on)for)the)internal)body)of)the)na@on) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of)Modernity:)A)Broad) Overview,)183041920! ¥ end)of)railroad)barons')halcyon)days)and)rise)of)automobile) ¥ most)extensive)network)of)railroads)in)the)world) The)U.S.)Railway)System)in)1918) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920! ¥ ii))Canada) Ð railway)development)in)Canada)was)more)oriented)beyond)the) border)towards)the)dominant)American)space)) Ð early)lines)designed)to))strengthen)the)roles)of)Montréal)and)the)St.) Lawrence)as)transit)routes)between)the)nodal)points)of)a)largely) American)economic)space) Ð took)longer)for)the)transcon@nental)line)to)be)completed)in)Canada) Ð eventually)realized)that)railroads)were)superior)to)canals)in)carrying) goods)and)necessary)to)compete)with)the)Americans)for)the)trade)of) the)interior) Ð led)to)construc@on)of))a)number)of)lines,)including)the)debt4ridden) Grand)Trunk)(GTR),)which)would)eventually)connect)centres)along) the)St.)Lawrence4Great)Lakes)liGoral) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920!

¥ despite)geographical)challenges,)the)Bri@sh)North) American/Canadian)railway)system)extended) agricultural)and)@mber)fron@ers,)s@mulated)the) growth)of)geographically)favoured)centres,)and) played)an)essen@al)role)in)the)process)of) industrializa@on)) ¥ 1867)–)3,644)kms.)of)railways;)1900)–)28,251)kms.,) 1914)–)49,272)kms.) ¥ railroads)a)valued)mode)in)the)building)of)a) Canadian)territorial)space) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920!

¥ Canadian)policy,)in)this)case)the)decision)of)the) state)to)support)the)construc@on)of)a) transcon@nental)railway,)was)directed)by)American) frames)of)reference) ¥ Andy)den)OGer)(1997):)Canadian)poli@cians) welcomed)American)investment,)American) technology,)American)exper@se,)and)American) railway)connec@ons) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920!

¥ in)@me,)two)new)transcon@nental)systems)4)the)Canadian) Northern)(CN))and)the)Grand)Trunk/Grand)Trunk)Pacific/ Na@onal)Transcon@nental)(GTR/GTP))4)emerged)to)challenge) the)monopoly)of)the)Canadian)Pacific)Railway)(CPR)) ¥ war)brought)an)end)to)the)highly)expansive)phase)of)railway) development)even)though)the)system)con@nued)to)grow)at) a)decidedly)more)modest)pace)) ¥ compe@@on)from)automobiles)and)trucks) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of) Modernity:)A)Broad)Overview),)183041920! ¥ iii))Cross4Border)Ac@vity) Ð over)@me,)the)border)became)both)permeable)and)fixed)4)permeable) in)the)sense)that)in)their)plans)to)expand)opera@ons,)railway) companies)on)both)sides)made)a)number)of)penetra@ons)into)each) othersr)territories;)fixed)in)the)sense)that)both)Canadian)and) American)lines)operated)within)tariff4protected)home)markets)) Ð railways)built)on)both)sides)paralleling)the)interna@onal)boundary) were)as)much)borderland)railways)as)those)that)crossed)this)same) geopoli@cal)boundary)) Ð even)though)these)railways)did)not)cross)the)border,)they)were)oVen) built)in)response)to)what)was)transpiring)on)the)other)side)) Ð as)well,)lines)were)built)specifically)to)tap)cross4border)flows)of) resources)and)goods)or)to)take)advantage)of)shorter)distances)and) paid)liGle)aGen@on)to)the)geopoli@cal)division) Railroads)and)Borderlands)in)the)Age)of)Modernity:)A) Broad)Overview),)183041920! ¥ the)railroads)cons@tuted)the)only)Canadian)industry)to) undertake)direct)investment)in)the)US) ¥ by)1914,)“Canadian)railways)controlled)four)miles)in)the) United)States)for)every)mile)in)Canada)controlled)by) railways)of)the)United)States”)(Skelton,)1914,)232))) ¥ Canadian)interests)overbuilt)railroads)during)the)late) nineteenth)and)early)twen@eth)centuries) ¥ in)doing)so,)they)oVen)ignored)the)interna@onal)border)and) extended)opera@ons)into)the)United)States,)thus) strengthening)north4south)@es) ¥ increasingly,)American)railway)interests)adopted)the)same) philosophy,)) ¥ such)ac@vity)was)by)no)means)spa@ally)uniform)and)varied) among)borderland)regions) ) ) A)Borderland)Regional)Focus! ¥ The)Great)Lakes)Borderland)) Ð Ontario,)par@cularly)the)southern)peninsula,)served)as)an) extraterritorial)appendage)of)American)lines)connec@ng)the)East) with)the)Midwest) Ð transna@onal)character)of)transporta@on)within)the)Great)Lakes) borderland)was)apparent)even)before)mid4century) Ð in)the)early)1850s,)lines)were)built)on)both)sides)that)paralleled)the) lakes) Ð in)many)cases)they)were)built)in)order)to)compete)with)railways)on) the)other)side) Ð businessmen)and)poli@cians)on)both)sides)of)the)border)recognized) the&basic&geographical&fact&that)in)some)loca@ons)American)outlets) formed)the)best)corridors)for)Canadian)trade,)whereas)in)others,) Canadian)outlets)formed)the)best)corridors)for)American)trade)) A)Borderland)Regional)Focus! ¥ The)Great)Lakes)Borderland)) Ð by)the)1870s,)railroads)dominated)transporta@on)in)the) region)and)several)lines)connected)communi@es)within) and)between)Ontario,)New)York,)Pennsylvania,)Ohio,) Indiana,)Michigan,)Wisconsin,)Minnesota)and)beyond) Ð Ontario)the)primary)target)for)American)investment)in) resources)and)branch)plants)and)oVen)this)investment) resulted)in)the)construc@on)of)rail)lines)(eg.)the)Cobourg,) Peterborough)and)Marmora)and)the)Belleville)and)North) Has@ngs)railways)were)built)in)order)to)service)American) financed)mining)ventures)north)of)Lake)Ontario)) Ð conversely,)Ontario)capitalists)invested)in)railways)in) order)to)ship)resources)highly)valued)in)American) markets) A)Borderland)Regional)Focus!

¥ The)Great)Lakes)Borderland) Ð gateways)(Detroit4Windsor,)Buffalo4Niagara))and) corridors)created)in)part)by)cross4border)rail)connec@ons) enabled)market)expansion)and)access)to)resources)) Ð operated)as)key)components)of)func@onally)integrated) supply)chains)within)the)cross4border)region) Ð in)par@cular,)railways)helped)create)the)Toronto4 Windsor4Detroit4Chicago)transborder)trade)corridor)that) is)so)prominent)today) Ð yet)over)@me,)trucks)replaced)trains)as)the)dominant) mode)of)transporta@on)for)cross4border)commodi@es) resul@ng)in)railway)ra@onaliza@on)within)the)borderland) ) The)Grand)Trunk)and)Great)Western)Railway)System)1885) Proposed)Route)of)the)European)and)North)American)Railway) Central)Vermont)Railroad,)1879) (purchased)by)the)GTR)in)1893)) Northern)Pacific)Railway)Map,)circa)1900)

The)Great)Northern)System,)1914) The)Canadian)Pacific)Railway)System,)c.)1912) ! Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in)Railroads)and) Borderlands! ¥ expanded)geography)of)distribu@on)well)beyond) the)tradi@onal)borderlands) ¥ restructuring)of)North)American)transporta@on) corridors)) ¥ crea@on)of)an)intermodal)transporta@on)system)) ¥ expansion)of)spa@al)reach))of)major)railways) through)networks,)mergers)and)purchases) ¥ a)much)more)integrated)system)with)Kansas)City) and)Chicago)consolida@ng)their)posi@ons)as)key) hubs) ¥ extension)of)Canadian)lines) Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in) Railroads)and)Borderlands! ¥ Two)Case)Studies) Ð i))The)Flaxton)(ND)4to4Whitetail)(MT))Line)of)the) Dakota)Missouri)Valley)&)Western)Railway)(DMV) &)W)) ¥ Soo)Line)(SL))and)Great)Northern)(GN))compe@@on) ¥ coopera@on)results)in)construc@on)of)line) ¥ hand4to4mouth)existence)un@l)the)Baaken)oil)boom) which)has)given)the)line)a)new)lease)on)life)

Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in) Railroads)and)Borderlands! ¥ Two)Case)Studies) Ð ii))The)Montréal,)Maine)&)Atlan@c)Railway)(MM) &)A)) ¥ July)6,)2013)explosions) ¥ a)classic)borderland)railway) ¥ originally)main)CP)line))from)Montréal)to)the)Atlan@c) port)of)Saint)John)

Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in) Railroads)and)Borderlands! ¥ Two)Case)Studies) Ð ii))The)Montréal,)Maine)&)Atlan@c)Railway)(MM) &)A)) ¥ reduc@on)of)business) ¥ purchase)of)line)by)Rail)World)Group,)who)named)it) the)Montréal,)Maine)&)Atlan@c) ¥ impact)of)Baaken)oilfields) ¥ impact)of))catastrophe) Ð )who)could)the)town)sue?) Ð where)would)the)case)be)tried?)

Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in) Railroads)and)Borderlands! ¥ Two)Case)Studies) Ð ii))The)Montréal,)Maine)&)Atlan@c)Railway)(MM)&)A)) ¥ a)borderlands)issue)and)a)railroad)issue) ¥ MM)&)A)filed)for)bankruptcy) ¥ In)June)2014,)Railroad)Acquisi@on)Holdings,)the)affiliate)of)New) York4based)investment)firm)Fortress)Investment)Group,) completed)its)purchase)of)the)MM)&)A) ¥ name)change)to)Central)Maine)and)Quebec)Railway) ¥ Fortress)Investment)group))sees))poten@al)in)a)500)mile)cross4 border)corridor)that)con@nues)to)be)the)shortest)route)between) Montréal)and)Saint)John) ¥ that)route,)Fortress)believes,)would)be)profitable)again)if)the) Québec)government)would)allow)the)return)of)crude)oil) shipments)from)the)Baaken)and)other)cargo)on)the)line) ¥ the)company)plans)to)resume)transport)of)crude)oil)by)rail)in) January)2016) Postmodern)Transforma@ons)in)Railroads) and)Borderlands! ¥ Concluding)Remarks) Ð case)studies)reveal)that)at)least)in)terms)of)transporta@on) spaces,)in)this)case)the)spaces)defined)by)railways,) borderlands)and)the)borders)that)define)them,)are)no)longer) as)relevant)to)North)American)railway)businesses)as)they)once) were) Ð two)railway)borderlands,)once)distant)and)seemingly)largely) separate)from)each)other,)are)now)interconnected)by)railways) and)product) Ð two)case)studies)show)how)Canadian)and)American)companies) view)themselves)as)belonging)to)and)compe@ng)within)a)North) American)rail)network)where)na@onal)borders)play)only)a) minor)role) Ð North)American)railways)are)con@nuing)with)a)philosophy)that) has)long)been)in)prac@ce)but)is)now)much)easier)to)realize) given)advancements)in)technology)and)developments)in) poli@cal)and)economic)spheres)