Vancouver or Bust

A motor trip across Canada is an endurance test. Only 1,945 out of 4,300-odd miles are hard-surfaced. In winter snow blocks the Rockies' passes, shuts off even the most adventuresome motorists. Not until 1943, when the last link was finished in Ontario, was there even a makeshift road across the Dominion. Even then, it was three years before any motorist made the trip from sea to sea--twelve days of bumps, jolts and dust.

The lack of a modern, well-paved Trans-Canada Highway is not for want of talk. Associations all over the Dominion have plugged for it. So have provincial leaders, and last week Ottawa admitted that it had heard some of them. Prompted by the oratory of British Columbia's Premier Byron ("Boss") Johnson at the Liberal Convention, it promised to call a Dominion-provincial highway conference this fall. Because the British North America Act leaves the problem of highways to the provinces, Ottawa was not ready to do much more than confer. Besides, it wanted the provinces to bear at least half the cost of any highway built.

Since Confederation, the Dominion government has spent only $79 million on peacetime highway construction, mostly on a dollar-for-dollar basis with the provinces as make-work in hard times. This fall's conference will thresh out how to charge off the estimated $400 million needed to put a cross-Canada route into shape. It will also try to agree on a route.

What is now unofficially dubbed the Trans-Canada Highway (see map) starts in Halifax, follows hard-surfaced roads through the Maritimes, Quebec and eastern Ontario, then loops over graveled roads into the bush before it straightens out on to patchily paved roads through Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. It humps up over the Rockies at 5,327 feet, and goes on to Vancouver.

Because this route cannot be kept free of snow in winter, an alternative line through Yellowhead Pass (3,717 ft.) has vociferous boosters. So does a southerly route through Crowsnest Pass. To western provincial government, the important thing is the road, not the route.

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