The years between 1900 and the start of World War I were exciting ones for railway proposals in Wellington County and adjoining jurisdictions. By 1900, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific had taken over control of virtually all the rail lines west of Toronto.
The Grand Trunk was the dominant company. It served every village and town in Wellington County, with the exception of Erin and Arthur. Residents, with some justification, regarded the company’s service as slow and substandard. As well, some connections using the rail network were awkward. The northern part of Erin Township had poor connections with Guelph, for example. Also bad was taking a train from Arthur village to Guelph. That required a trip by the CPR to Harriston, and then a walk to the Grand Trunk station for a connecting train to Guelph.
Promoters pushing new rail lines surfaced from time to time in the 1880s and 1890s, but those proposals all went nowhere. After 1900 a new idea captured the imagination of many: electric railways. These would be built to much lighter, and less expensive, standards than steam railways. Service would be better, with single cars operating at intervals of an hour or two, offering great convenience to travellers and those shipping small consignments.
Today, the best known of such proposals was the Hydro-Radial scheme championed by Sir Adam Beck. His concept was to use surplus power generated at Niagara Falls to power electric rail cars that would connect the towns and villages of southern Ontario. Rights-of-way would also be convenient corridors for transmitting electricity.
Another proposal was the People’s Railway, which planned a similar network. That idea collapsed when its promoters proved to be hucksters. The first of such schemes is less well known today. It was backed by the ill-fated Canadian Northern Railway and its principal owners, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann.
Mackenzie and Mann were aggressive and astute capitalists. Initially, their main holding was the Toronto Streetcar system. In 1899 the partners organized the Canadian Northern Railway, which, over the next half-dozen years, constructed a network of relatively light branch lines on the Canadian prairies. All the work was done with borrowed money, much of it from the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
By 1910 their ambitions had grown immensely. The pair now planned a transcontinental railway. They picked up lines in Quebec and the Maritimes, and connected their system with a line east from Port Arthur to Capreol, where it split into lines to Toronto and Montreal.
The biggest source of rail revenue was in the prosperous farming and industrial towns of southern Ontario. Mackenzie and Mann planned to serve them with a lightly-constructed network of electric lines. The partners had investments in Niagara electricity, which they would use to power their southern Ontario network.
In the spring of 1912 a group of men from the Guelph, including the mayor and several members of the city’s Board of Trade, organized a public meeting in Arthur to discuss the proposed new rail network. Canadian Northern had indicated that a line from Toronto to Guelph would be one of the first built, and Guelph’s businessmen grew excited over the possibility that the city would be a hub on the new system. Guelph’s merchants would be well-positioned to draw business from the small towns to the west and north.
A proposal for better connections with Guelph was a popular one in Arthur. A huge crowd jammed the Arthur council chambers and overflowed outside when the Guelph men opened the meeting on March 21.
The audience was most receptive to their discussion of the benefits of a direct rail link to Guelph. J.W. Lyon, Guelph’s wealthiest man, outlined the plans of the company. Eventually there would be a steam-powered main line from Toronto to London and Detroit. All other lines in southern Ontario would be lightly-constructed electric routes. Tracks would pass through the centres of all towns and cities.
The company was not asking for money or bond purchases from municipalities, he assured his listeners, but would be requesting franchises to build on municipal streets and roads. He expected the line from Guelph to Arthur to extend eventually to Georgian Bay.
Other speakers stated that they organized the meeting in Arthur to gauge the level of public interest and support, and to get an idea of the potential business that might be generated there.
Mayor Thorp of Guelph pointed out that the Canadian Northern line would bring competitive service to Arthur, and therefore result in lowered transportation costs. He also stated that the Canadian Northern Railway would be in a position to supply Niagara electrical power to Arthur, and perhaps offer a better proposal than Adam Beck’s Ontario Hydro system. That would help attract industry to Arthur.
Reeve Brocklebank and sixteen Arthur businessmen rose to speak. All strongly favoured the new rail line. The meeting unanimously adopted several resolutions before adjourning.
The Guelph delegation also visited Fergus and Elora. Superficially, the reception there seemed warm, but the merchants in both towns feared better connections with Guelph. They were convinced that Wyndham Street merchants would draw much of the trade that supported St. Andrews and Geddes Streets. However, a public position in opposition to the proposed line would not play well with their customers. Anything they said in public was muted.
When J.W. Lyon reported to a general meeting of the Guelph Board of Trade, he played down the Fergus and Elora meetings, and emphasized the enthusiasm found at Arthur. He was convinced that Arthur’s residents would co-operate fully in constructing the line. Lyon also noted that he was surprised at the level of support in Arthur for the extension to Georgian Bay.
Mayor Thorp told the meeting that the Canadian Northern project was already having a good effect in the north of Wellington. Grain shippers at Arthur had been hollering for empty cars all winter to move their grain. When the meeting by the Guelph delegation was announced, the CPR sent in an ample supply of empty cars.
Enthusiasm remained high during the summer of 1912. Canadian Northern concentrated its efforts of the transcontinental line and completion of the line through northern Ontario and the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The company financed all the new work with government bonds and loans.
Construction did commence that summer of the first segment of the southern Ontario electric network, from Toronto to Guelph. But the buzzards were circling. The company’s debt grew by leaps and bounds. Income was insufficient to cover interest payments. After the outbreak of World War I the situation became impossible.
The company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. The failure of the company would have brought down its largest creditor, the Bank of Commerce. The federal government had no choice but to intervene, nationalizing the company and its subsidiaries. Canadian Northern became a part of Canadian Government Railways, re-organized as Canadian National Railways after taking over the Grand Trunk in 1923.
By then the electric line from Guelph to Arthur, and the rest of the proposed electric network, had been consigned to history. Only the line from Guelph to Toronto was completed.
Due to the financial problems and the war, service did not commence until 1917, and lasted only 14 years.
Whether the Arthur line and the other proposed parts of the network would have altered the development of Wellington is still a fascinating question for anyone interested in the history of Wellington County.