The new Pacific outlet will have many advantages over the eastern. For one thing, it is always ice-free, whereas the eastern route is icebound for five months in the year. Even now, I understand, it is appreciably cheaper in winter to send wheat from Calgary to Liverpool by Vancouver than by St. John's, New Brunswick. The freight-rate between British Columbian and United Kingdom ports should be at least halved when the canal is in operation. Of all cities in any clime or hemisphere, Vancouver seems to stand most surely on the threshold of a new and mighty future. She will have "greatness thrust upon her." Her citizens are preparing for the spacious days that are about to set in. A "Great Vancouver" will probably arise from the nine local municipalities, to provide an area and administration worthy of the dawning era. Dr. F. B. Vrooman eloquently voiced the sentiment of the great port and of British Columbia at a recent luncheon of the Progress Club at Vancouver. He said:-- We are on the verge of nothing less than a revolution of the world's commerce, and industry, and finance, which now, as sure as fate, are destined to be transferred to the lands of the Pacific Ocean. It is not only revolution. It is such a revolution as never has been and never again can be foreordained before chaos primeval for this twentieth century of the Christian era, for there are no more hemispheres to cut in two. There are no more oceans, with half the water area on the world and twenty million square miles more than all the land surface of the globe, to be suddenly transferred into the arena of world trade. There are no more continents with the widest reaches, the richest resources, and the densest populations of the world to be awakened and developed after Asia has achieved its resurrection. Therefore I say to you that there has got to be one port at least in the British Empire big enough to be equal to the greatest opportunity the world ever offered any city since time began. And if that city is not destined to be Vancouver, it will be for one, and for only one, reason--because the men of Vancouver have been too timid and feeble, too shortsighted and too little to take hold of what the good God has offered them.