The ambition to construct and control a transcontinental railway was the result of an evolution in two mentalities, working in a single partnership. Just when it was first consciously entertained perhaps neither Sir William nor Sir Donald was aware. Certainly, nothing of the kind was contemplated when their first venture as railway owners and operators, as distinct from contractors, was undertaken, and I came into it as the first operating officer. The conditions affecting the nativity of the Canadian Northern were extensive and peculiar. The Sutherland project of a railway from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay had halted at Oak Point, forty miles from Winnipeg, on the east shore of Lake Manitoba. But the idea of laying steel to the Bay was never abandoned; and the Dominion charter of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company gave the right to build to tidewater, via northwestern Manitoba, in 1889. The Manitoba Government was friendly to the scheme from the very practical point of view of providing facilities for farmers who, though they were in fine country, could not profitably market their excellent crops, some for reasons for which they had no responsibility, and some for reasons which, perhaps, they might have avoided. They could not flourish without railway transportation. The main line of the Canadian Pacific came into Winnipeg from almost due north for twenty miles. Originally, it was to have passed through Selkirk, leaving ambitious Winnipeg as an important station on a branch to the American boundary. The line was built almost to the river, opposite Selkirk, and a round house was erected at Selkirk. Instead of going west through Portage la Prairie, it was projected straight northwestward between Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, crossed Lake Manitoba at The Narrows, and continued northwesterly to the Swan River, where it turned southwesterly, till it was a few miles north of Fort Pelly. Thence it took a due west route to the Elbow of the North Saskatchewan, near to where that river is now crossed by the Canadian Northern main line. Then, instead of crossing the river, the C.P.R. was to skirt the southern bank to Battleford, and strike the Saskatchewan again on its long northwesterly stretch, about twenty miles above Fort Edmonton, which is the Edmonton of to-day. A new Edmonton was to arise on the C.P.R. main line, about seventeen miles south of the present capital of Alberta.