The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific, was reminiscent of the Klondyke rush; and a steel record of the seeming diversion of Horace Greeley’s gospel which appeared at first to be the motive of the Mackenzie-Mann ventures into railway-owning company. “Go north,” was the impulse of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal venture. “Go north” was the urge of the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific. There is something peculiarly fateful about this pull to the Aurora. From one of the eminent journalists whom we conveyed through the West, it produced a fascinating discourse on “To the Pole by Rail”. It has made Stefansson famous. Through its possession of him it has brought Wrangel Island into the dreams of an aerial and submarine route that will shorten travelling between London and Tokio by seven thousand miles. But operating surpluses haven’t yet been common to farmost northern railway transportation. The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific was like the James Bay--it held territory, and it produced a short line that gave a great city its first railway station. The Calgary and Edmonton on which Mackenzie and Mann were contractors, ended at Strathcona, across the noble valley of the Saskatchewan from Edmonton, then almost hidden among the poplar groves of the northern bank. To build a steel bridge across the valley was a very expensive job. Indeed, at that time to go right into Edmonton would not add enough to the revenue derivable from Edmonton to pay interest on the cost. Competition was a dozen years, and hundreds of miles away. To hold the E.Y. and P. charter, then, our people built a line eight miles long, from Strathcona to Edmonton, going down a long ravine, crossing the river by a team-and-train bridge, which was in large part a public work, climbing into Edmonton, past the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort and the site of the future Parliament Buildings, and getting into the straggling town through lands that were very much of a backyard, but which have developed into property that is now worth millions of dollars to the Canadian people. The operating situation here was somewhat similar to what obtained at Parry Sound. The engineer was Entwistle, of whose connection with administrative work three things are worthy of note, because they are not likely to be repeated. Some time after the E.Y. and P. was superseded by the Canadian Northern’s arrival from the east, at the end of 1905, Entwistle was made superintendent. But very soon he asked to be allowed to resume his place at the throttle--an illustration of the frequent phenomenon of a refusal of responsibility, which every executive officer of any large enterprise has observed with considerable disappointment. It is surprising how many men decline higher jobs with higher pay, entirely because they are short of faith in their own ability to master unfamiliar affairs. We shall revert to this timidity towards ambition.