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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1939-10-12, Page 7THURSDAYi OCTOBER 12, 1939 PAGE SEVEN THE SEAFORTH NEWS ss .plicate Monthly State ° ie`.ents We can save you motley on Bill and Charge Forms, standard sizes to fit Ledgers, white or colars. It will pay you to see our samples. Also best quality Metal Hinged Sec- tional Post Binders and Index The Seaforth News PHONE 84 THE WORLD'S GOOD NEWS will come to your home every day through THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR An international Daily Newspaper It records Lor you the World's clean, eonetructtve doings. The Monitor doe* not exploit crime or sensation; neither does It Ignore them. but deals correctively with them. Features Lor busy men and all the L11117, including the Vecchia Magazine Section. The Christian Science Publishing Society One, Norway Street, Boston, Massachusetts Please enter ma eubscriotton to The Christian 0alenea Monitor fox e period of 1 oesr 112.00 d months $8.00 3 months 07.00 1 month *1.00 Wedneadar lase*, including Magazine Section: 1 year .52.00, 0 msues 20e Name add" ._------ Smog* Copy ON ! ni,"6 PLAN INTERNATIONAL HIGHWAY I working on large scale road projects in the populous centres, but would Dream of Route, via Alaska, to Con- sometime build a highway to the Sib- nect America with Europe and erten East Cape. And they asked him Asia. for technical advice of road building By motor car front Western Onunder - barctic coaditiona and got tario to Paris—France. Sure, laugh because it does sound fantastic, this thought of driving from Ontario to Europe. But then consider an Inter- national highway, linking the United States and Canada to Alaska, and then spanning the Bering Straits to Siberia, and joining the existing Eur- opean highway systems. This is the dream for which great men like Henry Hudson died. For years these figures of history search- ed for a Northwest Passage. And now the dream of an Amer- ican passage to the Old World seems nearer to realization than ever be- fore. There are only a few unbuilt portions. of a motor highway which would bring Paris within an automo- bile jump of New York, Toronto, or Windsor. Ten years ago had you been told that plans were underfoot to .connect South America, the United States and Canada with Asia, Europe, and Africa by means of road you would have laughed. You may still laugh at the suggestion, but before you do, listen to the story of Donald Mc- Donald. the modern Henry Hudson in this newest Northwest Passage scheme. And then suit yourself about laughing. This whole gigantic idea started away back in 1931. At least that's the first thing Mr. McDonald did hi the open towards his proposed road which would connect any community of this continent by road, with any other continent in the world except Australia. A letter was received in Moscow, at the Kremlin, from Fair- banks, Alaska. This was strange to the Soviet of- ficials, for it was before the resitinp- tion of Russo -American diplomatic relations, but it aroused their curios- ity. In effect. tate letter said:. "Gentlemen; "If you want to accomplish some- thing worth while with your five- year plan, how about building some roads in Northwest Siberia. Con- sider the economics of international communication with North America by automobile across Bering Straits? (Signed) Douald McDonald." Although the name on the letter meant nothing to the Soviet, there seemed to them to be something really worth while in the idea of linking North America and Asia. The result was they did some think- ing- on it, and replied to McDonald. 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Gentlemen: I enclose $ Mg below the offer desired scription to your paper. [ ] SUPER -VALUE Name Post Office with I am check - a year's sub- [ 3 BIG FAMILY 0 R.R, Province if Canada and the United States were willing to go at it with a mutual give-and-take spirit. His plans have the United States paying more than its share of the costs. in return for which Canada might make the it, filing ~it away in the engineering highway a free trade zone, so that offices at Moscow. I goods might move between the Then to speed matters up, recent 'United States and Alaska without valuable gold deposits have been discovered in the Siberian North- east, and the Russian government had built 5,000 miles of a highway which would reach East Cape by 1942. It means that there are only a few stretches unbuilt in the high- way which will put North Bay just an automobile journey away front Paris; Before going into detail over the construction and routing of tne pro- posed highway, there's Donald Mc- Donald to be considered, for he's the dynamo behind the whole compre- hensive scheme. He lays no claim to being a diplomat. Rather he's a wind -bitten pioneer of the Arctic Northland, a practical, yet far-seeing individual who has done more than dream of his greatest dream, ..he's one of the last of the old-time locat- ing engineers. Routes for the Alaska railroad, running 471 utiles through the mountains trona Seward to Fair- banks, were surveyed with his help. And when that was completed in 1923, McDonald became locating en- gineer for the Alaska Road Commis- sion. And in the past 15 years he has blazed the trail for 700 utiles of road through the northern wilds, travel- ling by foot and dog sled. But his work alone has repaid the United States many times over the $7,200,000 it cost the treasury ie. 1867, for pros- pectors followed hint, uncovering rich mineral deposits. Iiis plan to make Alaska pay is a simple one. It costs $7,000 to build a utile of road. And along that mile, or the one following it someone strikes gold, thus the United States benefits by the sates of machinery and equipment to develop the mine, and the hiring of men to work it. Every year Alaska spends in the United States the equivalent of 81,000 for every white resident in its popu- lation, making Alaska the richest per capita market the United States has. The Northland . . . the western Northland...knows McDonald as the "Father of the International High- way." He was given the title 10 years ago as a touch of ridicule, but has turned the tables on those who knighted him thus in fun, The high- way, linking the United States, Can- ada and Alaska is still unfinished business, but it is at least official business. And McDonald will build the road as soon as the details are threshed out with Canada. Right now the governments in the western pro- vinces of British Columbia Alberta and Saskatchewan along with the Donlini011 government are co:geed tug the details of it. Right now a highway links I of City with Hazelton, Brlti ii t n uz t bin, passing through San k la a iso o Seattle and Vancouver. it leaves 1,1110 miles to be completed from Hazelton to the southern end of the present Alaskan highway system at McCarthy, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Five -sixths 08 this nee' construction will lie within the Can- adian boundaries, in Yukon and Brit- ish Columbia. But now Alberta and Saskatchewan are advocating a route flung diagonally across their wide stretches to the North and into the Yukon. However, the details of their advocated changes in the present plan will be dealt with later in this SEAFORTH, ONTARIO, payment of duties. This phase is now being worked out. And when the final deal is made. Canada may have the right, of free trade through Alaskaa Panhandle Ports like SkagwaY, Juneau. Ketch- ican, and Petersburg, as these ports forge road links to the new highway. Born in Williamsport, Pa., in 1880, he took his first journey when he was 10, at the time his father, a hotelkeeper and Scotch Highlander, died. From then on he found It hard to stay in one spot, In 1898, the year of the original Alaska gold rush, he was back in Philadelphia- He was a cub reporter, but his chief interests were engineering and economics. He headed west three years later, as a junior construction engineer on the Northern Pacific Railroad, and locat- ed routes through Mexico. He became a star football halfback during a brief spell at the University of Arizona in 1905, while he followed his engineer- ing studies. At the time of the San Francisco earthquake he was there. and helped survey for the reconstruction of the city. He married in 1907 in New York, working with various rail- roads and the government, he moved ever west and north, He was in the first crew to go north to survey the Alaskan Railroad route. He settled in Fairbanks, and now his family consists of four daughters, two sons and three grandchildren, and his home in the land of the midnight sun he wouldn't trade for all of Park Avenue, New York. No dreamer, McDonald is convinc- ed that an important chapter of North America's history will be made in the completion of the Inter- national Highway. He plans to bring the City of Fairbanks within le driv- ing days of New York, and make Alaska the 49th, and the greatest state of the union. But Alaska isn't yet worried about equality with the other states, for they know nothing its the Northland of depression, other than what they've read about it in newspapers. He has three reasons for his pro- ject. The first is to open up the country to create new wealth. The next is to bolster the military de- fence of Continental North America, and lastly to give automobile tour- ists another real incentive to see North America first. There is no question but what McDonald's new highway will cut through some of the most magnificent c.ntetry it: the world. The starting point w'1 i;- Blaine Washing( t i viii v through an ever %all 9 tii (Magi Ila L There iti ,tl Vanconvor. rml It again. Al, tng it lerns a i e tits slope, for 174 1+ h an turning into more 2. to n ry. s. follows the Thorn t t 11 and Ba ipar`.e Rivers for the next 2.e miles. and le: this time the road has reached an elevation of 3,090 feet. Then it des- cends gradually to 509 ti,,q at Hazel- ton, which is Mile h;) and the eitd of of the gravel. An earth road con- tinues beyond Hazelton for 3o utiles, and stops dead in the trackless wild- erness. And that dead end is the starting point of a stretch of scenery for which there is probably no equal in article. In return for a transportation cor- the world. The valley narrows, as the ridor of vital commercial importance, two mountain ranges close iu, and it is believed the United States is the valley abounds in game, tisk and 'willing to pay more than its prorate minerals, edged by lee -capped moun- share of the expected $15,000,000 bill tains and deep green vegetation. to complete the North American That's the story of the 71:11 -mile stretches of the International HIgh- stretch from Hazelton to the Yukon. way. But the matter of costs is no At Lake Arlin, 114 miles north of longer regarded as an insuperable Whitehorse, the road will enter the obstacle. territory famed back in the strike There is the one big question left, days of '98. At Whitehorse.end Yukon and that is of the customs -tariff- Crossing there are short wagon roads, immigration barriers, and places Mc- There's another short stretch at Daw- Donald in the role of diplomat for the son, otherwise the vast area is un - second time in his career. It has al- traced. ways been regarded by the residents Stili, McDonald claims the con. of Alaska and the Yukon that there atruction will be smooth going, and are no international barriers, but un- oddly, will result in a road useful all fortunately they are separated by a year round. The snowfall is very customs barrier, and regulations are light behind the high coastal and regulations, wherever found. When Alaska- ranges, he points out. and it McDonald first dwelt upon his idea is light, powdery snow. not the wet, of an International Highway 13 years trestle -tieing kind in more temperate ago, he realized It would only work areas. The 50 -mile highway connect- . ing t act- ing the Matanust a Valley with v eb.- ; orage has been used w ith1. ut inter- ruption for three wittt'rs flow ana the 140 -mile merit near the head of the Copper. River has been u- i all year for many winters without eves I any snow -lighting equipment. The idea of an International High- way is an old one. It was first brought up it 1905 by F. H. Harri- man, the railroad magnate. That. was when the first riches of Alaska were being uncovered, and he plan- ned to build a railway from the United States. through British Col- umbia and tato Alaska. But he wasn't stopping there, He planned to either bridge or tunnel the stretch across the Bering Strait and continue his railroad into Siberia. It was a gi- gantic proposition, but was an- nounced feasible by the greatest 000- struction eugineer of the day. But the Russo-Japanese war stopped it, and Japan realized the importance of such a road immediately. She tie - mended that a clause barring the coustruction of an International Highway be written into the Peace of Portsmouth, and President Theo- dore Roosevelt agreed with her. So before long, McDonald firmly believes, motorists will be speeding up to and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser, and glide past the muddy waters of the Klondike and the Forty Mile. He exclaims that Harriman had the right idea. A. bridge over the 56 -mile stretch of the Bering Strait, or a tunnel under- neath it.,.both are feasible., .will come next. The water is only from 40 to 50 feet deep, and the longest stretch between islands in the strait is only one-third the total distance. There would be no more difficulty in. bridging it than was experienced. with the great Kay West Bridge sys- tem heading south from Florida. In his own lite, McDonald believes he will sae an automobile trans- portation system over which people will drive from Ontario to Paris, from. Buenos Aires to Brussels, or from Toronto to Cape Town, linking every continent of the world, except Aas- tralia. Now that the movement towards an .International Highway - is well _ started, the wectetat provinces are beginning to show marked interest in it. Saskatchewan advocates a route across the Prairies, rather than the road from Hazelton or- up into Fair- banks. Canada aad the United States would benefit greatly by the Alaska route being changed to lead through the western plains, rather than the mountains, claims J. H. Holmes, commissioner of the Saskatoon Board of Trade, The proposal for such a route had much to commend it, owing to the topography of the country it would traverse, he claim- ed. It would be less expensive than the coast road, and more important, would be the close connection it would have with the Hudson's Bay route. The present proposed route would lead from Chicago to Seattle, join in the highway to Hazelton there. But Mr. Holmes' proposal would see an International Highway stretch from Chicago to St. Paul and Minneapolis, through either Winnipeg, Manitoba, or Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to Sas- katoon. Then there are two different routes proposed from Saskatoon to F:a.i.:-haUks. B3 th would liad t.r Ed• menton. tj , .i L -t 1 hC ti t o r E 1- tt r ty 1 k t t a tc Leaver P,0.4t. and 100.2, Yukon. ir.Er, tee MeDenell rom, t b in I is 1 ittis i, it i 0troll 1' aD t.L tkr.migh trietr e G t Slav La t a. Mg Fort Simpson. 1.'`ortNt a turning east ti tallow the Peet fat ee into Dawson. There is .til- eiiatilez proposed route which would 4.3 t.a Jasper National Park from Edo:..i ton. then into Prince CCeorge. Fr.;m there it could either join the ton road or to -ono through F:aiay Forks and the Peace River ar,m. It is claimed the route tro:u Ed- monton to Finlay Forks is ties mast feasible of all routes suggested to date. it is the shortest. being mites shorter than the coast route... 2,500 miles as against 3.050 utiles. The Alaskan highway route through Canada is an essential to the country. according to mashy pro- minent military nten. It would be vital in the defence of the long Brit. ish Columbia coast. The majority of military figures in Canada have dis carded as unlikely the inference a.4 legedty made that United States was seeking territorial expansion Leto Canada. The new International High- way is regarded in most circles as a. movement which would greatly bene- fit both countries. and is no move on the part of the United States to gain power in Canada. D. H. McINNES CHIROPRACTOR Office — Commercial Hotel Electro Therapist — Hours -Man. and Thurs atte:- noons anw tby appointment FOOT CORRECTION by manipulation—Sun-ray treat- ment. Phone 227. Seaforth, Ont. THE SEAFORTH NEWS`