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Intercolonial Railway of Canada logo or herald
The Intercolonial Railway of Canada (IRC), also referred to as the Intercolonial Railway, was a historic Canadian railway.
The idea of a railway connecting Britain's North American colonies arose as soon as the railway age began in the 1830s. In the decades following the War of 1812 and ever-mindful of the issue of security, the colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and to a lesser extent Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, wished to improve land-based transportation with Upper and Lower Canada (later the Province of Canada after 1840). A railway connection among the colonies would serve both economic and military purposes during the winter months when the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence River were frozen and shipping was impassable.
Signficant surveys were conducted throughout the 1830s- 1850s and funding talks were established between the various colonial administrations and the British government, however progress remained slow and little was accomplished beyond talk. Railway construction came to the Maritime provinces as early as the mid- 1830s with the opening of the Albion Railway , a coal mining railway in Nova Scotia's Pictou CountyPictou County is a county in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It was established in 1835. The word "Pictou" is derived from the Mi'kmaq word "Piktook" meaning an explosion of gas. The area which eventually became Pictou County was a part of Halifax C and the second railway to open in British North AmericaBritish North America originally comprised all British colonies and territories on the North American continent, from Georgia to Labrador and Rupert's Land. It stood in contrast to Russian North America ( Alaska and parts of California) and to Spanish Nor. Construction in the 1850s saw two important rail lines opened in the Maritimes to connect cities on the Atlantic coast with steamship routes in the Northumberland StraitThe Northumberland Strait is a strait in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in eastern North America. It separates the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island from the mainland provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The western boundar and Gulf of St. Lawrence:
An intercolonial rail system in the British North American colonies was never far from the minds of government and civic leaders and in an 1851 speech at a Mason's Hall in Halifax, local editor of the Nova Scotian newspaper, Joseph Howe spoke these words:
But a rail connection between the Maritime colonies and the Province of Canada was not to be for another quarter century. Central Canada's dominant railway player in the 1850s was the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) and its profit-driven business model chose the U.S. Atlantic port of Portland, Maine over a much longer journey to a Maritime port. As a result, Portland boomed during the winter months when Montreal's shipping season was closed.
Nevertheless, the geopolitical instability in North America resulting from the American Civil War led to increased nervousness on the part of British North American colonies, particularly wary of the large Union Army operating south of their borders. The demands for closer political and economic ties between colonies led to further calls for an "Intercolonial Railway". An 1862 conference in Quebec City led to an agreement on financing the railway with the Maritime colonies and Canada splitting construction costs and Britain assuming any debts, however the deal fell through within months.
It is speculated that this failure to achieve a deal on the Intercolonial in 1862, combined with the ongoing concerns over the American Civil War, led to the Charlottetown Conference in 1864, and eventually to Confederation of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) in 1867.
The British North America Act (BNA Act) of 1867 formally established an agreement calling for the construction of the Intercolonial Railway in Section 145:
Despite being enshrined in the BNA Act of 1867, it would still be another decade before a route was finally selected and construction was completed, however as a start, the federal government assumed the operations of the NSR and E&NA which were to be wholly absorbed into the IRC. The route connecting the NSR and the E&NA was not contestable as the line had to cross the Cobequid Mountain range and the Isthmus of Chignecto where options were limited by the local topography. In New Brunswick, it was a different story, as the choice was narrowed to three options. A commission of engineers, headed by Sandford Fleming had been unanimously appointed in 1863 to consider the following:
Despite pressure from commercial interests in the Maritimes and New England who wanted a rail connection closer to the border, the Chaleur Bay routing was chosen, amid the backdrop of the American Civil War, as it would keep the Intercolonial far from the International Boundary with Maine.