Far Out on the Left Coast: British Columbia's Sense of Isolation and Belonging
The following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated.
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Create AccountThe following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated.
Liard Highway is an all-weather road linking northern British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Beginning 27 km north of Fort Nelson on the Alaska Highway, it runs 400 km north to join the Mackenzie Highway a short distance south of Fort Simpson, NWT.
The word "bus," short for omnibus, refers to any self-propelled road vehicle capable of carrying more persons than a private automobile.
West Coast Trail, on W coast of VANCOUVER I, follows the 72 km route of the historic lifesaving trail between the communities of Bamfield and Port Renfrew, BC.
This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.
The Boundary Waters-Voyageur Waterway extends 250 km along the international boundary extending from the western tip of Lake Superior to Lac La Croix in Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park.
The following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated.
During the summer of 1885 the railway was constructed over the pass at great expense. Over 6.4 km of snowsheds (31) were built to protect trains, trackage and workmen from AVALANCHES (the area receives up to 15 m of snow each winter).
The Alaska Highway was constructed from 1942 to 1943 during the Second World War. It went from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Alaska.
This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.
This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.
St Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, the world's first international railway, began service and was completed and inaugurated on 18 July 1853.
The Canada Aviation and Space Museum has the most extensive aviation collection in Canada. Located in Ottawa, the museum focuses on the history of Canadian aviation in an international context. Its collection includes more than 130 aircraft and artifacts.
The Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR) was incorporated in 1881. Its original purpose was the construction of a transcontinental railway, a promise to British Columbia upon its entry into Confederation (see Railway History). The railway — completed in 1885 — connected Eastern Canada to British Columbia and played an important role in the development of the nation. Built in dangerous conditions by thousands of labourers, including 15,000 Chinese temporary workers, the railway facilitated communication and transportation across the country. Over its long history, the Canadian Pacific Railway diversified its operations. The company established hotels, shipping lines and airlines, and developed mining and telecommunications industries (see Shipping Industry; Air Transport Industry). In 2001, Canadian Pacific separated into five separate and independent companies, with Canadian Pacific Railway returning to its origins as a railway company. CP, as it is branded today, has over 22,500 km of track across Canada and the United States. It is a public company and it trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CP. In 2020, CP reported $7.71 billion in total revenues.
This is the full-length entry about the Canadian Pacific Railway. For a plain-language summary, please see The Canadian Pacific Railway (Plain-Language Summary).
This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.
The SkyTrain is the rapid transit rail system serving Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. It uses mostly Advanced Light Rapid Transit (ALRT) technology, an automated rail system that operates mainly on a raised guideway, although some sections run underground or at street level. Regular service began 3 January 1986. The SkyTrain’s opening coincided with Expo 86, the world’s fair hosted by Vancouver as part of its 100th anniversary celebrations. The system is run by TransLink, the provincial transit agency for the South Coast of British Columbia. It was the world’s first driverless urban rail system. Now, it is one of the longest fully automated rapid transit systems in the world. The SkyTrain has three lines connecting 53 stations in seven municipalities. In 2018, it had more than 495,000 boardings per weekday, on average.
CTrain is a light rail transit system in Calgary, Alberta. It is operated by Calgary Transit, a public transit service owned by the City of Calgary and operated through its Transportation Department. Service began on the initial downtown transit corridor and south line in 1981. It expanded to northeast Calgary in 1985, to the University of Calgary in the city’s northwest in 1987 and to the city’s west side in 2012. Most of its route and stations are at surface level. Calgary Transit operates the CTrain in conjunction with an extensive network of bus routes. Through equivalency purchases of wind-generated electricity, it has been entirely wind-powered since 2001. Its two separate lines comprise 45 stations, 118.1 km of track, and an average daily ridership of 312,300 (2018).
The Montreal metro opened on 14 October 1966. The second Canadian subway system after Toronto’s, which opened in 1954, the Montreal metro was the first subway in North America to run on rubber tires instead of metal wheels. Extensions to the Montreal metro were built on Montreal Island over the two decades after it opened, and then to the city of Laval, on the island of Île Jésus, during the 2000s. The system runs entirely underground, and each station has a distinct architecture and design. The Montreal metro consists of four lines running a total of 71 km and serving 68 stations. In 2018, its passengers made more than 383 million trips.
Throughout the period of the historical fur trade (early 17th to the mid-19th century), water routes were the natural “highways” of First Nations trappers and European fur traders. Water trading networks connected Indigenous societies from the Atlantic Ocean, along the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, and then on towards the Hudson Bay watershed. North America’s waterborne geography facilitated intracontinental travel, enabled European expansion and settlement into Indigenous North America, and shaped the contours of Euro-Indigenous relations in the context of the fur trade. These extensive and interconnected systems of rivers, lakes and overland trails criss-crossed Indigenous territories and had been used for generations. At the height of the fur trade, the principal canoe route extended westward from the Island of Montreal through the Great Lakes, and from the northwestern shore of Lake Superior over the height of land into the Hudson Bay watershed. From the Lake Winnipeg basin, Indigenous trappers and European traders fanned out towards the Western Prairies via the Assiniboine, Qu’Appelle and Souris rivers, towards the foothills of the Rocky Mountains via the North and South branches of the Saskatchewan River, and finally towards the Athabasca Country via the Sturgeon-weir River and the Methye Portage.
More familiar are the "road stations" built between 1855 and 1857 for the Grand Trunk Railway's line from Montréal to Toronto and Sarnia.