RIOTS AT PRINCE RUPERT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1098, 10 April 1911, Page 5

RIOTS AT PRINCE RUPERT.

STRIKERS FIRE ON CONSTABLES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Ottawa, April 7. A violent conflict has occurred between the police and strikers employed on civic contracts at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the terminus of the new transcontinental railway now under construction. Revolvers were used, and many persons were wounded. One striker is dying. Citizens have been sworn in as special constables. Fifty of the ringleaders in the rioting havo been arrested. ORDER RESTORED. (Rec. April 9, 5 p.m.) Ottawa, April 8. Prince Rupert is quiet. It is announced that the strikers will be deported after they have served their sentences. Civic work has been resumed.

Princo Rupert existed in name only in 1909 when the town lots, then covered in virgin forest, were put up to auction. It is now a thriving town, and when the Grand Trunk Pacific is finally pierced will become one of the important ports on the western coast of the Pacific. The new terminal railway will opeii up a fresh avenue to the Far East, saving 453 knots in the sea trip to Yokohama as against the more southern port. This must draw a large part of the Pacific passenger traffic to tho Far East Another great advantage possessed by this route will be the very low gradient of the Grand Trunk Pacific across the Rockiei. The highest ascent made by the railway when crossing the mountains is under seven thousand feet, and the maximum gradient, is twenty-one feet a mile. Farther south the lines have a maximum gradient several times as great, low gradients mean tho possibility of fastrunning, and it is hoped to do the journey from the Atlantic coast to Prince Rupert in one hundred hours. The full inheritance of this new city will not be realised until the -Panama Canal is finished. Then Prince Rupert, Vancouver, and all the ports of tho West will enter on a new era. The great crops of the new North-West will more and more be taken through them to the world markets, to save tho Ions; land haul to tho Atlantic. Prince Rupert tomorrow, in the opinion of Mr. F. A. M'Kenzie, of the "Doily Mail," will be the nnin station of Hip great hiirh road lo Asia, and one of the world's great travel post*.