THE ROAD THAT ELL BUILT

NZ Truth, Issue 1142, 20 October 1927, Page 4

THE ROAD THAT ELL BUILT

IF, as a stranger, you descend upon Christchurch, you stand a good chance of being told gently but firmly, shortly after you have expelled the tunnel smoke from your lungs, that the summit road and track, now extending from the Port Hills to Akaroa, is the finest walk in the world. Be that as it may, it must be conced.ed that the road is a great scenio asset to Christchurch. The history of the road is the history of Henry George Ell's tireless efforts to shape and fashion it. He battled for funds with the persistency and plausibility of a professional mendicant and the completion of the track became an obsession with him. Ih season and out, and even when politics claimed much of his time, he dinned the road into the pink lobe of both the willing and the unwilling listener. Ell's record as a Parliamentarian is — like the history of the once allpowerful Liberal party he supported. — gradually fading into oblivion. He won a Christchurch seat for Seddon in 1899 and retained it until the final Liberal debacle in 1919. He enjoyed Ministerial rank as Postmaster- General under Tarn Mackenzie in 1912 for three brief but merry months, during which time he mad* the pace a cracker. Slot telephone-booths sprang up miraculously like mushrooms overnight; the public were invited to send by parcel post the succulent cod and flounder; whilst the members of the P. and T. staff were solemnly warned, that any of their number seen in the vicinity of the pernicious totalisator window would be "for iti" This last Mussolini-like edict received short shrift when Heaton Rhodes relieved a reluctant Ell of his portfolio. Politics aside, Ell has a creditable record of public service in his city. No great shakes on the platform, but nevertheless as a member of various local bodies he has the knack of emulating the busy bee and getting things done. He essayed a valiant "come-back" last general election, but Christchurch in the mass has little appetite for diluted Radicalism or for a candidate who stands in the middle of the road, although it has quite a lot of time for "the road that Ell built"!