BOUNTIFUL HARVEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 February 1939, Page 9

BOUNTIFUL HARVEST

INCREASED TRADE ACTIVITY IN CANADA. MANY PARTS GREATLY BENEFIT. OTTAWA. As a result of this year’s bountiful harvest. Canadian ports have greatly benefited from the increased traffic and shipping activity. During the first four months of the current crop year to the end of November. 50.716.442 bushels of Canadian wheat or 78 per cent of the total quantity exported. passed through Canadian ports. Similarly with other grains, 9.390.998 bushels of barley comprising all the exports to date. 726.948 bushels of rye and 256,242 bushels of oats have been exported through Canadian ports. In addition, 1,423,400 barrels of wheat flour were shipped out of the country via the allCanadian route. Canadian harbours are well equipped to handle Canada's vast crops of grain. Canada has been well named the "Wheat Basket of the Empire" and the ports have been designed to efficiently handle extensive quantities of grain., Immense terminal elevators have been erected which, by means oi carrier belts and chutes, can unload and load gram-carrying vessels in record time. The port of Vancouver on the Pacific coast is an all-year round port and handles much of the grain from the western sections of the Canadian prairie provinces. The ports of Montreal, Quebec and Sorrel on the St. Lawrence river only operate during part of the year but handle most of the eastborne grain traffic. The ports of Halifax and Saint John, on the Atlan-i tic coast, operate all year but are j most active when the St. Lawrence I River is closed to traffic. i

Most of the grain destined from the prairie provinces for shipment by the Eastern route proceeds by water from the head of the Great Lakes to ports on the St. Lawrence river for transhipping to the ocean-going vessels. Some tramp steamers, instead of loading at Montreal, proceed all the way to the head of the Great Lakes for their cargoes of grain, a distance of two thousand miles inland from the Atlantic ocean. Traffic through the Welland canal, which eliminates the world-famous Niagara Falls, this year to the end of November has already established a new high record of nearly 12,500,000 tons. In November alone, nearly 1,250.000 tons of freight passed through this canal, of which wheat and other grains accounted for 685.903 tons, or approximately 50 per cent.