RESOURCEFUL FARMERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 February 1939, Page 3

RESOURCEFUL FARMERS

OWN ROAD CONSTRUCTED THROUGH ROCKIES. WILD WEST ROMANCE NOT DEAD. Wild west romance is not dead. To prove it 85.000 farmers who till Canada's million square miles of fruitful Peace River District are. by their own resources, cutting across the Rocky Mountains a road which will be their sole outlet to the sea. No Government moneys’ aid these hard-bitten pioneer visionaries. Across 130 miles of muskeg swamp, forest, rocky wasteland they are driving their roadway paid for by funds raised in whist drives, bazaars, dances, private and church collections. At their head, showing these 85,000 the road to prosperity, is sixty-seven-year-old grizzled Alexander Monkman, a poor man with a £1,000,000 idea. To the isolated Peace River District, with its sole connection with the outside world centred in a branch of the Canadian Pacific-Canadian National Railways, Monkman's vision of a road across the Rockies to the Pacific Coast means salvation from ruin. FERTILE. Despite the fertility of its soil, Peace River has always been a struggling community. They can grow the wheat, barley, oats—but they have to haul it more than 400 miles to Edmonton, and then 500 miles to the Great Lakes be - fore they reach a distributing centre. The cost, with rail charged what they are in Canada, is obviously ruinous. For twenty-five years Peace River has been fed up. Official promises of an. outlet to the coast persistently fell through. The junction of the Peace River and Smoky River—which means as much to them as the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates meant to Adam and Eve—seemed destined to perpetual obscurity. Then came Alec Monkman, with his “hare-brained” scheme. I HAPPING. Monkman, in 1898, had had a furtrading post at Lake Saskatoon. He had watched the Peace River District grow from a wild, redskin-ridden region into a great agricultural centre. Early in the century he started farming. Low prices for his produce and long rail hauls ruined him, like many another. He went back to trapping. In the winter of 1922 Monkman was trapping the mountains south-west of the Peace River when suddenly he discovered that he had, unbeknown to himself, crossed the Great Barrier, Canada’s supposedly impregnable rampart. Breathlessly he turned in his tracks and surveyed the pass through which he had come. He learned that with 13,000 ft mountains towering at each side, he had come through a pass which was no higher than 3500 ft above sea-level. He had found a way across the Rockies that was easier than any pass north of Panama. He put his proposition up to the railways. With characteristic aplomb, they turned it down. But the beleaguered people of Peace River said: “We’re going through to the Pacific we 11 keep right on to the end of the road. ’ In the autumn of 1936 they held their first meeting. As a result, merchants gave free food and supplies. Ranchers, farmers, pioneers—many of them over sixty offered help. Dances, shows, card parties, donations brought in a fund of £4OO. In June of last year, twenty men started out with picks, axes, shovels, and Monkman at their head to conquer the 130 miles of virgin wastes which separated them from the British Columbia road systems terminus at Prince George. ACROSS SWAMPS. Within seven weeks they had cut sixty miles of roadway through thick stands of spruce and poplar, across swamps and small streams. Meantime, Monkman himself blazed the trail to Prince George. Their outlet to the sea is almost completed now. They have done it themselves, true pioners, in the face of official scorn and laughter from the railways. They have proved that their pass across the Rockies is practical. And the cost? Less than £4OOO foi 130 miles. For the same sum you can build about one mile of roadway in Great Britain.