HIGHWAY PROGRESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 February 1943, Page 4

HIGHWAY PROGRESS

ROAD CONSTRUCTION IN 1734. CANADIAN COMMMORATION. QUEBEC, Quebec. The inauguration of the QuebecMontreal highway some 208 years ago by Lanouiller de Boiscler, road surveyor of New France, who left Quebec for Montreal by carriage, is being commemorated by a historic plaque placed on the St. John’s Gate, Quebec. The inscription on the plaque, which becomes a souvenir of the first official King’s Highway between Quebec’s two largest cities, reads as follows: “On August 5, 1734, Lanouiller de Boiscler, road surveyor of New France left Quebec for Montreal by carriage, officially inaugurating the main royal highway in the Colony.” There were no highways in Canada, with the exception of a few disconnected strips here and there, until the first thirty years of the eighteenth century had elapsed. The St. Lawrence and other streams universal means of communication and all important travelling was accomplished by canoe. Lanouiller de Boiscler, who was appointed road surveyor of New France by Intendant Hocquart in 1730, was charged with the task of laying out a highway between Quebec and Montreal, and such was his energy and skill that he was able to set Out on August 5, 1734, by stage-coach, to inaugurate the first direct and continuous highway between the two largest cities of the colony. The highway had a uniform width of 24 feet. There is a vast difference between this dirt highway of 1734 and the modern asphalt highways of 1942. In olden days the trip from Quebec to Montreal required five days. Today the . same journey may be accomplished in five hours, at moderate speed.