Orillia and James Bay Railway

Orillia's efforts to secure the James Bay Railway continues to attract considerable attention. The Weekly Sun has the following: Still another attempt is being made to raid the Federal treasury for the benefit of railway promoters already made wealthy by like means. The James Bay Railway Company, which is a link in the Mackenzie and Mann Canadian Northern, recently held up Orillia for a municipal bonus of $80,000 in return for placing the town on the main line of the road. The company is now following this with a demand that the Ottawa Government sanction the deviation of its line in order to make the connection, and that the subsidy already voted the road by the Dominion Government be made to cover the five miles which this deviation will add to the length of the road. If this request is granted, the total amount of public money received towards the building of the extra five miles required to place Orillia on the main line will probably reach sixty thousand dollars—thirty thousand from the town and about another thirty thousand from the Dominion. The combined bonus and subsidy ought to pay the entire cost of the roadway and rails. But why should one dollar of this money be given when the C.P.R. is building a line from Sudbury to Toronto—directly parallel with the James Bay line—without a cent of public aid? Orillia has already voted its thirty thousand dollars; anyways that is the town's own business. But the people of Canada generally should have something to say about the wholly unnecessary grad it is proposed to make at Ottawa. The deviation will be made whether the Dominion Parliament grants its subsidy of not. They why allow the subsidy to be voted?

Railways: J.B.Ry.

Stations: Orillia

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