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Local: Victoria History - The Coming of the Railroad

By 1866, the BC and the Victoria Island colonies were united, but an economy based on just fur trading and mining was not stable enough to grow a colony. In 1871, four years after Canada was given its independence by Britain, BC joined Canadian confederation. The BC provincial government began encouraging the agriculture and forestry industries, to begin economic diversification.

To entice it to join Canada, BC was promised a railroad linking it to the eastern part of the country. While one crew was building from the east, across the Prairies and then through the Roger's Pass. Another crew was laying track from the West, up the Fraser River canyon and into the Thompson River valley. On November 7, 1885 the Canadian Pacific Railway set the last spike in its construction at Craigellachie, just east of Shushwap Lake. The first trans-continental railway train arrived in Port Moody on July 4, 1886. The following year, the railway was extended the last 20 kilometres into Vancouver. Since then, BC has shipped much of its natural resources east to the rest of Canada, and become the country’s gateway to the Pacific nations.

Even before the mainland line is connected, the 120 kilometre long Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway is completed in 1884. In 1890, Victoria becomes the thirds city in Canada to get an electric streetcar line. (they last until 1948). In 1894 the Victoria-Sidney railway line opens to connect the Saanich Peninsula.

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