The year following the union of the two governments of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, an ordinance was passed by the government, dated April 2, 1867, in which a new set of rates were established. On a letter passing between any two post offices in Vancouver Island or between any of these offices and New Westminster or any port in the colony, the rate was five cents; between Vancouver Island or New Westminster on the one side and Clinton or Savona's Ferry, the rate was twelve and a half cents; where letters pass beyond those distances the charge was twenty-five cents.
For letters exchanged between any two post offices above Yale, Hope or Douglas, the rate was twelve and a half cents. In each case the unit of weight was an ounce. The charge on newspapers passing between any two post offices in the colony was two cents each. At this period there were eighteen post offices on the mainland and eight on the island.
The situation of the post office in British Columbia stood thus when the colony became one of the provinces of the dominion. By the act of confederation the postal service was incorporated into the Federal system which was administered by the post office department at Ottawa.
The rates of postage in British Columbia were made uniform with the charges in the other provinces, viz., three cents per half ounce for letters, and one cent for newspapers.
Communication between British Columbia and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains was far from satisfactory. Until the completion of the Canadian Pacific railway in 1885, the eastern provinces had to depend entirely upon the United States postal system for the means of communication with British Columbia. At the time of the entrance of the province into the confederation, the opportunities for an exchange of correspondence were limited to twice a week.
The mails were conveyed from San Francisco by railway and stage to Olympia, between which point and Victoria, semi-weekly trips were made by steamer. There was also a service twice a month, between Victoria and San Francisco. The maintenance of these connections between San Francisco and Vancouver Island was stipulated for among the conditions of union of British Columbia with the dominion of Canada.
Within the province, the mails were carried by the steamer "Sir James Douglas" along the east coast of Vancouver Island and Comox. The mainland was supplied with mails by a steamer which ran twice a week between Vancouver and New Westminster. In the interior of the province, the mails were carried by steamer up the Fraser river to Yale, thence northward to Barkerville. The distance between New Westminster and Barkerville was 486 miles. The service from Yale to Barkerville was by means of stages, drawn by four or six horses. This service was carried on weekly during summer, and fortnightly during the winter. Striking off westward from this route at Quesnelle, there was another to Omenica, 350 miles, over which the mails were carried monthly.[327]
In bringing the narrative to a point where the several provincial systems were incorporated into one system controlled by the post office department at Ottawa, I have completed the task I undertook. It remains only to note in a summary manner the progress that was made by the post office from Confederation to the Great War.
[Illustration: ROBERT MILLAR COULTER. M.D., C.M.G.
(_Deputy Postmaster General since 1897_)]
On the formation of the present department, there were 3477 post offices in the system. In 1914 this number had been increased to 13,811. The expansion of the lines of the service in the four older provinces, though considerable, is not comparable with that in the provinces comprehended in the territories west of the Great Lakes. In Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the better settled parts of Quebec and Ontario, the characteristic of the increase is the greater frequency of travel on already established roads, and, particularly, the acceleration of correspondence by the introduction of railways into the parts of the provinces.
In 1867 there were but 2278 miles of railway in Canada. In the forty-seven years which followed this mileage was augmented to 30,795.
The narrow line of settlement in Ontario from the Quebec boundary to Toronto had expanded to a breadth, covering the extent of country from lake Ontario to the watershed, dividing the waters flowing south from those running into Hudson's Bay.
But the great expansion has taken place in the provinces on the plains between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains--in the New Canada beyond the Great Lakes. On entering Confederation, the postal arrangements in this vast territory comprised but six post offices, with a system of mail service of no more than 145 miles. Since 1867 a system has been created in these western provinces containing in 1914 over 42,000 miles, of which 16,500 miles are of railroad. The number of post offices in this year was 3402.
The expansion in British Columbia if not equal in magnitude to that in the prairie and grain-growing provinces, keeps full pace with the requirements of that province. There were thirty post offices in the province in 1871 when the colony entered Confederation. These had increased to 799 in 1914. The system in the earlier period comprised 3412 miles. This had increased to over 12,000 miles in 1914; of these 3200 were by railroad, and 5000 by steam or sailing vessel.
The outstanding feature of the interchange of correspondence between the several provinces at the time they entered Confederation is the dependence on the postal service of the United States for the means by which it was carried on. As between the old province of Canada and the Maritime provinces, there was indeed a mail service by coach between Truro, sixty miles west of Halifax, and Riviere du Loup, 120 miles east of Quebec. But, apart from the fact that the trips were made no more frequently than three times a week, the utter inadequacy of such a mode of conveyance over a route 485 miles in length was obvious to those who could use the railways of the United States for the same purpose.
The provinces had been united politically for nine years before the completion of the inter-colonial railway provided the means of direct communication between them. Until 1876 the usual course for the mails between the Maritime provinces and the old province of Canada was by railway from St. John, New Brunswick to Bangor, Maine, thence to Portland, where connection was made with the Grand Trunk system.
As the western provinces came into the Confederation they exhibited in an even more marked degree the dependence on the good will of the United States for communication with the older provinces. The construction of the Canadian Pacific railway westward around the head of lake Superior and the continuance of its course across the plains of the north-west territories, and over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, gradually relaxed that dependence.
But Manitoba had been a province of the dominion for fourteen years before the first train ran over an all-Canadian route between that province and Ontario, and it was two years later before British Columbia was linked up with its sister provinces by this means.
During these periods the mails for Manitoba were despatched from Windsor by way of Chicago, St. Paul's and Pembina, Dakota: those for British Columbia, by way of San Francisco. Fortunately, the geographical position of Canada with reference to the western and north-western states, enabled the post office of this country to reciprocate, more or less adequately, the services rendered in the maintenance of communication between the several provinces.
Concurrently with the expansion of the postal system has gone a steady reduction in the postal rates. The charge of five cents per half ounce on letters was lowered to three cents per half ounce in the first session of parliament after Confederation. The effect of the reduction on the volume of correspondence exchanged was manifested in the fact that, although the reduction was the very considerable one of forty per cent., the revenue in 1871 was greater by $55,000 than the amount collected three years before.
The rate of three cents per half ounce, which was fixed in 1868, remained unchanged for twenty-one years, when the unit of weight was changed from half an ounce to one ounce, the rate becoming in 1889 three cents per ounce. The final reduction in the rate was made on January 1, 1899, two cents being substituted for three cents as the rate of postage for an ounce letter.
In 1878 Canada became a member of the Universal Postal Union, an organization whose purpose it was to make in effect a single postal territory of the whole world. The obstacles to the interchange of correspondence between the various countries owing to differences in charges and regulations, had long been felt as a serious impediment to the cultivation of social and commercial relations which there was a general desire to foster, and some tentative efforts had been made, notably by the United States, to ameliorate the conditions governing international correspondence by the establishment of uniform regulations for this class of correspondence.
Twenty-two states, comprising the leading countries in Europe, the United States, and Egypt sent delegates to a conference that assembled at Berne in 1874, and the result of their deliberations was a convention which established a code of regulations and fixed uniform postage rates respecting correspondence passing anywhere within the union.
The benefits conferred by the union on those, who, for any reason, had to carry on correspondence with foreign countries were inestimable. Some illustrations drawn from the case of Canada will be enlightening. In 1873 letters sent to India were subject to two different rates, according to the route by which they were directed. If sent by Canadian steamers to Great Britain, and thence on to their destination, the charge was twenty-two cents; if sent by the United States, the charge was thirteen cents. To Chili, Peru, and Ecuador, there were two routes and two rates; by way of England, the charge was forty cents, by way of the United States, twenty-five cents.
The extreme instance of variation in the charges according to the route chosen was in the case of letters from the United States to Australia.
There were six different routes, and the postal guide set out the different charges: five cents, thirty-three cents, forty-five cents, fifty-five cents, sixty cents, and one dollar, according to the route by which the letters were sent.
Difficulties of an accounting nature arising from different standards of weights hampered the operations of the officials in preparing the mails. Thus a letter from Great Britain to Germany, passing through France was taxed at a certain rate per half ounce in England, another rate per ten grams in France, and, finally, a third rate per loth[328]
in Germany.
Many of these trammels to correspondence were removed by special conventions before the Postal Union came into being. But how many remained may be judged from the fact that the Canadian postal guide, issued shortly before Canada was admitted to the Postal Union, contained a list of rates to 127 different countries, which must be consulted by correspondents and postal officials before the charge on a letter going abroad could be ascertained.
The immediate effect of coming into the union was the removal of these extensive and complicated lists from the postal guide, and their replacement by a single sentence, in which the charge on letters for all the countries in the union was stated to be five cents per half ounce.
The Postal Union did not at that time comprehend all countries, though it did all the most important, but since then adhesions have been made from year to year until to-day there is scarcely a country to which letters are written, which does not come within its scope.
In 1898, at Canada's instance, a closer union was formed for penny postage within the British Empire. It went into effect on Christmas day of that year. It did not include all parts of the Empire at the time it was formed, Australia being deterred from associating itself with the scheme, by financial considerations.
A few years ago Australia found itself able to adjust the difficulties with which it was confronted when the union was formed, and the imperial penny postage scheme is operative in all parts of the Empire.
In 1903 the postmaster general of Canada opened negotiations with the administrations of the various parts of the Empire for a reduction of the postal rates on newspapers. His proposition was to allow newspapers to circulate throughout the Empire at the same rates as were charged for their transmission within the countries from which they were sent. The proposition encountered much opposition at the outset, but it made gradual progress, and to-day a newspaper may be sent from Canada to Great Britain and several other portions of the Empire at the same rate as would carry it from one place to another in Canada.
The auxiliary postal services--the money order and the savings bank--have expanded in their operations enormously between the period of Confederation and the present time. In 1868 there were 515 money order offices in the provinces comprising the dominion, and the amount of the orders issued by them was $3,342,574. The corresponding figures for 1914 were 4274 offices, which issued orders to the amount of $118,731,966.
The post office savings bank was not in operation prior to Confederation. It was established in April 1868, and at the end of the first year 213 post offices were charged with the duty of receiving and paying out savings deposits. The deposits at the end of the first year amounted to $861,655. In 1914 there were 1250 post offices doing savings bank business, and the deposits amounted to $11,346,457, and the balance standing at the credit of depositors was $41,591,286.
The financial operations of the Canadian post office have undergone a great expansion. The revenues which at the end of the first year of Confederation were $1,024,711, have, in spite of the steady reduction in the charges, been multiplied sixteen-fold within the forty-eight years since that period. In 1914 the amount collected for its services reached $16,865,451.
It is interesting, as illustrating the much greater use made of the post office by the public in Canada, to note that while the revenue has increased sixteen times, the population has not much more than doubled within the same period. In 1868, when the population of the four original provinces was given as 3,879,885, the amount paid to the post office was $1,024,711; in 1914, when the population was 8,075,000 the revenue was $16,865,451. Thus, notwithstanding the fact that for every letter posted during the first year of Confederation five cents was exacted by the post office, while in 1914 two cents only was demanded, the average expenditure for each member of the population was in 1868, rather less than twenty-seven cents, while in 1914 it was a small fraction over two dollars.
The Canadian post office has been on a sound footing as a business institution for a number of years past. This fact is more notable than would perhaps appear. The postal system of this country embraces a territory more extended than that served by any other system on earth, except the United States and Russia; and the population to utilize its services, and thereby furnish its revenues, is very much less than that of either of these countries.
Circumstances, incident to the expansion of settlement or the providing of new facilities, are constantly arising, which compel the department to embark on expenditures from which adequate returns can be expected only in the distant future.
As instances, when Manitoba and the north-west territories were added to the dominion, one of the early measures of the department was to establish a line of mail route from Winnipeg to Edmonton, at a cost of $10,000, while the receipts from the whole north-west territories was considerably less than $100. The completion of the Canadian Pacific railway to Vancouver in 1885 involved the department in outlays, which exceeded the revenues by over $200,000 a year.
Nor has it been only by the weight of unavoidable expenditure that the department has been impeded in its efforts to make ends meet. The policy of the government has also operated to deprive it of what in all other countries is regarded as a source of legitimate revenue.
Newspapers have always been circulated through Canada by the post office on terms most advantageous to the public. In 1875 publishers were permitted to send their papers to subscribers at the rate of one cent per pound. Even this small charge was removed in 1882, and for the following seventeen years newspapers addressed to subscribers were exempt from all charges.
In 1899 a small charge was imposed, which, after some variations, was fixed at a quarter cent per pound. As the cost to the post office of handling and transmitting newspapers is estimated as from four cents to six cents per pound, it is clear that the loss to the department on this head reaches a large amount each year. In spite of these facts, however, the revenues of the department have steadily increased, and since 1903, when they first surpassed the outlay, they have maintained an ascendancy which it is improbable will be overcome.
FOOTNOTES:
[313] _Sess. Papers_, Canada, 1871, No. 20.
[314] Hargrave's _Red River_, p. 155.
[315] _The Nor'-Wester_, January 28, 1860.
[316] Minutes of evidence taken before the select committee on the Hudson's Bay Company, Ques. 4772 (_House of Commons Papers_, 1857).
[317] Hargrave's _Red River_, p. 100.