Photostory #379: Serving Great Slave, Hay River, Yellowknife and Points North: Canada's Sub-Arctic Railroad to Rich Resources

Photographers
Ted Grant
Maker
National Film Board of Canada
Release Date
December 5, 1964
Collection
CMCP fonds
Credit Line
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives
Main Text
Canada's first railway to penetrate the vast 1,300,000-square-mile Northwest Territories has been constructed 14 months ahead of schedule. This new railroad, starting at Peace River in northern Alberta, runs a total of 432 miles to Great Slave Lake --inland gateway to the mighty Mackenzie River and Canada's mainland arctic regions. Working day and night with a massive-powered tracklayer, hundreds of workers laid a mile of steel a day across the low-lying plateaus of wilderness, sometimes in 40-below-zero temperatures. Built by Canada's national railway, the $86,000,000 project is a shining steel highway for shipping machines and material north to speed development and a vital freight line south for rich natural resources from northern mines and forests. Already in operation, it has spurred agriculture and sent thousands of cars of grain and lumber rolling south. Biggest foreseeable user of the line is the Pine Point base-metal mine being built at the railway's end, but, as exploration and development grows across this enormous region and world technology makes new demands, future rail cargoes may consist of riches not just still undiscovered -- but as yet unknown.