British Columbia Railway

The British Columbia Railway (AAR reporting mark BCR) is the largest railway company in British Columbia, operating over a total of 5095 miles of railway; of this, 4495 miles is on the mainland, 433 miles on Vancouver Island, along with 167 miles in Yukon, Canada. The BCR is a Crown corporation, owned by the government of British Columbia; responsible for it is the Ministry of Labour, Industry, and Railways. The BCR provides extensive passenger and freight service throughout its network.

History
The history of the British Columbia Railway can be traced back to the origins of two railway companies: the Dominion Northern Railway (DNR) and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP).

Dominion Northern Railway
The Dominion Northern had been formed in Canada in 1898, intending to create a second transcontinental rail line after the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). To satisfy the requirements of BC law, the DNR established a BC-based subsidiary called the Dominion Northern Railway of British Columbia' in 1908, and finally began operations over its new line from Pacific Central Station in Vancouver to Edmonton, Alberta in 1914. Financial difficulties, owing partly to the downturn in traffic caused by the First World War, led to the DNR's bankruptcy, and in 1918 the Canadian government nationalised the company. The BC government opted to follow suit, renaming the company British Columbia Railway.

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway had been established in British Columbia in 1911, with half of the shares being held by the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) of Canada, as part of a plan to build a third transcontinental line, this one intending to establish a major port at Prince Rupert, which would provide a shourter route for ships to and from Asia. Work on the new line from Edmonton, Alberta to Prince Rupert went quickly, and by the end of 1914 the new line was operational.

The GTR, however, had decided to pull out of the transcontinental project in 1912, and the Canadian government, still desirous of another railway from Atlantic to Pacific, established a new, government-owned company called the National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) in 1913. Construction of the NTR was fraught with difficulties, both in physical and financial, and the line expanded only slowly; two years later, the NTR, along with several other companies previously nationalised in Canada to create the Canadian Government Railways (CGR). It was under CGR control that the new line, running from Montreal, Quebec to Edmonton, where it connected with the Grand Trunk Pacific, was completed in 1922. The following year all of the railways owned by the Canadian government - the Canadian Government Railways, the Dominion Northern, the Grand Trunk Railway (which had been nationalised after a bankruptcy a few years prior), and several smaller railways - into a single entity known as the Canadian National Railway.

The Grand Trunk Pacific remained in private hands for several years after the end of the First World War. Although it provided a very important service to northern BC, the levels of traffic were far lower than had been anticipated. This was due in large part to the failure of the National Transcontinental project to generate the amount of traffic that had been envisioned - the Canadian Prairies were still too undeveloped and too sparsely populated. Another factor was that much of the traffic heading from Canada to the Pacific coast was routed to Vancouver. Traffic from the Canadian Pacific for export from Prince Rupert was virtually nil, as the CPR naturally moved along its own mainline in BC to the port of Vancouver to connect with its own shipping subsidiary, Imperial Pacific Steamships; similarly, most export traffic from the Dominion Northern was also routed to Vancouver for transshipment. This left only freight originating on the CGR's National Transcontinental route - which, as mentioned, proved to be much less than expected - along with DNR shipments bound for Japan and Vladivostok, Russia, being directed over the GTP, as the shorter sea route from Prince Rupert to these destinations cut several days off the transit time. This already lower-than-hoped-for amount of traffic dropped further after the Russian Revolution of 1917 led to a suspension of BC and Canadian trade with the Lenin's Bolshevik regime.

This drop in revenue hit hard, forcing the GTP to take a loan from the BC government in 1919. Two years later, the company directors were in Victoria once again. The government of Prime Minister Sir John Oliver wasn't keen on giving the struggling firm another loan so soon, however. Oliver did, however, understand the importance of the rail line, and what the failure of the GTP would mean to the development of BC's North. With the government already having four years' experience in running a railway, the decision was easy: the second loan request was refused. With the railway itself already the collateral for the first loan, there was little to protest for the GTP's directors when the nationalisation was announced; indeed, shareholders were given payouts that, argued Conservative Leader of the Opposition William Bowser, were far higher than what the railway was worth. Bowser subsequently attempted - unsuccessfully - to use the GTP nationalisation in his campaign to unseat Oliver in the parliamentary elections of 1924.

The nationalisation of the Grand Trunk Pacific took place on 1 January 1922, with its operations, equipment, and personnel being merged into the British Columbia Railway. Overnight, the length of BCR's routes more than doubled.