An important purchase

We are enabled to announce that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has acquired a controlling interest in the stock of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company. They have purchased the greater part of the shares at what is accepted by the sellers as a very good price; at the same time, it will give the Canadian Pacific Railway Company a property which will be more valuable and capable of development in their hands than it might otherwise be.

The full intentions of the railway company, we are given to understand, are to spend a considerable amount of money in adding modern, suitable vessels to the fleet and improving the present fleet, in order that the trade of the province, as a whole, may not only be protected, but improved.

While much attention has of late been directed to the agitation for an improved service, as well as to the competition between the cities of Victoria and Vancouver, it is not the intention of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to ask a bonus from either city, but to seek and develop trade wherever offering.

With such a powerful corporation taking hold of the Navigation Company, in connection with its large system, it is more than probable that trade properly belonging to the province, hitherto diverted to the Puget Sound cities, will be gained for British Columbia.

Much is due on the part of the province to the principal shareholders of the Navigation Company who have handed over their individual interests in order to promote the welfare of British Columbia.

Clarence Campbell Chipman, the commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who arrived here on Wednesday last, has conducted the negotiations between the various parties and brought them to this successful issue.

Daily Colonist, Jan. 12, 1901