Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was at British Columbia’s famous Rogers Pass on this date in 1962 to officially dedicate and declare open that Trans-Canada Highway which linked, like the CPR decades before, Canadians from sea-to-shining-sea. In his memoirs, written in political retirement, Dief looked back with pride on the role his government played in bringing the highway to completion.
“We extended the legislation covering its construction to provide an additional $50 million so that might be linked together by a national highway of 4,887 miles,” he wrote. “We brought Quebec into this vital project for the first time when (his government) signed an agreement with the province in October 1960. To complete this highway over the north shore of Lake Superior was a considerable feat; to extend it through the Rogers Pass route in British Columbia was a very difficult and costly construction task indeed. Canadians now travel from coast to coast in number than no one … would have believed possible.”You can watch a newsclip of the official dedication below:Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.
“We extended the legislation covering its construction to provide an additional $50 million so that might be linked together by a national highway of 4,887 miles,” he wrote. “We brought Quebec into this vital project for the first time when (his government) signed an agreement with the province in October 1960. To complete this highway over the north shore of Lake Superior was a considerable feat; to extend it through the Rogers Pass route in British Columbia was a very difficult and costly construction task indeed. Canadians now travel from coast to coast in number than no one … would have believed possible.”You can watch a newsclip of the official dedication below:Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.