For the week of March 18, 2024.
On March 18, 2015, the Government of Canada recognized the Grain Transshipment at the Lakehead as a national historic event. Between the 1880s and the 1980s, almost all grain from the Canadian Prairies passed through a large inland port on the northwest shore of Lake Superior. It arrived at the Lakehead by train and left by ship, travelling the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River to Montréal, Quebec, and then on to the global market.
The section of the Canadian Pacific Railway between Winnipeg and Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) opened in 1882. Grain started to arrive by train in 1883. The following year, the Canadian Pacific Railway began construction of the first of many terminal elevators for grain storage. The King elevator (named for its builder, John King) held roughly 350,000 bushels of grain.
Between 1896 to 1914, the prairie wheat economy experienced enormous growth. Settler agriculture expanded, leading to more production, at the same time as European demand for Canadian grain skyrocketed. Canadian exports grew from 10 million bushels of wheat in 1901 to 157 million in 1916. By 1923, Canada was the world’s largest exporter of grain.
The Crow’s Nest Pass Agreement of 1897 ensured that virtually all this grain passed through the Lakehead. The freight rates established under the terms of this agreement (known as the Crow Rate) made it less profitable to ship grain west. Railway companies now needed access to Thunder Bay to manage costs. The Canadian Pacific Railway operated a monopoly over the grain shipment at the Lakehead until the arrival of the Canadian Northern Railway in 1902 and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1909.
The expansion of the railway industry and the grain trade had major implications for Fort William First Nation. In 1905, the federal government expropriated approximately 1,600 acres (about 648 hectares) of reserve land. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway wanted the site for a grain terminus, which it never completed. Members of Fort William First Nation had no choice but to relocate their homes, school, church, and graveyard. This was a traumatic experience, which left the community divided between two different locations.
In the years that followed, the amount of grain passing through the Lakehead grew dramatically. In 1910, there were 14 elevators with a combined capacity of 22 million bushels. Those figures increased by 1929 to 32 elevators capable of holding 88.5 million bushels. By the 1970s, the elevators at Lakehead had reached a peak capacity of 104.3 million bushels of grain.
The grain trade at the Lakehead declined in the years that followed. Federal subsidies for the transportation of grain by rail ended in 1983. It was now cheaper to transport prairie grain products a shorter distance to ports on the west coast. Those ports were increasingly exporting to the growing markets of China, Japan, and other Pacific Rim nations. Thunder Bay experienced a great reduction in trade, as a result. Today, there are only seven grain terminal elevators still in operation at the Lakehead.