TT4-2-2003E.pdf - Office des transports du Canada

called from his post as the first presidentof the Ontario Agricultural College inGuelph, Ontario.and approved construction and repairson railways and crossings. The AccidentBranch investigated railway accidents.Together the three men set to work toestablish rules and regulations for thenew body. They had no models tofollow. Theirs was the first independentregulatory body established by theDominion government. They would laythe groundwork for a new method ofpublic regulation in Canada.The first Annual Report of the Boardshows that the commissioners took uptheir tasks with a great deal of energy.Between February 9 and October 18, theBoard held 62 days of public sittings.Although 38 of those days were spent inOttawa, the Board travelled to Torontofor six days of hearings in June and,between August 8 and September 18, itheld 18 days of sittings in 15 differentlocations between Winnipeg and Victoria.The Board also hired 19 permanentemployees—one of them being Blair’sson and namesake, A.G. Blair Jr., as theBoard’s law clerk—and set up fourdepartments to handle routine work.The Records Department dealt with thepaperwork—complaints received by theboard, orders and decisions issued by theCommissioners as well as investigationscarried out. The Traffic Department dealtwith tariffs and freight classifications.The Engineering Department inspectedThe Board was also establishing itscredentials with the Canadian public.In July 1904, the Canada Law Journalreported that “we doubt if even theDominion Government, whichconstituted the Board, has yet realizedthat it has created a Court of suchextended jurisdiction as this Boardpossesses, and which jurisdiction, ifwisely exercised by a tribunal ofcompetent members, will be both asafeguard to the public and a speedymethod of settling differences betweenrailway companies.”But the 60-year-old Blair, busy as he wasmarshalling the Board through itsformative days, had not hung up hisgloves in the political ring. The fall of1904 brought the excitement of a federalelection and fresh battles to be fought.Laurier led his campaign with promisesof a bigger and better Canada.The election would yield one of themost often repeated—and misquoted—phrases in Canadian political history.On October 15, The Globe newspaperreported on an election rally for Laurier,at Massey Hall in Toronto. “Let me tellyou, my fellow countrymen, that all thesigns point this way, that the twentiethcentury shall be the century of Canadaand of Canadian development,” Laurier11Chapter One — ALL A BOARD 1904 TO 1938