With the current trade uncertainty due to tariffs on southbound Canadian crops and those headed to China, Shipfax takes a look back and offers a recommendation to both alleviate the pain for Canadian farmers and to make use of an underutilized asset of the Port of Halifax.
In 1897 the Canadian Government subsidized extension of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Southern Alberta to British Columbia using a route through the mountainous terrain by way of the Crow's Nest Pass. By artificially lowering the freight rates to transport grain to eastern ports by matching the rate through the Crow's Nest Pass, the government also promoted growth of industry in eastern Canada at the expense of western development. The program, known as the Crow Rate, was very unpopular in western Canada due to a perceived bias against western interests (what's new), and was eventually repealed in 1992. Grain exports through Halifax dropped away to near nil as a result. A new Western Grain Transportation Act was introduced in 1993 and promoted grain shipments southward by rail and by the Mississippi River system.
The backlogs to load grain at Vancouver was not improved despite government grain car programs. The railroads then discovered winter as a new excuse for slow westward grain movement.
Present day politicians (in election mode) are now funding renovation of the Port of Churchill, Manitoba, to ship more prairie grain via Hudson Bay to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. While that redevelopment may make sense on paper, it is just a way to pour more money down the throat of a white elephant that has failed to live up to its promise since the1930s. (Construction of the Port started in the early 1900s, was delayed by World War I, and the Great Depression, finally opening for business in 1931. It was also shut down during World War II and from 2016 to 2019 due to rail line washout.) Now privately owned, the port and rail line, apparently cannot fund its own maintenance.
Why spend tax payers' money on a port with shallow water, a short ice free navigation season of only four months or so (even with global warming and an open Northwest Passage it will still be only seasonal) and a rail line built on melting muskeg (global warming cuts both ways) when the Port of Halifax is the very opposite? With deep water, ice free and a stable rail line (the Isthmus of Chignecto can be reinforced for a competitive cost) the Port of Halifax is all that Churchill is not. Not only that but Halifax has a huge grain elevator and grain handling facilities that are seriously underused.
The 365 silos in the Port of Halifax grain elevator can hold 5,152,000 bushels of grain and can load out 50,000 bushels per hour. The installation is a Halifax landmark.
Shipfax is calling for a competitive rail system to move grain from the prairies to Halifax. The two so-called Canadian railways need to be reminded that they owe their existance to the Canadian government's largesse and promotion. Both have huge networks into the US, but should now be directing traffic, tariff free, through Halifax and on to the rest of the world.
The grain importing facility at Pier 25-26 consists of a "grain leg" that can offload 500 tonnes per hour from ships. A bucket loop contraption, it is rarely used anymore as grain now arrives, usually from the Lakehead, on self-unloaders. Most of that inbound grain is for local consumption.
The Nanticoke used the grain leg until a hopper was built to allow it to self-unload.
The hopper can receive 1,000 tonnes per hour from self-unloading ships, such as the Nanticoke (built in 1980, but since retired and scrapped in 2020 after ten years mostly carrying salt and re-named Salarium).
Grain exporting galleries are now located at Pier 28, but once extended out from Pier 25 to the end of Pier 26, and presumably could be expanded again if the basin between piers A and A-1 is filled in.
In 1970 Elder Dempster's Dunkwa could load grain from spouts at pier 24 and, as shown, at Pier 26, but that section of the gallery was removed in the mid-1970s when the Pier 28 gallery was built.
Despite the look of the three-master Star of the Pacific , this photo was not taken in the age of sail, but also in 1970, showing a bit of the old grain export gallery at Pier 23 (right side of photo) and the old maze of conveyor systems. Who knew? The "new" export gallery at Pier 28 dates from the mid-1970s:
An April Fool's Day event in ice-free Halifax harbour in 1987. Broken ice from the Gulf of St.Lawrence drifted down the coast and, driven by wind and tide, flowed into Halifax choking the harbour for a few days. The bulker Common Venture was loading grain at Pier 28, and suspended operations for a time. The event has not been repeated on subsequent April Firsts.
Nowadays the Pier 28 facility remains idle for months at a time, with only the occasional load of soy or wood pellets passing through the huge facility. It could be put to much more use if there were a present day equivalent subsidy or incentive, such as the infamous Crow Rate.
That's enough April 1 crowing. (Yes the gist of the above was inspired by April 1.)
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