During the wheat boom, elevator construction barely kept pace with shipments of grain. In this photograph, freight cars are seen unloading wheat at the Thunder Bay elevator built at Port Arthur in 1909 with a capacity of one and a half million bushels. A steamer takes on grain at the Dominion or Canadian Government Elevator built in 1913 by the government to help accommodate the unprecedented yields of the prairie wheatfields. From 1900 to 1915, the total capacity of elevators at the head of the lakes increased by over 800 per cent to 43,785,000 bushels, or one-seventh of Canada's total crop. With additions, the Canadian Northern Railway's elevator was the largest in the world with a capacity of nine and a half million bushels. At the height of the shipping season, the elevators of each city could ship one million bushels a day.
Courtesy: Whalen Collection, Lakehead University Library
