Inauguration of the Port Arthur Electric Street Railway, 1891.
Port Arthur was among the first communities in North America to establish an electric street railway system. It also pioneered the municipal ownership of public utilities when its citizens voted down the proposal of local merchants to run a privately owned system and opted instead for the town to build and operate its own street railway. One of the spurs to this early intiative in public transportation was the Canadian Pacific Railway's decision to move its Port Arthur works to properties newly acquired from the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort William. By means of the street railway, Port Arthur hoped to keep its taxpayers employed by the C.P.R. from moving out of town. The following year the Ontario Legislature granted the town of Port Arthur the right to construct and operate an electric railway in Fort William, and by the end of 1893 the system skirted the entire industrial area along the waterfront of the two towns. Although the new city of Fort William purchased the sections of the line within its own boundaries in 1908, a Joint Board managed the entire operation in both cities until 1913. After much wrangling, each city then assumed the operation of its own independent system requiring passengers to change cars at the border. This situation continued until the two cities amalgamated in 1970.
Port Arthur also pioneered in the municipal ownership of steam generating stations and built its own in 1891 to supply electricity for the street railway and commercial customers. It was only in 1898 that Fort William had electricity which came from a small municipally owned generating plant on the Kaministikwia River. After construction of the Kaministiquia Power Company's plant at Kakebeka Falls in 1906, however, Fort William owned the distribution system of its electric power.
