Port Arthur, Ontario

CPR's completion to the east did little to affect the city's importance for shipping; the Canadian Northern Railway was constructed to serve the port, and it built numerous grain silos to supply lakers.

With Confederation in 1867, Simon James Dawson was employed by the Canadian Department of Public Works (DPW) to construct a road and route from Thunder Bay on Lake Superior to the Red River Colony (now Manitoba).

In May 1883 this unwieldy name was changed unilaterally by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) officials in Winnipeg to Port Arthur.

This early form of regional government covered an area that reached from Sibley Peninsula to the United States (US) border.

They began a long and ultimately successful competition with Port Arthur to secure all the operations of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which moved to Fort William later in the century.

The CPR completed its construction along the north shore of Lake Superior and decided to centralize its operations along the lower Kaministiquia River.

From 1871 onward, Port Arthur was designated as the administrative centre for Thunder Bay District (created 1871 by the Ontario government).

A provincial stipendiary magistrate dispensed justice until 1884, when the government created a judicial district and appointed a federal judge to lead the court.

Lakehead University was established on a site within the former city of Port Arthur, whose intercity area increasingly became a focus of industrial and commercial activity in the post-World War II period.

In 2006, Prince Arthur's Landing was adopted as the name for a mix-use waterfront redevelopment district incorporating a marina, parkland and trails, public art, restored heritage buildings, and a future hotel.

Canadian Northern Railway coal trestle in port Arthur (1907)
The Harbour and C.N.R. Depot, Port Arthur, Ontario in 1910