Gustavus Myers, A History of Canadian Wealth, ch 16: "There was," he said, "a little line of railway--I passed over it since --along the sea coast from Victoria to Nanaimo, a distance of 70 miles, the construction of which was scarcely necessary ; and to promote the construction of that railway nearly all of the coal lands of the Island of Vancouver were granted to a syndicate, the greater proportion of the capital being held in San Francisco by the Southern Pacific Railway magnates. I pointed out this fact at the time but the lobby influences here, the backing here, were too strong ; the grant was made, the coal lands have gone ; and the other day we were informed, in discussing the militia estimates, that the reason coal was so high when purchased in Vancouver Island, was that there was a monopoly, and we ourselves created that monopoly by the grant of the Nanaimo Railway Company."