Mr. MCLENNAN.

The hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Borden) has asked me what I know of this matter. The gentleman in question did apply to me to see what could be done re this matter, and I wrote to the department in his behalf. This gentleman sold these ties to the Boston and Nova Scotia Company, who in turn sold them to the Department of Railways. In answer to my letter the department replied that they had bought a certain number of ties from the Boston and Nova Scotia Company, at West Bay Road station, on the Intercolonial Railway, but the department could not say who originally owned the ties. Mr. McLellan sold these ties to the Boston and Nova Scotia Company, who forgot to pay him for them. When Mr. McLellan applied to me, I remember distinctly that I wrote to him advising him to forbid the government employees at West Bay station taking away the ties. He did so. He tells me he went to the station and forbade the government employees taking the ties away, warning them that he was going to apply to the Department of Railways for payment for these ties, having not been paid for them. The trackmen took the ties away, declaring that they knew nothing about the transaction between him and the Boston and Nova Scotia Company. From what I can gather from the department, the department certainly paid the Boston and Nova Scotia Company for the ties, but the company never paid Mr. McLellan for them. McLellan now. appeals through his solicitor to the department for redress. I must say that while the Department of Railways and Canals is innocent in the matter, it is a very hard case for Mr. McLellan, who honestly paid for the ties to the people who furnished them. There is an item, I believe, that the money was paid to Messrs. Fraser & Ross of the Boston and Nova Scotia Company.

Mr. MCLENNAN.

There are many excellent nurses who are not in a position to undergo examination before the medical board-who know very little about the technical subjects of anatomy and physiology and the materia medica in the abstract, but who, nevertheless, are perfectly capable of doing all the work required of them. These ladies, though they have not studied these subjects in the training schools, have nevertheless, acquired by practical experience all the proficiency desired. It is not really a technical knowledge of these various branches that constitutes a really good nurse. A patient, painstaking, kindly attendant at the bedside is really the successful nurse, and no one in this parliament would debar such ladies, who besides have considerable skill and experience, from practicing their profession.

Mr. MCLENNAN.

I move that the chairman leave the Chair.

Mr. MCLENNAN.

The clause under consideration reads as follows :

An advisory board for the government of the Association shall he selected at each annual meeting. The board may require candidates for membership in the Association to submit to examination before a hoard of medical practitioners to be named in each province by the president of the provincial Medical Association

therein, may impose penalties for unprofessional conduct

It is a star chamber, you see.

-rescind certificates of membership for cause, and exercise a general supervision over the affairs of the association.

It remains for these ladies to trump up a case against any lady or body of ladies whom they do not choose to have in their charmed circle. Now, in reply to the hon. member for Annapolis (Mr. Wade), I may say that there is not one trained nurse professionally practicing in Canada but has a certificate of competency from some recognized training school for nurses or some hospital. For my part, as a medical man, I consider these training schools and hospital authorities infinitely better authorities from whom to secure a license to nurse than a mere group of medical men practicing anywhere in the Dominion of Canada. They may know physiology, materia medica, anatomy, they may know all the book learning of the profession, but I would infinitely prefer a certificate of the body managing a respectable hospital than the certificate of any group of medical men in the Dominion in private practice, as I have just indicated.

Mr. McLENNAN.

Several letters from sea captains that I have received point out one difficulty, that is, that a large steamer 280 feet long going across from Mulgrave to Point Tupper, with a current running four or five miles an hour, and sometimes ice running with it, forcing it broadside, would have great difficulty to make so sharp a point as Point Tupper for the terminus. Even the present comparatively small ferry boat has to be driven full steam in order to make that dock on the Point Tupper side of the Strait of Canso, thus subjecting both boat and wharf to damage, which they often sustain in this way. If there is a difficulty in docking a small steamer, there will necessarily be a much greater difficulty in docking this large steamer that it is proposed to put on that ferry. I would, therefore, suggest to the hon. minister that it might be prudent to experiment upon docking the new boat at Point Tupper before any great expenditure is made upon it as a permanent dock. I have five or six letters in my possession from sea captains who have navigated the Straits of Canso from boyhood to the present day. Men who have been in charge of almost all the steamers that ply around the Strait of Canso, and they are a unit in the opinion that it would be most difficult to dock a large boat at such a place as Point Tupper. I have already said that if the present small boat which plies on the ferry is not run at full speed to' avoid the ice and fight the current that is tending to bring her down stream she will fail to make her dock at that very narrow point and she will then be very likely to go on the ledge of rock on either side of the point. They, therefore, unanimously have answered several questions put to them by the town council of Hawkesbury as to whether the point called Grant's Point at the northern entrance of Hawkesbury harbour would uot toe a safer point at which to dock a large steamer. Their answers are unanimous that Grant's Point would be the safer of the two at which to dock a large steamer. Many railway men are also of the opinion that the government would lose no money upon all the works they have now established at Point Tupper. The round-house and all the paraphernalia for the Cape Breton terminus established there would not be lost money

In view of the fact that cars for repairs can he driven in there as a sort of yard just as they now are, while the dock would be in a safe, roomy place at the entrance of Hawkesbury harbour, one of the finest harbours in eastern Nova Scotia outside of Sydney and Halifax. As proof of its safety 1 may say that vessels frequenting the Straits of Canso in storms always make for that harbour. The government steamers always make for that harbour when they are on the coast of Cape Breton or of eastern Nova Scotia. When there is so much unanimity amongst men who are thoroughly versed in the navigation of the Strait of Canso. who are thoroughly posted on the currents and movements of the ice, where there is such unanimity as to the choice of Grant's Point as a point of landing for the ferry steamers, particularly as large a steamer as the proposed one, I think the hon. minister should hesitate a little and experiment upon the docking of that new boat on the Cape Breton side before a permanent dock is established. There is a vast sum of money about to be voted by parliament to establish a terminus on the Cape Breton side of the Strait of Canso. It happens that Port Hawkesbury is on the Inverness side of the line of demarcation between Richmond and Inverness, but that does not make any difference for me as to the point I suggest. If there is a safe point, even to the south of Point Tupper, it would not matter to me. If these sea captains had chosen such a point I would not have one word to say, but I consider it my duty, as representing a portion of the people of the Island of Cape Breton, which has a good deal to do with the road, to lay before the committee, and particularly before the Department of Railways and Canals, the opinions of all these sea-faring men, who are perfectly conversant with the navigation of the Strait of Canso.