An Event At The Soo

They Celebrate Completion of The Power Canal.

Doings To Continue Through Four Days

Commemorating Greatest Enterprise of Its Kind.

Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.. Oct. 23.- Today begins the great four-day celebration of the completion of the immense power canal, and a time which it is proposed shall live in the memory of all who may be so fortunate as to attend. From the beginning to the end of the festal season the people of the Soo are assured of a series of events that will appropriately commemorate the greatest enterprise of its kind in the world. For four years they have waited for a realization of what seemed too much like a dream to be true, and now that the time has come for the final dedication of the work little else is thought or spoken of. An outline of the program is as follows:

On Thursday night an informal banquet in the Iroquois hotel will be given by the Consolidated Lake Superior Power company to about 350 guests.

Children's Day.

Friday will be children's day. The forenoon will be given over to an inspection of the canal and powerhouse by the officials and guests of the company and the general public.

In the afternoon the children's parade will be given.

Friday evening the company will give a general reception and grand ball to the citizens of the city at the armory.

Saturday, the real opening day, will be ushered in by a plan which Chief Engineer Von Schon insists on keeping under his hat. He says there will not be a man, woman or child in the Soo but will wake up with the celebration very forcibly called to their attention in an audible way.

The feature of the morning, the civic parade, promises to be the greatest display of marching bodies the Soo or the upper peninsula ever witnessed.

At 11:30 there will be a naval parade on the river of all shipping in the harbor. The opening ceremony will occur at high noon. Luncheon will be served in the powerhouse immediately after the ceremony, and this is to be follower by speaking in the powerhouse, where an auditorium with a seating capacity of over 2,000 will be arranged.

Following the ceremonies at the powerhouse and the speaking will come the industrial parade, which will consume the balance of the afternoon.

At night will occur the illumination of the powerhouse and canal and city.

Saturday night the company will tender to their guests at the armory a banquet, beginning at 8 o'clock, as it is planned to have the function at midnight.

On Sunday special services will be held in the churches of the city.

This canal is a triumph of engineering skill and industrial enterprise, the greatest hydraulic power plant in the world. Starting in the lower arm of Lake Superior, it passes straight through the heart of the city, and by magnificent true curve debouches into the St. Mary's river a mile below the rapids.

Wonderful Energy.

The canal is 203 feet wide at the water's edge and carries 22 feet of water. It is to produce energy aggregating over 50,000 horsepower. The interior of the canal is made perfectly smooth and true so as to offer the least possible friction. The upper 4,000 feet are through solid sandstone, where the cut is 30 feet deep to give the required level for the canal. This immense excavation is as clean cut a the mark of a square testing rod through a roll of butter. Over 6,000 feet pass through clay and sand, and to make this as nearly perfect as the rock section, all below the level is planked like the deck of a ship.