letterhead:]

My dear Cal,

Very many happy returns of the day. I sent a small remembrance through the mail the other day which no doubt you will have received by this time. I suppose that the season is not quite so far advanced with you as it is with us but we have been having fine warm weather here for the last couple of days and everything is the garden is commencing to come up.

We had our first brush with the Railway Company the other day here before the Commission and while there was nothing very definite done we succeeded in having our proposition placed before the Commission and the city assented to it and was made a party. This removes one of our chief difficulties as it was a matter of considerable doubt whether or not we could persuade the city to take up our proposition involving as it does an additional expenditure of perhaps half a million dollars.

Our scheme is to depress the tracks and cover them over, being in fact a continuation of the present tunnel eastward to a point about half way between MacNab and James Sts., swinging it slightly to the South and getting off the street at this point. So that the mouth of the tunnel will be about where Arnott's [?] house is. From this point it will continue curving to the South in an open cut, the present station torn down and a new one being placed on the South side of Hunter St. across Hughson St. The station grounds lying to the South of this again to a point about half way across the Woodmarket between James and Catherine Sts. Something like this:

[Sketch of the path the tracks will take].

The present top of the tunnel is taken off as far as Bay St. from Park and re-covered as far as the point marked X on a level however with the old original Hunter St. grade. This is about the best we can do with the present situation and as a matter of fact it will be considerable relief to us from noise and smoke. If however we still find the conditions intolerable then we can sell at a greatly increased rate owing to our having Hunter St. frontage restored to us.

I am not at all sanguine of the result of the final result of the present application but we have made progress.

Take care of yourself and don't overwork.

Your affte brother.

T. B. McQuesten