The federal government had encouraged the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) system in the 1870s to consider building the transcontinental rail line. During the same time, a government survey party under the direction of Sandford Fleming set out across Canada to survey routes for the proposed railway. The "Canadian Pacific Survey", as it was called, surveyed routes to a number of Pacific Coast destinations (including Victoria on Vancouver Island). When Grand Trunk balked at building a railway using the survey, the government turned to the privately owned Canadian Pacific. The CPR, one of whose directors was James J. Hill, from Minnesota (and eventual builder of the transcontinental Great Northern Railway located just south of the US/Canada border), favoured a route farther south, as Hill hoped to tap into freight flows from the northern US states. That left Canada with a single transcontinental route close to the US border, since CPR chose to use Rogers and Kicking Horse passes rather than the surveyed route over the Yellowhead.