The Canadian Northern Railway was an upstart regional system for the prairies that had begun in Manitoba under entrepreneurs William Mackenzie and Donald Mann in 1899 through their amalgamation of several smaller branch lines. The CNoR started the process of building Canada's second transcontinental system between 1903 and 1912. The system was built from Winnipeg westbound to Vancouver and eastbound to Toronto and Montreal. In addition to an extensive network of branch lines in the prairie provinces, CNoR had many branch lines in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces.