Canadian Railroads > Why No CP-DAR Physical Connection

Did the CP ever consider physically connecting their Montreal-Saint John line to the Dominion Atlantic Railway line in Nova Scotia?  Was there ever an effort to build a line roughly parallel to CN's Sussex subdivision and the Intercolonial Railway?  There a car ferry across the Bay of Fundy used for the connection; how long did that service last and how efficient was it?  Did the CP ever look to obtain trackage rights on CN to bridge the gap on a all land rail routing?

CP had a line to Truro, NS from Windsor, but it was still over 200 miles from Truro to Saint John, and I suspect they decided there would never be enough freight to make a parallel line profitable.  It didn't matter for passengers, since they could take the ferry, and that was actually a lot faster than going the long way around anyway.  The ferry still exists, and it's still a lot faster to get to Saint John that way if you're in western Nova Scotia, but not if you're close to Halifax.

CP found themselves with too much track in New Brunswick (reputedly the highest mileage of railway track per capita of anywhere in Canada, at the turn of the last century), and likely didn't want to be in a similar situation in Nova Scotia.  And building over the Cobequid Mountains would be expensive.  Not like building competing branch lines on the Prairies.

GTD

More to the point, why did the Canadian Northern build the Halifax & South Western, hundreds of miles from the rest of the Canadian Northern System?

CNor was starting to fail financially while it expanded east from Toronto.