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National Dream,The CP Rail The Great Railway 1871-1881 By Pierre Berton DJ
The National Dream CP Rail The Great Railway 1871-1881 By Pierre Berton Back dust jacket has damage, see photos, Reflections from the lights on some photos.
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket Has plastic covering
Copyright 1970, 10th PRINTING 1973
439 Pages Indexed
CONTENTS
Cast of Characters x
From Sea to Sea 1
ONE
1. An act of "insane recklessness" 6
2. The dreamers 11
3. "Canada is a corpse" 19
4. The struggle for the North West25
5. The land beyond the lakes 31
6. Ocean to Ocean 39
7. The ordeal of the Dawson Route52
TWO
1. Poor Waddington 60
2. Sir Hugh Allan's shopping spree 65
3. The downfall of Cartier 72
4. George McMullen's blackmail 80
THREE
1. Lucius Huntington's moment in history 90
2. Scandal! 101
3. The memorable August 13 108
4. The least satisfactory Royal Commission 114
5. Battle stations 124
6. Macdonald versus Blake 134
FOUR
1. "Hurra! The jolly C.P.S.!" 148
2. The bitter tea of Walter Moberly 156
3. Ordeal in the mountains 164
4. "That old devil" Marcus Smith174
FIVE
1. Lord Carnarvon intervenes 184
2. "The horrid B.C. business" 200
3. The Battle of the Routes 208
SIX
1. The first locomotive 220
2. Adam Oliver's favourite game 229
3. The stonemason's friends 239
4. "Mean, treacherous coward!" 249
SEVEN
1. Resurrection 262
2. "Get rid of Fleming" 272
3. The Strange Case of Contract Forty-two 278
4. Bogs without bottom 282
5. Sodom-on-the-Lake 289
EIGHT
1. Jim Hill's Folly 302
2. "Donald Smith is ready to take hold" 307
3. Enter George Stephen 316
4. A railway at bargain rates 323
5. The Syndicate is born 329
NINE
1. "Capitalists of undoubted means"338
2. Success! 346
3. The Contract 353
4. The Great Debate begins 359
5. The "avenging fury" 368
6. Macdonald versus Blake again 372
7. The dawn of the new Canada 382
Chronology 391
Notes 399
Bibliography 415
Acknowledgements 425
Index 427
MAPS
Canada before the CPR (1871) Frontispiece
Prairie Trails and Explorations (1857-71) 34
Fleming's Route, Ocean to Ocean 48, 49
The Dawson Route 54, 55
Walter Moberly's Country 158
The Battle of the Routes 192, 193
Fleming's Survey (1877) 224, 225
Government Contracts 244
The St. Paul and Pacific Railway (1873) 303
Drawn by Courtney C. I. Bond
In 1871, a tiny nation, just four years old-its population well below the four million mark-determined that it would build the world's longest and costliest railroad across empty country, much of it unexplored. This decision-bold to the point of recklessness-was to change the lives of every man, woman and child in Canada and alter the future and the shape of the nation. Its effects are still being felt a century later.
Using primary sources-diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents and newspapers-Pierre Berton has reconstructed the incredible decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe-contractors, politicians, financiers, surveyors, workingmen, journalists and entrepreneurs-fought for the railway, or against it.
It is a tale crammed with human drama. Here is the fullest account ever published of the Pacific Scandal, which left its scars upon the era. Here, told for the first time, is the saga of the surveyors who struggled and often died in the mountains and of the construction men who fought to tame the muskegs and the granites of the Canadian Shield. Here is the unpublished story of how railroad contracts were awarded to political cronies-men who thought little of bribing public servants to get what they wanted.
Above all, THE NATIONAL DREAM is the story of people, all of them larger than life. It is the story of the great political figures of the era-Macdonald, Tupper, Mackenzie and Blake. It is the story of George McMullen, the brash,
young promoter who tried to blackmail the Prime Minister of Canada, of Marcus Smith, the crusty surveyor, so suspicious of authority he thought the Governor General was speculating in railway lands, of Sanford Fleming, the great engineer who invented Standard Time, but couldn't make up his mind about the railroad's route, of Donald Smith, one-eyed Jim Hill and George Stephen, who turned 'a broken-down railroad in Minnesota into a multimillion dollar enterprise. All these figures, and dozens more, come to life as flesh and blood figures, with human failings, human ambitions and human foibles.
THE NATIONAL DREAM reads like a novel but every word of it is documented. Never before has this story of Canada's beginnings been told in such detail and with such zest. An important contribution to history, it can be read with equal pleasure by layman or academic. And after reading it, none can ever say again that the story of this country's past is dull.
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