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  • Published: 19 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780385698740
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

Dominion

The Railway and the Rise of Canada





NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times

A gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the engineering triumph that created a nation: the Canadian Pacific Railway

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times

A gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the engineering triumph that created a nation: the Canadian Pacific Railway

The sharp decline of the demand for fur in the late nineteenth century could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company, but an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the Canadian Pacific Railway would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces.

The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In Dominion, Stephen R. Bown widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world during this time provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada’s creation as an independent state.

  • Published: 19 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780385698740
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

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Praise for Dominion

Praise for The Company:

  • "Absorbing and nuanced. . . . What distinguishes The Company's popular history is Bown's highlighting of those dynamic Indigenous polities and, as far as the historical records allow, some key individuals within them." —Maclean's
  • "Stephen Bown . . . tells the story of the Hudson's Bay Company with verve and an astringent, contemporary slant. . . . Bown widens the lens to include a more-informed portrait of the peoples and a more-balanced assessment of the HBC's impact during 200 years of monopoly. . . . The Company is compelling, both as a lively narrative about a corporation that helped shape North American development and as a thoughtful exploration of the complex indigenous cultures that once dominated the continent." —Wall Street Journal
  • "A thorough and comprehensive history of the international operation that helped create western Canada, The Company focuses on vivid portraits of the people whose personalities and actions made the Hudson's Bay Company what it was and what it failed to be." —Eugene Walz, 2021 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize Jury Chair