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In 1871, a tiny nation, just four years old - it's population well below the 4 million mark -- determined that it would build the world's longest 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 shape of the nation. Using primary sources - diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents and newspapers -- Pierre Berton has reconstructed the show more incredible decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe --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. The National Dream is above all else the story of people. It is the story of George McMullen, the brash young promoter who tried to blackmail the Prime Minister; 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 who couldn't make up his mind about the best route for the railway. All these figures, and dozens more, including the political leaders of the era, come to life with all their human ambitions and failings. "From the Trade Paperback edition." show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A solid telling of the politics behind the building of the CPR, Canada's first national railway. My only regret was the discovery that the actual story of its construction only really gets going in the sequel, "The Last Spike". Consequently this volume is mostly dry, but it granted me insight into the character of key politicians of the time, motivations behind the project and its impetus.
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Pierre Berton is a chronicler of the first order who has brought photographic clarity to the great and the corrupt, to the zealots and the dreamers associated with Canada's first great vision of linking steel threads to the nation's fabric.
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Books Set in Canada
57 works; 10 members
Author Information
103+ Works 7,387 Members
Pierre Berton was born in 1920 and raised in the Yukon. He worked in Klondike mining camps during his university years, spending four years in the army, rising from private to captain/instructor at the Royal Military College in Kingston. After the military, Berton went to Vancouver where he began his career at a newspaper. At 21, he was the show more youngest city editor on any Canadian daily. He moved to Toronto in 1947, and at the age of 31 was named managing editor of Maclean's. In 1957 he became a key member of the CBC's public affairs flagship program, Close-Up, and a permanent panelist on Front Page Challenge. He joined The Toronto Star as an associate editor and columnist in 1958, leaving 4 years later in '62 to commence The Pierre Berton Show, which ran until 1973. Since then he has appeared as host and writer on My Country, The Great Debate, Heritage Theatre, and The Secret of My Success. He has received numerous honourary degrees and served as the Chancellor of Yukon College. Berton is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, and has received a Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor in 1959, a Govenor's General Award for The Mysterious North in 1956, Klondike in 1958 and The Last Spike in 1972. Berton has also won a Nellie Award for best public broadcaster in radio in 1978, the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for non fiction in, 1981 and the Canadian Booksellers Award in 1982. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The National Dream
- Original publication date
- 1970
- People/Characters
- John A. McDonald; Alexander MacKenzie; Sandford Fleming
- Important places
- Canada
- Important events
- Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway
- Epigraph
- "Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation." - Thomas Henry Huxley
"Until this great work is completed, our Dominion is little more than a 'geographical expression'." - Sir John A. McDonald - First words
- It is New Year's Day, 1871, the year in which Canada will become a transcontinental nation, and in most of British North America it is bitterly cold.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The triumph lay just a few short years ahead.
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 385.0971 — Society, government, & culture Commerce, communications & transportation regulations Railroad transportation Subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North America Canada
- LCC
- HE2810 .C2 .B44 — Social sciences Transportation and communications Transportation and communications Railroads. Rapid transit systems
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 317
- Popularity
- 100,273
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.92)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 5
