Stephen Brown 464 pages hardcover
In
The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen
Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins
in the fur trade. With
Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally
thrilling and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian
Pacific Railway.
In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline.
This 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 into a
single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With
over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly
inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railroad 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 recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In
Dominion, Stephen Bown again 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 vivid portrayal of the powerful forces
that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a
revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent
state.
