Dominion

But there were also human obstacles to the construction of the railway: notably the Métis and First Nations inhabitants of the area through which the railroad was destined to pass. Bown spends several chapters discussing the conflicts between the Métis of the Red River Settlement and the government in Ottawa, as well as the struggles of First Nations such as the Cree, Siksika (Blackfoot), and Niisitapi peoples, as they coped with the extermination of the buffalo and the demands of the Canadian government for them to settle on reserves or face starvation. “How could they even conceive of a life so radically different from the one they knew?” Bown asks. “What would life be like without the buffalo? Or without their free-roaming ways across a land over which they were masters, or had been until recently?”

Other notable characters in the book include the railway baron William Cornelius Van Horne, an indefatigable industrialist who “despised drunkenness, sloth and dereliction” but loved a good dinner and fed his workers well, ensuring that they had “a plentiful hot meal to look forward to at the end of each day.” We also read about the stoic and philosophical Dukesang Wong, one of the thousands of Chinese labourers who built the railroad while facing unequal treatment and, sometimes, outright hatred because of their race. Wong’s diary is the only known first-hand account written by a Chinese railroad labourer.

While Dominion centres around the building of the CPR, David Laurence Jones’s book New World Dreams focuses mainly on the period after the railway had been completed. Jones, the CPR’s former manager of internal communications, explains the railway’s role in bringing settlers and tourists to the West while transporting grain grown on the prairies to shipping terminals on the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast.

Where New World Dreams excels is in the quality and quantity of its artwork. This coffee-table-sized book is chock full of posters, many in full colour, that advertise such alluring prospects as “Ready- Made Farms in Western Canada” and that encourage immigrants via appeals such as “Canada wants women for household work... Good wages, employment guaranteed.” In addition, there are dozens of photographs showing the faces of railway workers, hopeful immigrants, and eager tourists, all transported westward by the marvellous iron horse.

Together these books provide readers with a deep appreciation of the fundamental role of the Canadian Pacific Railway in shaping the Canada we know today.