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Using primary sources--diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public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 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.