“Nothing would ever be the same again. The tight little Canada of Confederation was already obsolete; the new Canada of the railway was about to be born. There was not a single man, woman or child in the nation who would not be in some way affected, often drastically, by the tortured decision made in Ottawa that night.”
It’s easy to forget how important railways were in North American development. Without them, however, history could have been very different in both the US and Canada, not only economically but politically. Railways weren’t just a way to ship goods; they were a lifeline to remote areas, often deciding whether a particular territory would join the larger federation, stay independent, or even join another country, as the US once envisaged for the area between Alaska and Washington (now part of Canada).
Indeed, the 1885 railway across Canada is perhaps the most notable example of the influence of railways, as well as an example of just how much effort it took to get the railways built. The railway crossed thousands of miles of almost unexplored territory, with no other transport links to send construction materials or supplies; bottomless mud (one lake with a mud bottom had 220,000 yards of gravel poured into it before the contractors went bankrupt, while another had piles driven 96 feet below the surface before they hit bedrock); huge mountains; strikes by workers over the terrible conditions; constant drinking as a result of the cold; and continuous accidents and explosions from poorly handled nitroglycerine, which needs to be kept warm to be stable, not an easy task in Canadian winters.
Most of all, though, the book is about political difficulties. The politicians, the contractors, and pretty much everyone else involved in the railroads at that time, both Canadian and American, were, to paraphrase the book, up to their sideburns in corruption. False companies, bribes, patronage, sudden disappearances and falsified bankruptices: no effort was spared, and above it all the worry of some politicians that without the railway, the West Coast would never join Canada at all.
To be honest, the book goes into more detail than I think most would want: unless you have a particular interest in this period, it is perhaps not suitable for a general reader. If you are interested, however, the railways played a key role in the development of the West, and the corruption that went with it makes for entertaining, if mildly depressing, reading.