[]
Dominion
Play sample
  • Published: 19 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780385698740
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

Dominion

The Railway and the Rise of Canada

Formats & editions
EBook
10 Oct 2023
Audiobook
10 Oct 2023
Paperback
19 Nov 2024
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times

A gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the engineering triumph that created a nation: the Canadian Pacific Railway

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times

A gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the engineering triumph that created a nation: the Canadian Pacific Railway

The sharp decline of the demand for fur in the late nineteenth century 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. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the Canadian Pacific Railway would be the longest railway 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 Dominion, Stephen R. Bown 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 portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world during this time provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada’s creation as an independent state.
  • Published: 19 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780385698740
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

About the author

Stephen Bown

STEPHEN R. BOWN writes on the history of exploration, science and ideas. His subjects include the medical mystery of scurvy, the Treaty of Tordesillas and the lives of Captain George Vancouver and Roald Amundsen. His books have been published in multiple English-speaking territories, translated into nine languages and shortlisted for many awards. He has won the BC Book Prize, the Alberta Book Award, the William Mills Prize for Polar Books, among others. His 2020 book, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire, won the J.W. Defoe Book Prize and the National Business Book Award. Born in Ottawa, Bown now lives near Banff in the Canadian Rockies.
portrait photo of Stephen Bown

Also by Stephen Bown

The Company
See all

Praise for Dominion

Praise for The Company:

  • "Absorbing and nuanced. . . . What distinguishes The Company's popular history is Bown's highlighting of those dynamic Indigenous polities and, as far as the historical records allow, some key individuals within them." —Maclean's
  • "Stephen Bown . . . tells the story of the Hudson's Bay Company with verve and an astringent, contemporary slant. . . . Bown widens the lens to include a more-informed portrait of the peoples and a more-balanced assessment of the HBC's impact during 200 years of monopoly. . . . The Company is compelling, both as a lively narrative about a corporation that helped shape North American development and as a thoughtful exploration of the complex indigenous cultures that once dominated the continent." —Wall Street Journal
  • "A thorough and comprehensive history of the international operation that helped create western Canada, The Company focuses on vivid portraits of the people whose personalities and actions made the Hudson's Bay Company what it was and what it failed to be." —Eugene Walz, 2021 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize Jury Chair

Praise for The Company:

  • "Absorbing and nuanced. . . . What distinguishes The Company's popular history is Bown's highlighting of those dynamic Indigenous polities and, as far as the historical records allow, some key individuals within them." —Maclean's
  • "Stephen Bown . . . tells the story of the Hudson's Bay Company with verve and an astringent, contemporary slant. . . . Bown widens the lens to include a more-informed portrait of the peoples and a more-balanced assessment of the HBC's impact during 200 years of monopoly. . . . The Company is compelling, both as a lively narrative about a corporation that helped shape North American development and as a thoughtful exploration of the complex indigenous cultures that once dominated the continent." —Wall Street Journal
  • "A thorough and comprehensive history of the international operation that helped create western Canada, The Company focuses on vivid portraits of the people whose personalities and actions made the Hudson's Bay Company what it was and what it failed to be." —Eugene Walz, 2021 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize Jury Chair