Items related to National Dream
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Using primary sources -- diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents and newspapers -- Pierre Berton has reconstructed the incredible decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe --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.
Using primary sources -- diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents and newspapers -- Pierre Berton has reconstructed the incredible decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe --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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
" Pierre Berton is a chronicler of the first order who has brought photographic clarity to the great and the corrupt, to the zealots and the dreamers associated with Canada's first great vision of linking steel threads to the nation's fabric."
-- "Montreal Star"
"Pierre Berton is a chronicler of the first order who has brought photographic clarity to the great and the corrupt, to the zealots and the dreamers associated with Canada's first great vision of linking steel threads to the nation's fabric."
--Montreal Star
About the Author:
-- "Montreal Star"
"Pierre Berton is a chronicler of the first order who has brought photographic clarity to the great and the corrupt, to the zealots and the dreamers associated with Canada's first great vision of linking steel threads to the nation's fabric."
--Montreal Star
Pierre Berton was one of Canada's most popular and prolific authors. From narrative histories and popular culture, to picture and coffee table books to anthologies, to stories for children to readable, historical works for youth, many of his fifty books are now Canadian classics.
Born in 1920 and raised in the Yukon, Pierre Berton worked in Klondike mining camps during his university years. He spent four years in the army, rising from private to captain/instructor at the Royal Military College in Kingston. He spent his early newspaper career in Vancouver, where at 21 he was the youngest city editor on any Canadian daily. He wrote columns for and was editor of Maclean's magazine, appeared on CBC's public affairs program "Close-Up" and was a permanent fixture on "Front Page Challenge" for 39 years. He was a columnist and editor for the Toronto Star and was a writer and host of a series of CBC programs.
Pierre Berton received over 30 literary awards including the Governor-General's Award for Creative Non-Fiction (three times), the Stephen Leacock Medal of Humour, and the Gabrielle Leger National Heritage Award. He received two Nellies for his work in broadcasting, two National Newspaper awards, and the National History Society's first award for "distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history." For his immense contribution to Canadian literature and history, he was awarded more than a dozen honourary degrees, is a member of the Newsman's Hall of Fame, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Pierre Berton passed away in Toronto on November 30, 2004.
Born in 1920 and raised in the Yukon, Pierre Berton worked in Klondike mining camps during his university years. He spent four years in the army, rising from private to captain/instructor at the Royal Military College in Kingston. He spent his early newspaper career in Vancouver, where at 21 he was the youngest city editor on any Canadian daily. He wrote columns for and was editor of Maclean's magazine, appeared on CBC's public affairs program "Close-Up" and was a permanent fixture on "Front Page Challenge" for 39 years. He was a columnist and editor for the Toronto Star and was a writer and host of a series of CBC programs.
Pierre Berton received over 30 literary awards including the Governor-General's Award for Creative Non-Fiction (three times), the Stephen Leacock Medal of Humour, and the Gabrielle Leger National Heritage Award. He received two Nellies for his work in broadcasting, two National Newspaper awards, and the National History Society's first award for "distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history." For his immense contribution to Canadian literature and history, he was awarded more than a dozen honourary degrees, is a member of the Newsman's Hall of Fame, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Pierre Berton passed away in Toronto on November 30, 2004.
From the Hardcover edition.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherMcClelland & Stewart
- Publication date1970
- ISBN 10 0771013337
- ISBN 13 9780771013331
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
£ 16.60
Shipping:
£ 15.09
From Canada to U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Seller Image
The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881
Published by
McClelland & Stewart
(1970)
ISBN 10: 0771013337
ISBN 13: 9780771013331
New
Soft cover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. Second printing 1986- New and Unread- Pierre Berton's The National Dream is the perfect antidote to recommend to anyone who thinks history, especially Canada's history, is boring. Canada's best-known historian takes the seemingly unexciting story of the building of a railroad and tells it with the colour and humor of a master yarn-spinner. The National Dream and its sequel, The Last Spike, published in 1970 and 1971, were two of Canada's biggest best-selling books and were turned into an eight-part series on CBC-TV watched by more people than any other dramatic program in the network's history to that date. The Last Spike won for Berton his third Governor General's Award for non-fiction. The story he tells has no end of crazy and bizarre characters: sleazy politicians, robber baron-style railroad tycoons, corrupt newspaper publishers, many of them considered the political and economic founders of Canada. Somehow, in a few short years, this band of misfits managed to build the world's longest railway across a vast, unforgiving land, much of which was unknown to non-Natives. The project left a mixed legacy. Opposition politicians denounced it as "insane" and "reckless," accurately predicting that the massive spending would lead to a flood of corruption. It almost bankrupted the country and provoked the displacement of the Native peoples of the Prairies from their ancestral lands. The railroad became the spine of an empire, an imperial highway linking Britain with Asia, conveniently paid for by the Canadian public. On the other hand, the railway dream is also credited with binding together a fledgling nation with a steel ribbon. "The dream," wrote Berton, "would be the filling up of the empty spaces and the dawn of a new Canada." --Alex Roslin. Seller Inventory # 009939
Buy New
£ 16.60
Convert currency