The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885

Regular price RM44.00 MYR
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Nation-building history with cinematic railroad drama

If you enjoy big true stories driven by outsized personalities, this feels vivid, urgent, and surprisingly dramatic. Pierre Berton turns a massive engineering project into a human saga full of risk, ambition, political tension, and sheer momentum. It’s especially rewarding if you like history that reads like an epic adventure while showing how a country was stitched together.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885

Regular price RM44.00 MYR
Unit price
per
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ISBN: 9780385658416
Authors: Pierre Berton
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Date of Publication: 2001-08-14
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Travel, History, Politics, Business
Goodreads rating: 4.15
(rated by 683 readers)

Description

In the four years between 1881 and 1885, Canada was forged into one nation by the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the remarkable story of how roughly 3,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years — exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin; the extraordinary land boom of Winnipeg in 1881–1882; and the epic tale of how William Van Horne rushed 3,000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion. Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible — a host of astonishing characters: Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the vision of a transcontinental railroad; Rogers, the eccentric surveyor; Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker; Stephen, the most emotional of businessmen; Father Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur; Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police; Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies; more than 7,000 Chinese workers, toiling and dying in the canyons of the Fraser Valley; and many more — land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians, and entrepreneurs — all of whom played a role in the founding of the new Canada west of Ontario.
 

Nation-building history with cinematic railroad drama

If you enjoy big true stories driven by outsized personalities, this feels vivid, urgent, and surprisingly dramatic. Pierre Berton turns a massive engineering project into a human saga full of risk, ambition, political tension, and sheer momentum. It’s especially rewarding if you like history that reads like an epic adventure while showing how a country was stitched together.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.