Building Canada: People and Projects That Shaped the Nation

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Forty years ago, Pierre Berton wrote his masterpiece about the building
of Canada’s first transcontinental railway. Now Jonathan Vance reminds
us that that was only the beginning. Canada required bridges, roads,
commercial aviation, memorable architecture, cultural centres, a post
office, telecommunications, monuments, electrical grids, and grain
elevators before it could become a real country.

Perhaps few have given much thought to the significance of bridges, but
before their construction, what is now Ontario was truly separate from
what is now Quebec. Montreal on its island was in danger of economic
stagnation. Travel from Quebec City to the other side of the St.
Lawrence was particularly difficult in winter. In Building Canada,
readers learn about the politics of bridge construction, the materials
used, the collapses, and the benefits. Particularly poignant is the
story of the lacrosse team from Kahnewake, 33 of whose players were
building the bridge. Days after the team posed for a picture in front of
the bridge in 1906, the bridge collapsed, taking more than half the
players to their deaths.

There is humour. As railways expanded in the 19th century, there were
fears that rail passenger service would make roads obsolete. The first
flight of Trans-Canada Air Lines (now Air Canada) from Montreal to
Western Canada on April Fools’ Day 1939 was described as “bumpy;
noisy; the passengers had to make frequent use of the oxygen masks; and
the less said about the toilet facilities the better.” After the
opening of the Canso Causeway in 1955, one woman rejoiced that Canada
had finally become part of Cape Breton Island.

Like Canada’s railway hotels (Chateau Frontenac, Royal York, Banff
Springs, Empress, and others), most provincial legislatures are
buildings of which Canadians can be proud. Walter Scott,
Saskatchewan’s first premier (1905–1916), was the mastermind behind
the structure that dominates Regina. He had moved west to escape the
shame of his illegitimate birth in Ontario.

Most chapters begin in the 19th century and end in the late 20th. Vance
tells the stories well.