Review of Surveying the Canadian Pacific: Memoir of a Railroad Pioneer and The Railway King of Canada: Sir William Mackenzie, 1849,1923

Authors

Alec Paul, University of Regina

Date of this Version

1994

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 14:3 (Summer 1994). Copyright © 1994 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

Both these books deal with themes related to railways and with events significant to the early economic development of western Can, ada. But there the similarity ends. Rylatt's memoir is a highly personal account of a stint with a survey crew in the Canadian cordillera a decade before the laying of the rails. Flem, ing, on the other hand, gives us a life of William Mackenzie, a railway builder who kept no diary and left very few personal papers to guide the biographer. Thus it is easier to contrast than compare the two volumes.