Canadian Railroad Trilogy
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This lavishly illustrated book brings Gordon Lightfoot’s heart-stirring song, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” to readers young and old. The song was commissioned by the CBC in 1967 to mark Canada’s centennial year and it has been a classic ever since. It eloquently describes the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway — “an iron road runnin’ from the sea to the sea” — a great feat of nation building that changed Canada forever for good and for ill, as in the process many people died and were dispossessed of their land.
Highly acclaimed, award-winning illustrator Ian Wallace brings the song to visual life with his sweeping landscapes and evocative portrayals of the people who lived the building of the railroad — from the financiers in the East to First Nations people across the country to the thousands of navvies themselves, many of whom came from as far away as China. The book includes Gordon Lightfoot’s music and lyrics, a brief history of the railroad, notes on the illustrations and further reading.
“Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” an extraordinarily special song, has inspired this very beautiful book that many will want to own as a keepsake.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wallace's (The Sleeping Porch) sprawling, dreamlike paintings pay homage to the Canadian landscape; they accompany the lyrics of Lightfoot's 1967 song, which run along beneath the spreads. Mountains, forests, coastline, and plains roll past as on a railway journey miles of lonely wilderness the Canadian Pacific Railway was built to span. There are dark moments, too, portraits of the First Nations peoples whose land the onrushing railroad violated, and of the poorly paid and shamefully treated Chinese workers who built its westernmost end. Although some paintings show the railway in detail, it's less a book about railroads than it is about the history and settlement of Canada itself. Lightfoot's lyric is a hymn to ambition: "Oh the song of the future has been sung,/ All the battles have been won,/ On the mountain tops we stand,/ All the world at our command." But despite such sentiments, Wallace doesn't avoid showing the realities of the railway workers' lives; they can be seen drinking and carousing as well as swinging hammers. It's a huge and unusual project, and Wallace has executed it with admirable care. Ages 4 up.
