from the east to the Pacific.

Background

For a young and loosely defined nation, the building of a national railway is a form of state-making,. In Canada's case it was that and as well an ambitious capitalist venture. The government of Canada, a nascent country with a population of 3.5 million in 1871, lacked the means to exercise meaningful de facto control within the de jure political boundaries of the recently acquired Rupert's Land.

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