Rails Across the Rockies: Surveying and Constructing the Great Railways of the Canadian West

Graeme Pole

jun 2006 · Mountain Vision Publishing

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With 54 black and white photographs and maps, Rails Across the Rockies tells the stories of the surveying and construction of the Canadian Pacific, Grand Trunk Pacific, and Canadian Northern railways in the glory days of Canadian railroading.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern railways rank among the greatest political and financial gambles in Canada’s history. Politicians, engineers, and surveyors bickered and scrapped for years over why, how, and where to locate the rails. Each of the enterprises helped to stitch the country together physically while threatening to tear it apart politically. Great Railways of the Canadian West tells the stories of the scheming and the daring, and the monumental physical toil of laying steel across the mountains in the golden age of railroading in Canada.

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Honour your subject. Honour your audience.

Graeme Pole has been writing professionally since 1989.

His thirteen published titles have cumulative sales of more than 300,000 copies.

Canadian Rockies SuperGuide (1991, 1997)

The Canadian Rockies: A History in Photographs (1991) Walks and Easy Hikes in the Canadian Rockies (1992, 1996, 2012) Classic Hikes in the Canadian Rockies (1994, 2003, 2011)

The Spiral Tunnels and The Big Hill (1996, 2009)

Healy Park (1998)

David Thompson (2003)

Summit Tales (2005)

Great Railways of the Canadian West (2006)

Gravity, Steam, and Steel (2009)

Canadian Rockies Explorer (2010)

Rails Across the Rockies (2015)

Siren Call (2016)

Since 2009, Graeme has successfully self-published his catalogue in print and eBook formats. Graeme’s wilderness essays and historical essays have been widely published, with his annual contributions to the Canadian Alpine Journal being among the better known.

Nine of Graeme’s titles have been finalists in the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Classic Hikes in the Canadian Rockies won the Mountain Exposition category in 1994. Graeme has been a runner-up for the Andy Russell Nature Writers’ Award (1995), a finalist in the Crown of the Continent Nature Writing Award (1998), and in 1997 received a Northwest Outdoor Writers’ Association “Excellence in Craft Award,” and the inaugural Teddi Brown Award for Nature Writing, for which he was also runner-up. In 2017, his essay, Designs of the Wild,took Gold for short essays published in Alberta the previous year.

Graeme lives with his family near Hazelton in northwestern BC, where he serves as a paramedic.