A history of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway from its inception in 1871 to 1881. Using primary sources-diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents & newspapers-Berton has reconstructed the decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe-contractors, politicians, financiers, surveyors, workingmen, journalists & entrepreneurs-fought for or against the railway. Here's the fullest account ever published of the Pacific Scandal, whch left its scars upon the era. Here's the saga of the surveyors who struggled & often died in the mountains & of the construction men who fought to tame the muskegs & the granites of the Canadian Shield. Here's the unpublished story of how railroad contracts were awarded to political cronies-men who thought little of bribing public servants to get what they wanted. Between 1881 & 1885, Canada was forged into a nation by the building of the railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the story of how some 2000 miles of steel crossed the continent in 5 years, exactly half the time stipulated by contract. Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it & ruin; the land boom of Winnipeg in 1881/82; & the epic tale of how Wm Van Horne rushed 3000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion. Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible a host of astonishing characters: Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the transcontinental vision; Rogers, the eccentric surveyor; Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker; Stephen, the emotional businessman; Fr Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur; Sam Steele, of the NW Mounted Police; Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies; over 7000 Chinese workers, toiling & dying in the Fraser Valley canyons; & many more land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians & entrepreneurs all of whom played a role in the founding of Canada west of Ontario.