The Last Spike (book)

The Last Spike
Author	Pierre Berton
Subject	Canadian Pacific Railway
Publication date	1971
ISBN	0-7710-1327-2

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The Last Spike is a 1971 Canadian non-fiction book by Pierre Berton describing the construction and completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1881 and 1885.^[1] It is a sequel to Berton's 1970 book The National Dream. Both books formed the basis for the TV miniseries The National Dream.

The book won the 1971 Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction.

Editions

1971 (McClelland and Stewart): ISBN 0-7710-1327-2
1974, combined with The National Dream (McClelland and Stewart): ISBN 0-7710-1332-9
2001 (Anchor Canada): ISBN 0-385-65841-9

References

^ Gray, Charlotte. "Untoward, the Last Spike". Literary Review of Canada. Retrieved 2023-12-27.

v t e Winners of the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction
1930s	Thomas Beattie Roberton, TBR: Newspaper Pieces (1936) Stephen Leacock, My Discovery of the West (1937) John Murray Gibbon, Canadian Mosaic (1938) Laura Salverson, Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter (1939)
1940s	J. F. C. Wright, Slava Bohu (1940) Emily Carr, Klee Wyck (1941) Bruce Hutchison, The Unknown Country (1942) Edgar McInnis, The Unguarded Frontier (1942) E. K. Brown, On Canadian Poetry (1943) John Robins, The Incomplete Anglers (1943) Dorothy Duncan, Partner in Three Worlds (1944) Edgar McInnis, The War: Fourth Year (1944) Ross Munro, Gauntlet to Overlord (1945) Evelyn M. Richardson, We Keep a Light (1945) Frederick Phillip Grove, In Search of Myself (1946) Arthur R. M. Lower, Colony to Nation (1946) William Sclater, Haida (1947) Robert MacGregor Dawson, The Government of Canada (1947) Thomas Head Raddall, Halifax, Warden of the North (1948) C. P. Stacey, The Canadian Army, 1939-1945 (1948) Hugh MacLennan, Cross-country (1949) Robert MacGregor Dawson, Democratic Government in Canada (1949)
1950s	Marjorie Wilkins Campbell, The Saskatchewan (1950) W. L. Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada (1950) Frank MacKinnon, The Progressive Party in Canada (1951) Josephine Phelan, The Ardent Exile (1951) Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician (1952) Bruce Hutchison, The Incredible Canadian (1952) J. M. S. Careless, Canada, A Story of Challenge (1953) N. J. Berrill, Sex and the Nature of Things (1953) Hugh MacLennan, Thirty and Three (1954) Arthur R. M. Lower, This Most Famous Stream (1954) N. J. Berrill, Man's Emerging Mind (1955) Donald G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald, The Old Chieftain (1955) Pierre Berton, The Mysterious North (1956) Joseph Lister Rutledge, Century of Conflict (1956) Thomas H. Raddall, The Path of Destiny (1957) Bruce Hutchison, Canada: Tomorrow's Giant (1957) Pierre Berton, Klondike (1958) Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney (1958) [No award] (1959)
1960s	Frank Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism (1960) T. A. Goudge, The Ascent of Life (1961) Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe (1963) Phyllis Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds (1964) James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada (1965) George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell (1966) Norah Story, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature (1967) Mordecai Richler, Hunting Tigers Under Glass (1968) [No award] (1969)
1970s	[No award] (1970) Pierre Berton, The Last Spike (1971) [No award] (1972) Michael Bell, Painters in a New Land (1973) Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years (1974) Marion MacRae and Anthony Adamson, Hallowed Walls (1975) Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History (1976) F. R. Scott, Essays on the Constitution (1977) Roger Caron, Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars (1978) Maria Tippett, Emily Carr (1979) Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, C.D. Howe (1979) Larry Pratt and John Richards, Prairie Capitalism (1979)
1980s	Jeffrey Simpson, Discipline of Power: The Conservative Interlude and the Liberal Restoration (1980) George Calef, Caribou and the Barren-Land (1981) Christopher Moore, Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth- Century Garrison Town (1982) Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (1983) Sandra Gwyn, The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier (1984) Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (1985) Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986) Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album (1987) Anne Collins, In the Sleep Room (1988) Robert Calder, Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham (1989)
1990s	Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times (1990) Robert Hunter and Robert Calihoo, Occupied Canada: A Young White Man Discovers His Unsuspected Past (1991) Maggie Siggins, Revenge of the Land: A Century of Greed, Tragedy and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm (1992) Karen Connelly, Touch the Dragon (1993) John Livingston, Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication (1994) Rosemary Sullivan, Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen (1995) John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (1996) Rachel Manley, Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood (1997) David Adams Richards, Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi (1998) Marq de Villiers, Water (1999)
2000s	Nega Mezlekia, Notes from the Hyena's Belly (2000) Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (2001) Andrew Nikiforuk, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil (2002) Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2003) Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2004) John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (2005) Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006) Karolyn Smardz Frost, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad (2007) Christie Blatchford, Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army (2008) M. G. Vassanji, A Place Within: Rediscovering India (2009)
2010s	Allan Casey, Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada (2010) Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life and Times (2011) Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper (2012) Sandra Djwa, Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (2013) Michael John Harris, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (2014) Mark L. Winston, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive (2015) Bill Waiser, A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 (2016) Graeme Wood, The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State (2017) Darrel J. McLeod, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age' (2018) Don Gillmor, To the River: Losing My Brother (2019)
2020s	Madhur Anand, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart (2020) Sadiqa de Meijer, alfabet/alphabet: a memoir of a first language (2021) Eli Baxter, Aki-wayn-zih: A Person as Worthy as the Earth (2022) Kyo Maclear, Unearthing (2023)

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The Last Spike (book)

Editions

Further reading

References

This information is adapted from Wikipedia which is publicly available.