Canadian Transport Sourcebook

Biographical Note

There are surprisingly few secondary books dealing with Canadian railway history available for the general reader. The admirable treatise by Dr S. J. M'Lean, 'National Highways Overland,' in vol. x of Canada and its Provinces, is much the best. Trout, The Railways of Canada (1871), and the article by T. C. Keefer in Eighty Years' Progress of British North America (1863), are useful for the early period, but are scarce. There is, however, a wealth of first-hand material—pamphlets, travellers' notes, company reports, Hansard debates, committee inquiries, and departmental returns. The largest collections of such material are to be found in the Parliamentary Library, Ottawa, the Library of the Department of Railways and Canals, the Toronto Public Library, and the Library of Queen's University, Kingston.

For progress from year to year since 1901, see Castell Hopkins, The Canadian Annual Review, vol. i et seq. See also, in this Series, The Day of Sir John Macdonald and The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.