Canadian Railroad Trilogy

Starred review from October 18, 2010
Wallace's (The Sleeping Porch) sprawling, dreamlike paintings pay homage to the Canadian landscape; they accompany the lyrics of Lightfoot's 1967 song, which run along beneath the spreads. Mountains, forests, coastline, and plains roll past as on a railway journey—miles of lonely wilderness the Canadian Pacific Railway was built to span. There are dark moments, too, portraits of the First Nations peoples whose land the onrushing railroad violated, and of the poorly paid and shamefully treated Chinese workers who built its westernmost end. Although some paintings show the railway in detail, it's less a book about railroads than it is about the history and settlement of Canada itself. Lightfoot's lyric is a hymn to ambition: "Oh the song of the future has been sung,/ All the battles have been won,/ On the mountain tops we stand,/ All the world at our command." But despite such sentiments, Wallace doesn't avoid showing the realities of the railway workers' lives; they can be seen drinking and carousing as well as swinging hammers. It's a huge and unusual project, and Wallace has executed it with admirable care. Ages 4–up.

October 1, 2010

Sir John A. Macdonald once envisioned what Gordon Lightfoot called "an iron road runnin' from the sea to the sea"--the Canadian Pacific Railway, begun in 1885. In this dramatic, oversized tribute to the construction of that mighty railroad, both the lyrics of Lightfoot's song "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" (1967) and Wallace's dazzling chalk pastels powerfully illustrate the manifestation of that ambitious dream, emphasizing the ethnically diverse people who made it possible and those whose lives were forever changed by it: "We are the navvies who work upon the railway, / Swingin' our hammers in the bright blazin' sun. / Layin' down track and buildin' the bridges, / Bendin' our backs 'til the railroad is done." The atmospheric illustrations--each explained in wonderfully detailed endnotes--capture not only the workers' toil but also the splendor of the Canadian landscape and, obliquely, the price the displaced First Nations people paid for steam-train technology. (music and lyrics, illustrator's notes, a brief history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, further reading) (Picture book. 4-8)

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