Charles Wilkins reviews Building Canada: People and Projects that Shaped the Nation in Saturday’s Globe and Mail which is
“historian Jonathan Vance’s account of the construction of, among other things, our telephone and electrical lines; our highways, bridges and air strips; our railway hotels and beaux-art and neoclassical legislative buildings. It is the story of the people who did the planning, of those who did the painting and plastering, and of how the resulting structures and installations affected the lives and perspectives of Canadians . . . The underlying theme of the book is that the construction of all of the above (plus air strips, highways, bridges and performing-arts centres) served to unite the country and enhance its evolving self-awareness. “
Wilkins’ final point in the review is a provocative one:
“…it is perhaps telling that fully half of the projects depicted in Building Canada have fallen on shadowy, if not evil, days. Our grain elevators are but a memory; our arts facilities are begging; our biggest electricity company is swamped by debt. Our war memorials say as much about skepticism as heroism.
On the positive side, not all of our legislative buildings are madhouses, and a couple of our great railway hotels have managed to remain solvent.
Meanwhile, it is instructive to try to imagine what a sequel to Building Canada might look like, featuring nation-building projects from the past 20 or 30 years. Is there even a remote equivalency between the building of the information highway, or at least Canada's piece of it, and the building of the literal highway that stretches across the Prairies and through the mountains? Or between the bridges of cyberspace and those that span the St. Lawrence River or Burrard Inlet?”