num_pages: 216
description: Few individuals have had as much opportunity to traverse the breadth of Canada as the photographers who rode the rails for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Almost from the company's beginnings in 1881, CPR hired noted photographers, first on contract, then later in its own in-house photography and publicity departments. Portraits of Canada presents the very best of their work in a visual journey across Canada in space and time. This book is a painstaking selection of 150 of the most thought-provoking, stunning, and sometimes quixotic images from the approximately 800,000 historic images in the Canadian Pacific Railway Archives, including momentous events in Canadian history, the social changes that swept through Canada from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and picturesque scenes from across Canada that were sent around the world by the CPR. These are postcards of a nation that allow us to see the country as it was, and how it was perceived by outsiders looking in.
language: English
title: Portraits of Canada: Photographic Treasures of the CPR
titlecomplete: Portraits of Canada: Photographic Treasures of the CPR
publisher: Fifth House Publishers