Wilbert Awdry
In addition to the Dominion Atlantic's major influence on tourism and heritage presentation in Nova Scotia, it also inspired several generations of writers. The noted Canadian poet Charles G. D. Roberts wrote a book of prose and verse sponsored by the railway in 1900. Children's author Zillah K. Macdonald wrote two books "The Bluenose Express" (1928) and "Mic Mac on the Track" (1930), personalizing the railway's locomotives and their adventures in a style that predated the famous Thomas the Tank Engine characters created by British railway enthusiast Rev. Wilbert Awdry in 1942. In the rural Canadian classic, "The Mountain and the Valley" (1952) by Ernest Buckler, the railway is used as an important symbol of change and the outside world. The Dominion Atlantic features prominently in the book "Blomidon Rose" (1957), a nostalgic look at the life and landscape of 1930s Annapolis Valley by Esther Clark Wright. The Dominion Atlantic inspired poetry by noted Nova Scotian writer George Elliot Clarke, a wistful, erotic poem of youth entitled "Dominion Atlantic Railway" in his 1983 book "Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues"