Long Synopsis
After the scandal that shattered Macdonald’s first government, Canada had to decide whether its national project could survive its first great breach of trust. The Iron Dominion follows the young Dominion as it becomes more real, more ambitious, and more coercive. Railways cross the Shield, tariffs promise prosperity, cities fill with smoke and labour, and the West is surveyed into a national project. The country gains muscle, but the muscle is not innocent.
This volume moves from Ottawa’s party rooms to railway camps, reserve offices, factory floors, prairie settlements, courtrooms, and classrooms. It examines the CPR as both achievement and instrument, the National Policy as both economic vision and political bargain, and the North-West Resistance as a national turning point whose consequences cut through Métis, Indigenous, French-English, and federal politics. The Iron Dominion is the story of Canada learning to govern distance with steel, law, hunger, paperwork, and force.