A dramatic biography of the now-forgotten Canadian entrepreneur, who spearheaded the most technologically advanced projects ever undertaken in the country, and built a business empire that stretched to Brazil, but was virtually bankrupt by the time of this death.
Description
During the first two decades of this century, Sir William Mackenzie was one of Canada’s best known entrepreneurs. Spearheading some of the largest and most technologically advanced projects undertaken in Canada, he built a business empire that stretched from Montreal to British Columbia and to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil. It included gas, electric, telephone and transit utilities, railroads, hotels, and steamships as well as substantial coal mining, whaling, and timber interests. But when he died in 1923, his estate was virtually bankrupt as a result of the dramatic collapse of his Canadian Northern Railway during the First World War. In a business biography intended as much for general readers as for a scholarly audience, Fleming offers a revisionist perspective on Mackenzie. He dispels the simplistic approach of those historians and journalists who have depicted Mackenzie and his partner Sir Donald Mann as melodramatic crooks who could have stepped out of the pages of Huckleberry Finn.
Reviews
Fleming ... has produced a well-researched and readable portrait of an important Canadian businessman. He makes impressive use of archival and other materials to avoid being taken in by Mackenzie's stories, and offers some interesting perspectives on this businessman's public career ... The Railway King of Canada is a well-crafted and entertaining biography.
- Ken Cruikshank
Fleming has delivered a scholarly and sympathetic picture of the life of this influential and important Canadian. Anyone interested in Canadian parallels to rail expansion in the United States, in entrepreneurship, or in prairie-province settlement would profit by reading this work.
- Bruce Smith