The National Dream: Building the Impossible Railway

I watched this as a kid in 1974 and I loved it. Recently I tried to find this CBC Canadian Broadcasting Company show. You can only watch it if you are a registered educational institution and a paid member of Curio.ca. So if you have kids in a Canadian school, maybe you can get it through them.

I do not know why this show is not for sale. As a student of Canadian History, this is one of the better tellings of how Canada came together as a country. It shows with all their foibles, issues, and faults the fathers of confederation and the compromises made to unite the country. It illustrates the hardships of the surveyors and the navies who charted out and built the rail-lines. Finally it relates what the purpose of the railroad was to move people and products joining the west to the east and supporting Canada's development of the west. No car chases, hardly anything blows up, just a good story about people on an epic scale.

This is a truly outstanding documentary production (extremely well-researched and filmed, with high-quality acting and narration). This 8-part mini-series was produced at a cost of 2 million CAD (a large sum in 1974), and the viewing audience when first aired, set a record for Canadian dramatic productions (Source Wikipedia).

To follow up on the comments of the previous reviewer (who was disappointed that they had been unable to find the series), I am happy to report that it IS possible to obtain a copy of this series on DVD. After much searching, I found that it can only be purchased directly from the Educational Services department of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), although it is quite pricey (approximately 200CAD).

If you are a railway or history buff, you will definitely enjoy this epic story!