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The Pacific Railway: Speeches by Sir Charles Tupper and Others

Charles Tupper · 1880

A printed collection of 1880 House of Commons speeches by Tupper, as railways minister, defending the Canadian Pacific Railway project.

Tupper delivered these 1880 speeches himself as railways minister defending the Canadian Pacific Railway.

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The Pacific Railway: Speeches by Sir Charles Tupper and Others
Charles Tupper and others, The Pacific Railway: Speeches, 1880. Scanned book, Internet Archive.

About this source

What it is

This is a printed pamphlet collecting speeches delivered in the Canadian House of Commons in 1880 by Sir Charles Tupper, then Minister of Railways and Canals, along with Hon. H. L. Langevin and other members. It was printed in Montreal and survives as a scanned book.

Why it matters

The Canadian Pacific Railway was one of the defining national projects of 19th-century Canada, meant to bind the country together from coast to coast. Tupper's speeches show how the government defended the cost and progress of this huge undertaking to Parliament and the public.

Look closer

  • Why might the publisher have chosen to print these speeches as a pamphlet for wider readers?
  • What does the detailed defence of costs and progress suggest about public debate over the railway at the time?
  • What is left out of a speech meant to persuade rather than simply inform?

This speech is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Charles Tupper on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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