In both the United States and Canada, railroad corporations acted as key agents of the state in the projects of western expansion and economic development. Across a border remarkably open to flows of capital and population, the two nations’ railroads engaged in heated contests to reach areas rich in natural resources and open routes promising for commerce. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the US Great Northern Railway completed nearly parallel transcontinental lines just eight years apart. However, US railroad incursions into Canadian territory were much more common than the reverse. This study argues both that the border offered US corporations certain geographical and economic advantages, and that international railroad competition created a more heavily commodified and industrialized landscape in the borderlands.

Railroad building was a crucial means toward securing national unity in latenineteenth century North America. The Dominion government generously subsidized the CPR because it served as a vehicle for uniting the young nation’s disparate provinces. But the railway failed to meet local needs in southern British Columbia and Alberta because its line passed north of new mining districts that prospectors were opening. Canadians in these regions perceived their national railway as monopolistic and unresponsive. The Great Northern capitalized on these divided loyalties and on many Canadian entrepreneurs’ desire for closer ties with the vast US market. And the geography of southern BC, characterized by north-south running mountain ranges, favored trade between Canada and US centers over east-west trade within Canada. American railway development in Canada inspired debates about the merits of free trade versus protectionism.

Ultimately, this transnational railroad rivalry represented wasteful corporate development. Companies built lines in a purely speculative manner, and sought and disposed of federal land grants in corrupt and undemocratic ways. The Great Northern’s dominance in the borderlands proved short-lived. Natural disasters, rugged topography that increased operating costs, and disappointing output from mines doomed many rail lines to failure. But Canada learned that neither its national identity nor its economic security depended upon protecting an east-west flow of commerce, and the two nations remained closely integrated economically in the post-World War I period.