Craig Baird’s new book takes readers for a ride along the Trans-Canada Highway, and there is much to discover along the way.
Canada’s Main Street: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Highway, published by Sutherland House, marks Baird’s debut as an author. Baird is known by many as the creator and host of the popular Canadian History Ehx Podcast, which delves into lesser-known stories from Canadian history, but he felt the history of the Trans-Canada Highway deserved a deeper dive, which led him to write the book.
“I wanted to make sure that people appreciated the Trans-Canada Highway because I think it often gets overshadowed in our history,” Baird told BayToday. “I wanted to write a book that showed how difficult it was to build and how long it took and give it the recognition it deserves.”
His book details how prior to the Second World War, “only an adventurer would have driven cross-country on Canada’s haphazard network of highways, gravel roads, single lane paths, open fields and ferries.”
The national highway affirms the idea of a united country, Baird emphasized, and his book looks at how the massive project came about, the issues involved with building over 7,000 kilometres of road, and highlights how the highway led to exponential growth in the towns it passes through.
The Trans-Canada Highway transformed many aspects of our country, and Baird’s book explores these transformations in-depth. The book explores a wealth of history that spans all provinces and several decades. The highway project began in 1950, and although Prime Minister John Diefenbaker officially opened the highway in 1962, the highway was not fully completed until 1971.
While researching and writing his book, Baird found inspiration from the work and legacy of Canadian author Pierre Berton. “Two of his best known books are about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway,” Baird said, referring to The National Dream and The Last Spike. “I thought, what about the Trans-Canada Highway? Because again, it’s something that we don’t really think about. Everybody drives it as some point in their lives, and we don’t really give too much thought to its history.”
Indeed, as Baird was researching the topic, he relied heavily on primary sources, digging into newspaper articles and magazine features discussing various aspects of the highway’s construction. “A lot of the books I found were about travelling the Trans-Canada Highway, but there wasn’t really anything that was like straight history, so I had to use a lot of old newspapers and Macleans’ archives and things like that to write this book.”
One thing that really stood out for Baird was when the Canadian Pacific Railway was under consideration, the federal government provided most of the money and land required to build it. For building the highway, responsibility fell primarily on provincial governments. “Each province had to agree with the province next to them about where that highway was going to connect,” Baird explained, and likened the negotiations between provinces to nothing short of herding cats.
Baird’s book highlights many of these conflicts, and presents this history in an accessible way, in a nod to Berton, who helped pioneer the writing of popular history. Baird explained, “Pierre Berton was able to show that people are interested in Canada’s history, it’s all in how it’s presented. If it’s dry and academic, people won’t respond to it, but if you make Canadian history interesting, people will respond, so that’s something I’ve tried to emulate with what I do.”
Canada’s Main Street: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Highway is available at bookstores across the country, or from Amazon. Visit Sutherland House’s website for more details.
