Nicholas Morant's name is synonymous with the Canadian Pacific Railway. He is known across Canada, and in a good many other parts of the world, for his photographs of the CPR. He was the CPR photographer! His 50-year career spanned the "Great Depression" the "Second World War," the "Cold War," the end of the steam ear, and the end of the company operated passenger service.

For 44 years Morant crisscrossed the country on passenger trains, enroute to and from assignments to all the subsidiaries of Canadian Pacific. He photographed hotels, steamships, trucks, airliners, oil wells, mines, logging and myriad other facets of the CPR. He photographed people, places and events. He chronicled the times, writing for the company magazine as well as photographing developments on the railway.

It is the photographs Nick Morant made for the Canadian Pacific Railway that are the subject of this book. There was no shortage of material. In fact it was difficult to choose. But wherever Morant has stories to tell, we have tried to match his tales with the photographs he made.

Here then is a book of photographs of the Canadian Pacific Railway over the years, from 1929 to 1981, the span of Morant's career as a photographer. It is a book that all who are interested in railways, their engineering and technology, will be interested in.

About the Author:

John F. Garden is a resident of Revelstoke, B.C., a locomotive engineer by trade, on CP Rail. This is his third photographic book, the first on a railway subject. Previous publications to his credit are The Selkirks - Nelson's Mountains, and The Bugaboos, An Alpine History. Writing is a way of complimenting photographs. A picture, so the old cliche goes, is worth a thousand words, but an interesting caption focuses the viewer on the events at the time of the photograph. Usually a picture is taken on a momentous occasion, or for some reason special to the photographer. It remains for the author to bring the viewer into the scene as experienced by the photographer, or the photograph remains only a pretty picture.