Click on each image for a closer look!
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We mentioned in an earlier Field Trip Report that the young lad in the famous picture shown here of the driving of the last spike at Craigellachie, B.C. would be the feature of a future post.
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Ray Argyle has written a book about this boy. It is titled “Boy in the Picture – The Craigellachie Kid and the Driving of the Last Spike”. Here is more information from Ray Argyle’s website about the book and the boy:
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“The Boy in the Picture: The Craigellachie Kid and the Driving of the Last Spike, is a Young Adult book about the adventures of Edward Mallandaine. He’s the boy seen peering out in the iconic photo of the driving of the Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway, taken on November 7, 1885 – 125 years ago this year.
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Edward had just turned 18 when he left his home in Victoria, British Columbia, to join the Canadian militia to fight Louis Riel in the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Hired to ride dispatches over the unfinished stretch of railway in British Columbia, he meets highway men, high officials, men of the North-West Mounted Police, and the denizens of saloons hidden away in mountain passes. He survives the lawlessness of remote towns and railway camps, rubs shoulders with Chinese labourers struggling to blast a right-of-way through the towering peaks of Eagle Pass, and makes a freezing midnight ride by railway flatcar to reach the outpost of Craigellachie just in time.”
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This Sunday, August 29th, at 4:00 p.m. Ray will be hosting a book signing at Don Station and will also be interviewed by Derek Boles, TRHA’s Historian.
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If you present the invitation found by clicking here, you may print it off and use it for a free ride on our miniature railway at the book signing event. You may visit Ray Argyle’s website by clicking here.
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Click here to read the next of our series of TRHA News postings on the 125th Anniversary of the driving of the Last Spike on the CPR.
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Posting by Russ Milland