The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier

The Private Capital is a magnificent and infinitely entertaining panorama of Canada's governing society in Ottawa from the time of Confederation to the eve of the First World War. Sandra Gwyn has woven together from an enormous range of personal letters, diaries, scrapbooks, memoirs, and social columns, a historical chronicle that has the intensity and liveliness of a novel.

We meet not only the great political leaders like Macdonald and Laurier, but also their wives, families, and friends, other politicians, civil servants, governors general, soldiers, poets, journalists and belles. The pathos, drama and sometimes hilarious scandals of their daily lives compete in these pages with the great events of the nation's history. We see through the prism of the capital -- that raw and boozy lumbertown -- the excitement of Confederation, the crisis of the Fenian raids, the opening of the West, the Riel Rebellion, the railway scandal and the Boer War.
(from jacket)