Stephen R. Bown

My guest on this episode is Stephen R. Bown. Stephen is an author and historian whose books have been translated into nine languages and have won the BC Book Prize, the Alberta Book Award, the William Mills Prize for Polar Books, among others. His 2020 book, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire, won the J.W. Defoe Book Prize and the National Business Book Award. His most recent book is Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada, published by Doubleday Canada in 2023. That book was a national bestseller and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times. The Literary Review of Canada said that “at a time when too many writers and readers are turning away from historical non-fiction, Dominion reminds us that Canadian history is nothing to be afraid of.”

Stephen and I talk about his novelistic approach to writing history, about how each of his last few books began as material he had to leave out of the previous one, and how, despite his status as a bestselling author, people continue to get his last name wrong.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

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