In the New Capital

A Nineteenth-Century View of Ottawa in the Twenty-First Century

John Galbraith (1846 - 1914)
Edited with an Introduction by R. Douglas Francis

6 X 9 inches, 174 pages

A FASCINATING UTOPIAN NOVEL set in Toronto and Ottawa in 1897 with a vision of a new and reformed Canada of 1999. The book offers a wonderful insight into the social and political problems facing Canada at the turn of the twentieth century, such as widespread poverty and unemployment, prostitution, and "the drink"; puts forward various social and political theories of the day proposed to deal with these problems; and then offers a utopian vision of a future Canada in 1999 free of all of these age-old problems. The book is both rich in detail about social life in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century and visionary of Canada at the beginning of the twenty-first century and the new millennium. Who the visionary author, "John Galbraith," is is as intriguing as the book itself.

Canadian historian R. Douglas Francis provides an Introduction to this reprinted text in which he compares In the New Capital to the famous utopian novel of the late nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1889); sets In the New Capital in the social and political context of its time; judges Galbraith's success at envisioning the Canada of today; and recounts his attempt at discovering the true identity of John Galbraith.

R. Douglas Francis

Editor

R. Douglas Francis teaches Canadian history at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Frank H. Underhill: Intellectual Provocateur (1986); and Images of the West: Changing Perspectives of the Prairies, 1690-1960 (1989); and co-author of a two volume history of Canada: Origins: Canadian History since Confederation; and Destinies: Canadian History since Confederation. 4th eds. (2000). He is currently working on a book on "Technology and the Canadian Mind."