By Ayo Akinfe
(1) Canada’s grand railway hotels are a series of hotels across the country. Each is a local and national landmark and are icons of Canadian history and architecture
(2) Each hotel was originally built by the Canadian railway companies, or the railways acted as a catalyst for the hotel’s construction
(3) Because Canada was a multi-ethnic state, it was thought that structures needed to be built to unite the anglophone and francophone arms of the nation and the Canada Pacific Railway was seen as this uniting feature
(4) The railway was first built between eastern Canada and British Columbia between 1881 and 1885. Today, it covers over 20,000 kilometres coast to coast
(5) Together with the Canadian Confederation, the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a task originally undertaken as the National Dream by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Sir John Macdonald. He saw it as essential to the creation of a unified Canadian nation that would stretch across the continent
(6) As part of the dream, it was decided to build hotels at all major towns and cities along the route, so people from different parts of Canada could meet and mix
(7) Today, Canada still has its divisions but this railway network with its hotels has helped with integration immensely
(8) Today, Nigerians are divided more than ever and something drastic needs to be done to unite them. Our single gauge railway network built by the British was designed to convey goods to the coast, so it has failed to serve any unifying purpose
(9) As we look at upgrading our railway network into standard gauge and high speed, we need to adopt a wholistic approach that will make unification one of its core objectives
(10) I am awaiting a blueprint from minister Rotimi Amaechi. At its heart should be a plan that gets the railways to soak up millions of unemployed youths and then have national integration as one of its core objectives
