How a King, a President, a Railway Empire and a Hotdog Helped Save the Free World
Photo Credit: Canadian Pacific Archives
Edward Prince of Wales (L) next to Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty on the CPR ship, Empress of France.
Truth is far stranger than fiction when it comes to family roots stories. That’s certainly the experience of North Americana host Liz Beatty. This week Liz follows a long lost thread of family history back to a pivotal moment in North American history when a reigning British Monarch, a US president, a Canadian railway empire and a hotdog came together to help save the free world. Listen in.
The Hotdog Summit at Hyde Park overlooking the Hudson River.
Canada By Rail on Royal Canadian Pacific and The Rocky Mountaineer
Special thanks to Adam Meeks, Manager Heritage Services & Operations of Canadian Pacific for his help with this episode. Next year Royal Canadian Pacific offers to the public a chance to experience their fleet of historic railcars, including The Royal Wentworth — Sir Edward’s personal rail car that was part of the 1939 Royal Train (I’d love to see it myself!). And as always, the iconic Rocky Mountaineer is the quintessential railway experience of the Canadian Rockies.
King George and Queen Elizabeth on their 1939 whistle stop tour of Canada.
The Beatty Lecture Series — McGill University
change through exchange
Many thanks to Robin Koning, Digital Marketing & Outreach Associate in the Office of the Vice-Principal (Research and Innovation) at McGill University, for her invaluable contributions to this episode. Robin has created a remarkable digital archive of Edward Beatty’s life for the lecture series on the McGill site. See below more about this fascinating lecture series.
From the McGill site: From the Nobel to the Pulitzer, from the Kremlin to Wimbledon, from Cambridge to Carnegie Hall, McGill has hosted a diverse range of prestigious voices under the Beatty banner since 1952. In recent years, our speakers have been conservation advocate Jane Goodall, authors Roxane Gay and Margaret Atwood, philosopher Charles Taylor, psychiatrist and bioengineer Dr. Karl Diesseroth, pianist Alfred Brendel and social entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus. The topics that lecturers have covered are equally eclectic and provocative, including the environment, human rights, urbanization, evolution, comedy, philosophy and much more.
