At the turn of the century Sudbury was a town set on the railway line, with a population of about 2,000. The community was smaller than Sault Ste. Marie and Copper Cliff to the west, and to the east, North Bay and Pembroke. Now, nearly 100 years later, Sudbury is the largest city in northeastern Ontario. it is also the centre of many governmental, business, social, educational, media, medical, and other professional services in the region.

Sudbury: Rail Town to Regional Capital, which honours the centenary of the community’s incorporation as a town in 1893, analyses Sudbury decade by decade, describing the ongoing changes in the community and their impact on citizens. The book also examines the forces that shaped the city’s destiny and argues that Sudbury is far more than a single-industry town based on mining. Grounded in new research and written in an accessible style by a team of local scholars, the book, with numerous maps and photographs will appeal to urban historians as well as the general reader both within and beyond the city.

C.M. Wallace, an associate professor of history at Laurentian University concentrating on Canadian urban history, edited City Government in Northern Ontario, a special issue of the Laurentian University Review. Dr. Wallace is also co-editor of Reappraisals in Canadian History.

C.M. Wallace's profile page

Ashley Thomson, B.Ed, M.A., M.L.S., a faculty member in the J.N. Desmarais Library at Laurentian University of Sudbury, is the author/editor of six books including the Directory of Canadian Private Residential Schools (1986), of which this is a major revision. In 1998, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations presented Mr. Thomson with its award for being the most outstanding academic librarian in Ontario.

Ashley Thomson's profile page

"Sudbury:Rail Town to Regional Capital contains much interest. The legends surrounding the discovery of the ore body in the 1880s are revised by new evidence."

G.T. Bloomfield