John Boyko

In Pursuit of Tomorrow is the stunning new biography of an innovator, engineer, explorer, and relentless dreamer.

Sandford Fleming directed the building of the intercontinental then the transcontinental railway; reset the world’s clocks with the adoption of global time zones; championed an undersea cable linking the British empire and a bias-free cable news network; founded an institute to stir imaginations and forge progress; laid out roads, towns, and waterfronts; and even designed Canada’s first postage stamp.

A university chancellor, corporate director, and mountaineer, he was a restless polymath who was as comfortable in royal courts as uncharted wilderness while reimagining time, space, and nationhood. He was a naive idealist and a shrewd pragmatist. He knew fawning international celebrity and crushing public humiliation. His stunning accomplishments then and the searing questions his life poses now are current and crucial. Fleming’s unrelenting pursuit of tomorrow offers urgent lessons for our age of disruption.