David Laurence Jones wins Alberta Literary Award for New World Dreams

Heritage House is proud to announce David Laurence Jones won an 2024 Alberta Literary Awards in the category Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction for his latest book, New World Dreams: Canadian Pacific Railway and the Golden Northwest.

The Writers’ Guild of Alberta (WGA) announced the winners for the 2024 Alberta Literary Awards on Saturday, June 8 at a Gala during the WGA Conference in Edmonton.

Jones, who attended the gala, said the win was, “very unexpected and thrilling.”

A Calgary resident and historian, Jones is the former manager of internal communications at Canadian Pacific Railway. A history graduate from Concordia University, he worked for fourteen years in the railway’s corporate archives, researching and collecting stories and anecdotes about the CPR’s rich heritage.

Jones’ award-winning book, New World Dreams: Canadian Pacific Railway and the Golden Northwest (Heritage House, 2023) is an in-depth exploration of how a transportation company created a vision for a burgeoning nation and played a leading role driving immigration to the Canadian West. Illustrated with more than four hundred archival photos and colour advertisements, New World Dreams is the most extensive history of Canadian Pacific ever published.

This celebration marked the 42nd anniversary of the Alberta Literary Awards and brought together writers from across Alberta. The Alberta Literary Awards recipients represent excellence in literary work written by Alberta authors and published or created in 2022–23.

MEDIA CONTACT: Monica Miller, Marketing & Publicity Coordinatory, monica@heritagehouse.ca