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When I sat down to read Clark Blaise's 245 page 2001, Random House book, Time Lord, I expected a standard biography of the somewhat forgotten transcontinental railway engineer, Sandford Fleming. Stamp enthusiasts know Fleming as the designer of Canada's first postage stamp, the Three Pence Beaver, which is also the world's first topical, or animal, stamp. Fleming was a man of his age. He emigrated from Scotland to Canada, and rolled with the age of steam and steel. After engineering many North American railways, Fleming was instrumental in the invention of standard time, and in the laying of the trans-Pacific Telegraph cable. |
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Blaise, likewise, is a writer of his age. An expat Canadian, living in America, Blaise riffs on Fleming's life and work, ruminating on the meaning of time for our time, and comparing the Industrial Revolution to the Internet Revolution. Blaise breathes some life into a potentially dry subject as Fleming brought an engineer's bearing to the problems of adapting a rapidly changing world to an international time standard. |
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| Fleming's Scottish-Canadian diplomacy helped it all happen. Blaise leaves us wondering if it is all enough. Good for Fleming and his era, maybe, but does our fast paced post modern life need a new time standard?
Reliable, quick communications are essential to life and commerce. Our goods and services cannot arrive fast enough. We cannot get connected to the net or send emails fast enough. As a thought provoking quick hit on the meaning of time, Blaise's Time Lord works. As a standard historical biography it does not. It got me thinking about more than stamps though. It is also good to see Sandford Fleming get his due. Fleming was knighted for his work on the world telegraph cable, and he appears on a 1977 12c Canadian postage stamp. |
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