With a flair for dramatic storytelling, award-winning journalist Gordon Laird recounts the little know story of Canada’s other national dream: cheap power to fuel industrial growth. Canada’s abundant sources of power—huge reserves of oil, gas and water—place us at the centre of such controversial issues as energy exports, climate change and environmental degradation. As he explores the human side of economic forces, Laird argues persuasively that enery will become a critical issue in Canada’s domestic and international relations.

Power investigates the heart of energy nation, taking us on an epic journey from Sable Island, a remote island populated by wild horses and climatologist, surrounded by five gigantic offshore oil-drilling rigs, to the remote company town of Kemano, B.C., a slice of suburbia that once thrived as Canada’s leading hydro project. He visits the High Arctic desert of Ellesmere Island, where global warming is tracked at the world’s most northerly civilian outpost, and reports on the dramatic effects on climate change and disturbing signs of atmoshperic chaos. He travels across Alberta’s gas fields, where forty-foot flares dot, the countryside, and climbs the radioactive waste piles of northern Saskatchewan, where uranium tailings seep into Canada’s rugged subarctic wilderness.

Power is the untold story of Canada’s modern age. What began as an improvement on nature—light, heat, power, speed—now presents itself as a daunting series of challenges. Over the next decade, the need for alternative power sources will become more urgent.and as First Nations and citizen advocacy groups reclaims energy as a public issue in an age of privatization, the debate over who will own and control power in the future will determine Canada’s political and economic health.