 An entirely different operation later built the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Pacific.For a young and loosely defined nation, the building of a national railway was an active attempt at state-making, as well as an aggressive capitalist venture.Canada, a nascent country with a population of 3.5 million in 1871, lacked the means to exercise meaningful "de facto" control within the "de jure" political boundaries of the recently acquired Rupert's Land; building a transcontinental railway was national policy of high order to change this situation.