This episode is part of a larger series where I’m sharing my books here on the podcast, not as a detour, but as context. If we want to understand what’s happening in Canada today, we need to understand how we got here.

Driven Wealth: The Rise and Fall and Future of the North American Auto Dream is the first in that series.

New book episodes drop Tuesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m., while regular episodes of The Canadianist continue throughout the week, woven in alongside this series.

In Part I, we go back to the beginning, from the earliest days of the automobile through to the end of the Second World War. This is where the foundation is built, where a scattered, experimental industry becomes a coordinated industrial system, and where wartime production helps shape the structures that will go on to create the modern middle class.

This is the starting point of the story.