>also why all the love for Canadian Pacific rail?

The Canadian Pacific rail connected the country east to west, was a major milestone in the country's history: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Canadian_Pacifi...>

While that's true, it does seem to be a strange thing to glamorize now, since as much as it was an engineering accomplishment, it was also arguably a genocidal pursuit, and it's doubtful the sort of projects the government has in mind now will be as "nation building" as expropriating the entirety of Western Canada and letting a single private entity have as much power as CPR does.