Interlude - A drive to East Sooke Park

Sunday August 30, 2009

Maybe there was something about that boat trip that has me wanting to spend more time by the water... even though we see it from our window every day.

We drove out to Metchosin past the gravel pit.

Parked the car and wandered around Aylard Farm in East Sooke Park. The grass seems especially tawny this year. Usually around this time there are hawks and vultures soaring in the sky, riding the thermals, but maybe it is still a bit early yet. (Yes, according to this website, it happens from mid September to late October. There can be as many as a thousand turkey vultures, it says!)

Down at the beach

An arbutus trunk

We hadn't been to this park in some time - we couldn't remember how long. Nothing much had changed except that now there is a parking lot attendant who keeps an eye on things and provides information pamphlets, maps, and water and treats for dogs. "Welcome to my office," she said. Nice office.

Interlude - Chips & Vinegar

Saturday August 29, 2009

Glenn and I did something we have actually never done before - ate French fries outside. Yes, like picnic. We happened to park in front of Salty's Fish & Chips in Sidney and bought some to go, then walked to the shore and ate them at a picnic table.

You may remember there was a nice gazebo in the little park by the wharf. Gone. In its place is this structure - a bandshell perhaps.

Sidney is in desperate need of some shady spots along its waterfront. Trees would do wonders to soften the somewhat austere, sterile look but some owners of the ever-increasing condos might complain if they blocked their view.

Interlude - Butchart's boat trip

Took a boat Sunday, down by the sea

It just felt so nice, you and me

We didn't have a problem or a care

And all around was silence, everywhere

So go the Supertramp lyrics. But it was a Thursday a couple of weeks ago that we finally took the little boat trip out at Butchart's. We've been thinking about it since last year and since weather was perfect and nobody had booked the boat tour, we took the first one at 11:00 am. There was just Glenn and me, the captain and a trainee. The captain, it turned out, is the ex-husband of the woman who owns Butchart's! He has worked there over 40 years for 3 owners.

The tide was out. As I came bopping down the ramp to the boat and went to snap a photo, the change-camera-battery warning message came on. That was ok because we have a back-up but, horror of horrors, it was dead too. (The first photo was taken another day.) I did manage to eke out a couple more photos from the dying battery.

The electric-powered boat is only a year old and is nice & quiet. We went out from the dock and turned left in Tod Inlet. We circled around the end and then came out to, I imagine, Brentwood Bay. I've been out there a couple of times before, decades ago.

We didn't see much wildlife. The seals weren't on the rocks, the eagles and the purple martins had left the area just recently. I was glad! Imagine how frustrating it would have been without a functioning camera. There were jellyfish around - small whitish Moon Jellies I think they are called. Apparently there was a different type, a big yellow one about three feet across by the docks, but it happened to not be there on this particular morning. Lots of starfish were in the water though.

The captain told us about how they didn't use to charge admittance to the gardens in the winter. Owner at the time Ian Ross would walk around the grounds and decide whether or not there was enough colour to warrant a fee. But then, as houses started filling in along the waterfront, parents would send their kids into the gardens to play which resulted in a bit of damage so they started to charge year-round.

We heard a bit about the history of the area too. One story was about the native band living near the Brentwood Bay docks who told a tale generation-after-generation of a time that the water rose so high they and the animals had to stay up on Mt. Newton. Other people didn't take this legend seriously until Ocean Sciences opened up at Pat Bay and they found evidence of a collapsed moraine or something that caused a tidal wave. Interesting.

That was just a lovely outing and it made Glenn long for his sailboat. He says:

I happened to ask the captain if the boat was a 20 footer cause it looked to be the same length as the Cal 20 sloop I used to own. He said it was and that he had owned a Cal 20 also. "A grand boat!" he said and then we went on to compare how much each of us had paid for our boats. It was a trip back in time to feel the swell under the hull and look over the side through the clear water to the sandy bottom and remember anchoring in various coves. When we were saying goodbye at the end of the trip I said to him, "I want my boat back!" and he grinned, knowing exactly what I meant.

Back in the gardens, a worker was pruning this hedge. I love that they do this by hand without electric tools.

Winnipeg & heading west

Thursday May 28, 2009

Back on the train, we were dismayed but not entirely surprised that our tap and drain had not been fixed. During the 4 hour stop in Winnipeg there was a change of crews. Thank goodness. This group seems a little more on the ball than the last one. I felt sorry for them having to pick up the pieces from the last bunch. The new service manager already showed promise when he knocked on our door, checked out the situation and apologized. They would try again tomorrow in Jasper. He offered us a bottle of wine but since we don't drink, he suggested a vest, which we picked up for Glenn later. It's quite nice.

And so, at around noon, we say goodbye to "The Peg".

* * * * *

Somewhere in Manitoba

A trestle in Uno, in Manitoba's Assiniboine Valley

We should be into Saskatchewan around dinnertime. An interesting tidbit about Melville, Saskatchewan: It was named for the president of the Grand Trunk Pacific, Charles Melville Hays, which makes you wonder why they didn't name the town Hays. The railway tended to name its stations in alphabetical order between division points. But I think Melville is a division point so presumably it could have had any name. Anyway, he had been in England to promote the railway but died on the Titanic.

At our dinner table was a German man who didn't speak much English and a fellow from Squamish who was retired after working for a railway. We passed by many boxes in fields and were told they were for bees for the canola they grow here. Not much growing yet but the fields now had a slightly green tinge that was not there a couple of weeks ago.

Another time change on this night, going back one hour.

Winnipeg - Bus tour continues

Thursday May 28, 2009

Continuing the tour we were taken down part of Wellington Street to see the expensive homes. It looked a bit like our Uplands. Moving buses are not are not ideal for taking photos but the pictures above give an idea of the area. Even the less expensive neighbourhoods had attractive treed boulevards.

We saw an area of town where movies are filmed because the old buildings can be made to look like other cities as they were years ago. We zipped around the corner of Portage and Main, famous for its extremely cold wind. I was surprised, shocked really, that you can no longer stand on the corner because the passageway is all underground now. Imagine that - the most well-known street corner in the country is inaccessible to tourists. I was also surprised that the Eaton's store building no longer exists, which was where my Mom worked before she and Dad moved to Victoria after the great flood of 1950.

An interesting bridge

We were taken to the French neighbourhood of St. Boniface and the Catholic Church there. St. Boniface is not a separate town but we heard about how the residents fought to keep their post office by making a point of addressing mail to St. Boniface rather than Winnipeg. And they were striving to get shop and restaurant owners, even if they were Italian or Korean, to make building fronts to look French.

Louis Riel's tombstone at the St. Boniface Cemetery

St. Boniface Cathedral

The interior of the building had burned so they built a new modern one inside the remaining walls.

Different views of the front wall of the original building. I like the sort of Santa Fe, southwest look of it.

Side view.

Detail.

A model of what it used to look like.

An unusual interior.

There were many scenes in the windows. Apparently one appears to be missing but it shows up on a wall when the sun shines through at a certain angle.

Our tour guide was French-Canadian with a family going back several generations in this country, so she's more Canadian than I am. But inside the church she went on and on and on about the French for so long that people became bored and started wandering off. To hear her talk, Winnipeg is all about the French and I thought it was too bad that some foreigners may have gone away with that impression. I would have if I didn't know better. For fun, I looked up Winnipeg's ethic origins on the internet and found that the French ranked 6th. English, Scottish and German are the top three.

It was a little disappointing that we didn't get to see the huge rail yard in Winnipeg either from the train or on this tour.

Winnipeg - Manitoba legislative building

Thursday May 28, 2009

We arrive at the building and all pile out of the bus.

It's our old friend Wolfe again.

As you walk toward the entrance you notice an interesting thing about the building material - there are fossils in it. Tyndall stone is a unique sort of limestone quarried not far from Winnipeg. Apparently this part of the country was under the ocean millions of years ago.

A little info from the net:

The small village of Garson north-east of Winnipeg bills itself as The Limestone Capital of North America. This is no empty boast. The 450 million year-old (Late Ordovician) Tyndall Stone quarried here is probably the most frequently used building stone in Canada. It is used in the House of Commons, old Eaton's stores, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and in the venerable Empress Hotel in Victoria.

Inside are these impressive bison statues on either side of a staircase. I said to Glenn, "Wow, look at those buffalo." "Bison," the guide's assistant corrected me. The statues were modelled by Charles Gardet of Paris and cast in New York City. Each one weighs 5000 lbs. The question then is - how do you get a 2½ ton sculpture into the building without damaging the lovely marble floors? Well, the story goes that the entire main floor was flooded and frozen. The bison were put on giant slabs of ice from the river and slid into place.

The Carrara marble staircase, shown partially here, consists of 3 flights of 13 steps. Thirteen is a number used throughout the building.

There are a number of Grecian, Egyptian and even western touches throughout the building.

The rotunda - looking down and up.

Outside we take a closer look at the Golden Boy statue on the top of the building. The north-facing, 17-foot figure holding a golden sheaf and a torch was sculpted by the same artist who designed the bison. This one was cast in France and had 'a bit of a time' getting here as the foundry was partially bombed during WWI. It was then put on a ship but the ship was commandeered for the transport of troops. The statue lay in the hold until after the war when it was finally delivered to Halifax.

A view from the bus as we leave the grounds.

Winnipeg - A bus tour

Thursday, May 28, 2009

I think Manitoba gets a bit of a bad rap. You don't often hear of it being a tourist destination, yet it has one of the most (if not the most) beautiful beaches in Canada. It may be a prairie province in the middle of the country, but parts of it look more like BC to me rather than Alberta or Saskatchewan. Also, most of my family was from there so I'm partial to it. Still, when we decided to take a bus tour during the lengthy stop in Winnipeg and Glenn asked, "What is there to see?" I couldn't answer. The only thing that came to mind was Fort Garry but we wouldn't be going there.

No, this isn't Glenn's train layout, but it looks like it could be if this scene by the train station was shrunk to miniature size.

As our bus pulled out of The Forks, the area we'd seen before on our way east, the French-Canadian tour guide told us about its history. Evidence was found of bison hunting thousands of years ago. Later it became an important site in the fur trade, and then for the railway. When the government began promoting the 'Gateway to the Canadian West', they built immigration sheds here for a thousand people.

Winnipeg was hit with more floods this past winter and you could see that the river was still quite high. Part of a paved walkway disappeared under water.

The tour guide talked about the city being known for its friendly people. Could be - my aunt in Victoria had many lifelong, childhood friends from Winnipeg.

Our first stop would be the Manitoba Legislative Building.

There are a lot of elm trees in Winnipeg so it would be devastating if they all got killed off by Dutch Elm disease, a fungus spread by bark beetles. To combat this, the city bands the tree trunks from fall to spring.

Heading into town it looks like they're getting ready to plant their flower beds.

Arriving in Winnipeg

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Some cloud but clearing. Up at 5:30 for breakfast at 6:30.

The less-than-dazzling crew continues to underwhelm

Unlike the dining car staff on the trip east, this group seems completely disorganized. Yesterday, people seated after us had their food before we even got our first cup of coffee. When Glenn's egg dish arrived, he had to wait some time for the toast to appear. This morning when we arrived for breakfast we were told to go into the games car and put our names on a list. We still don't know why. That car was full of people, some apparently unaware a list existed. We finally located it and added our names. After a while, an attendant appeared and announced that breakfast was on. Everyone herded into the dining car and the list was ignored.

Rule #1 - just serve the coffee!

This morning at our table was a couple who worked for different railway companies. The man was in upper management with Via Rail. The restaurant staff obviously didn't know this or our table might have received better service. His wife was immediately unimpressed that we had to wait so long to be served a cup of coffee. She had asked for milk for it rather than cream but went ahead with the cream before the coffee went cold. By the time the milk did appear her cup was nearly empty. She had wanted oatmeal but they were out (?) so she ordered two eggs and toast and that was all - no meat or hashbrowns. Like me, she likes to have the toast with the eggs but they were getting cold waiting for the toast. By the time she inquired for the third time, she was getting pretty irritated. The waitress said there was a problem with the toaster, which didn't explain why I still didn't have the muffin I'd ordered. Also, I had asked for ketchup for my sausages but ate half of them before it arrived.

We booked a 2 to 2½ hour tour of Winnipeg starting at 8:30 am. The train would arrive in Winnipeg at about 8:00. At the stop in Winnipeg you take an escalator down into the station. When we got to the bottom we saw a cluster of people and soon learned that one bus was already full and the tour company had not received the fax letting them know more had reserved. Or perhaps the fax had gone to the wrong place. In any case, they were uncertain they could accommodate the extra people but, amazingly, they managed to put together a bus, driver and tour guide within 15 minutes or so. The manager of the bus company happened to be in the office doing payroll so he started driving the bus until another driver could meet up and take over.

Northern Ontario - A day to relax

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Overcast and wet. This is not a big sightseeing day as we're still in northern Ontario (do they call it northern? because it's actually not that far north) where the scenery, at least on the rail route, looks much the same mile by mile. I'll be glad to get back to the wide open prairie but for today, I'm looking forward to doing nothing.

We got up at about 5:30. First station we were aware of: Capreol. You might be asking where is Capreol? Well, it's much closer to the eastern side of Ontario than the western side, so we've got a long, long way to go to get to Winnipeg.

A little info from the internet:
Capreol formed around the Capreol railway station which was a major divisional point on the Canadian National Railway line. Although the town was originally an independent community with its own thriving economy, it gradually became a satellite community to the more rapidly growing city of Sudbury, approximately 40 kilometres to the south.

Showered and went to breakfast at 6:30. It was cold in the dining car. Sat with English couple from Midlands, England - he was a retired dentist. They were travelling to Jasper, then to Prince Rupert to take ferry to Port Hardy, then going to Tofino, Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. There were a fair number of English people on this trip so it was unfortunate it wasn't the best experience. At lunchtime we just had dessert and tea with pleasant, humourous couple from around Barrie. Had supper with them as well and enjoyed their company.

Changed clocks back an hour and went to bed early, about 9:00 new time.

The train trip home

Tuesday May 26, 2009

Now we're in the Toronto train station waiting to board our train. Same train company (Via Rail), mostly the same route, so you might think one train trip is the same as any other. But here things were different.

Unlike in Vancouver, we had to load our own bags. Retrieved them and checked in at one counter, then had to proceed to another counter to book lunch and dinner seatings. Out of Vancouver we just did this in the dining car at breakfast. We chose first seatings at 11:00 and 5:00. Waited in lounge which was packed. Boarding was done at two gates depending on car number. Everyone had to pile onto an escalator. It was a madhouse.

Train left at 10:07 pm. It went for a while, then stopped and backed up quite a distance. We don't know why.We were in the larger cabin F again, this time in the Draper car, just in front of the Park Car again.

There were a few problems with this cabin. It was freezing cold with cold air blasting out the vent. Glenn mentioned this a couple of times to our room attendant who got us blankets and claimed he turned the heat up. I was so cold that I sat in my chair with the blanket right over my head. After complaining a few times, Glenn went in search of the person in charge but they managed to remain invisible. He eventually became quite angry and threatened to leave the train. On our way outside during a stop in Hornpayne he mentioned the problem to another employee and she said she would cover the vent with cardboard and tape if need be. When we came back, no cardboard was to be seen but the room was warmer so something had been done. The temperature control was an issue in the dome car too as people couldn't sit comfortably for long. Either it was too warm and stuffy or it was like a meat locker. There were a lot of complaints on this trip and this crew in general was a dud.

The other problem in our cabin was that our sink barely drained and the hot water tap spewed water out the back, leaving pools of water around the rim of the sink. It was that way from the moment we arrived. So much for doing a little clothes washing in the sink. You can imagine how charming it was to brush your teeth and then have the water sit there in the basin. We were told that this would be fixed during the long stop in Winnipeg on Thursday morning. We couldn't switch cabins because the train was full.

The problem sink

Sayonara Toronto

Tuesday May 26, 2009

After the CN Tower we wandered around the streets. Toronto on the sunny day we had heading east was better than Toronto on a cold damp day now. And compared to Quebec City, it just seemed like a big boring city and I was looking forward to leaving it.

The Ontario Legislative Building. What is this sad little patch of garden? Did they try growing corn in there? Perhaps they ran out of money for the gardeners.

Heading out of the grounds.

Before long it began to rain. We found a restaurant called Eggspectations in the Eaton Centre (I love that they still call it Eaton's) and had supper there.

Then we went back to the train station and boarded the train for the 10:00 pm departure home. I was happy to leave Toronto but would have preferred taking a train east back to Quebec City!