Final report of the great Canadian train trip

Saturday May 30, 2009

On the last morning of our train trip we woke up in Hope, BC. Before arriving in Vancouver we had breakfast on the train. Two women came to the dining room wearing matching pajamas with snow-globe designs. It must have been a dare.

This was our first view of the morning, in Hope.

Before long we were into the flat farmland of the Fraser Valley.

Glenn says this is the Pattullo Bridge. Below it then would be the Fraser River Bridge, which I believe we crossed on that first moonlit evening of our trip. By the way, when Glenn was 16, Pat Carey (Canadian Airways pilot) and he flew under the Pattullo Bridge in a Waco biplane on floats. Crazy.

One day I came home from work to find this nice surprise from Glenn. :-)

All in all it was wonderful trip with lots of variety. If we had just taken the train trip east, I would have said it was a great experience but it wasn't as good coming back. They never did get our sink and tap fixed. So, expect to have plumbing problems on Via Rail, but also expect good food. The food was the star of the show on the train.

The only real disappointment of the trip for me was that I didn't get to see a cardinal, but that's pretty minor as compared to all the wonderful memories. We were quite lucky with the weather.

The End!

Trip report continues - West through Jasper

Friday May 29, 2009

Since some people are leaving the train in Jasper, which we should reach about noon, breakfast is being handled differently today. Instead of breakfast beginning at 6:30, there will be a continental breakfast in the dome car and a brunch beginning at 7:30. No lunch. So at 6:30 we trekked down to the dome car for coffee but the pot was empty. Good news was that there were packets of Honey Nut Cheerios for Glenn and there was one banana left. Before long others came looking for coffee and once the attendant reappeared he brought another pot. We heard a lot of complaints from passengers mainly about the lack of water and the cold. I don't know if I mentioned before that normally you each get a bottle of water in your cabin every night but they ran out after the first night. What - they couldn't send somebody out for water during their four hour stop in Winnipeg, or any of their other stops?

Anyway, at brunch Glenn had bacon, eggs and toast and I had waffles with berries. Sat with the man from Squamish again and a humourous Chinese fellow from Vancouver.

We passed a pond with a large beaver house which would have been easy to photograph if I'd been ready with the camera. In fact, we passed many beaver houses and I never got a picture of one. It became sort of a joke with the people around us in the dome car when I'd miss house after house. Even with the camera on and ready to go, by the time you see something and get the camera focused it's too late.

For over an hour we sat by a lake west of Edmonton, blue in the sunshine, waiting for a freight train to pass. Freight trains take precedence. I'm not sure if the one we sat by for so long was Lake Wabamun - once used for float plane landing practice by the Royal Canadian Air Force, or Mink Lake. Some docks and boats line the shores of the lake. Mostly blue sky, high cloud. Red-winged blackbirds periodically visit the small fir tree out our window. I can't hear them calling but can tell they are when their wings and tail feathers fluff out.

An announcement came on asking people to limit their time in the dome cars to half an hour. Reading, dozing, viewing, it can be easy to sit in there for hours. No doubt those cars will be packed once we get into the mountains.

Apparently the tracks were being cut ahead, whatever that means, and we had to stop for more freight trains. We are now two hours behind schedule for getting into Jasper.

Mountain sheep

We saw three black bears, one quite small, elk and mountain sheep.

There seemed to be not much snow around Jasper, but then the mountains seem flatter and less spectacular than down around Banff, I think. It is interesting though to see the rock formations.

There was some snow

Views in & around Jasper

Hooray they're finally cleaning the windows and we'll be able to see better for the rest of the journey through BC.

And we're on our way although we were delayed so long that there isn't much daylight left.

Above left: These are the new concrete ties that are replacing the old wooden ties.
Right: According to Glenn, the silver structure contains equipment which monitors the condition of the freight car wheels and detects "hot boxes" when axles are overheating and transmits warnings to the trains engineer.

We had supper with a lady from a small town in BC and a man from a different small town. They weren't together. She was a crusty older lady who had done a fair amount of cross-country horseback riding in the interior BC. She left the table before dessert and then the man, who had barely said a word up to that point, slowly began to open up. We found out that he had retired from the railway and had lost his wife a year and a half ago. So he seemed a bit sad and at loose ends, but was such a sweet soul that I wish we'd met him earlier in the trip. He was departing well before Vancouver to visit his son at a place on a lake.

Glenn and I had chicken with scalloped potatoes and we shared a cheesecake dessert.

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.

Day 4 - Toronto to Quebec City - Part 2

Tuesday May 12, 2009

Someone asked how to pronounce VIA. It is vee-ah.

Back to Tuesday, we arrived in Toronto in the morning and got on a commuter train to Montreal, then switched there to another to Quebec City.

These trains are different. Here, it is like travelling by airplane in that you sit in assigned seats and meals are brought to you. These are not cooked on board as on the 'Canadian' trains. First, the attendant comes around with hot, wet towels for you to wash with, then they bring the food tray with an appetizer, bun and dessert. The appetizers always seemed to have black mushrooms so we never ate them. Then came the main course, one of three choices which can be preordered.

The ride can be very bumpy so we found it a mistake to get full cups of coffee or any other liquid.

After dinner, the attendants come around with chocolates, usually in two flavours. With any luck, they might came around twice.

From Montreal to Quebec City we got a train with Renaissance cars. These are much nicer than the usual commuter train cars. The seats are on a raised platform and instead of four seats across (two on each side of the aisle), there are three (two and one), so the seats are roomier. There is an outlet for computers. You can use the internet on these trains but I think it costs about $30.

One perk of travelling VIA 1 class is that, while waiting for trains in stations, you get to sit in the Panorama Lounge where there are newspapers and refreshments. Otherwise, you'd be stuck standing like a horse in line out in the main station. At boarding time a person comes along and leads you to where you need to go.

A Panorama Lounge

At last we arrived in Quebec City and booked into our hotel that night. The Chateau Frontenac is a very short taxi ride from the train station. As soon as we entered our room we could hear distant saxophone music playing outside, so I sat on the window ledge, looked out at the St. Lawrence River, and enjoyed the music and the muffled chatter of people. It didn't matter that the sax player wasn't the best musician in the world. It was just a wonderful introduction to this city that I knew I was going to love. Migraine and sickness behind me, this to me felt like the real start of our holiday.

Inside the train: Dining car

This is where the VIA Rail Canadian trains really shine. The chef(s) on board create a variety of dishes that, in our experience, were always fresh and tasty. I even tried pickerel which I'd never had before. Most of the time the dining car staff was exceptional - prompt, genuinely friendly and good-humoured.

For supper there are rolls, soup or salad, the main course and dessert. Coffee, tea and juice are free but you pay for wine. The desserts were so good that I didn't want to miss one so I usually skipped the soup and salad.

Breakfast begins at 6:30 am and it is first come, first serve. Then you choose your seatings for the rest of the day. We took the early ones, 11:30 am for lunch and 5:30 for supper. Or maybe it was 11:00 and 5:00, I can't remember.

Tables are for four.

Inside the train: Park car

The only dome car we have been in is the Park Car at the back of the train so I can't speak about the others.

There are three public parts to the Park Car. 1) An attendant is stationed in a small bar called the Mural Lounge underneath the viewing dome. 2) Behind that is the Bullet Lounge, a main-floor lounge with windows around, where there are muffins, fruit (here we go with the bananas again - if you want one, nab it quick) or other snacks and water, coffee, tea and sometimes juice, as well as newspapers. 3) Climb a set of stairs and you're in the dome where all seats face forward. The curved windows there distort the view somewhat and the brochures never show the bug splattered front windows which are the preferred windows for shots of the train heading around a curve.

Sometimes the car attendant comes through with a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

To get anywhere on the train,
you walk down narrow aisles like this

Lower seating area

Upper seating area - not always this empty!

Snacks

At first we wondered why all the lights we passed on the tracks were red. That's because we are at the back of the train and by the time we get to them, they have changed colour.

The dome car is a good spot to look for mile markers along the tracks. Distances are broken into subdivisions, often 125 to 250 or more miles (not kilometres) in length, with the 0 mile mark being at the eastern point. So, Toronto is a 0 mile mark, Hornepaye is 0 mile mark, and so is Jasper, and so on.

Window, before cleaning in Jasper

Window, after Jasper

I should mention that there is also an activity room ahead of the dining area. Sometimes if you can’t find snacks in the Park car, you can find them there.

Inside the train: Double bedroom

A big thank-you goes out to the person on the internet who recommended the F rooms because they have more space than the other double bedrooms. I believe each of the sleeper cars has a room F. In such tight quarters any extra room counts and in this case there is probably more than an extra foot. Normally people would check most of their luggage and take on board only what they needed for the train trip. We didn't check anything. In F rooms one suitcase can be stored in that extra space with room to spare and another between the two chairs. Smaller bags can be stored on the high ledge above the sink and bathroom door. It takes some agility to put items up there for not-so-tall people like us. How some of the seniors manage is a wonder.

We're in the Dunsmuir car, number 222, in front of the Park (dome) car at the back of the train. Is it best to be closer to the dome car or the dining car? It's hard to say. Another bonus of an F room is that the shower is just outside the door to the right. I can zip in and out of there in moments. (Bring your own shower cap if you're not washing your hair and flip flops are handy too.)

But don't expect a 4 or 5 star hotel experience here. These rooms are basic and small. In the two bed cabin we had on an Amtrak train in the USA we barely had room to stand when the beds were set up. Here on Via Rail the beds are not only wider, but armchairs could still fit into the remaining space. Two chairs are set up in daytime. By 10:00 pm all the beds are set up, although you can arrange for earlier - we usually had it done while we were at supper. The chairs are folded down and a bed put on top. A bunkbed is lowered from the ceiling. There is a ladder to reach it and netting on the open side so you don't fall out. We heard that new cars are being designed for double beds for the comfort of the ageing population. Beds can be left in place in the daytime if you want to nap.

Daytime setup

Nighttime setup (VIA Rail photo)

I have to use this internet picture (above) of the bed arrangement because I forgot to take my own photo.

See how close the wall across from the bed is in the above photo? Well, in Room F all that room to the right of the door (below) is extra space.

Turn right out this door and step to the shower

The toilet is in a tiny closet, like an airplane washroom. Push the flush button and you have time to escape and shut the door before a sound like a jet engine occurs. A small sink surrounded by mirrors is in the room and a full length mirror is on the back of the door. There is a slim clothes closet only a few inches wide, and a tiny compartment above it. Towels, plastic and paper cups, earplugs, shampoo, hair conditioner, lotion and mouthwash are supplied. Each night two bottles of water and two small chocolate bars were left on our beds.

The room locks from the inside but not the outside. We were told that nothing is ever stolen, but when we left our room we locked our luggage, stored the laptop out of sight and took the cameras with us.

The train stops fairly often to let other trains pass. Try to choose one of these moments to apply mascara or use sharp objects. There can be some surprising jolts on the train and Glenn has the bruises to prove it.

Other arrangements are available such as triple bedrooms and sleeping berths. I just read that you can request a table for your room.

Sink with flip-down counter

Extra storage above sink

Day 4 - On to Toronto, then Montreal to Quebec City - Part 1

Tuesday May 12, 2009

Not a great day

Here, I have no pictures! There is a reason for that.

From the start of the trip I'd had a migraine. During this last night I started getting severe stomach pains. This was distressing as I had thought my operation would have taken care of that problem, at least for a few years. At 3:00 or 4:00 am the toilet started not working. It would flush sometimes and then not others. This is no joke for a person with crohn's disease. It was less of a joke when I had to throw up. Was it something I ate? I'd had exactly what Glenn did except for the small salad and tomato juice. Or was it a case of over-eating? I don't know but the good news was that after I got sick, I felt better, so the old pain was not back after all.

Anyway, it was a frustrating night and morning of dealing with the toilet.

There are buzzers in your room so you can ring for help. They cause a bell to ring in the hallway. Staff is on duty at 6:30 am but you are advised that you can reach them any time in their rooms, which are labelled. Glenn found our room attendant outside in the hallway early on. He didn't speak English well and blamed the problem on the fact that the train was at 80% capacity, which made me wonder what they did when it was at 100%.

With the problem unsolved and me still in desperate need of the bathroom, Glenn eventually rang the bell. The snippy dome car attendant happened along and snarled at Glenn that they weren't on duty until 6:30 am and she had been up until 2:00 am. As if it was our fault she was up that late, and anyway she apparently hadn't noticed it was now 6:35 am. Glenn bellowed back, “Don't talk to me like that!” and tore a strip off her. She lost the snide attitude with us after that and even managed to paste a weak smile on her face.

The story emerged that the tanks weren't cleaned out at the last stop. It was unfortunate that the trip ended on a down note after it had been so good until then. I could have easily sat on the train all the way to Halifax.

I heard someone the night before tell a photography fan that if he got up early he might see a long covered bridge. It might have been near Parry Sound. I had hoped to see it but by then we were so tired, we just took it easy and slowly got ready to depart the train. I remember seeing some nice houses along Lake Simcoe.

In Toronto we departed the Canadian. From there we travelled on commuter type trains, which are different. So, before I go onto fabulous Quebec City, where it felt that my holiday really began, I will talk next a bit about the inside of this train.

(It sure is easy posting when there are no photos to add.)

Day 3 - Winnipeg through northern Ontario

Poor map
X marks the spot we should reach by midnight

Monday May 11, 2009

A crew change and we have no bananas

There was a crew change in Winnipeg. Eight enthusiastic trainees boarded and they fit right in with the friendly and capable staff. The new attendant (not a trainee) in the dome car was the only fly in the ointment. When I asked if there were any bananas, she said if there were, they'd be out in the fruit bowl in the lounge. There weren't, so I asked if she had any stored away the way the other attendant did. "Like I said," she droned while glued to the bench seat in the bar as if taking a rest, not stationed behind the counter as if working, "if there were any, they'd be in the basket." Then she said that they were unable to get bananas in Winnipeg! Later, I heard her ranting to a passenger, wanting to know where a man had gone with her only pen.

We were in Ontario already when we woke up, and had breakfast while we were at Sioux Lookout. Glenn: eggs and toast. Me: apple fritters which seemed like deep-fried, artery-clogging food so I didn't eat much it.

Land of lakes

I understood from a Via Rail agent that this would be a long stretch through similar territory. In fact, she couldn’t face another trip on this route because of this tedious section. This is in the Canadian Shield, I guess, but I forget what it was and had to look it up. From the net:

"The Canadian Shield is a large geographic area in eastern and central Canada composed of some of the planet's oldest rock. The shield is mostly thin soil lying on top of bedrock, with many bare outcrops and thousands of lakes. In total it covers approximately 8 million square kilometers."

She was right. Mile after mile, hour after hour you pass through forests and glassy smooth lakes. 'Land of the Lakes' you could call it. The trees - lodgepole pines, spruce and birch, I was told - are much shorter and narrower than ours in BC. Someone said there are also oaks, although I haven't been aware of any. The evergreen trees here are shorter than the birches. There are also woodland swamps, but unlike the bogs through Saskatchewan these are lacking birds. There must be some wildlife around here but maybe when it warms up. Bits of snow are still on the ground here and there. I saw one hawk in the sky and two butterflies. That was it for wildlife.

It was just as well that the scenery was all the same today because we are exhausted and seized the opportunity to catch up on sleep.

We skipped lunch and just had a muffin each and water in the dome car.

Hornepayne is another stop where you can get off the train but there isn’t much to see. We had supper shortly after leaving it.

Hornepayne and its abandoned station

In the dining car, the table across the aisle from us started filling up with single travellers who had gotten to know one another. A young woman entered the car and, though they invited her to sit down, she chose to sit at our table. I was glad she did because she was the best dinner companion of the trip. 27 years old, from South Africa, she was the first Pipa I'd ever met. I only wish we’d met her sooner because she was interesting to talk to and quite funny.

All this eating has to stop! Glenn had soup and I had a nice light salad with mandarin orange slices and some sort of nuts. I could have skipped the sourdough dinner bun, pork, mashed potatoes and beans, so I ate very little of it. We had only a few bites of the rich chocolate torte, and lately have cut down the coffee in favour of tea.

This afternoon we were given survey forms to fill out with the lure of winning a $25 gift certificate for items or drinks on the train. It was almost like filling out a census form! During dinner they announced that there would be two winners, one each from the front and the back of the train. Glenn won! So he got a book about this train trip which I had wanted but not enough to buy.

We had our third time change somewhere along the way so we are three hours later than home time. Now at 8:30 as the sun sets we are seeing some different territory and finally a few hints of civilization in the form of cabins on lakes. I can see the attraction as these lakes are pretty and serene. There isn't any wind, at least not today. (Glenn here: Although the scenery is "pretty and serene" I know first hand what it's like to out in it during a hot summer day: it is not only hot but usually very humid (read "sticky, yucky") and the black flies will carry you away to their lair.

Ontario is a huge province. By midnight we should reach McKee's Camp and are scheduled to get to Toronto at 9:30 the next morning.

Here, I should say a word about telephone wires. For much of the trip you see them alongside the tracks. Most are unused as apparently fiber optic cables have been put underneath the tracks now, and the poles are decaying. I guess whoever owns them feels it's not worth the expense of removing them, but I wonder if, when they collapse, animals might get caught up in the wires. Meanwhile, they just get in the way in photographs.

Day 2 - Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba

Sunday May 10, 2009

Prairieland

An interesting thing about train travel is that when you wake up, you don’t know where you are. Assuming the train was on schedule we may have been near the Alberta / Saskatchewan border or right into Saskatchewan when we got up, which would have been at 5:30 am at the latest. So, you really don’t see much of Alberta on this trip!

This wasn’t the Saskatchewan prairieland I remember as a kid on family driving holidays. Back then we would drive across dead-flat, dry land and see nothing but grain elevators on the horizon which took hours and hours to reach. It was an excruciating wait to reach the next grain elevator where I always hoped there would be a town with a restaurant. But we were probably south of this rail route, and it was summer during those trips. I hadn't been through the prairies since I was 15 so I looked forward to this part of the trip through 'big sky country.'

Later in the season the fields might be covered with wheat or canola or whatever they are growing these days, but in early May most of the route through Saskatchewan looked fairly colourless with fields of grey and tan, and leafless black-trunked trees. Mile after mile.

When I was a kid I thought Saskatchewan had no water, so it sure came as a surprise to pass countless ponds and marshes pretty much through the entire province. Not only that but they were alive with ducks and geese. We saw a few hawks too. A fellow train passenger said that the ponds are from snowmelt and would mostly disappear later.

We had bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast. No lunch. The meal at lunch is as big as the one at supper so we soon learned to just grab a mid-day snack from the dome car.

Stops were at Saskatoon in the morning and Melville in the afternoon. Saskatoon train station area was bleak and neglected-looking but it's always nice to get out and stretch your legs. Sunny but cool. I watched water being drained out of each car. Melville, as with other stops along the way, had an older station that had been boarded up.

The train's service manager talked for quite a while in the dome car and told us that half the Via Rail budget had been cut by Prime Minister Mulroney. It's too bad that many of the older stations were replaced with newer, less interesting ones.

At the Saskatoon station

Old Melville station

We saw a coyote and a small herd of buffalo somewhere.

Nearing (or in) Manitoba we saw great mounds of potash. I realized I didn't know what potash is. We were told that it is used in fertilizer and China buys a lot of it. Once into Manitoba the terrain changed and we started seeing slight changes in elevation.

Potash (& marshes)

Qu'Appelle Valley

There is a Cree legend that goes along with the Qu'Appelle Valley. I’ve read many variations but it goes along lines of a brave who went by canoe to visit his sweetheart in another village. Paddling along he heard a faint call of his name. “Who calls?” he asked but only heard his echo in reply. Later when he reaches his sweetheart’s home, he learns that she died the night before. It was her voice he heard calling his name. Since French was the common language of the fur trade, the Cree word for “who calls” became "Qu'Appelle".

For supper Glenn had roast beef and I had chicken in port wine sauce with sun dried tomatoes. Both with mashed potatoes and carrots. We sat with the father and daughter from the interior of BC again.

I wonder what this little broom was for?

Winnipeg

Nearing Winnipeg we passed through a residential section of Portage la Prairie, hometown of my Dad. Here is a little trivia from the net:

• The name is derived from the French word portage, which means to carry a canoe overland between waterways. In this case the "portage" was between the Assiniboine River and Lake Manitoba, over the prairie.
• According to Environment Canada, Portage la Prairie has the most sunny days in warm months in Canada.

I missed the nicer shot of the rowing club on the river.

Winnipeg is where most of my family was from and some still are. I figured we would have a lot of time off the train with a three or four hour stop and thought I might phone an aunt and uncle in town. But we were held up getting off the train until sometime after 8:30 pm. We had to be back on the train within 45 minutes or wait an hour longer to reboard. The station is right by The Forks, and area of shops, restaurants and a riverside park so named because this is where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet. Since it was a Sunday night and Mother's Day, there wasn't much open so we raced around and got back on the train within three quarters of an hour.

Winnipeg suffered another big flood this year. We were told we wouldn't see much evidence of it as most of it happened on the other side of town. The flood of 1950, which caused the largest evacuation in Canadian history, was the reason my parents left Winnipeg and moved to Victoria.

At The Forks

At least we found a caboose! You don't see them on working trains any more. What on earth do kids nowadays wave at on driving trips?