Radio FM4

Johnny Bliss

Disorderly artist, journalist, and late night moderator, with a fetish for microphone-based hooliganism.

Erstellt am: 28. 9. 2013 - 11:53 Uhr

Canada By Rail: From East Coast to West Coast

A train ride across the second largest country in the world. In an age when most people opt for speed, who is choosing this slower mode of travel, and why? This is Canada by Rail, on FM4's Reality Check.

There is a reason this here web story is called Canada By Rail, Part 1.

See, I produced another web story, and entire program, called...
Canada By Rail, Part 2.

The second one focuses on the anecdotes and life experiences of bearded train employee Walter. Check it out!

Around these parts, I am known as the "Reisende [or roaming] reporter" who has traveled around the world, conquered foreign lands, and returned victoriously, with golden bags of treasure in the form of filled-up SD Cards and new contacts.

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What many of those who have sung ballads, passed down oral histories, and written sagas by candlelight on ancient parchment about my journeys may not know, is that for all of the bounty I may have brought back from my travels, all the time I had been masking a deep and terrible secret.

* - Not saying that I've been to every other country; indeed, there remains yet more than one continent I have not even flown over.

We're talking about particulars here. ^^

For everything I had done, there was one country in particular* that was absent from my list of adventures; one country in particular* that I had yet to explore, befriend, and conquer! This country was none other than the one where I was born: Canada.

And so, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, whilst hoisting a herculean tankard of stout, I vowed on the blood of my enemies that I would not go down in battle having neither seen nor conquered much of the land I called my place of origin.

No more would I mask my dark secret by merely visiting the city of my birth, and then, while there, asking local Vancouverites to answer larger questions about the entire country. No more would I tell glorious tales about the city of Vancouver, whilst conspicuously neglecting to say a single word about anywhere else in the entire godforsaken land!

* - offering terrible service, to boot

But my new goal was fraught with difficulties; Canada is no minor European country that one can explore by car in one week. Indeed, it is a vast country with very little public transportation infrastructure. Other than a couple crappy buses and horribly overpriced planes*, there are very few options for traveling long-distance from one end to the next.

But there is one option, that grew to gargantuan proportions in my imagination, the longer that I thought about it. 'Twas, indeed, the very "foundation of Canada", as one of my interview partners eventually put it...

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Yes, that's me on one of Canada's trains. Canada has small trains.

Canada's National Railway

(1) - And that's just from going straight from Cape Spear in Newfoundland to the border with Alaska in the Yukon. If you are going instead to Vancouver, as we did, you are looking at well over 7000 kilometres.

(2) - Not saying I didn't go there, just saying you might have to wait for another web story to hear about it.

Even traveling by rail takes a long time in a country the size of Canada. Measuring 5514 kilometres(1) from one end to the other, if one hopes to travel the entire distance by rail.... well, that's actually impossible, owing to the fact that the eastern province of Newfoundland has not had any rail service since at least twenty five years(2).

However, if one travels from the farthest eastern train station (Halifax) to the end of the line on the western Canadian route (Vancouver), one is looking at a minimum of more than five days of continuous travel.

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mural of a train, at Truro Station, in Nova Scotia

The funny thing is, the trip nearly wouldn't have happened for two reasons.

One of those reasons was a company strike that was due to start one day before our "Ocean" trip had been booked. If the company and its unionized employees had not struck a deal by midnight that night, there would have been only a very small group of employees remaining to run any of the regular trains, and things looked very bleak for our scheduled journey eastwards. The news headlines were very ominous about the chances of a compromise being found, and we went to bed thinking our scheduled train was destined to be cancelled. To our (pleasant) surprise, we woke up the next morning to the news that the strike had been averted last minute.

The other reason the trip nearly didn't happen was actually our own fault.

We arrived at the train station at Charny (near Quebec City) something like an hour and a half before the train was scheduled to leave; being highly unrealistic, we decided to take all of that extra time to discover Charny, and nearly didn't make it back to our train before it left, and in one piece.

I won't spoil the rest. If you want to know all of the details (which included some "Indiana Jones-maneuvers", to quote some other travelers we'd met), you'll just have to listen to the program / podcast (see below).

Canada's national passenger rail service:
www.viarail.ca

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this is me looking really happy to actually be on a train.

* - This is a pun. Because, you know, that one Bruce Lee movie was called 'Enter the Dragon'. Yeah.

Enter the Wagon*

But make it onto the train we did.

We actually ended up taking two main routes on our trip. The first route (following the above-mentioned adventure) was called the Ocean, which took us through the Maritimes to Moncton (New Brunswick), and onwards to Halifax (Nova Scotia), before returning us via Halifax to Montreal.

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On the "Ocean" Route

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Ditto

From there we transferred to the most famous train, the Canadian, which took us to Vancouver via the remote wilderness of northern Ontario, the prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and the rocky mountain provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.

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On the "Canadian" Route

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Ditto

As scenic as the landscape undoubtedly is, you are probably thinking, up to six days hanging out on a train seat sounds really boring!

You would be right, if that were true. But Canadian rail is nothing like Western European rail. Some of the speed and infrastructure is sacrificed, but it is replaced by... well, a whole other set of features.

The Sleeper Car.

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Amusingly enough, for a great length of the trip, I was travelling in a sleeper car called the Bliss Manor.

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Couldn't make this stuff up.

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Well, I could, but nobody would believe me.

While still being small by normal-room standards, the sleeper cars offer considerably more space than one would dare to imagine from the comparative discomfort of most train seats.

During the day you have two ordinary seats surrounded by ... actually, nearly too much space. It's almost a little bizarre and out-of-place to have these seats surrounded by nothing.

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Sleeper Cabin aboard the 'Canadian', by day

* - Well, at least a toilet and a shower.

During the night it all comes together, because a guy comes through and pulls down two cozy bunk beds. You also have your own toilet, shower, kitchen, and beer cellar*. On the Ocean route, the shower is kinda cramped and uncomfortable (and everything is generally smaller), but on the Canadian it is practically like a normal shower, with the same amount of space you would have in a normal room.

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Considerably smaller Sleeper Cabin aboard the 'Ocean', by day

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Sleeper Cabin aboard the 'Canadian', by night

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Shower aboard the 'Canadian'

The Entire Train

What prevents cabin fever from setting in is the fact that one is actively encouraged to get up and move around. Indeed, it's pretty boring to just hang out in your sleeper car on this seat in the middle of an empty room.

And why should you? For one thing, you can always go hang out in

The Dome Car(s).

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A Dome Car from outside.

The pictures essentially speak for themselves; much of the walls and ceiling are made of glass, which makes for a great view of the scenery around you... or the stars, if you come late enough.

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A Dome Car without people...

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A Dome Car with people...

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A different Dome Car...

* - If you are lucky, you will get Walter. That guy could talk about shopping for socks, and you'd be laughing your head off.

Frequent wine or beer tastings make this also a great place to get proper nozzled for free. Sometimes there are presentations on local wildlife and scenery provided by staff, which can be spectacular or superbly boring depending on who is leading the presentation*.

The Dining Car.

* - Along the Ocean route, meanwhile, the food is OK but nothing spectacular; in some cases, you get the feeling that it has been re-heated in the microwave.

And then there is the dining car. Along the Canadian route, the food is particularly astounding and luxurious*. Absurdly elegant three-course meals included the likes of duck confit benedict, pan-roasted halibut, and stuffed portobello caps. Just as you're stuffed and declaring you've never been so finished, along comes an irresistible dessert.

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Sometimes there was live music too.

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Lobster Roll aboard the 'Ocean'

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Duck Confit Benedict aboard the 'Canadian'

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Crème brûlée.

Following this trip, I discovered to my horror that I had gained something like five kilos of weight during my brief travel along this route! Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.

The Bar.

There is usually a bar car, which is open until about ten or eleven at night.

Recreation / Lounge / Activity Car.

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Seriously, check out our Walter Special. You will not be sorry.

Lastly, there is the "hang out" car, with crossword puzzles and a television for occasional film viewing. What makes it more interesting is that Viarail usually books Canadian folk bands, one band per route, to do regular shows during the trip. They don't only perform in the Recreation car, but I've seen them more often than not here, which is why I mention it now.

Band on the Ocean Route: Galen Hartley & Athena Holmes

Along the Ocean route, I met Galen and Athena, anglophones who live in Montreal and have both solo and collaborative projects together.

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Galen and Athena performing on the train

Athena Holmes

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Athena in Interview

Galen Hartley

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Galen in Interview

What?! You want to know what they told me in the interview, or hear some of their music?!! Well, for that I suppose you'll just have to tune in at 12 midday, or afterwards tune in to the podcast...

While they were performing live, a drunk Canadian guy named Gene joined in the performance, playing the guitar case as a drum very convincingly. I interviewed him and his wife after the show.

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Gene is to the right, playing the guitar case.

On the Canadian, meanwhile, I met Lara and Melissa, who performed folk music together on the train. They don't feature in today's program, which justifies my decision to include their interview already below.