(Canada: Toronto – “The Canadian” – Vancouver)
Toronto, Ontario:
Last time I was here, access to the CN Tower, this town`s phallic landmark, was denied as Canadian TV had procured it for 1979 New Years` Eve. The view from the top is breathtaking, in fact nearly as breathtaking as the $48 cost. A squalling two-year-old year old in the coffee shop proudly wore a large red T shirt labelled:: ``I bet you wish I had an OFF button``. Quite.
To recover I decided to walk and take the streetcar some considerable way through the downtown neighbourhoods and along Keele Ave through Filipino, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian enclaves with the occasional West Indian restaurant thrown in... An ATM at Earls Court offers Portuguese as your choice of language, after your excellent cup of Italian coffee at a 40 year old family bakery. Beyond the streetcar terminus at the old stockyards, at the end of diverse and welcoming pre war neighbourhoods, stretch miles upon miles of the vapid condos, freeways and `big box` malls of North American post modern identikit suburbia... These were the areas that elected the recently `gone` Mayor Ford of national and international embarrassment, wanting more of the services that support such a vibrant and apparently harmonious downtown culture. (No confected outrage about hijabs in this town...)
And across Toronto, neighbourhoods featured public-park ice rinks and caged (ice) hockey rinks for young Canadians to creatively injure themselves in pursuit of the national obsession.
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Late Night: Toronto
I`m relaxed in the lounge at Union Station, booked in, meal sittings allocated, comfy sleeping berth awaiting on The Canadian to Vancouver. This is the last regular survivor of the great streamlined stainless steel art-deco 1940s transcontinental fantasy design trains which, by themselves, could not save the American long distance train. From the sleek glass-bubble vista domes, coaches, sleepers and club cars to the rounded-end observation car this was luxury the railroads offered in the losing battle with airlines and massive freeway construction. The Canadian is at once the symbol of how transcontinental trains initially bound the disparate provinces together into a nation, and also a national tourism icon. It is one of the few trains `propped up` by the conservative national government because of this status.
Unlike Amtrak in the US who have pensioned off all of the `heritage` equipment offloaded from the grateful private railroads, the Canadians decided to hang on to their streamlined original Canadian Pacific trains and to strategically upgrade them. The result: a somewhat nostalgic train of coaches, `sections` (where daytime seats convert to beds-behind-corridor-curtains which you have probably seen in old Marx Brothers movies), roomettes and cabins and several lounge cars with vista dome views. It is so comfortable and warm - compared to some more more modern attempts at streamlined trains... and the sleeping berths don`t bloody rattle all night. And it is older than most of its passengers, including me. The journey is leisurely (4+ days!!!) but after a champagne welcome in the `Park Car` observation car, a snug sleep and a hot breakfast, what`s not to like. I was in `Hearne` carriage. The next car down was `Bliss`. The occupants said it wasn`t.
For the $10 image, see: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/11/07/new_5_and_10_polymer_bills_released_by_bank_of_canada.html
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Day 1:
Capreol: 7am. Pitch dark relieved by ghostly snowdrifts and hot pumpkin pancakes in the dining car. Across North Western Ontario: through fresh snow, along and over near-frozen rivers; just spellbinding scenery (except for the Canadians who complained that Winter was too warm and the snow had not fallen so much...). Photos and landscape were in starkly arty Anselm Adams black and white
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Taylor, our entertainer, will provide seasonal music for your holiday celebration..." A lank, spectacled, straggly beard carrying a banjo arrived in the Park Car. I departed. To read the paper. Unbanjoed. Much of the morning was spent looking forward in a vista dome where passing trees and bridges and signal lights were mirrored in thee grooved silver roof from a 360 degree Winter landscape view.
`The National Globe and Mail` seems to be Canada`s national quality broadsheet, although about 1/4 of a page narrower than the old Sydney Morning Herald. It maintains a certain level of distanced gravitas with most news, but the crime stories are enthrallingly intrusive, in forensically titillating detail with extended graphic murders, abductions and child abandonment in lurid narrative tone worthy of Victorian `penny dreadfuls`. I read on...
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Hornepayne: 3pm. An hour to walk the station (such as it is) and to look at the town, such as it is: a CN railroad town with lumber industry. The Australian family from `Bliss` made good use of the hour: snowmen and snow-mountain climbing, much photographed by anyone else in the -10 degrees `fresh` air
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I was sat for meals with `the grumpy old curmudgeons` group: myself (surely misplaced), a long term retired firefighter from the states who permanently wore a railroad engineman`s cap and smiled beatifically at the world with one front tooth and our self appointed `leader` who was a 70 something, ragged and slightly haunted looking guy from Quebec City. He asked for his lunch-time burger `medium rare`... The waitress patiently explained that the meat was frozen, prepackaged and had to be `well done` to avoid possible contamination. (As the meals progressed she may have had second thoughts for this customer...). ``Well,`` he growled through jowls and stubble, `` I buy horsemeat and I cook it medium and it`s ok. What`s wrong with your chef?``
Patient waitress (less chirpy now) stood her ground and asked if he would like soup. ``Why would I like soup if I can`t get the burger I like?`` He was persuaded to order the pickerel with horse radish crust instead. Old guy in railroad engineers` cap maintained upward beatific one-toothed-smile and pronounced the soup: ``Good``.
The maitre`d arrived; businesslike: she had been warned. Grumpy old man from Quebec City ordered white wine: ``Can I take the bottle with me?``. It would be stored in the dining car for his meals. It arrived. Wrong white. Reisling. Too sweet. Increasingly assertive maitre`d pointed him to a blended wine which he was persuaded to enjoy. ``Have you got an ice bucket?`` A large circular cardboard contaner was procured from somewhere down the train. Conversation/growled monologue resumed. He was going to New Zealand. If that was too expensive, he was going to Tahiti or Thailand. He wasn`t coming back. He was leaving to die, but only if he could afford it.
Old guy in railroad engineers` cap maintained upward beatific one-toothed-smile and pronounced pickerel: ``Good``.
Old guy in railroad engineers` cap maintained upward beatific one-toothed-smile and kept conversation flowing about the chocolate cake dessert: `That wus good.``
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Activities on board were announced: ``We have the Kris Kringle movie. You can`t miss that!!`` I rather think I can.... Wine tastings and champagne ``horrrrderrrrves`` were fun, though, especially with the black attendant in the Park Car who turned on the R&B music and shimmied along the aisle in the vista dome topping up the plastic champagne flutes.
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Bad Karma #1
Dinner: same Old Curmudgeons` table: Railroad Engineer Cap Guy pronounced soup ``Good``. Quebec City Guy asked for his wine bottle from lunch to be returned to him with glass. The wine bottle was warm. The glass had a hairline crack. The Maitre `d thoroughly enjoyed dealing with the complaints.
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I scored a different sitting for all following meals... and met a variety of English tour groupers escaping Christmas and retired people from London, Georgia, Toronto and China who were great company. The Chinese family took the Christmas dinner photo which some of you received. Their son is studying sociology on Toronto, Dad was staying for three months in Ontario to learn English, and Mum was returning to her motor vehicle insurance assessment job in Shanghai: a growth industry in a booming city. She was wearing the dark floral plastic puffer jacket that can ONLY be bought in China...
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Day 2: Christmas as the train pulled in to Winnipeg. The pre-dawn fresh snow on deserted streets reflected Christmas lights and flashing big-screen advertisements: and a trainload of passengers that remained locked-in until the station staff arrived to open up 8am.
Breakfast with a retired journalist from Kingston who pontificated while his wife passed him most of her breakfast to eat: ``We`re early. See all those freight trains. They are `poot oot` and stored for Christmas Day. We haven`t stopped to pass any of `em all night.... Canadians know that the USA is not a country, it`s a religion. Once you understand that it all falls into place... We though we Canadians had bad political leadership until we saw your Abbott in Canada... It`ll be -17 in Winnipeg today. Hope you brought your sunscreen.``
Winnipeg was very closed for Christmas during our 4 hour train servicing stop to go walkies (or not). The station`s flood-lit deep blue and white monumental dome resonated to an angelic `Ave Maria` as we walked through to be the first footsteps in the downtown and riverfront christmas snow. On return from trudging through snowy sidewalks in the pre-dawn light, the effect was somewhat spoilt by a recorded children`s choir singing: `I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus`.
There was only one escalator from the station subway to the platform (perfectly adequate for only two or three trains per week...) so a station employee was parked at the base of the escalator to press a button to determine which way the escalator would go. They were parked there for more than four hours, pressing forward and reverse, after which they were presumably `turned off`, with the escalator, until the day any next train would arrive.
Late morning departure through the `burbs to Portage La Prarie and to an extended day of flat, furrowed, lean, snow covered prairies, relieved by tree lined roads and fences, potash mines, the very occasional vast, frozen river valley, several giant freight trains and the occasional oil derrick or horse-headed pump as we dawdled from Saskatchewan and into the resources boom state of Alberta.
As the snow was tinged with the sweeping orange and darker red of creeping twilight, we rolled into Melville: a crew change and a chance to see a several-streeted town (straight out of `Fargo`). The closed and shuttered and tattered two-storeyed station house looked more prepossessing than the town so it was a chance for more passenger-sprints of the length of the train and `selfies` in front of the parked locomotives; particularly for the poor coach passengers who had been cooped in seats for nearly three days now. One Chinese kid was running the length of the platform: `I didn`t bring any warm clothes.`
The first sitting for (Christmas Turkey) dinner watched the frolic and the sunset as they tucked in to their `festive season red tree` dessert: a conical confection of spotted red filled with unspeakably rich chocolate mouse.
Looking up through the window I noted Quebec Curmudgeon Guy appearing to argue with the wine waitress...
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As we travelled west through time zones, each day was extended by one hour. This was needed for digestive systems to have adequate time to digest the huge amounts of great food. Passengers travelling east must stagger off in Toronto feeling like stuffed battery hens.
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Day 3: Edmonton. 6am: pitch dark apart from the `lights on the hill` of the distant city, -22 degrees: `Quite warm,` muttered the car attendant as she shovelled snow from the carriage steps to allow us some tingly fresh air (and for me to send you the first email using the station`s wifi).
Throughout the day the landscape gradually transitioned from small undulations with occasional oil derricks to sinuous frozen river valleys leading to the frozen and snow-hazed majesty of Rockies where the train followed increasingly spectacular river valleys into Jasper. During several afternoon hours in the Park Car, looking through the streamlined rear windows at growling freight trains and snow flurries fogging the receding tracks we were hugely entertained by a Winnipeg Hockey Widow. She`d left her hockey-addicted husband in front of both TVs: ``It`s like that from October to April; doesn`t matter who`s playing or where the game is, he is THERE or 6 months. (Helps self to handfull of hors d`oeuvres) I live upstairs with my own TV. I tell the repairman I can`t get my man to fix it if his TV is working. (Helps self to another handful of hors d`ouevres as car attendant saunters by with champagne-to-funky-R&B-music). He doesn`t know I`m here. I really want to go to Vancouver to do stuff you cannot do in Winnipeg (more hors d`ouevres) like go on a ferry and see a mountain, you know?? The smoked salmon is good, but there`s none left...``
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Day 4: Vancouver
The train does a s-l-o-w circumnavigation of freight yards and glisteningly bleak rainy suburbs, a s-l-o-w-e-r U-turn over a clanking steel lift-bridge then a similarly murky tour through inner suburbs, regularly overtaken by the local Skytrains. After an anticipatory long pause with a view of Downtown, the train then eases backwards into the station. A local family cannot believe it has taken more than 3 hours to travel the suburbs, but it did allow time for a final civilised breakfast.
To our left is a large cage where the US train to Seattle will be impounded by Customs and Immigration when it arrives... Leaving Canada might be as ``interrrresting`` as entering it...
Downtown in Gastown, the skies are bedecked with Christmas lights, trolleybus wires and glowering rain clouds. What seems like a relentless thin drizzle soaks through several layers of clothes on the way to and from the laundromat. Every second corner has a Tim Horton`s (`good` coffee and fast food, recently swallowed up by Burger King) and the big stores are flogging ``Boxing Week`` sales to the drenched but snow-free populace.
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From the hotel is a stunning view across the water to the vertical strips of parallel streets climbing the hill of North Vancouver with house and apartment windows glinting in the early twilight.
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21st Century Begging:
"Sir, may I use your cellphone. You won't have to let go, just put in the number I give you. It's really urgent I call my friend. Put it on speaker so you won't have to give me your phone, sir. Sir?"
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Brunch at Hegel`s Bagels before launching into the Museum of Vancouver which proudly featured a whole gallery of rescued `50`s neon shop and business signs removed during the downtown `beautification` of the 1960s (about the same time Robin Boyd was writing `The Australian Ugliness`). In amongst the local history images and rinky dink videos of 1904 streetcar rides is a sobering exhibition of the injustices and internment of Japanese Canadian citizens, including the confiscation of property during World War II. Following the war, 4000 local Japanese were directed to move many miles east or go to Japan. These were Canadian-born citizens. In 1988, the government of Canada acknowledged past injustices and signed a Redress Agreement, which is somewhat more than the government of Japan has been prepared to do for people who may have been inconvenienced by the their actions from, say, 1933 to 1945?
On the way back downtown, on foot to enjoy the stunning views of Vancouver high rise surrounded by water and sharp, snow capped mountain ranges from the nearby Burrard St Bridge, I wandered through the museum carpark where some back-tighted local runners had done their kms of pavement pounding and were relaxing with a strongly aroma`d shared spliff... not so secretively in a state which has already legalised medical marijuana.
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Bad Karma #2
Checking in to what seemed on the surface to be a civilised hotel (located handily to Skytrain station, Gastown, laundromat and the Methadone Facility) was like trying to shout an order at the school canteen through the noise of scores of adolescent kids yahooing, as they do. To quote the local paper: ``Thousands of electronic dance music fans packed BC Place Friday and Saturday nights for the Third contact Winter music Festival...`` and it seemed my pub was bloody Festival Central as it is next to the city arena. And the bastards all kept calling me: ``Sir``. As in: ``Perhaps Sir might like to join us for some narcotics later this evening? ``
On checkin, I had been offered a temporary bed in a quieter room away from the arena music noise for one night if I wanted to hang on to my booked room. This seemed passing strange, and it rapidly became passing stranger...
The elevators were clogged, delayed chaos as scores of kids went visiting room to room. The yelling between and across open rooms brought back `fond` memories of rowdy university college corridors. The view from my room was fine, but walls were thin. On return to Reception, I was invited to consider going to another hotel.... Rather coldly, I suggested that as this was a long-standing and non-refundable booking, they might do better than boot me out or to offer me only a temporary bed in a quieter block for one night (in quietly assertive schoolteacher voice - which seemed very appropriate in the context). So a quieter room with only a view into the CBC studio offices next door was eventually and somewhat grudgingly `located`....
In amongst all the chaos, a bunch of young blokes, while harassing a couple of assertive girls in the elevator, did refer to their take-out MacDonalds `food` as ``MacDicks``... I may use that.
After 5 nights on moving trains, an early night was looking goooooood.
However.....
2.30am: VERY rude awakening by squawking/jangling fire alarm: grab valuables, throw on trackpants, puffer jacket and boots (SUCH a good look) and clamber down 12 flights of icy stairs to the lobby. Many kids out of control in the pervasive racket of unbearable squawking/jangling alarm; a hundred or so around the doors smoking; fire fighters arrive (sirens and lights), force their way through smoking(!) kids and try to work out the mysteries of the emergency powerboard in the noise and chaos; eventually shutting of the alarm/racket at about the same time that the five hotel guests over 25 found each other and muttered darkly together behind a planter pot.
And so to bed. Those of us beyond the first fresh bloom of youth unceremoniously barged our way to the front of the extended lift queues and were bundled in by long-suffering-night-security-guys. `Sir` and the other grey-heads were getting their shut-eye
5am: Woken AGAIN by the same squawking/jangling alarms, groped for the `necessaries`... icy stairs, lobby, cluster of the relatively few `mature` guests re-formed and festered around the planter pot, muttering more conspiratorially through the chaos this time. More kids looking more haggard and blocking the lobby doors smoking. Fire guys reappear to barge through smokers and to do their thang, along with “Vancouver`s Finest” Boys and Girls in Blue (flashing lights; raging sirens)... sorting out the racket taking somewhat longer this time. When done, we were stopped from ambling back to bed by a bloke who announced that he was the Hotel Manager with a loud finger-whistle and `Get back here!` to the dopy `revellers` at the elevators.
What followed was one of the best `despairing coach`/`dismayed deputy principal`/`exhausted and angry teacher on the overnight excursion from Hell` speeches it has ever been my sleep-deprived pleasure to witness. It was the `putting others` safety at risk`, `we will find who did this and they will be removed`, `we are about to conduct room searches and will be removing all alcohol`, `if you are a registered or unregistered(?) guest behave yourselves`, `get back to your rooms and bunker down` 5.15am oratory.
At least we non-children didn`t have to barge the lifts this time as someone had wedged the fire stair doors open, until some bastard in front of me kicked the wedge so the doors firmly shut...
Apparently the room searches happened and some kiddies were bundled out onto the cold, cold sidewalk in the early hours.
And the name of the hotel where all this took place?
Sandman.
And so, good night!
