The slow, scenic route on the rails
One writer’s train of thought along Canada’s historic line
To paraphrase Canada’s storyteller Stuart McLean, Via Rail is mentioned in the Bible — right there in the passage about “all things that creep and crawl.” It’s true there are faster ways to travel across the country.
And there are times — say, when pushed onto a siding for an hour by one of the many freight trains whose right-ofway commands the same tracks used by Via — when the idea of walking becomes rather appealing. But that would defeat the purpose.
Despite the regular, vaunted talk about high-frequency rail in Canada, our country’s trains have been unjustly ignored, shunted onto the sidelines of our national infrastructure. They aren’t a simple conveyance, but a neglected national emblem.
Unlike taking a passenger plane, anyone who elects to go by train spends a memorable part of their life on it. Consequently, speed isn’t the fundamental allure of train travel. Rather, it’s the chance to catch up on long putoff tasks, while letting the country’s enormity roll over you.
The 3,400-kilometre trip from Winnipeg to Halifax, for instance, is long enough to read all 900 pages of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” By the time I reached Montreal and boarded the historic Ocean line for Halifax, Ivan Karamazov was doing much the same, leaving Skotoprigonyevsk for Moscow: “the traveller felt troubled in his mind, but he looked eagerly around him at the fields, the trees, the flock of wild geese flying high overhead across a cloudless sky. And all of a sudden he felt so happy.” I could relate.
Helping was the diminishing Montreal skyline, its blocky façade fronted by the flashing red letters of the Farine Five Roses mill, which carved a scar of ghostly neon into the darkening sky. As the Ocean chugged out and over the St. Lawrence, the river flowed fierce and dark in the warm evening air.
If one is unpressed for time, there is little better than sitting in a chair as comfortable, or very nearly, as your favourite one at home, and looking out the window at a slowly but unceasingly changing view.
Speed cannot reveal the line where city becomes suburb, and suburb country, and country from country town; passing slowly, one can almost put their finger on those dividing lines. For one, had we shot out of Montreal, I’d have missed, or mistaken for grass, the stunted cornstalks growing between the rail ties at the Pointe-SaintCharles rail yard, the crop grown from seeds shaken from some grain car.
Train passengers are unlike other travellers. Free from the rigmarole of security measures, they travel unburdened. As the lights were dimmed, a sense of ease fell over the cabin like dew, with most settling into their evening with blankets and sleep masks. With my book, and a packed lunch of puffed-wheat cake and Polish candies, I felt well-prepared for whatever might come; little more is required of the train passenger than to sit and observe. There’s no need to worry, no turns to decide on, no exits to miss.
This wasn’t a sentiment shared by all that evening. Across the aisle, a fellow passenger settled into his seat, nervously cradling a bag on his restless leg and bouncing it as one might a happy baby. Sticking from the open bag was a toothbrush, a glue gun, a mint tin bearing a faded picture of hockey star Eric Lindros, and a spatula.
Throughout the journey, he sporadically but intensely studied from a tattered copy of “The Official YMCA Physical Fitness Handbook (Questions You Should Be Able to Answer About Your Good Health).” It was comforting to know that if I broke my glasses, or needed an egg flipped, or wanted advice on proper jumping-jack form, that too was close at hand.
In the morning, as the Ocean shot out from the confines of a corridor of birch, we riders strained to gauge our surroundings. “I swear I saw a wild turkey,” someone said, and we all craned our necks in the hopes of spotting the bird. A train isn’t only an event for the people inside, but also those outside. People double-take, stare and snap photographs. Near the Quebec border, where the line follows the Matapedia River, vested fly fishermen, waistdeep in the water, paused their reeling to turn and wave.
Here, the bearded, burly steward drew our attention from the window. “We’re running a little late,” he said, his voice stained with resignation. He told us that during the night we’d been sidelined outside Rivière-duLoup. And Rimouski. And Mont-Joli. It was there, in the half-light of dawn, I’d been shaken awake by a freight train blurring past, the window flexing under the force of its speed.
By the time we reached Matapédia at 11 a.m., we were four hours behind schedule. We all knew it, of course, but there was nothing for it. Even if, after over a century (the line’s first run was in 1904), the Ocean is still ironing out some kinks, once you’re on, you’re on.
But there was a fine view. We’d entered the woodlots and high, white church spires of New Brunswick, and the rail line was fringed with goose- and mulberry bushes. At Campbellton, Sugarloaf Mountain loomed darkly over the Restigouche River. After a brief, refreshing stop in the cool salt air, we continued to hug the Baie des Chaleurs, where bone-white driftwood delineated the high water mark along the rocky beach.
When we reached Moncton (at the time we were meant to be arriving in Halifax), the disembarking passengers suddenly looked dishevelled and weary, as though proximity had defeated them. Those travelling on to Halifax looked fresher: the longer the trip, the lesser the effect of a delay. For all our trouble, we enjoyed a full chicken dinner, complimentary, as a peace offering for the late hour.
The mud fields of the Fundy Basin shone in our second setting sun as we crossed into Nova Scotia, and two hours later, we crept into Halifax foxlike, as though afraid to wake it. Behind a grey veil of haze, the city lay wraithlike and quiet. As the Ocean parted the cold Atlantic curtain, we within were warm and happy.