Great Canadian Railway Journeys

BBC2, 6.30pm, Monday

Michael Portillo begins a new journey along the tracks of the Ocean line as he explores Canada’s maritime provinces en route to Quebec City using an 1899 Appleton’s guide. He begins in the Atlantic port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he visits an 18th-century British hilltop citadel and learns of a catastrophic explosion in the harbour in 1917 which wiped out the north of the city, killing 2,000 people.