Holiday Day 16 (March 17^th) A second, and rather gay day in Vancouver

Our second full day in Vancouver dawned sunny and chilly, much like the day before. Unlike the day before, however, there was a change to the breakfast arrangements. Today, we were welcome to take breakfast in the dining area next to reception, but there had to be an empty table between diners, the first demonstration of social distancing. Later, we were told we couldn’t gather as a group in reception either and had to sit apart, although you could sit in your couples.

Breakfast done, we had a full day ahead ‘at leisure’ as the brochures call it. Now, leisure, to me, is either writing at my desk or putting my feet up in front of a good film, as I am not the most active of people. Our leisure this day was to be a ten-mile walk around part of Vancouver before meeting our group for our final evening together, and there were rumours of a group gathering of some sort – which we will get to later. Remember, we’d already had our last night dinner together on the penultimate night, but after the ‘up the tower’ dress rehearsal of yesterday, this was to be our definite last night, for sure, ever. Honest.

Going Gay on the Streets

Not far from where we were staying in the West End was (and still is) ‘Davie Village.’ This isn’t, as you might think, a small mining town in Wales, it’s a street, Davie Street, that is home to what Wiki calls ‘the city’s gay subculture.’ I would call it a gaybourhood, as I don’t like the syllable ‘sub.’ Why should it not be a domculture? Or simply, culture? You know, a lot of gay people have shaped world culture.

Years ago, when I was working with lyricist and singer, Keith Bursnall, we wrote a cabaret song titled ‘Naming Names.’ We used it as an end of set number, and it was basically a list of famous gay people, some of whom came as surprises to many in our audiences. I’ll treat you to a couple of random lines written in Keith’s classic Cole Porter-ish style:

There’s Oscar Wilde and young James Dean, Nazimova overdone on the silver screen… And let’s not forget Colette, the thespian lesbian…
Kenneth Anger loved the men he’d fetter. David Hockney liked his men much wetter…
Ludwig the Second, Richard the Second, Edward the Second, James the First – it’s been reckoned…

I could go on, but we haven’t even left the hotel yet.

When we did, we followed a map towards Davie Village along wide, quiet roads wondering if Vancouver was always so peaceful and fume-free, but suspecting the thing had much to do with it, and on the way, we passed this rather welcoming church.

Not long after, we came to Davie Street and its parade of shops, cafés and diverse take-outs that included a sushi bar or three, KFC, Thai, and one called The Basic which may have just offered the plate with nothing on it. I don’t know because it was still early, and many places were still closed. There are other entertainments on the street, including the naughty-sounding Pump Jack pub, and the alluring Shoppers’ Drug market, and what was really good to see was the abundance of rainbow flags.

Not only were the flags hanging from buildings and in windows, but even the pedestrian crossings were in rainbow colours.

And the bicycle stands were in the shape of hearts.

Not only do you feel that you are celebrating diversity by merely walking along this street, but you also learn something as you go. There is a memorial to one side, and if you click the photo, you should be able to read what it says.

The street also offered a few laughs, and this unfortunate arrangement of vet’s surgery and take-out made me snigger (and decide to eat somewhere else).

And then it was back to education…

Followed by being returned to earth with a thump as we noticed more sights that would, in days to come, become a standard feature outside cafes and bars, shops and other places.

And so, having ‘done’ Davie Street, we wandered on, through narrower streets and into wider ones, down towards the water, Burrad Street and the bridge. Down there, there’s a beach called Sunset Beach which is, according to the map, a dog beach with a dog park. I assume it’s pay and display, I’m not sure. There’s the Aquatic Centre, a park, plenty of sushi bars and views of the river. They take urban planning very seriously in Canada, or at least in Vancouver where they like to do things with class (and glass), and we were lucky enough to see the annual flyover chandelier dusting ceremony.

Of course, I made that up, but not the photo. I think it’s rather grand to have a chandelier beneath an over-pass. More cites should do it.

Towards the Harbour

And onwards we walked, following the river, or inlet, or harbour, bay, body of water, beneath Granville Bridge opposite the market we’d been to the day before, and through another park or two where we stopped to admire views and rest our feet.

Further along the bank towards Marine Plaza and The Plaza of Nations, places offering boat tours though with not many takers, and then we cut inland across Downtown to emerge some time later at Vancouver harbour. Ambling along this waterfront took us past Digital Orca, a sculpture of a pixelated killer whale (I mean, why not?), and the seaplane flight centre.

There will be more about seaplanes tomorrow, for now, we were hungry and walked another mile back to Davie Street for lunch on a more direct route. In my case lunch was a bowl of homemade soup and what I think was a ham and cheese sandwich.

We encountered a few other points of interest during this day of aimless, though enjoyable nomadicy, a word I think I just made up. (Well, if Shakespeare (gay) and Marlowe (gay) can do it, I don’t see why I can’t.) Among these notable sights, I include a steam locomotive inside a building. We took a couple of shots of it because I was doing that ooh-and-wow thing, not quite as enthusiastically as Harvey and the Detainers would have done, but it was an impressive thing to see as window dressing. Neil’s shot captures the reflection of the modern street against the locomotive as if the engine is steaming into the future. I rather like that.

Mine, less so.

Then there was this…

And I have absolutely no idea where that was or why I took a photo of it.
Oh, yes, I do, it just came back to me. That was lunch. Not the rubber duck, which was plastic, but the place we had lunch in. You were given one of these when you’d placed your order, and it had a number underneath. When your order was called, you returned the duck and won a sandwich.

A Quick Sideshow

It reminded me of a fairground sideshow of my youth where I paid sixpence to hook a duck from a revolving channel of water and was guaranteed a prize every time. That was a bit like the elephant in a tall glass cabinet. I can’t remember the name of that one, but for another sixpence, I watched this decorated elephant trundle off into a cave, the rocks above dripping with plastic jewels and the occasional knocked-off wristwatch, and, Lo! A moment later, it reappeared with a box on it back. The thing stopped just above a hole in the ground, and with a kind of ‘Pah, you’re welcome to this, it’s crap,’ the elephant tossed the box into the pit and the ‘prize’ popped out. Hey, I used to love wasting my parents’ sixpences on tacky plastic keyrings given for ‘free’ by disinterested elephants and plastic ducks, mainly because I hated losing, and they guaranteed me a win every time.

Where did that come from? Clearly from before 1971 (or 1980, as that’s when the sixpence was finally taken out of circulation. 1980? Really? Apparently so). The elephant and hook-a-duck thing are memories from growing up in the 60s and 70s in the rural surroundings of Romney Marsh. The elephant was one of the attractions at ‘the arcade’, a throwback to, or leftover from, the 50s and before when Littlestone was a seaside resort complete with a grand Edwardian hotel, and probably people. The arcade and that part of Kent seafront features in my comedy novel, ‘Remotely‘ should you wish to buy a copy and boost my godsons’ chances of getting Christmas presents. That plug is the reason I’ve rerouted from Vancouver to Romney March, so lets’ get back on track.

Back at the Hotel

Our day of walking eventually brought us back to the hotel for a rest. I just looked at my step counter and we did ten miles that day, something of an achievement for me, but not as many miles as we did that day in London. That seems so long ago now, not just because I am writing this in November, but from the point of view of that day on holiday. We’d been on the go for only sixteen days, but it felt like months, pleasurably so, I should add, and we were 6,200 miles from home.

On the way back to the hotel, we called in for a drink at a nearby pub run by an Irishman. It was St Patrick’s Day the following day, and the bar was festooned with all things green and leprechaun. The owner was down in the mouth, to say the least, as everything had to be cancelled, and he was to shut the pub later that afternoon, not knowing when he might reopen.

That afternoon, we rested up in the room for an hour before our ‘honestly it is the last night’ gathering, so I’ll just pause here while you wait for me to get back and finish this story after some random shots from the day that don’t quite fit anywhere else.

Keep going…

Our last night in Vancouver

Hello again. There had been talk of a get together during the day when we distantly met others in reception, and it transpired that Keith had been at work behind the scenes. As I mentioned, people weren’t supposed to be meeting in groups, and many, if not all of the restaurants had closed. Canada’s schools had already closed, although a full lockdown wasn’t yet in place (I don’t think) but on this day, as we prepare for our last evening, apart from Americans and a few exceptions, Canada announced it was closing its borders to non-Canadians. This, naturally, had Keith on his phone, and we received regular reports from him about our flight the next day and how it was still on track. Canada was happy to get rid of us, it seemed, and we would be fine, but there were restrictions in London and most places around the world. It had kind of happened behind our backs until then, and yet, there it was under our noses because there was nowhere to go out to eat. (We’d been lucky to sit down to lunch.)

The hotel kindly and quietly said that if we happened to find ourselves on the very top floor in the accidentally unlocked conference room that evening, no-one would really notice, and as they hadn’t told us, they had plausible deniability. Thus, a few of us scuttled across the street and around the corner to buy in supplies. We queued outside an off-license because they were allowed to stay open, and bought a couple of bottles of wine and some snacks to share, and later, some of the group gathered like naughty school children on the top floor of the hotel.

We couldn’t have asked for better company or a better view. We raised a glass as you can see. That’s Maxine on the left in the brown. I think whoever took the photo must have shouted several times that a photo was being taken, and Judy translated for her.

‘A what, dear?’
‘Photo!’
‘That was Dorothy’s little dog, wasn’t it?’

Beside Judy, going around the table, we find Jude, Keith, Neil, me, Sarah, David and then Jeremy. I meant to say hello to Sarah and David earlier in this story, but now they’ve made an appearance I can finally do it. Small world, they say. Well, when we started chatting days ago, it transpired that Sarah and David had not only been to Symi but were planning to come back to Rhodes/Symi later in the year and were going to come and visit us. Well, we all know how holiday plans turned out this year, so we’ll see you next year, I hope.

And as for our view. I’d say it was better than the one the previous night from just over 500 feet, what with the sun going down over Vancouver Island and the North Pacific beyond.

And that seems an appropriate place to leave the story today – celebrating the end of the trip with some wonderful people, and wondering what the journey home was going to entail.
I’ll give you some clues ahead of telling you all about it over the next few days. Planes, changes and a race to the finish line worthy of ‘The Amazing Race Canada’ lie in store.

See you tomorrow.

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Holiday Day 15 (March 16^th) A Day in Vancouver.
Stanley Park, Granville Island and other places

We had two and a half days in Vancouver, not enough time to see everything. Not even enough time to see 10% of “A bustling west coast seaport in British Columbia, and one of Canada’s densest, most ethnically diverse cities. A popular filming location, it’s surrounded by mountains, and also has thriving art, theatre and music scenes. Vancouver Art Gallery is known for its works by regional artists, while the Museum of Anthropology houses preeminent First Nations collections…”

Stanley Park

Forget that. There were other things to see like a Trump hotel (we walked by on the other side, heads turned), a steam-powered clock, an Indian restaurant and other ‘must see’ attractions. Because we’d arrived late the day before, our tour of the city was rearranged for this afternoon, giving us the morning to wander and wonder, and after breakfast, we headed to the waterfront and Stanley Park.

[Stanley Park is a 405-hectare public park that borders the downtown of Vancouver, and is mostly surrounded by waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The park has a long history and was one of the first areas to be explored in the city.]
It was one of the first areas to be explored by us too. It wasn’t a long walk from our hotel in the West End, and it was a bright though somewhat chilly morning. The air was brittle and so clean you could see for miles, as we walked along the shore into the edge of Stanley Park, and took a look at some totem poles which came from ‘remote areas in British Columbia.’

Nearby, we had our first taste of the welcoming attitude of Canadians and found this sign that Little Pad was delighted to see.

He counts himself as a gender diverse kind of bear and was accompanying us on this trip around the city. Older Paddington was having some kind of sulk for a reason I now forget, and pretending not to enjoy himself. You know how bears are.

There’s a photo coming up in a moment that needs explanation, and here it is. Back in 2011, we popped over to Australia to see my brother. I say ‘popped over’ because we were only there for two weeks, but actually, one doesn’t ‘pop’ anywhere from Symi in the winter. Our journey to Australia took several days, one or two in Rhodes, so we didn’t get caught out by bad weather and miss the boat and thus the flight. Then two or three nights in Brighton for the same reason, having built in a cushion before the main flight from Heathrow to Sydney. We then spent a fortnight in Australia with the family and a few days on our own with Kate Mary in Sidney visiting other friends we’d come to know from Symi, and ‘popped’ back home via a three-day journey.
That’s another story, but while we were in Australia, I did some filming with my video camera (this was pre-mobile phone). One of my great tricks with the video cam was to either leave the lens cap on and film hours of nothing, or forget to switch the thing off after filming and record hours of the ground while walking. Well, I’ve included this next photo just for Jenine who finds such errors hilarious, and it was taken in Stanley Park.

Lunch like a local

One of the great things about Canada, I learnt, was that it is not only welcoming to gender diversity but ethnic diversity too. I expect that might be a little rose-tinted and if I lived there, I’d soon pick up on racism etc. that exists everywhere, but as a tourist, I’d rather think good of the place and people. That being the case, finding a place to eat was simple enough, but deciding between a huge variety of foods wasn’t. There was so much choice, from your standard, unhealthy fast (-track to an early grave), to healthy (read: windy), to local which seemed to mean anything from Korean to Chinese, French to Guatemalan. However, our choices were limited by signs on doors saying, ‘Closed due to C-19’ which had started to appear the day before. Rumours of an imminent lockdown had begun to circulate by then.

We found an Indian restaurant that was not only open but also welcoming, empty and obeying new guidelines about distancing and hygiene. I’ve never eaten in America, but I hear their portions are as big as Trump’s personality disorder, and I wonder if they are as big as a Canadian-Indian meal for two. It’s hard to get the scale and depth of our lunch in this photo, but you could have swum in that chicken dish, and pebble-dashed your back-to-back with the rice with enough left over for the outside privy.

Delicious, it set me up nicely for the rest of the day, as long as the rest of the day could be spent sleeping in blissful stuffed-ness.

It couldn’t, we had a rendezvous.

A slightly racist guided tour

You might have noticed that I’m not terribly good at recalling details, and you could be forgiven for thinking I go around with my eyes and ears half-closed. You’d be right, I do, and that’s why you’re forgiven. It’s also why I can’t remember how our guide for the coach trip around parts of the city came to be called ‘slightly racist.’ I think Jeremy started it. I vaguely remember, him, Neil and others talking about something the guide said, but I can’t remember exactly what was taken as being ‘slightly’ discriminatory. I do remember Neil saying that one couldn’t be ‘slightly’ racist. You either were, or you weren’t, and I think the whole thing became a joke I missed the start of. I think it was the way she spoke about the First Nation population or something…

Anyway, aboard the coach, our SR guide introduced herself and began babbling effulgently. (That’s a word from which you can make the anagram, ‘G! Effluently’ should you wish, and if it was a real word). We were toured around nearby parts of the city including the Prospect Point washrooms (gender diverse and very clean), the visitors centre and the viewpoint overlooking Lion’s Gate Bridge which spans the entrance to Vancouver Harbour.

This viewpoint came with dire warnings…

And it also came with a life-sized bear…

Later (or maybe before, you know me), we stopped for an hour or so on Granville Island and the famous Granville Market. Well, some of us did, others who shall remain nameless (Neil, Jeremey et al.) decided they needed a beer to get over the slightly racist guide, and so slunk off for a different kind of local flavour.

Meanwhile, I explored the market and the views, dodged seagulls and anyone coughing behind a mask, and had a lovely, quiet and sober time admiring crafts, homemade feasts, chocolate and delis.

Later, we visited this steam-powered clock I’ve been going on about, an attraction in Gastown, we were told, that did things on the half and hour. We hung around there for a while, but it didn’t perform, not until cameras were put away because it was twenty-five-to by then, and videos were switched off, then it did… something. Blew a whistle perhaps, I can’t remember.

Ah. Here you go: [Built in 1977, this well-known, antique-style clock is powered by steam, & whistles to tell the time.]

There then followed a debate about either walking back to the coach to get a lift to the Top Of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant, or walking there. This was to be our ‘last night group dining experience,’ or similar as promised in the brochure, even though this wasn’t our last night. As it was closer to where we were than the coach, logic won, and we walked.

And this is where another bloody glass elevator comes in, though, by then having the CN Tower’s horror ride under my belt, the ascent to the restaurant at merely 553 feet (as opposed to 1,225) was a breeze. This excursion was included in our tour package, in other words, paid for in advance, and at a reasonable rate – as the whole Great Rail Journeys tour was. I was glad it was inclusive, what with a green salad priced at $16.00, a side of onion rings at $13.00 and spaghetti carbonara at a cool $40.00. (That’s roughly €26.00 for pasta, in case you were wondering.) Mind you, you do get excellent food, great views and, in our case, extraordinary company.

We’d been asked to make our selection from the menu somewhere back around Jasper, so when it arrived, and we remembered what we thought we’d ordered, it came as a pleasant surprise. We also watched the sun go down…

To bed via Amsterdam

Post-dinner, we descended to ground level and were bussed back to the hotel. Everyone went their separate ways, but we were interested in exploring the happy shop a few doors down and called into what we christened the ‘dope shop’ to see what one was like.

Now then, once upon a time in the 1980s, I went to Amsterdam. I’ve been a few times actually. 1) on a ‘works outing’ weekend by coach that was cheap and not too cheerful. 2) to visit an opera singer friend of mine who had moved there. 3) To see said opera singer open as Old Deuteronomy in Cats sung in Dutch… Oh, hang on, there’s a subplot slipping in here…

The year was 1987, and Cats opened at the Carré Theatre in Amsterdam on July 18^th. I arrived the day before, and went to the hotel my friend, Brian, had booked on my behalf. It was one of those tall, narrow, old-city buildings were everything creaks, and you wonder if it will still be standing in the morning. I found the reception on floor five, or somewhere, and presented myself to a very flustered lady dripping apologies onto her clogs.
‘I am zo zorry, Mr Klins,’ she effused as her opening gambit. ‘I put you in my backside tonight, but tomorrow, you have my voorkant.’

Somewhat unnerved, and with no option other than to be homeless in Holland for three nights, I hid my horror, became awfully British, and replied with, ‘How kind.’
After we’d negotiated each other’s language, it transpired that she had given me a room at the back overlooking a very attractive drainage system, but would move me to a canal view and a front bedroom (a slaapkamer voorzijde, apparently) the next day.
O…kay.
I couldn’t work out why until, after the opening night the following evening, I was having a drink with Brian, and he explained.
He’d called into the hotel to book my limited budget room a few days previously, and Madame Voorkant had said she was completely sold out apart from her’ backside’, and that would have to do. He arrived home later and saw himself being interviewed on the TV along with the other stars of the show. A few minutes later, his phone rang, and an apoplectic Madame Vookant verbally prostrated herself in remorse and promised his geëerde gast, his ‘honoured guest’ would be moved to her best room as soon as it became free. You see, it’s not what you know in that sordid business, it’s who’s got the biggest part in Lloyd-Webber’s latest opening.

Where was I…?

Oh, yes, the happy shop. Other visits to Amsterdam included one on the way back from a three-week drive around Europe and one with Neil for my 35^th birthday. On at least one of these occasions, I’d been drawn to seedy dens filled with clouds of pungent smoke where weed was sold by dubious dudes in caged booths. Thus, my impression of ‘happy shops’ was one of entering a Turkish prison before you’d done anything wrong; dodgy at best, illegal at worst, but something every 24-year-old had to try.

Well, all I can say is, in Canada, they do things with a lot more class.

That’s a photo taken inside what I can only describe as a cross between Habitat and the perfume hall at Harrods. You get a guided tour of the exhibits, elegantly displayed behind glass under museum lighting, you’re more or less counselled through your requirements by a lady in a white coat bearing medical degrees, and come away feeling as though you’ve just been shopping in Fortnum’s. Classy, I thought, and our shop assistant was such fun, I felt we’d made a friend for life.
We took a slow wander back to our hotel, where lifts once again enter the story, and, heading up to the tenth floor, took more notice of the posters covering the lift walls.
I wished I hadn’t. The first one brought on a mild sense of paranoia after where we’d just been…

The second was just typical of Canadian openness and brought on a fit of the giggles…

Later that night, I got lost trying to get from my bed to the bathroom. I found a door in the darkness and was about to open it when I realised it lead to the corridor, and only just saved myself the humiliation of being found wandering naked around a five-star hotel.
I will leave the story there, and let you make up your own ending to our first day in Vancouver because I certainly don’t remember any more of it.

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Holiday Day 14 (March 15^th) Last day aboard.
Kamloops to Vancouver via bridges, tunnels and views

The problem I have with this post is deciding which photos to show you. Between us, we have over 350 shots from the day, plus videos (which I can’t upload here for some reason), and many of them are similar, but all of them are worth seeing, in my humble… So, I’ve tried to cut them down. They take us from Kamloops to Vancouver, through part of the Rockies and into Vancouver where, I think, we arrived about 18 hours behind schedule.

We did miss a couple of things because of our delays. One, we missed the eastern side of the Rockies because we passed through in darkness, and two, we missed a quick bus tour around Vancouver which should have happened on arrival. We did it the next day instead, and that was just fine.

For this, the 14^th day of our holiday, we were travelling from Jasper to Vancouver. According to the maps, that’s roughly 500 miles by road (which takes you through a place called Clearwater, which has meaning for me, as you’ll know if you’ve read my other blog), and, by road, would take between eight and 12 hours depending on the route. By foot, if you were crazy enough, it would take you 174 hours or just over a week, and by train, according to Google’s directions, one day and nine hours. We left Jasper at midnight and arrived in Vancouver about 20 hours later, the last few miles taking at least four of them, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Jasper to Kamloops

Here’s one of those photos that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else but which I think is worth seeing. You can guess what it’s of…

There were signs of approaching civilisation through the morning too. (It’s steam, not smoke.)

I’m trying to follow the railway line on Google maps to see what we missed during the night from Jasper to Kamloops. As long as I’ve got this right, we paralleled the Yellowhead Highway towards the west, crossed the border into British Columbia at Yellowhead Pass, and followed the shore of Lake Yellowhead, keeping close to the Fraser River. Later, still mirroring the route of the Yellowhead Highway [a 1,777 mile-long interprovincial road from Winnipeg to Graham Island, built in 1970], we passed Moose Lake, Red Pass (where we crossed the river) and Mount Robinson. Staying low, beneath the foothills of Klapperhorn Mountain, we passed through forests while the highway cut through the hills above and across the river, looped back on ourselves at Tete Jaune Cache, keeping to the contour of the land, and continued south towards Valemount. Here, as I squint into my screen to follow the line on the map, I notice we are running alongside Whiskey Fill Road, which I rather approve of, and on past Clearwater, Little Fort, McLure, and sometime around dawn, Vinsulla, finally arriving at Kamloops as the sun came up.

Early morning and Kamloops

It’s that breakfast cereal pace again, Kamloops. [The first European explorers arrived here in 1811. “Kamloops” is the anglicised version of the Shuswap word “Tk’əmlúps”, meaning “meeting of the waters”. Kamloops is in the Thompson Valley and the Montane Cordillera Ecozone. The city’s centre is in the valley near the confluence of the Thompson River’s north and south branches. Suburbs stretch for more than a dozen kilometres along the north and south branches, as well as to the steep hillsides along the south portion of the city and lower northeast hillsides.]

We saw the north railway station where there were a few minutes to stretch legs and admire the refuelling.

After that bracing time on land, it was time for breakfast, and here, Neil is either giving a sermon, about to sing a hymn, or choosing between the intercontinental, the healthy or the daily special. Either way, it was our last breakfast aboard and just as good as every other day.

Most of the day was spent in the observation car, gazing out at distant mountains, rivers, bridges, cliffs and the occasional settlement. There was definitely more of a buzz in the obs-car that day, plenty of oohing and ah-ing, pointing, cameras clicking, videos whirring and the occasional cry of ‘bald eagle!’ at which time Neil would turn and say, ‘Yes, did you want me?’

Onward from Kamloops

I’ve just spent half an hour trying to discover the route we took next, but the Google map doggedly only shows me the road route. The timetables I’ve found say ‘restricted service due to Covid-19’, and little else, while others simply state that you leave Kamloops at X and arrive at Vancouver at Y. Presumably, they don’t mention points of interest because you don’t stop anywhere, so I’ll have to follow the road and hope the train did too.

Whatever. We may have passed the Cosco Wholesale at Dufferin… (Do you like Dufferin’? I don’t know, I’ve never duffered) and on to Rush Lake and Timber Lake and to… Ah-ha! I’ve found the railway line. I know this because there’s a thing on the map that says, ‘Inks Lake Brake Check – try saying that at speed – and if I zoom right in, I can see the tracks.

I wonder if this was Timber Lake? It would make sense.

Anyway, wherever we were, there were plenty of river views…

Beyond the window, we were also treated to the sight of a working railway as two-mile-long freight trains passed us by, or we passed them when they were parked up. We were lucky enough to catch a semi-fileted double-stack, which you might also call a toupee.

Other sights

At other times, from the back of the observation car, we could look towards the end of The Canadian and count the number of cars (I think there were sixteen in total, pulled by two engines at the front). I took this shot because we noticed the luggage car, now at the back due to the curious incident of the bog in the night time when the air pressure failed to flush the… and so on. It was travelling with its door open. We were convinced our luggage was going to fall out, but no, all remained well.

We did see a fair few bald eagles flying around, though they’re not easy to capture on a mobile phone through a window.

And then there were the tunnels cut into the cliffs where all kinds of safety engineering had taken place. Sometimes, there were slides to take rockfalls over the tracks and away from the trains, and at other times, there were electrified cables or nets which sound alarm bells somewhere if they are touched by falling scree. Not long after returning home, we saw a programme about this and how specialists respond to these falls by blowing up parts of the hillside. That’s’ reassuring, and obviously necessary.

I can’t remember how many tunnels we passed through, but we were often plunged into darkness for a while, emerging on the other side to see where the runoff had frozen, and were reminded that, although we were toasty inside and the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm outside.

As the day progressed, the landscape became more industrial, and we reached the outskirts of Vancouver. At this point, there was more talk of hand-washing and keeping a sensible distance, but there was no trepidation, and we were told Vancouver was safe and unaffected. From what?

It wasn’t until later when we could reconnect to the net and talk with people who hadn’t been incommunicado for the last five days, that we learnt the WHO had announced a worldwide pandemic while we were chugging obliviously past snow and trees. It was something of a shock, but not one that was going to mar anyone’s holiday.

Anyway, there was Baker Mountain to admire just over the border in the USA.

Vancouver

The last leg of the journey was tedious. I can’t put it any other way. We’d done the cabin thing and packed, checked everywhere for anything Neil might have left, made sure we had the bears, and that was that. Then we learnt we’d be another two hours starting and stopping through the suburbs and industrial parts of the city, so we had a drink, and waited, and had a drink, and waited, and the bar closed. Then we were told another hour, and the afternoon dragged on. We gathered outside our cabins to chat and look at the barely moving scenery, and there may have been a cheer when we crossed a river because we thought we were getting somewhere…

But then we’d stop for another 20 minutes by a graffitied wall or outside a shopping centre so near and yet so far, and then jolt into action at two miles an hour for another fifty yards. And hiss to a stop again, and wait… But, of course, we did finally arrive at Vancouver station, not, as the itinerary had said, at 08.00 in the morning, but sometime around sunset or just after.

From there, it was a question of collecting our bags and being reassured they’d not dropped out of the open door, thanking the staff, and gathering to meet a coach which, I hope, hadn’t been waiting for us since the due arrival time. It was a brief, night-time journey to our hotel…

… which was situated on Robson Street, and turned out to be a five-star with rooms even bigger than the ones in Toronto. Lifts were involved again, but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow, as there are more adventures yet to come.

My last couple of images of that night show you the street as we approached the hotel…

And, believe it or not, that was taken before we discovered a delightful shop a few doors down from the hotel…

But, again, more about that tomorrow, a day which also included totem poles, a curry, bears (of course) a steam clock, another bloody scenic elevator, and food.

Talking of which, our first stop was a late supper with live music. A perfect end to the day.

And, to finish, a few more photos from the day at random.

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Holiday day 13 (March 14^th) Third full day aboard.
The wilderness to Edmonton to Jasper, 17 hours behind schedule

Time is starting to play tricks on me. Not only are we passing through time zones and changing clocks, but the itinerary no longer matches the days, let alone the hours. Our list of arrival times at various locations doesn’t fit with where we are, and I have a strange feeling I’m on the wrong day. However, according to the timestamps on my photos, our third full day on the train (and the fourth and last night) saw us stop at Edmonton and reach Jasper at 23.00 that night, instead of 06.30 that morning. It doesn’t help that my phone hadn’t coped well with the changing time zones and although the clock updated, the time stamp and other time-related functions didn’t. One of my images shows the time as being ten in the evening when the picture was taken in daylight. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the third full day on the train was spent heading towards Edmonton where Neil hoped to meet his cousin, and then on to Jasper, and we were running something like 15 hours late. When we did arrive at Jasper, we were 17 hours behind schedule, and one of the reasons for this was, unsurprisingly, trains.

I don’t mean to bring up Harvey and the Detainers again, but I must because freight had a lot to do with the ever-increasing distance between scheduled arrival and actual. Basically, we had to wait for the drag to go past.

Freight takes priority over tourists on this busy and vital rail line between west and east coast, and when a freight train is coming the other way, the passenger train must give way, pull into a siding and wait. You may be used to the trains in the UK or wherever passing each other, and they tend to happen with a whoosh and a vacuum between carriages and passing truck, everything rattles for a bit and then it’s over. Not so out in the wilderness or, later, through the mountains. When a freight load is coming at you, they saunter past at a sedate speed apparently having all the time in the world to get wherever they’re going. There’s nothing to do but count the number of cars. As some of these slow-moving trains (known as ‘drags’) are two miles long, you’re usually well asleep by the time you get to thirty as it’s a bit like counting sheep.

Whatever, we weren’t in a hurry, and although the shifting schedule made for impossible planning (and Neil never was able to meet his cousin), we weren’t in any hurry. Vancouver would still be there when we arrived.

What do you to do for a whole day on a train with only minimal fuelling and supply-pickup stops? Well, there was jigsaw action happening in the saloon, and anyone was welcome to drop by, put in a piece and help it along. When we finally did leave the train in Vancouver, it was complete bar three missing pieces, which I thought was rather sad,

The scenery that had started out as snow and trees became snow and fields, and at one point, we sped through a near white-out.

The conditions changed fairly rapidly, so sometimes we were looking at grey and other times, white, with occasional bursts of wintery sky and cloud, trees, of course, and frozen rivers.

We were passing through or near places with familiar names but in unfamiliar landscapes and others with unfamiliar names but in what was by then, a very familiar landscape. Between Saskatoon in Saskatchewan and Edmonton in Alberta, on the map at least, you can find Battleford and Cut Knife before passing close to Maidstone, and further west, Paradise Valley. On to Viking, Bruce and Ryley which sounds like it should be someone’s title, ‘Have I introduced you to the Viking, Bruce Riley?’ Actually, if you zoom into Google Maps as I am doing, searching for the actual rail route with no success, you find that Holden and Poe come between Bruce and Ryley, another suitable name for a character. ‘This is my friend, Holden Poe…’ Somewhere beyond our windows and the snow-covered fields, lay Beaverhill, which sounded like something from The Hobbit, as did Adrossan, and either side of them, North Cooking Lake and the South Cooking Lake. I wonder how they got their names? Oh, and slightly further to the south-west of Edmonton, not far from the airport, you can spend some time in Devon.

All these places are on the map, but we didn’t see any of them, or if we did, we didn’t know it. The day was mainly about looking out of windows, chatting, watching people do a jigsaw and drinking tea. There were, of course, the meals to look forward to starting with brunch.

One of the policies on the VIA Rail Canadian is that you have no set place for meals, apart from in the dining car, that is. You arrive, and the maître d’ shows you to a table which you share with another couple. If you’re on your own, you may end up sharing with a couple or another single, and a couple will be sat with you later, or… Well, you get the picture. No-one dines alone, but if you’re a group of four, you’re not split up. This can lead to all manner of unlikely dinner guests and conversations. We spent lunch with two of the trainspotters who, when they discovered we didn’t know our 4-6-0- Wheel arrangements from our GE U18B baby goat locomotives and had no idea what a cinder dick was, they kept their own company, and we enjoyed an angle-cock free meal.

I have to pop over to a siding here as I scroll through an American railways glossary, agog at some of the wonderful terminology. For example, did you know that a small locomotive is called a dinky? (Bless, sounds rather cute.) Or that, in the manner of filleting a fish, one can also filet a double-stack container to a single-stack? A Gandy dancer isn’t, as you might think, Neil in full flow, but a track maintenance worker in the USA and a hack isn’t a writer like me, but a caboose (also known as a brake van, way car, end-of-train-device and, more alarmingly, a flashing rear-end). If you want to go slightly more bizarre, then how about knowing your mother is a locomotive paired with a slug, itself a locomotive with or without an operator’s cab which lacks a diesel engine… Can’t see the point of slugs, no operator, no engine…

It gets better. It seems that SpongeBob isn’t a popular cartoon character, after all. It’s a Rebuilt CSX SD40 locomotive with a yellow nose and nose-mounted headlight, something I am sure you already knew. Among this fascinating glossary, I came across some everyday items which demanded further investigation. Toasters, (EMD AEM-7 and ABB ALP-44 locomotives), toupees (single stack trains coming from reduced clearance territory with additional containers placed on top for the rest of its trip; the opposite of filet), and a screaming thunderbox (another locomotive that goes by the catchy name of EMD F40PH). In my opinion, no home is complete without a screaming thunderbox, and a man is not dressed without his Thunder Pumpkin.

There are so many delicious words and terms in this glossary, I could go on for hours about black widows and bluebirds, cabbages and catfish, or hoggers and mating worms, but I won’t. The couple of railfans beside us that lunchtime had clearly digested the entire ‘Railway Enthusiasts Dictionary of Cant and Other Arcane Language.’ So much so, I can only describe them as FRMs, or if you want it spelt out, F***ing Rail Nuts – and yes, that is an official term according to Wiki.

But at least there was pudding.

Onwards, into the afternoon, with the scenery becoming less rural as we approached Edmonton, occasionally stopping to get in touch with fresh air and freezing temperatures, and ever westwards towards our next pitstop.

These pitstops were not just for fuel and fags. There was a chap towards the front of the train with his massive hound who, when not sleeping in its vast cage, was being otherwise well behaved. It looked forward to a good walk when we did stop for fifteen minutes, or as good a walk as it could get in that amount of time.

Other passengers boarded, mainly front-enders who were hopping between one town and another, and as they embarked, so some of our American friends disembarked to make their own way home. They were cutting short their trip because of the ever-circulating news about possible border closures, rising numbers, and the possible need to quarantine. News of the outside world wasn’t exactly viral if you will excuse the term, but news of the virus was filtering in. Keith, the tour manager, made regular announcements, assuring us we were still going to make it to Vancouver and nothing there was yet closed, and our flights were not being cancelled as some were, so we had nothing to worry about. As I said, there was nothing we could do about it anyway, so there was no point in worrying.

Afternoon rest times were taken in the cabin for the sake of actually using it for something other than sleeping, and we trundled ever-closer to Edmonton.

There was a slightly longer stop there, though not the three-hours as stated on the original itinerary, and not at 20.50 on day… whatever, but according to my photo time stamp, 22.15 but in broad daylight, as you can see.

Actually, and others will correct me if I am wrong, I think it might have been late afternoon, as we didn’t stop for long and we reached Jasper at 23.00 that night, and the estimated time between the two places was six hours.

We said goodbye to Chance at Edmonton, wished him well and wondered how he would get on with the temporary reset of his life. We had time to explore the station concourse, which took all of ten minutes, most of that time spent investigating vending machines and sanitising hands as hand-san was everywhere by then.

And then, it was back on the train and dinner.

We had meals with members of our party, but one was spent in the company of a French-Canadian lady who spoke no English (and why should she?), and who behaved like a duchess. Conversation was had in the manner of someone pressing a teabag with a spoon, and my school French came back to me in waves of Greek.

It’s happened before. When in France for my uncle’s funeral, having lived in Greece for only two years, I went into a shop to buy something trivial and used five words to ask for it. Three words came out in Greek, one in English and the other in French, even though I had constructed the sentence in French in my head, rehearsed it and thought I knew what I was asking for. At least I got it, though, and similarly, our dinner conversation was, in part, understood. It left me with a headache as all French lessons at school did, and I’m not sure if there was a little Latin thrown in by accident, there were certainly lots of hand gestures.

And so, that evening (I think) we climbed through the night and into the Canadian Rockies. While journeying towards Jasper and the next stop – that we were determined not to miss even though it meant staying up until after midnight – we spent time with some of our party in the saloon. In this photo, you have a rare sighting of Harvey (right), he of the Detainers fame. You can tell it’s him, he’s wearing his red lanyard with pride, and, in this photo, being usually quiet about running boards and slack action.

And then, finally, we arrived at Jasper and our first sight of the Rockies, except we couldn’t see them in the dark. You know you’re in Jasper when you are told to…

As we weren’t wandering far from the station because as we only had 60-minutes, we didn’t need bear spray, and the shops were closed anyway. A few pubs were open, and we headed for the nearest to find it was welcoming on all levels…

Inside, we had time for one glass of wine, and just enough time for Neil to interview a local chap about God knows what while our glasses demisted, and we enjoyed the brief change of scenery.

That guzzle was followed by a chilly walk back to the station…

That’s condensation, by the way, nothing else, not even the perfectly legal happy-smoke that was everywhere. Neil interviewed a random woman in a glamorous (fake) fur coat, but I can’t remember exactly why or what about, we had a laugh, froze our thunder pumpkins off, and headed back to the station. On the way, we pressed our faces to the window of Buffalo Betty’s Gift Store, wondering how she got her name and then crossed the road to the railway station.

There, the train was rather majestically waiting for us. Not quite the Orient Express, but still romantic.

It was after midnight as we waited in the ticket hall with people who had been waiting for a train they expected 17 hours earlier, but it was a friendly, chatty place, mainly because Canadians all seem to be friendly and chatty, and devilishly polite too, something I might remember to mention in a couple of days when we’re in Vancouver. For now, though, it’s off to bed, and you may need a decent night’s sleep because tomorrow we have the Canadian Rockies to get through. Although we missed some of the mountain scenery because we were travelling through it at night, the delay meant we got to see other parts of it that passengers on that train don’t usually see. We took hundreds of photos, so rest up now, and I’ll meet you in the flashing rear-end tomorrow.

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Holiday day 12 (March 13th) Second full day aboard

For me, this day started in the middle of the night. The original plan (according to that brochure) was to stop in Winnipeg for three hours, and there was some dissent in the ranks when this didn’t happen. The journey had started late due to some technical issue, and we were running behind time. At some point on the journey (I think it was this night), there was a further delay caused by toilets. We stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere for several hours, and the news in the corridors and lounges was that there was another technical glitch, and we were waiting for an engineer. It wouldn’t take long, he/she was only coming from down the road, which in Canadian terms is about 500 miles away, and apologetic announcements kept us well informed in two languages. It had something to do with compressed air or similar, and I think the repairs focused on the system that is used for flushing toilets. There was a certain amount of backing-up going on in some carriages, and obviously, that was an issue that couldn’t be left to fester.

Eventually, the situation was sorted out by moving the baggage car from the front of the train to the back, and the next morning, we were again underway. The shifting of the rolling stock (no doubt blissfully overseen by Harvey and the Trainspotters) meant those who’d spent extra to have TVs in the cabin and be closer to the caboose with the plush seating in the observation car, now had a view of the baggage truck, rather than rails disappearing into their vanishing point.

The other sad news for those at the back was although our restrooms were fully functioning by the morning, there’s weren’t. Never mind; we were underway.

But that was after we’d stopped at Winnipeg in the middle of the night and not for three hours of sightseeing and museum visiting, but for one hour of taking a quick look at the railway station as some passengers did. I was fast asleep by then but woke around three in the morning, and as the window was at the end of my bunk, sat up to see where we were. We were here:

And I have no idea where that was or still is. So, back to sleep, wake early to the flushing issue but find a way around it (a restroom that was working), take a shower before anyone else gets up, grab a coffee from the 24/7 coffee stand and enjoy the peace and quiet up in our observation car waiting for the sun to come up.

Perfect, until one of the fervent train enthusiasts climbs the stairs, sees a victim and engages in a conversation about freight. In fact, he opened with the line, ‘Ain’t the freight great?’ or some other tacky rhyme stolen Richard Stilgoe’s libretto for Starlight Express. ‘Freight is great. Freight is great. We carry weight cause we are freight,’ is the opening line of one of that show’s contributions to world culture, and is about as welcome on the ear at six in the morning as a lecture on ballast, covered hoppers and rotary dumps. A couple of impolite yawns sent the chap fawning over haulage elsewhere.

The sun came up, and the scenery rolled past as we travelled on from Winnipeg in Manitoba to Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, now roughly 1,300 miles (by train) from where we’d set off in Toronto.

Here’s a Winnipeg bear-related aside as we wait for the dawn. It’s about Winnie the Pooh and starts in White River, Ontario. A Canadian soldier and veterinarian named Harry Colebourn was at a train station when he bought a (live) bear cub for $20. (’Cos we’ve all done that at a railway station.) He named the cub “Winnipeg Bear” after the town he grew up in. Since Harry was on his way to Quebec to join fellow soldiers heading overseas for World War I, the bear went with him. Winnie became the mascot for the 2^nd Canadian Light Infantry Brigade, and when that brigade went to war, Winnie went to London Zoo. A. A. Milne took his son, Christopher Robin there, and before you can say “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart,” Winnie the Pooh was born. Oh, and he was a she, btw.
And now, back to our regular programming.

As you can see, the landscape was still flat and endless, snowy and yet fascinating because every blink brought a sight I’d never seen before, and still nothing was boring. How could it be when there was a dining car waiting for us, serving breakfast, and later brunch, and when we had a cabin to hide in? There, the bears could take a rest and a bath while we made use of the furniture to make a change from sitting in the observation car or the saloon.

There were also the corridors to explore where you’d pass ladders protruding into the aisle because people had open berths. Privacy was provided by curtaining, and the stewards converted seating areas into sleeping areas and back at certain times during the day. We walked quietly through these areas when the ladders were out and curtains drawn, passing back through after breakfast to find them gone and their occupants in chairs looking at the view, knitting or reading as if there had never been beds there. Passing from one car to the next, from ‘Donald’ to ‘Berkshire’ or whatever, brought the reminder of the outside I mentioned yesterday.

Seeing the laundry bags also reminded me of how slick and organised such a trip must be. I assume other things travel on this train, deliveries from one stop to the next, possibly post to the outlying towns, and, to the enthusiasts’ delight, possibly even light freight. With the train now several hours behind schedule, there must be a robust communication system between one place and the next, and the further down the line you’re waiting for your train, the more chance there is you’re going to have to wait a long time. We were to learn about this the next night when we reached Jasper, but that’s getting ahead of myself. For now, we were happily trundling across plains and past farmsteads, watching out for wildlife and seeing only moose (which turned out to be hay ricks), plenty of deer tracks and those from other animals, and places where they appeared to rear tractors and other farming vehicles.

I don’t remember what time we arrived at Saskatoon, but it was in daylight, and not at 11.50 as the itinerary had said. It was still on day three though, and still cold; probably -15° degrees, certainly cold enough to pinch the ears and freeze a runny nose (I won’t show you that photo). We got off for a few minutes to stretch legs and burn the lungs with icy air, and wandered up and down the platform keeping warm.

Refuelling points also allowed the opportunity to chat with passengers we’d not yet met, and we fell into conversation with a young chap called Chance. He was travelling from Toronto to Edmonton and was going home. He was doing more than that, he said, he was admitting defeat. He’d gone to Toronto to, by the sound of it, seek his fortune, and had ended up homeless, and now, with only $10.00 in his pocket, had no option but to return to a place he didn’t want to be and think again. He was travelling in the front carriages of the train where passengers don’t get berths, but where they do have an observation car and a bar. Whereas our refreshments were included (apart from alcohol), he had to fork out $7.00 for a cup of coffee and hadn’t eaten much for the last 1,300 miles. Remaining cheerful as he puffed gently on a reefer (totally legal in Canada), he told us his story with an optimistic air, accepting of his lot, it seemed, and with as positive an attitude as anyone could expect. We met several times during the journey, ‘lent’ him a twenty or two we were happy to part with, and carried out a couple of semi-illegal raids to help him along. These involved helping myself to a few things from our free bar, juice, fruit, cakes, whatever, and sneaking beyond the ‘sleeping car passengers forbidden beyond this point’ sign between tourist cars and the front end (a sign we never took any notice of anyway), and dropped off some contraband as we passed through on our way to alight at fuel stops. Well, when you’re lucky enough to be able to use some of your retirement fund for a trip like this, what’s a twenty, a few supplies and a friendly chat with someone who has nothing?

Here we are at Saskatoon, photo by Jude. Left to right, Jeremy, Neil, Chase and me, looking like a much-rounded version of my granny. (Layers, mother, I was wearing layers!)

You may notice something slightly odd about Neil in that photo. Take another look…No, not that… I’ll make it easier for you:

Well, needs must when the devil drives, and all that, and gloves do make a good alternative for those who don’t care for muffs, as it were. We learnt later that it’s become all the rage in Saskatoon, and the fashion is spreading to the remoter parts of Saskatchewan as we speak.

Back on board and time for lunch, which I think we’d already had, so time to sit and chat, watch the scenery roll past, wonder what time dinner is, and get an update from our guide.
Remember Keith? Well, he’s still with us, trying to get Maxine to understand what’s going on around her, patiently answering questions and repeating himself several times. When not doing that, he was to be found in his compartment doing his paperwork and checking in with head office about the outside world. News was starting to filter in, from those with roaming or local phones, that the virus was spreading. Roughly around the time we were boarding the train, unknown to most of us, the WHO (not the rock band) were declaring the C19 outbreak a global pandemic. On the 13^th, still unknown to most aboard, Europe became the epicentre of the epidemic with more reported deaths than China, and the WHO launched their ‘Safe Hands Challenge’ to encourage better hygiene through the washing of hands. Aboard, there were now hand-sanitisers in the dining rooms and elsewhere, and more people were talking about the spread of the disease.

This included Keith who popped up in the saloon to announce we were okay, no flights had yet been cancelled, and the train was going to get us to Vancouver. The announcement, for me, came out of nowhere, and rather than finding it worrying, as you might expect, I thought it added another layer of adventure to the trip. It was sad though, because we also learnt that the staff so cheerfully serving us would not work again until further notice as this was to be The Canadian’s last journey. They continued to work without complaint or change in attitude despite harbouring concerns about income and families.

The upside of this spreading news, if I may be glib, was that there was talk among the trainspotting faction from the USA of cutting their trip short, and leaving at Edmonton to make their own ways home before borders were closed. As it turned out, many did, leaving only the diehards, like Harvey, to complete the journey.
Another upside was that the news brought our group closer, to the point where even the bears made new friends.

Despite the news, which we could do nothing about, the trip continued in its same fashion, the round of feasting, socialising (now slightly at a distance) and watching the snowy world go by. Even when Keith opened another declaration with ‘Now, there’s nothing to worry about, but…’ We learnt that a lady from carriage ‘Benny’ or somewhere towards the back, had taken herself off the train because she’d coughed and had chosen to self-isolate. Our coterie continued life much in the vein of the first-class passengers aboard the Titanic, but with fewer jewels.

And so, the journey continued towards Edmonton where Neil was hoping to meet up with a cousin he’d not seen for many years. A rendezvous, as it turned out, that couldn’t happen due to our delay. That didn’t stop him trying, and before we’d become wi-fi-less in Toronto, we’d given the cousin Keith’s mobile number so we could stay in touch, something which we did tell our tour manager and yet still came as news to him when he started to get calls from an unknown lady asking for Neil. ‘Knew you were going to be the troublemaker, lad,’ he huffed good-naturedly as he passed along messages, and took over the role of social secretary.
Day three aboard ended with drinks in the saloon (without impromptu crooner concert), and after another perfect day aboard, we went to bed looking forward to the changing landscape tomorrow would bring.

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