Canada Trip Epilogue 1- Trains

A word or two about ViaRail and long trips on trains in general

On this trip I spent over 200 hours riding on trains. This experience was not as rewarding as I had fantasized it would be. It was very irritating and uncomfortable. I swear I must have been cursed with terrible train partners. That, or there's just something about people on trains.

On the first leg of my trip a plague of teenage girls descended upon my car and spent the entire first night giggling and cavorting and just generally preventing sleep. Next, on the way to Churchill, someone has brought an honest-to-god baby aboard. It should probably be illegal to bring a baby on a 40 hour train ride, although I guess such a law would seem silly because who would want to do this in the first place? The woman in front of me, that’s who! Well, let’s be fair. It’s not quite a baby, more like a toddler, but is that really an upgrade? I guess if you’re a parent, it must be very rewarding to see your child progress from the writhing and crying stage to the flailing and yelling stage (which they will remain in until age 22).  Anyway, this baby spent the whole night yelling about something (gaabee?) and I’m pretty sure it went through a stage where it was just yelling the word shit over and over. You got that right kid. The mother kept shushing it in these urgent, quiet tones, as if the baby would eventually pick up on the social cues or something and say ‘oh, pardon, I have no idea what I was thinking yelling like that for hours’.  I have to say, although it was the shouting that woke me up, what made me lose the most sleep was the existential crisis it triggered about whether I really do want children. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I work with kids. I just don’t really love babies, and if I ever have one, I promise not to bring it on a train.

Aside from the dramatic Candian Rockies on the first day, the ride itself was not very eventful. We kept passing by the remains of telephone poles, which had been disused for years, in various stages of sinking into the muck. Some are held up by other poles, tripod-style. It reminds me of that bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail about swamp castle. So we built another telephone pole! It fell over, burned down, and then sank into the swamp. It really makes you wonder what exactly people are doing out here, that they’d colonize someplace so nakedly inhospitable to them. Is the need to expand so great that we just do it thoughtlessly, without any regard to whether or not it’s actually a good idea? The railroad, by the way, is also sinking into the swamp. An American company does the rail maintenance for viarail, laying down new track as needed. Evidently, they do not do this job very well. Before I came on this trip, it didn’t really occur to me that a train could experience ‘turbulence’, and now I know both that it can and why. Turns out it’s america’s fault. I like to imagine that when the train’s pace slows inexplicably, that it’s because we’re approaching a particularly faulty section of rail, and we have to, like, creep carefully over it, like an explorer on an old rope bridge.

More than anything else, the train is slow. Aside from the aforementioned swamp, there are plenty of other issues that can cause endless delay. Sometimes it's too hot and the train must creep along at 10 miles per hour to avoid warping the track. Sometimes a freight train breaks down in front of you and you just sit still for hours. Sometimes it just seems as if something is wrong with the train as it sits in the station with no one apparently doing anything to make it leave on time or fix it. Mostly, however, the problem is that the railroads themselves are owned by the freight companies. This ends up meaning that the freight trains have priority and that passenger trains must essentially pull over and wait for them to pass, no matter how long that might take. In some places it means sitting on a side track for 2 hours. Capitalism, everyone!

The coach class, which I am of course a part of, is forbidden from interacting with our betters during non-dining hours. We are not even allowed to use the showers, which sit in the nearly-deserted upper class cars largely unused.  And the website explicitly lied about the train’s wifi capacity (it has none).  There is a weird, enforced class divide where the coach passengers actually end up poorly fed and smelly by the time they reach their destination. Didn’t want to pay the extra? This is what you deserve, you Poor. For every dollar they invest on, like, train improvements, and such, ViaRail can expect to make 70 cents back. I learned this from a fellow traveler, but he seemed well informed, so I kind of just believe it. Plus it would explain why it feels like as little effort has been put into this train as possible. Capitalism, everyone! Oh wait, that's the punchline I used last paragraph. Guess it's still true.

Above all else the train is about enduring. You have not truly experienced what it means to be delayed until you arrive at a destination 10 hours late. I don't think I will ever be impatient on an airline flight again.

Chapter 8- Nova Scotia and The End

 Hello blogfriends. This is the last update in my series about spending a month traveling across Canada by train. By the time I got here I had spent 200something hours on trains and was covered in bug bites, cuts, and bruises. I was also pretty sick. Truth be told, I pretty much limped across that finish line. Nova Scotia was a welcome respite. I spent about a week with my parents at their cabin on Church Lake, kinda just recovering. A lot of the striking images here are of the lake.

 Nova Scotia is a maritime province, its motto something like 'shaped by the sea'. Between the lakes, rivers, and frequent fog, even when you're not looking at the ocean it has a generally watery feel to it

 I also has an adorably old-fashioned rustic feel to it. It is low key, small scale, intimate. I actually think that talking a lot about Nova Scotia would be incorrect. It's not that things couldn't be said, but rather that quietness could say more. Does that make any sense? Who knows. Anyway, I think the pictures speak well about the place.

So now I'm back from Canada. While the trip might not have given me everything that I wanted, it certainly gave me what I needed. Expect one more entry where I talk a little bit about trains and post some funny pictures.

Chapter 7- International Metropolis of Confusion, Montreal

or how I failed to learn to stop worrying and love the french

Let's just get it out of the way- Montreal gave me a headache. By the end of my first day I was thoroughly overwhelmed and exhausted. I do not blame Montreal, I blame myself. See, thing is, I don't speak french. Like none at all, with no exaggeration. This is in stark contrast to the other languages that I don't speak like spanish, german, and italian, in which I am pretty sure I could competently recognize at least some percentage of important words and phrases. The only french I know basically comes from Pepe LePew cartoons. We're talking 'I don't know how to say I don't speak french in french' bad.

Montreal's big central-park type park, Mont Royal Parc. There were a lot of steps..

featuring views like this

and the famous la croix (no points for guessing what this means)

 I figured that Montreal would be bi-lingual, like most of the places I had been in in Canada so far. Nope, all french, all the time. I guess it makes sense, I mean, this is why the Canadians train themselves in at-least-incidental french from an early age. When you visit montreal you want to know that the truck in front of you makes frequent arrets and you need to know not to wander into le machine qui écrase la tête. It is an intimidating place for someone unprepared. Thing is, it actually is bilingual. Like, virtually everyone can speak english, they just tend not to. Still, I felt a little bit of internal tugging between my desire to at least attempt to speak to these people in their native language and the realization that I really really had no capacity to do so.

It was silly to feel this way, I realize, but Montreal is no stranger to linguistic confusion and conflict. It is split about evenly between 'francophones' and 'anglophones', on contrast to the rest of Quebec, which is much more 'francophonic'. To give you an idea of how extant these issues are, these are real words that are used regularly there. I've digressed on this either too long or not long enough, so let's move on.

Although I had trouble at first (and indeed throughout), I left with a very pleasant impression on Montreal. It has that european/metropolitan mix of new and old and is organized in a way that makes for an engaged and active population. I don't have much else to say about Montreal, other than that it managed to be challenging to me in a way that drew me in, rather than repelled me, which is no mean feat. I look forward to going back. And now, some pictures of my self-guided bike tour around Montreal (an amazing way to see the city, highly recommend).

 This is one of Montreal's greatest architectural wonders, La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal

 It was built in the 1820's and boasts a spectacularly 11 ton bell and two towers named Perseverance and Temperance. You can bet that if I ever come into possession of towers, I will be naming them in a similar way.

 In addition to traditional stained-glass, it also features depictions of important events in montreal's history.

 Like all good churches, it is literally awe-inspiring.

 Celine Dion was married here, in case you care to know such a thing.

 I just love church organs

 Some of Montreal's oldest sky-scrapers. Once again I am impressed by how legitimate the history is here.

 Biking along the waterfront I came upon some of the coolest looking apartments I've ever seen.

 Central station, a site of much confusion for me, but a beautiful building.

Next blog post will probably be the last one in this series and will cover Nova Scotia and some general observations. See you soon

Chapter 6- Thanatos and Niagra Falls

 Let's establish right off the bat that Niagra Falls is a beautiful place. It is the world's most voluminous waterfall, that an astounding 1/3 of the world's fresh water will pass over at some point. The memorable statistic that is often thrown around is 'a million bathtubs' of water per second. The quantities we are talking about here are ridiculous.

 It is no surprise that people are drawn to this place. They have been for thousands of years. It is awe-inspiring, and not many things can truly be described that way without irony or quotation marks.

 Niagra falls is actually 2 waterfalls. The American falls are quite a bit shorter as they fall onto a jumble of huge boulders and kick up enormous sprays of mist.

 The Canadian falls (or Horseshoe falls) are astoundingly large and curve pleasingly into an amphitheater of water.

 So yes, it makes sense that Niagra Falls is a big tourist destination. I mean, one would have to wonder about people if it weren't. The main thing the big attractions are peddling is a 'falls experience'. A way to get closer to, or experience more sincerely, the falls.

 This is the 'behind the falls experience', which takes you through tunnels constructed for uncertain reasons

 And there is of course the 'Maid of the Mist Experience' which involves this little boat. "As close to the falls as you can get"

 This is from the 'Rapids Walk Experience'. "The closest you can get to category 6 rapids!"

 There is a lot of talk about closeness

 And experience. I think the word 'experience' was used more than the word 'falls'.

 I also participated in Niagra's Fury "the ultimate multi-sensory experience" (hey, it was included with that other stuff, come on). I speculated that this was like a movie where they spray you with water. I was correct. The less said about this Experience the better.

 Despite the touristy kitsch, it really is a beautiful place.

 This is the Old Skow, a boat that got stuck here, just above the falls, ages ago and is now just waiting to rust enough to fall apart and go over. My Lonely Planet travel guide describes it as a (perhaps) "symbol of western imperialism". Incidentally, this is why Lonely Planet guides are always preferable.

 -! What's that?! I've spotted an animal.

 The return of loaf-animal, so named because of its size, shape, and color. I have encountered him once before in California. Subsequent research has revealed that he is a groundhog (aka. woodchuck aka. whistlepig), but he will always be loaf-animal to me.

 So, like I was saying, it IS beautiful.

 So then why do people have to destroy it?

 This is something I've noticed happening in a lot of places with an outsized amount of natural beauty. People seem compelled to come and fill it with garbage.

 Almost as if they needed to counterbalance out the goodness.

 I saw a lot of this in florida and I developed the idea that maybe it was in people's natural death-drive, The Thanatos, as it was called by the notoriously-wrong Sigmund Freud. Something is beautiful, so it must be destroyed.

Or perhaps it is as simple as an inferiority complex. Nature won't show me up, I'll create a spectacle even greater. One sometimes gets an idea of one's own insignificance at such places. What an unpleasant feeling, let's exert our might as human beings to tame it. The same impulse that causes people to 'challenge' the falls by surviving going over them in a barrel. As if the falls care.

 Or maybe people just want to make money. A lot of people come to the falls > people like to spend money on this stuff > I will build this stuff so that I can make money.

 However, I'm having trouble with the assumption that people truly like this stuff. Does a drug addict like drugs? I guess in a way. But this is more than that, I think there is a need being filled here. Again, I think it boils down to the desire to feel good about oneself.

 And it's not just the money, because there are other ways to make money. See, for example, the earlier Experiences, which were legitimate (in my mind) efforts to profit off of the natural beauty of the place.

 No, I think there might be some really sick people out there who just want to Conquer. Ironically, this drive is also the one that generally puts people in positions of power where they are able to do so. 'Sup Mitt Romney. (it's an election year, come on, let me editorialize a little)

 I don't entirely blame them. It is pretty terrifying, to realize one's own tiny impact. Sometimes it's easier to just not think about these things. After a day of looking at (sorry, Experiencing) something as monumental as the falls, it's likely that people are exhausted, not necessarily physically, but existentially. This kind of thing brings you back to your humanity.

Anyway, it's almost certain that I'm overthinking things and exaggerating and all that, but being there is a really striking experience in contrast. Worth Experiencing for oneself, I would argue. So go to Niagra Falls. It's amazing and terrible.

 As sort of a palate cleanser after reading all that, here are a couple of pictures from the Daredevils Museum. It not only chronicles human beings' various attempts to Challenge or Experience the falls, but showcases some quantity of the devices used to do so. Highly recommended.

See you next time folks, when I visit someplace very different.