This was going to be a post about how we finally got snow today, and I have a picture to prove it:
However, there is another, more significant "at last": our daughter just gave birth (three weeks overdue) to her first child, a boy, 8 lb 2 oz. That was what we went out to Vancouver for, and missed. We are pleased that mother, son and father are all well. Here is a family photo:
There was a dreamlike quality to our stop in Jasper. We detrained for about an hour, then waited in the station for time to board. They served champagne in the dome car, as they did leaving Toronto and Winnipeg. Just after I put my camera in its bag, as we were picking up speed, it was announced that the engineer had spotted elks on the left. I scrambled to get my camera back out, but watched about a dozen elk slip by before my camera was ready to shoot.
To the right is the inside of the station in Jasper. This is a train station with character.
In the poem, I speak of drivers in the west: they are trained to stop for pedestrians; if you step off a curb, anywhere, they stop for you to cross. I can see westerners getting into trouble in the east: eastern drivers have difficulty in Cornwall stopping for official flashing amber crosswalks. It got so bad, they had to change a pedestrian crosswalk in the east end of town into a red-amber-green signalled stop.
I wrote this poem November 20, shortly before we left on our trip out west. That seems so long ago. I have revised it significantly form the original draft: the last line in particular has been a subject of some sport for me. The tree in question (see photo to the right) is the tallest in the centre of the city, some eighty feet, I estimate. It is much taller than it appears in the photo; I used auto stitch to join two photos of it that I took a few moments ago. note how the photo tapers at the top. The tree seemingly taller in the foreground to the right is actually considerable shorter, if you consder that I was shooting up at quite an angle for the top of this. In years that huge murders of crows flock to the centre of the city, they seem to focus over that tree, often filling its branches as prodigiously as the leaves. Local tree firms are hesitant to consider pruning it, so large and dangerously close to property is it. I wonder what the future holds?
Here is another image of northern Ontario, taken from the lounge car. I like the contrast between the frozen evergreens outside, and the colourful flower arrangement inside.
To the left is a town we passed late in the day. see the light at the horizon.
The link for the title of this piece takes you to the whole category of poems I posted in my blog (and will continue to post there) . Here is a photo of the staircase in the lounge car:
The cars (manufactured in 1950) used to belong to the Candian Pacific Railway (CPR), which ran a little to the south of the Canadian National Railway (CNR). They are stainless steel and very art deco. In the photo, you can see the dome, which gives a 360 degree view of everything.
Here is a unique view out the rear of the train, through the lounge window:
In future posts, I shall give you other views, some particularly inspirational with regard to particular poems.
We are back from a wonderful visit to Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The wierd weather there on the west coast co9ntinued with heavy winds and attendant trees down, high surfs, power outages supplied by the "Pineapple Clipper" (heavy winds from Hawaii.) They were reporting winds at sea in the realm of one hundred knots, and seas over forty feet.
I took a lot of pictures and some video on the train trip out, and will post a few here soon. Lots of potry drafts, some of which I have posted from my sister's on Vancouver Island, and my daughter's in Kitsilano (a Vancouver district).
More when we are settled again.
