Champagne at Jasper

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.

Out the train windows

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 Canadian" — a train ride, a country

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.