On this trip I have learned by going not only where I have to go but also where I should have gone and how and when. If or when I take another train trip in Canada I will do it differently. I will go east from Vancouver, NOT KAMLOOPS. This time I carried my pack and rolled my carry-on down 32nd Street to City Hall where I caught the ebus ($25.00) to a mall in Kamloops where I caught a cab ($20.00) to the Riverland Inn and Suites where I had taken a room to wait for the train in ($110.00). There was nothing to eat there so I walked 15 minutes to the nearest place, Dairy Queen, where I bought a crispy chicken salad and Orange Julius to carry back and eat while I watched tv and waited for the train that was due to leave at 1:00am. At 11:00pm I phoned VIA. The employee who answered was as surprised as I was to discover that the train was almost on time. So I ordered a taxi for 12:15 to take me to the Kamloops North Station ($20.00). The train did finally leave the station at 2:00am. As I waited for it I watched two of the longest freights I've ever seen roll slowly and loudly by, one pulling an uncountable number of tanker units labeled, not odourized liquified petroleum. I later read of the dangers of transporting that because odourless leaks can not easily be detected. By 2:15 I was snuggling into my upper berth, jolting east. I was asleep in minutes. The rest of the trip had it's high, low and medium moments, but I'll never take a VIA train east from Kamloops again. I'll take the bus to Vancouver and train east from there. While I was with Miche, she had this thought. The other suggestion she made was to plan the time of the next trip not only according to dates that suit me but also with the sale dates on the Via web site in mind. The prices are spectacularly lower than normal fares. I have added this site to my favourites.
I have seen many good friends in the last couple of months. Terry Keough was in Vernon in mid September, visiting relatives. He came to my place one evening and we had a beer and chat. Then we walked up to his niece Coleen's for her usual great dinner. After dinner we talked, watched CNN and talked some more, this time about the furor in Trumplandia as impeachment looms ever nearer while simultaneously getting nowhere. This topic and CNN have gone on to become a leitmotif of my trip east: at Don and Mela's, at Caroline and Albert's and a bit at the Baughan's. The only Trumplandia free zone was Micheline's where we watched a couple of good old videos. The word impeachment never crossed our lips. It's a testament to the US mastery of media that their problems with a narcissistic president have captured the attention of Canadians more than our own upcoming federal election. I've been reading a bit about the latter but haven't watched a single debate.
Back to chronology and VIA Rail. On Tuesday, September 24, I woke just before 7:00. By 7:30 I was eating a delicious omelette in the dining car. After, I went to the observation car in time to see Mt Robson as we approached Valmont. We stopped in Jasper for an hour. I got out and walked around town with a Korean woman,Han, and another woman, both of whom had been seated with me for breakfast. I sat for meals with one or both of them from time to time but not always. The Maitre D' was very skilled at mixing people up. Han was sweet and very enthusiastic about her trip in Canada. It was an ambitious one. She had been traveling alone for about three weeks and would not be visiting friends until we reached Toronto. She is retired after having taught English in elementary school in Seoul for her entire career. In spite of this, she had great difficulty speaking English; although, she knew the basic grammar well. It made it clear why so many Koreans send their kids to English hagwons like the one Jay teaches at if they want them to be able to actually use the language.
I had conversations with many interesting people from Norway, England, Wales and Waco, Texas. But there was one crashing bore. I tried to avoid him after having my first lunch in his company. He, unfortunately, was Canadian; although, he was born in England. He looked about my age, with grey hair that must have been intentionally worked into the worst case of bed head I've ever seen because it remained as it was when I first met him until we detrained in Toronto. As we sat down we all introduced ourselves using our first name. He said he was Geoffrey-James. I assumed he had a hyphenated first name and prepared to find him pompous. He did not disabuse me of this notion. I learned later from Mela that his first name is Geoffrey and his family name is James. He assumed we would all have heard of him if he said both, but we hadn't. He proceeded to fill our ears with the hyperbole and superlatives that he seemed to find necessary to impart to us even an inkling of his extraordinary life. I can't remember how I managed to get a word in (which is saying something since I am rarely lost for words) and why I mentioned Mela when I did, but his reaction was positively gleeful. She had "worked for him". He was sure she'd be impressed that I'd met him and say, "Wow!" Well she wasn't and didn't. She told me when I got to her house that he had hired her at the Canada Council. She had been happy to get the job so easily but not impressed by the fact that he sat with his feet on his desk while he conducted the perfunctory interview. She was impressed however once she'd worked there a while by how lazy he was. I could attest to that because although he boasted of the fact that VIA had given him the trip from Vancouver to Toronto with an option to use in a brochure some of the spectacular pictures he would take with his magnificent camera that had also been given to him by the best makers of cameras in Germany. It turns out he is a recognized Canadian photographer. He did have an impressive looking camera, but he didn't seem to go to any great lengths to get good shots. Whenever I saw him he was either sitting sideways on a bench in the games room below the dome idly snapping pictures through the window or filling someone's ear with stories about himself. His unfortunate hair and narcissism might qualify him to be a Canadian Trump. Thank goodness his name won't be on any ballot on October 21.
The dreary VIA Rail station in Kamloops
The Sleeping Giant seen from the dome car as the train headed east out of Jasper. Coming from Thunder Bay where the real Sleeping Giant rests in the Harbour, I was slow to appreciate it,but it is impressive. The country that the train rolls through east of Jasper is well worth sitting in the dome car to appreciate even though it's not as starkly rocky as the Banff/Jasper area. The tamaracks along the sides of the tracks were healthy and swayed gracefully in the strong wind. They were still green but the aspens and birch had already turned bright yellow.
A grain elevator near Raymore, Saskatchewan
The Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. Han had really wanted to visit this museum but it was closed by the time we reached Winnipeg. But we had about an hour to walk around and fortunately it's close to the train station.
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