Cross Country, Part 2

Jasper, Alberta

We did not do a lot in Jasper. We did enough, I suppose, looking back. We took a trip to Jasper National Park where we crossed Maligne Lake to see and stand on Spirit Island. It’s a long lake, long and narrow and boxed in by high peaks, the round trip to Spirit Island taking about ninety minutes, not counting the time spent there. It’s worth the trip; it’s one of the most iconic images of the Rocky Mountains. Otherwise, we stayed in the city. We visited the Park Museum. We went to a few restaurants, and shopped. There was a fair bit of people-watching, too, as we sat in cafes and took in the ambiance of Patricia Street, the Athabasca and surrounding snow-peaked mountains. Everything looked brand new. Impossible, due to its fame and foot traffic. But very little of it showed much wear and tear.

Evil Dave's, Jasper

We did eat at a restaurant named Evil Dave’s Café. That was a must. Obviously. It was not the best restaurant we ate at, though. The food was passable, locally sourced, a little too spicy for Bev. We both walked away thinking that we’d had better. But I did have my picture taken under its black awnings sporting my namesake. Of course I did. Wouldn’t you?

And we met people. Short term Euro pals, expiry date today. Mainly people we kept stumbling across, but would soon discover that they were headed out to the trails the next day. We were not, we were waiting for the train.

Most importantly, I purchased a new carry-on that met the specifications set out by VIA Rail. More or less. It almost met the specs, it had to be scrunched down a little to be made to fit in the chrome template, but it passed. Barely. Sigh of relief.

When our departure date came due, we made our way down to the station on the banks of the Athabasca. That, at least, had a timeless quality to it, much like one imagines what train stations always looked like. Wood benches, a post office, brown paper packages wrapped with twine.

Jasper Station

We heard what we expected as the Canadian pulled into the station, a distant blare of a horn, a closer still ring of a brass bell. We stood and inched closer to the tracks with the other expectant passengers, waiting for that first view of the train approaching. Everyone always seems to do that, don’t they, stop and watch a train approach and pass, waiting for the horn to blow, the brass bell to ring? It approached, it slowed, it stopped. We mounted the stair the conductor set in place, directed to which way to go to find our cabin.

It was much the same as the last one we had, but we were far closer to the middle of the train than we were last time. Our observation car was mid-train this time, as was our activity car. The dining car was the same, there being only one.

We stowed our luggage and took our complimentary champagne and drinks in the activity car, disappointed to hear that there was no musician-in-residence that trip, with none expected. That left books and the magazines I’d picked up from the Maple Leaf Lounge in Pearson as the primary source of entertainment, aside from our watching the country flow past us as we made our way east. We did have music and TV and film, of a sort. I’d filled an album of CDs and DVDs before leaving home and took it with me, expecting that there might be some long hours to fill during the trip. There were. One can only watch so many hours of the Great Plains or the Great Boreal Forest before tiring of them. Especially the boreal forest, as I’ve had a spectacular view of it my whole life.

And so began our trek across country. It took four days, our only stops in Edmonton and Winnipeg and Hornepayne. We didn’t see Edmonton. We pulled into the station in the middle of the night, when we were asleep. We saw little of Winnipeg, arriving at the station at 11 pm, our only glimpse of the city a steady stream of streetlamps and the pot lights of the station. We were just going to bed and had no desire to step out onto the platform in the dead of night, with no inclination of what to do or what to see and no idea when the train might be pulling out again, so we closed the blind and tucked in and bid Winnipeg adieu. There were one or two other stops along the way. We always stepped off for a moment or two, just to take the air and stretch the legs, but those stops counted in minutes and not the potential hours those other three might have afforded. We arrived late at Hornepayne, so the potential hours we might have spent there were limited to minutes, as well. Not that we there was much to do or see in Hornepayne. Unlike Longlac, where we skirted past while at breakfast, without actually stopping. It was pretty, well kept, with manicured parks, and seemed a-bustle with all manner of activity. People stepping out of church. Baseball in the park. Mother’s pushing prams. Mind you, it was late morning and sunny as we passed there; that might have made all the difference in my perspective; and this is not to say that Longlac wasn’t much the same as Hornepayne, either, both being working-class lumber towns.

The weather deteriorated after breakfast, the clouds rolling in, the rain lashing the train, reducing the view from the observation deck of the activity car to a rain dappled rush of windswept pine.
It cleared after a time, the rain, not the cloud cover. It remained damp and grey when the clouds did clear as we approached Hornepayne, twilight taking hold by then.

We pulled in and got off. There wasn’t even a station, just a faded metal sheet sided butler building alongside the gravel stretch the followed the track a short ways. We got off despite what we saw, just to take the air and stretch the legs. We climbed the shallow rise away from the tracks, rounded the two-bay fire hall and past the Home Hardware, seeing the G&L Variety down the street. A Credit Union was across from it, a garage up the street, and little else. There were a number of For Sale signs. There were one or two boarded up buildings. There were “closed” signs in all the windows except the G&L’s. Beyond it, we saw nothing but a worse-for-wear residential zone, sidings faded, lawns an unkempt afterthought, vehicles that had weathered a number of winters. Maybe it was the twilight.

Hornpayne

Maybe it was the aftermath of the rain. But Hornpayne looked like it had endured more than a few minutes of stormy weather. It looked like it had been suffering an economic hurricane that had been raging for years.
We got back on the train after doing our best to support the local economy, buying what sundries we saw at the G&L, mostly a few bags of chips and a couple cans of pop. Those others who’d made the short trek up that short shallow hill did much the same.

The sun set and we carried on, wiling away our last evening on board before arriving in Toronto the next day, where there was shopping and Blue Jays games, the end of our vacation more familiar than usual. Familiar pubs, familiar restaurants, familiar streets, retracing time-honoured steps that we considered well-trod. Queen, King, Wellington and Yonge. John Street. Dundas and Spadina. We’d been to Toronto many times before and knew it as well as any who don’t actually live there.

It almost feels like home.