A Half Century

I turned fifty. It had almost no effect on me at first, but it did after a time. It was sobering. I was half a century old. I guess I’m middle-aged now, I thought. In truth, I’d been middle-aged for a number of years already, but the realization had never quite dawned on me until then. The truth of it was written all over me, though. Grey had been creeping in for years. Aches and pains too, if truth be told. Injury took longer to heal. And I was getting up and going to bed earlier. I’d yet to scream at anyone to get off my lawn, as yet, though. I still haven’t and hope I never will.

The occasion had been marked quietly. Just dinner with Bev. My mother baked me a cake. My mother has baked me a cake for each and every birthday I’ve ever had. But I have never had an actual birthday party since I was a child. And being a December baby, I’d never had a birthday barbeque, or a lawn party thrown in my honour.

I wanted one. If only once.

So, I set about throwing myself a party. I made a Facebook event page, calling it MY 50.5 BIRTHDAY BASH, and set it exactly six months after my actual half century.

I invited most people I knew and liked, those people who’d been my friends for years or in years past, some of those I worked with. Then I sat back and crossed my fingers to see who would accept the invitation. My ego got a bit of a boost when Barb Strum, Bev’s closest friend accepted the invitation seconds after I posted the event. Other acceptances leaked in from time to time. I will not say that the event filled up. I’ve never had a wide circle of friends. Secretly, I hoped that the party I was throwing myself would not be a social shunning. My self-esteem was not at its highest at the time. I even went so far as to invite the toxic friend, offering an olive branch, hoping that it would be accepted, still not sure if our flagging friendship was my fault. Like I said, low point in self-esteem.

I got about thirty acceptances, altogether. Not bad, I thought, chalking it up to my having such a small circle. I was jealous of those people who can gather in over a hundred guests for such an event, but my family was not large, either. But I was pleased, if not thrilled.

The day grew near. I checked the forecast repeatedly. More so as the day grew nearer still. Twice a day or so. Rain was in the forecast. Of course there was. But there was a hint of hope. The day before was to be clear and sunny, hot. The day after was as beautiful. The rain might pass us by, I thought. The forecast will improve as we drew closer. It did not.

“Maybe you can move the event,” people told me. But one or two of the people who I really wanted to be there could not make it the next weekend. Moving it further conflicted with even more people’s schedule. It was summer, after all; people had plans; people had holidays; people were travelling.
The day arrived, and it did indeed rain. Buckets fell. Cats and dogs. A river of overflow raced down my street.

Should I cancel? Would anyone come? I considered renaming the event DAVID’S HURRICANE BARBEQUE BASH. “Oh well,” I thought, “rushing out into the biblical deluge to get what I discovered I was missing.

People did come. Most came. And some brought gifts, even though I’d specifically requested that no one do so. “It’s not my birthday,” I told them. I’d even said so on the Event page.
I cooked the burgers and sausages and dogs in the rain.
Once that was done, I settled in to not be the host. Make your own drinks, I thought. Entertain yourselves. I wanted to be a guest at my own party.
If you were there, thank you. You helped make my day.
If you were not, not to worry. Bev’s 50th BIRTHDAY BARBEQUE/HURRICANE PARTY was much the same the next summer.

Some further good came from it. I rekindled my friendship with Henri and Sylvie for a time. They invited us to their anniversary party a few months later. And then they invited us to join them on a Mediterranean cruise a few months after. Ports of Call: Venice, Mykonos, Athens, Istanbul, Nice (Capri and Sorrento), Rome (Orvieto for us), Florence and Pisa, and Barcelona. It was fun, but we weren’t attached to Henri and Sylvie throughout the cruise; we were used to going it alone while on vacation, me even more so than Bev. They may have expected us to be by their side throughout, but that didn’t happen; but, at least it always gave us something to talk about during dinner.

A return to Killarny Lodge followed the next year. I brought Bev to New Orleans and New York the next (a return for me, new ground for Bev, but I wanted her to experience what she’d missed in 2010), where on our first day in New York, the couple eating supper next to us at the Italian Restaurant next door offered us free tickets to the smash hit Bandstand. New Orleans brought the same excursions, but better music on Frenchman’s Street and Beignets here and there and Hurricanes at Pat O’Brian’s, while New York brought jazz at Dizzy’s Club Cocoa-Cola and at Smalls and Mezzrow’s. Central Park and Broadway and Little Italy.

Life’s been good. Life’s been a struggle. Life’s been an adventure. Life has been as life has been.

A long time ago, shortly after we’d moved away from Cochrane, but back when we were still returning for weekends at the cottage, returning for holidays and carnivals, Keith and I were playing on 16^th Avenue. It was a slow day. A weekend. Cold. Winter. Mostly bathed in sun. Clouds flowed past as we stormed the snowbank seawall of Omaha beach, or some such, hockey sticks cut to our height serving as rifles. We stormed that beachhead again and again, pretending to almost scale its height before the imaginary enemy took careful aim and shot us, killing us in turn. We posed melodramatically, our arms splayed out, and collapsed, rolling back down what seemed a precipice at the time but must have only been a few short feet, coming to rest at its foot, looking up at the sky until we rose to storm the hill again, to the same result. After unnumbered repetitions, we lay flat out on the street, looking up at the sky and the clouds. Dead. Quiet. Awestruck with imaginings. Imagining what we saw in their shapes, pointing them out after a time and finding what the other saw there, declaring, “Yeah, I see it,” once we did. Frogs and chickens and ships and horses. There was giggling. There was laughter. There were comfortable silences.

For all that imagining, for all those flights of fancy, we, neither of us, had any clue what was to come. Or what might become of us. We were just children, after all, just starting out, an eternity before us.
It has been a symphony of happenstance, of cause and effect, and despite the stumbles and setbacks, despite the pitfalls, it has been an adventure. It has been a truly awe-inspiring and epic discovery of what it means to be me.

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.

Alberta, Part 2

We arrived as Lake Louise at 4:30 pm. It’s a beautiful hotel in a beautiful valley. I’d seen pictures of it my whole life, but this was the first time I’d ever set eyes on it. The icefield at the far end of the lake bathed in brilliant sunlight. The lake itself was glowing seafoam green, the colour of all glacial lakes in Alberta, as far as I’d seen. Some were brighter than others, but they all carried that distinct colour of the rock flour suspended within. It was a picture postcard.

We walked the shore after checking in and making dinner arrangements, following the stone walkway to and onto the boardwalk where we rented a canoe for a half hour. I can’t say we were any good at guiding the canoe, then. We’re much better now, but we fought against it and each other the whole time we were on the lake, going round and round in circles, never once keeping the damned thing straight. I lost my temper. Not a good thing. Totally uncool of me.

We showered and changed and I indulged in a wine and cheese platter before taking a late dinner at the Italian restaurant at the hotel.

We stepped out for some air, afterwards. Too much food. Too rich. Too much wine. Damn holidays. Oscar Wilde had it right when he said, “I can resist anything but temptation.”

The mountain face was a black wall, devoid of stars or any detail, for that matter. It disoriented me. It made me slightly nauseous to look at it. “Where’s the sky?” my equilibrium screamed. This was not the first time I’d felt that soulful bewilderment, but it was by far the worst, the forested rock wall so close and so tall. It closed in on me and felt like it was crushing me.

I looked up to relieve the sensation. The stars glittered brightly up there in that far too limited expanse of cloudless sky. There was no moon. Had there been a moon, we would have been bathed in its glow and seen…something. But its absence left me bathed in black, the void only broken by the flood lights of the hotel.

The next day we climbed to the Fairview Lookout. It took about twenty minutes. It was steep. Very steep. Steep enough to cramp the calves if we took it too fast and in one go. Mostly duff underfoot, a few roots reached out and grasped across the path here and there, tripping up the unwary. More than a few wooden stairs were constructed along the way to help us up the steepest bits. Even so, the climb necessitated a few breaks. Luckily, maybe not so luckily, there were benches and lookout points along the way. They learned that most people might need a rest break while climbing up there decades earlier. We certainly used them, and we weren’t the only ones to use them, either. We passed a few climbers along the way and were in turn passed by others, waving and saying hello to those on their way down, stepping off the path to give them the right of way in a display of politeness that may have been a break in disguise. But we made it, greeted by a song bird at the lookout rail. It was a great view, well worth the exhausting climb. It was a bit of a concern coming back down, though.

We ate at the Walliser Stube restaurant and wine bar that evening, attended by another sommelier for another perfect pairing of course to wine, with the expected results. How anyone can drink four or five glass of wine with a meal is beyond me. It’s a wonder that I did not require support to make it back to our room.

We bought sandwiches and snacks the next morning for the trip to Banff. We needed them. It was a long haul. Moraine Lake, the Icefields parkway, and another harrowing switchback traverse to another glacial falls. It was a wet excursion, raining for most of the day, the spray from the falls adding to the experience.

Banff was bright when we arrived. Thankfully. We required a bit of a dry off.

Where most of our fellow Brewster companions were shuttled off to the Banff Springs Hotel, we were deposited outside the Delta in the heart of the city, which was fine with us. We had dinner at the hotel before making our way to the main street, browsing up one side and down the other, the mountain down the road in full view the whole time. It’s a lively place, compared with the Lake Louise Chateau, where there was nowhere to go and nothing to do that was not put on by the Fairmont. There were people in restaurants, people in pubs, people buying this or that, usually fleece or camping gear or provisions for their lengthy trek on the trails. There were backpacks everywhere, tall, heavy looking things that looked like should their bearer topple over, he might never get back up again.

We had the better deal. So said those few Brewster companions we talked to, afterwards, comparing our accommodations with theirs. Theirs carried a grand old affair of past opulence. Ours was cheaper. Ours was far more spacious than the stately old rooms they’d been shoehorned into, their bathroom door rapping up against their footboard whenever one of them tootled off to the bath, their pipes rattling and groaning after decades of use.

The next day we explored Banff and the springs. We lined up for the first ride up the Gondola to the mountain top, up there long enough to begin in morning haze and watch the clouds burn off, giving us a most spectacular view of the lands around its feet. We visited another moraine lake and another falls, this time following the course of the river as it carved its way deeper and deeper into the rock, the rush of the water deafening us with a roar that rolled up between the tight channels of smooth rock, as it dropped from this level to that, making it almost impossible for us to hear one another speak.

We visited the Hoodoos. It was more of a walk than a hike, and we didn’t actually walk right down to the towers of rock, halting far enough away to get a good photo, but that was all. According to folklore, those monoliths—sometimes called “fairy chimneys”—were human beings until a witch turned them to stone. Other legends tell of travellers witnessing the hoodoos reveal themselves to be wizards, offering a helping hand by pointing them in the right direction. All hokum. They’re just columns of limestone that were a little harder than the rocks around them. Unless you like to believe in fairies and wizards and magic. And I’m all for fairies and wizards and magic.

The next day we were deposited back at the Jasper Inn. We lost touch with those Brewster couples we’d shared the last few days with, only getting to know them in the waning days of our time together. Too bad. They were great people and I wish we’d connected with them sooner; and judging from their response to us, I think they wish they’d connected with us sooner, too. But I’d come to realize that older people aren’t as open to meeting new people as younger ones are. Youth blends instantly, we older ones take a little more time.

I realized then that the lion’s share of my Euro pal experiences might be behind me. Or maybe it was just the choice of holiday, or the type of Tour Company. Did they treat their clients as a group to gather or as separate entities sharing a common experience? Were there meet and greets? Cocktail gatherings? If not, I gathered that I needed to work harder at meeting those people I stumbled across than I had.

But it was easier then. Easier by far.

No matter. Done was done. We still had a couple days in Jasper before boarding the Canadian and crossing the country, riding the rails as people did in days or yore.

Alberta

We boarded the Canadian at 8 pm, about a half hour after coach seating and departed a half hour after that. Slowly at first, with some jostling of cars, the clack of the rails still noticeable and not yet faded into the back of the mind. The city pulled away, the buildings shorter, shrinking, growing sparse, as were the dense collection of criss-crossing rail lines and the graffiti that was splashed across industrial space and bridge and overpass supports.

There was free champagne in the club car at the far end of the train, conversation with fellow passengers we would shortly never see again and a little music by our musician-in-residence, Kaysha. We retired a couple hours later, sleeping soundly after we grew accustomed to the rolling motion and the periodic jolt of rail contacts.

Our cabin was in Thompson Manor (our car’s name): 221E, midway between the activity car (two forward) and the rear club car (two aft). We did not spend much time in our cabin. It was not large, but we didn’t expect large, having seen more than a few YouTube videos of what our accommodation would be like. I suppose it was spacious enough. When the bunks were tilted up, there were two reclining chairs within that could shift about, not being anchored to the floor. All in all, it was a good leg stretch in depth. We had a private toilet with a door, a sink in the main space, an outside door that locked on the inside, a picture window with a blind. All the comforts of home. Most of the space disappeared when the bunk beds rolled down and the ladder to the top bunk was put in place, the chairs neatly folded and tucked under the lower berth. They were actually quite comfortable, the chairs, the beds.

I woke to a narrow band of light filtering through the crack left open by our blind. It was sunny, or would be once the sun had fully risen above the layered mountains behind us. We were not moving. I peeked through the gap and discovered that we were in Kamloops, still in British Columbia. Top of the world, so to speak. It was all downhill from there. It looked dry out there, the vegetation thin, the ground more rocky than soil and scrub. Trees were sparse, widely spaced. Wisps of cloud danced about the slopes at eye level.

I bathed in the communal shower down the hall from our room. We had our own shower (right over our private toilet, what I would call a nautical head, as they were much the same as those I’d had on ships), but never tested it. We saw no reason to raise the humidity in our room or risk lapping pools around our toilet even if it did work. We queued up for breakfast and spent the day in the club car, watching our descent. We signed up for second seating for lunch, all tables shared and filled to capacity, then whiled away the afternoon in the club car again, passing from Pacific to Mountain time about the same time as we passed Pyramid Falls.

Kaysha, our musician from the Eastern Townships in Quebec, joined us soon after to perform one of her obligatory daily three shows. Banjo, guitar and kazoo. Leggings, plaid shirt, denim jacket and black peaked cap. She played by ear, apologetically admitting to not being able to read music, after hearing that I was taking music lessons, despite her attending a songwriter’s workshop in BC. “It can make it difficult for me to communicate with other musicians,” she said.

Dinner in Jasper before disembarking. We were in Alberta. We’d be there for a week before hopping back on the train again. Our adventure had begun. Or should I say the focal point of our vacation. Our adventure had already begun.

We spent the night at the Jasper Inn. We could have stayed at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, but we decided to not high-end it this trip, opting to forgo two of the four possible Fairmonts for less opulent hotels in the cities, instead. I think it was a good choice. The rooms were fine; good, in fact; and we were within a short stroll of the city centers, something we would not have been treated to had we taken the more luxurious and far more expensive Fairmonts.

Jasper National Park

Breakfast at the hotel before we hopped on the Brewster’s coach for an eight-hour Rocky Mountain discovery tour. Our driver was Dustin. He was a lively lad, with an abundance of historical and allegorical tales, some short, some long, most tall, some about as implausible as any you’ve heard. They were recycled by just about every other tour operator we were to listen to throughout our time in Alberta. Like this one: “See that peak there?” he said, directing our attention to said peak, “It’s the Tri-continental Divide, where water dropped on its peak will drain to the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.” He didn’t say water. It was a story about a young boy who asked if he could go up there and pee on the peak. I think that’s called colour. Either way, the stories passed the time. Most of them were even funny.

We stopped at a spectacular falls before arriving at the main attraction of the tour, the Columbia Icefield. We climbed a switchback until unloading and hiking a long trail in what we thought was the rain but turned out to be the icy spray from what seemed an impossibly high falls. Rain gear was required. Pants and boots, too, but we didn’t have them, so we didn’t get as close to the foot of the falls as we might have. We were going to stand on a glacier in a little while, after all.

We backed down a long stretch of the switchback, a rather harrowing experience, I might add, and hit the road again, arriving at the Columbia Icefield visitor center. It was cold there, too, despite the now clear sky and brilliant sunshine, the wind sweeping across the ice and whipping past the parking lot without a tree to slow it down.

Off one coach and onto another that took us to the more specialized six-wheel drive vehicle with very wide wheels that traversed the moraine and the icefield. It was quite a ride, a drop steeper than any ramp we were legally allowed to excavate in the Mine, one requiring a death grip on the handles of the seat in front of us as we descended to the glacial floe. Down the groomed path to the ice, through the deep pool of muddy melt and back up onto the glaringly white field, we were one of three of the enormous “buses” in a row to mount the ice. We got out and walked on the glacier. First time ever. It was far brighter than I imagined it would be. I’d always thought glaciers dirty on the surface. There were runnels of stone and dirt, but this one was clean and bright, for the most part. It was very much like walking on an icy road, which it actually was. But it wasn’t what I’d call solid. Not everywhere, anyways. Three people plunged knee or crotch deep through the ice and came back up soaked to the depth they’d plunged to. It was funny. Everyone laughed. Or did until they too took a step too close to the manicured edge, or atop a thin glaze of crust and went through, themselves. Luckily neither Bev nor I did.

There were a few other stops. Spectacular views. I’ll say that a lot. Because they were. High, tall, majestic, awe-inspiring, spectacular; take your pick. All are applicable.

Eight or so hours after leaving Jasper, we pulled into Lake Louise. Its view paled most everything we’d seen up to then. It was that beautiful.

Mountains rose up steeply to either side, boxing in its lake of such remarkable colour. Like all glacial lakes it was a glowing seafoam green, quite opaque, so thick with the glacial silt that gave it its colour that when I dipped my hand within it, it faded from view by the time my elbow was wet.

Cross Country

I’ve always loved trains. That may be due to all those old films I watched in which trains played such a large part: Casablanca, Some Like It Hot, The Lady Vanishes. There are too many to list here. There were trains in song, too: Take the A-Train, Midnight Train to Georgia, Casey Jones. Trains were everywhere. They were part of our lives. Until they weren’t. The car and the Jet Age had whittled away at their place in our culture, until they became nothing more than a curiosity.

Few people consider the train when travelling. Unless they’re terrified of flying, that is. North America is not Europe in that regard, where they understand that any trip under 400 kms is quicker by train than by air. But they don’t have our vast distances between destinations. And they have dedicated passenger lines, unlike in America where freight owns the tracks and cargo is king.

We decided to do something different. We were going to time travel and experience what it was like to travel before the airplane and the car took over our lives. We’d take the Canadian cross country, stopping in Alberta for a week to spend time in the Rockies. We approached this cautiously, at first. What was it like to spend four days on a train? YouTube answered that question. People post just about everything on YouTube these days. We saw posts of the train coming into and leaving stations, of people boarding, of people walking the narrow passage along the length of the train, of people sleeping in their chairs, and of curtained booths and doored cabins. There were videos of lounge cars and observation decks and the dining car. There were videos of musicians performing aboard the train. Armed with this knowledge, we booked passage.

Thanks to our neighbours, we had vouchers for the Maple Leaf Lounge in Pearson. The space was handsome. Spacious, comfortable, leather chairs instead of the contoured plastic throughout the rest of the airport. There was free food, free magazines, marbled washrooms. Maybe not free; everything was paid for in the voucher cost. I took a copy of just about every magazine available for the trip. Why not? They were there to take, after all. Bev fell asleep in her chair, needing to be roused to catch our flight.
We flew. We landed. We checked in at the Fairmont. We spent the day in Gastown and on Granville Island. It was Labour Day weekend and the streets were teeming with people, the passages clogged by those hundreds of people gathered about buskers and musicians plying their trade. We found a Keg for supper. We ran out of steam while we ate, at about 7 pm, just as we had the year before. Time Zones. They wear on a body.

We had breakfast at a little café on Water Street and took a walk through Chinatown afterwards. There was a street market on Albert Street where homeless people tried to sell odds and ends they’ve rescued from wherever. One of them tried to sell me a ‘57 Royal typewriter. It was beautiful. Pastel, compact with case. With stuck keys. It weighed a ton. Not something I was inclined to buy, let alone carry across country with me. Maybe if I were in Toronto, and it had been serviced, workable, spruced up, maybe then I’d have bought it. But that would have been an impulse buy. A potentially pointless buy. Pretentious. Nostalgic. A curiosity.

We spotted a Garden Museum a block over. It was authentically Chinese, constructed using traditional methods and tools, all the plants imported from China. Even the pebbles were from China. It was a peaceful place. Quiet. Trees reached out overhead, bushes walled in private, shaded nooks. Water babbling. Fountains gurgling. The paths and bridges never struck a straight path; they curved and turned sharply, sure to confuse what demons that might have snuck in with us.

Before boarding the Canadian at 8 pm, we completed our day at the Bellagio, the same restaurant we had breakfast at the year before. We watched the city wind down and rush to leave then, as we had watched it wake and wind up the year before. Then we were off to the train station where we were entertained on the platform by the musician-in-residence. We were to be accompanied by her as she made her way home to Quebec (when I say we, I mean the train; we would be disembarking in Jasper the next day). If you’re lucky, there’ll be one travelling across the country with you, should you ever travel cross country on the Canadian. It’s a sweet deal for them. They get a single cabin and pay less than coach seating and all they have to do is perform three times a day, once in each of the lounge cars.
There was a menagerie of folk on the platform with us. Asians, Americans, British, Canadians. The young carried coach tickets, destined to curl up in their seats for however long they remained onboard. The middle-aged and elderly carried cabin berths in hand. I might have been able to handle coach when I was younger. I could sleep anywhere, then. Not now. I’ve joined the ranks of the middle-aged and I like a little luxury. I like to stretch out. And my back would never have survived the ordeal. I watched those youths with envy, though. I saw army surplus and cargo pants. Denim. I saw backpacks. I saw dreadlocks and Doc Martens and wildly coloured print leggings. I saw nose rings and ear hoops, too. I didn’t envy those.

Regardless our age and tickets, we all carried small bags. Coach was given a little more wiggle room, in that regard; so long as they could shove it into the overhead compartment or under their feet, they were good. But if you had a cabin, you carried a small bag. You’d better, too, if you’ve a mind to take the train. If your carry-on wasn’t exactly 28” x 18” x 9” you’d have to check it and you wouldn’t see it again until you departed the train. I discovered that mine was a couple inches too wide and too thick. Fool. I’d read the specifications and checked the carry-ons I owned. One was perfect, I thought, just a little off the specs. I didn’t think it would make a difference, but it obviously did. Cabins were small, the space limited, and the bags need be exactly as mentioned to fit in the storage bin in the cabin. Thank god we were only staying onboard one night. I rifled through my pack, adding a few essentials to Bev’s before handing my carry-on over.

I realized that I’d have to buy another carry-on while in Alberta. Or do without. That wasn’t going to happen. Four days without clean clothes was not something I wished to experience. I might as well have bought coach, then.

I wasn’t young anymore. I wasn’t a backpacker anymore.

Alaska

The descent back into Vancouver was uneventful, if a little nauseous. The Sea to Sky highway is a winding switchback that weaves between lakes and coastal cliffs, the angle steep, making it seem like I was always leaning forward as we plunged back down to the coast and Canada Place where we were whisked aboard the cruise ship, even though we weren’t able to claim our cabin until after lunch.

Lunch was served aft, two decks above our room. It was quite a selection” pizza, soup, sandwiches, pasta, salad, and more. If you’ve never been on a cruise ship, you know that access to food is not a problem. Overeating is. Over-drinking may be a problem, too. Champagne as we boarded, beer, wine, brandy, not to mention water, tea, coffee and pop, all of which I consumed that first day, owing to the drinks package purchased. Mustn’t miss out on getting my money’s worth! I’m such a Northern Ontario boy.

We took possession of our cabin shortly after lunch. 1140, Deck 10, three from the starboard stern. There were fresh cut flowers, fruit, and a bottle of champagne awaiting us. Just what we needed, more booze. No point letting it go to waste, we nibbled and sipped as we checked out our room. We had a sizable balcony, easily twice as long as the largest I’d seen along the flanks, and those above us, large enough for two lounge chairs, a table and two chairs. It stuck out so far, we could see the table and chairs from the aft lounge above us.

We dressed and caught the early show in the Celebrity Theatre before supper in the Grand Restaurant, a vast open concept spanning two decks. We sat on the lower of the two, towards the centre. The food was fantastic. It always is on a cruise ship. Lunch was as large and as elegant therein as during the supper seating, so too breakfast, if you were so inclined.

We somehow completed our first supper, despite being bloated by lunch and a tide of fluids. Bev thought her prime rib divine, my coq au vin as good. FYI: all meals are replete with appetizers, bread, soup or salad and dessert. Not to mention the accompanying bottle of flat or sparkling water. One must waddle from the table. One sleeps on one’s side after such a feast, unable to either lay on one’s belly or tolerate the weight of said belly above one. I must mention that there were over fifty wines on the menu, far too many to partake of in one sitting.

I found Michael’s, the piano bar, shortly after supper. It quickly became my favourite. It was a woody affair, reminiscent of smoking rooms of old where gentlemen in tuxedos drank scotch and brandy while buffing on fat cigars. The cigars were gone, banished to the promenade, but the brandy and scotch was still there, along with a beautiful Russian girl behind the bar. Just for ambiance’s sake.

The space was not perfect, though. The piano player was not to type. Where I’d have preferred someone along the lines of Dooley Wilson, projecting the likes of Gershwin and Sinatra into the dim lit space, “As Time Goes By,” eagerly anticipated, the player in attendance was more akin to Groucho Marx. Richard Rubin manned to keys. You don’t remember him? He was a participant on a cheesy game show called “Beauty and the Geek.” I think the music ought to match the mood of the place, and that place radiated a melancholy romance. Richard did not radiate such a mood.

Our first day was at sea. We passed the most scenic portion of the passage after sunset the night before—go figure. It would have been nice to take in the view of the Pacific coast and Vancouver Island falling behind us from our balcony, but we left port too late for such a view. We woke to a view of the sea, with only our wake visible behind us. The air had cooled.

I felt great. Bev did not. Bev had grown queasy.

She did not make her spa treatment. She grew more sea sick with each undulating roll of the deck, collapsing onto the bed after tossing back the pills our butler brought from the infirmary.
Once I knew she was okay, I went to the spa, where I was treated to the hard sell of my need for a continuous stream of spa treatments throughout the voyage. I declined. I did return to find Bev worse off than I’d left her. She slept through lunch, rising for supper, even though she didn’t feel up to eating much. She sipped a little soup before retiring again.

I had kippers for breakfast. Why? Because they come highly recommended by Supertramp. Thereafter, I always had kippers for breakfast. Why? Why not, I reasoned. How often would I be afforded the opportunity, afterwards? I was treated to whales breaking the surface as I ate. They blew geysers and leapt, their spray as long as they were.

Bev was feeling better. The sea-sickness pills were kicking in and she was probably getting her sea legs. We played a game of shuffleboard on deck, Bev kicking my ass early, until I got a feel for the deck and recovered in the second half. We don’t really know the rules, if there were any beyond placing the disks within the numbered squares and triangles, but we carried on, regardless.

We retired to the Library for a while, as the day was damp and growing cooler, the wind gusting past the deck. I wanted to go to the theatre after lunch to learn the tango but Bev bailed at the theatre entrance. She may have felt a little queasy still, not firm of foot, so she left to go back to the room. A partner could not be found for me. Most people arrived as couples or in twos, so I watched for a time.

I now know how to watch the tango.

Progress. Small steps.

Sea to Sky

We rose early. We were flying out on Timmins on the first flight of the day. You’d think I’d have grown used to early mornings by then, steady days for the past four years, but alas, 4 am is early by any reckoning. We were treated to a preview of west coast weather, wet if not actually an outright deluge. We arrived with only ten minutes to spare before being herded into the security lock-up. We need not have rushed. All fights were backed up, even then, delayed, if not grounded by the wall of thunder and lightning passing over the province.

B.C. was better: sunny, 28 degrees, a welcome contrast to Ontario’s gloom. We checked into the Fairmont Vancouver, a grand old CPR hotel much like the Royal York. But it would be, wouldn’t it? The CPR hotels were designed to be the same. Palaces at measured distances across the country, a showcase of urban and rural opulence. Granite walls, graven façade, copper roof, it radiates style and opulence unlike the architecture of today.

We had the afternoon to ourselves, with nothing planned. Late lunch, with no need to eat again for the rest of the day, we made our way to Gastown, browsing Water Street’s cobbled way. It’s wonderfully attired, as well kept as one would expect of any tourist magnet. Clusters of globes top ironwork streetlights, limestone and slate and red brick buildings tell a tale of the 18th century. Low slung chains mark the space between street and sidewalk. I loved the steam clock, gathering with the other tourists in time for its whistle chiming. The rest of Water Street was a disappointment, the shops either selling the same kitschy souvenirs or high end jewelry, or those things neither needed nor portable, like camping and hiking and mountaineering gear, or woven rugs and walled canvases too large and far too expensive for the meagre floor and wall space we had in abundance in our little abode. Had we planned our day through, we would have eaten there instead, the restaurants seemingly more to our taste and budget than the Fairmont had been. Pubs and coffee shops broke up the stream of souvenir shops, their windows tall and wide, their tables spilling out into terraces shaded by tall elms. Better for people watching. Better ambiance.

We found our way to Canada Place, pleasantly pleased to see that the Port Authority building looked very much like the cruise ships moored alongside it. We took in the Olympic Torch, The Drop, and Douglas Copeland’s Lego Orca.

We walked too far to Stanley Park. Maps are deceiving, aren’t they? We ought to be able to judge distance by them but we seldom do. We watched as a few buses passed us on their way to where we too were headed. We arrived too late and too tired from too much sun to spend too much time in the park. It’s too large anyways, taking up the tip of the Peninsula in its entirety. We did walk around some of the Lost Lagoon’s perimeter before heading back to the hotel by transit. $2.50 was a small price to pay after such a foot-sore trek.

We found a great little restaurant up the street from the hotel for breakfast the next day. The Bellagio, no relation to the casino in Las Vegas, terrace on the street, wrought iron tables and barrier, plush leather chairs. We watched the city wake up and get busy as we lingered over coffee.

Then it was time to take the Sea to Sky highway to Whistler, considered one of the most scenic drives in the world, according to our coach driver. I can understand why. It’s beautiful. It’s also steep. We gained a great deal of altitude in the three hours it took us to reach the world famous resort town and the Fairmont we were staying at in the Upper Village. It was a departure for Fairmont, not old, not steeped in the ages, but as fine in its own way. It was designed to be the chalet lodge it was, and not a European castle like the Frontenac or Royal York were. The room was not spectacular. It was like any other room in any other hotel. But we did have a spectacular view of the Blackcomb.

We toured the village, threading through the shops and ultimately eating at Earl’s, just inside the village, at the top of the dizzying height of stairs descending into it.

Whistler is a selection of distinct areas, Creekside (the lower village), Whistler Village (at the foot of its namesake mountain), and Upper Village (at the foot of the Blackcomb). The actual town was south of these on the shores of Green Lake, Alta Lake, Nika Lake, and Alpha Lake. That’s a lot of lakes for such a small town.

Dinner in the Wine Room, one of the restaurants inside the Fairmont. Jazz flowed through its dimmed expanse, the ceiling as high as one would expect from a chalet. A sommelier attended us, pairing wines with each of our courses, extolling the virtues of each and why they mated so well. The food was excellent; so was the wine; but as to the perfection of pairing…I must say that a full glass of wine with each course does not do a head good.

I needed to walk off the meal afterwards. Too much food, too much wine. Fresh air was what the doctor ordered. I found the walk claustrophobic. The mountains boxed me in. I could not see the sky except for the narrow strip of it directly overhead. Below that, there was an indistinct black wall, the trees blurring my perception, making depth impossible to ascertain. I retreated back indoors where I had a nightcap in the Mallard Room to a soulful blues guitar.

Our stay in Whistler was short. It wasn’t the main attraction, after all, just an add-on before the main event. I was bent on making the most of it, I’d signed up for a horseback excursion. I’d never been on a horse before, so, why not climb a mountain on one, that sounds a reasonable first step. Smokey was patient with me, better at walking the trails than I’d have been on foot. Going up was easier than down, when I felt like I’d flip headlong over his neck with each rolling step. I clamped my legs around his torso and leaned far back in the saddle on the return, further than I thought comfortable, but perception is not particularly true when descending down such a slope. I had to haul back on the reins too, our pace a little quick for someone of my questionable skill. I survived, more than survived; I wanted to ride more. But I didn’t have the time. I dismounted, pet him, and scratched him behind the ears as I thanked him for the gentle ride he gave me.

There was only one more thing to do. I wanted to stand on top the mountain. I hopped on the chair lift and swung up into the air. The height freaked me out at first. I’d forgotten to set the safety bar in place. But once it was down, I was alright. I was not good, I’d never been good with heights, but I was not pressed so far into my seat as to leave an impression of my spine in it anymore. Two lifts later, I was on top of the world. Ice was present if not aplenty. There were one or two skiers in attendance, but more mountain bikers and hikers. I did neither. The afternoon was getting on and I had no desire to find myself racing the sunset on my way back down. I took the gondola over to Whistler Mountain from Blackcomb before descending. Descending was worse than going up. The ground dropped off so quickly, I caught my breath. I was too panicked to close my eyes, though. I breathed deeply. Once, twice, and the fear receded some, and after a while I enjoyed the ride, loving the view, keeping an eye out for the black bears that once or twice stepped out to watch me pass on by.

But before I descended, I walked around a little, revelling in that chill mountain air. Much like atop Table Mountain, I felt the heat of the sun in my face while my back felt the onrush of winter. I faced it full on and closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of those disparate temperatures taking hold of my body.

It felt wonderful.

New Brunswick, Part 2

We’d gone South. We’d gone East. We headed North to Shediac and Bouctouche next, a much smaller focus than the prior days.

We took pictures of each other climbing Shediac’s giant lobster, walked around the wharf and then headed North along Kent County into Bouctouche, where we took a long stroll down the boardwalk and beach of the Irving Ecological Conservation Site. We did not walk its full length. The dunes are 12 km long, the boardwalk itself 2 km. And it was hot. There were no clouds. Bev walked about a quarter of the way while I ventured out further, probably about half way before turning around, returning to the more modest salt marsh. The beach along the boardwalk was deep and easily accessed by periodic steps leading down to it from the boardwalk. There were bathers and swimmers at each of these, the sand thick and clean, both warm and cool when digging one’s toes within. The surf rolled in again and again. Not crashing. Not high, certainly not suitable to surf, and not with any great strength, either, what with the parents and toddlers braving its breakings up to their ankles along the dune’s shore. We sat awhile, basking in the sun and finding the sand too hot for too lengthy a stay.

We weren’t thinking; we ought to have brought bathing suits and beach towels and spent the day there instead of returning to Moncton to shop a while. We shop too much on holiday. It eats up time and we buy stuff we could probably have picked up in Sudbury or Toronto without having to cart it back home in a suitcase.

We ought to have stayed. There’s enough to do there to occupy a day, judging by the number of people there when we arrived. There was a great deal of camp sites for those spending a more sensible stay. For those just popping in and out, like we were, there was ample parking at the Eco-Centre, or not enough, depending on your perspective; there was room when we arrived, far less when we left, but people were coming and going all the time.

The next day we headed South. We drove to Fredericton and had lunch in a coffeehouse, browsed some shops downtown, and checked out a craft show in the park. We did not venture further than the historic district around City Hall and what remained of the old fort. Neither of us bought anything. The stores were frightfully expensive, the men’s shops specializing in Hugo Boss and the like. We really didn’t do much in Fredericton but enjoyed seeing it. It’s a neat, well-kept grid, nestled in a bend of the Fredericton River, slightly lower to the ground than Charlottetown was. We ought to have toured the fort. We ought to have found out more about what the area had to offer, but we had it in mind to see much of New Brunswick’s south shore, so time was short, the drive long, and that did not make for much time anywhere. A pity. It cheats a vacation, driving too much, shopping too long, rushing from place to place and not actually experiencing any of them fully.

We jumped back in the car and followed the scenic highway form the Capital to St. John, following the St. John River through rolling hills, the road cut from the side of one. Radio was spotty, the satellite reception cutting out often. Much like most roads we toured, tall, treed cliffs rose to one side of us, deep steep cliffs plunged down to the river to the other side, both sides littered with homes and cottages and a few farms where space and grade allowed. From what we could see, the far bank was much the same as the one we followed.

St. John was taller than Fredericton, stories taller, far larger too from the look of it, and probably larger still once before, judging by the abundance of empty buildings and lack of upkeep we saw on the windows of the upper floors. A port, it looked like it might have had shipyards, once. It’s steep too, much like Halifax and San Francisco, its streets cut tiers on what looked an impossibly steep rise for buildings. I expected the buildings to begin to slide, crashing into one another on their race down into the Bay of Fundy. Aside from that, it reminded me of North Bay. Something like a shad fly had risen up from the waters to flit about and cover just about everything. The air was filled with them, if not thick with them. But we weren’t there at night, either.

We parked up the hill alongside King’s Park, walked down to the pier, then back up where we ate seafood and pasta at Billy’s Seafood Market, next to the park. I was thrilled to see a framed signed caricature on the wall by Ernie Coombes, Mr. Dress-up.

Leaving St. John was stressful. The day had grown short, the sun was sinking low to the horizon, the light a lustrous gold. The byways were a tangle of confusion to the uninitiated, twisting about like in Ottawa and Toronto. Should you miss your exit, it might take some navigating to find your way back the way you came or to the next outlet. We did not navigate well. It took some false starts before we stumbled on the right path and began our lengthy drive back to Moncton, most of it in the dark.
St. John appeared poor once we left the central hub. The buildings were in general disrepair and looked altogether slum-like. And the sun was failing. I had no wish to be lost in it when I could not see where I was going, the roads a confusion of streetlights and hard to read signs.

I exhaled a long sigh of relief when I found myself on a straight byway, multiple lanes guiding traffic north of the city. I was happier still when I saw my first sign informing me the distance to Moncton.
We had a flight the next day, and I was worried that we’d be driving round and round St. John for the better part on an hour before finding our way out.

It felt that way, but it couldn’t have been more than 15 or 20 minutes.

We arrived. We repacked. We finished what little alcohol we had left and went to bed, anticipating home.