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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
