A railroad in search of a country (Canada 2022)

[kileskus]

The Ocean

The Ocean services the Montréal-Halifax route, with major stops in New Brunswick. The whole journey takes 22 hours. Economy class means sleeping in seats, though you can also nab a bench in the bistro car to use as a bed. I found economy to be pretty full even during the off season because of the number of Nova Scotians/New Brunswickers who work and study in Ontario and Québec.

There's a sleeper class option with a cabin for two and meals included. The cabin is about 2 m x 1.4 m and has a private toilet, some with showers.




The seats fold down to form the lower bunk.

Each carriage has an attendant who will help you unfold and stow the beds and who you can ask questions of and have a good chat with. I've found the service on VIA to be great in general, but in sleeper class it has a nicer, more personal touch.

Meals are included and the dishes are usually made with local ingredients, and with local wines to pair with.

One of the dinner menus. (Pier 21 is an iconic part of Halifax and is where many immigrants arrived in Canada.) The meals had three courses and the dishes were well presented and service attentive, so I think even if you take economy it's well worth it to pay $19 to have a meal in the dining car.

Breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages and mushroom


Breaded chicken breast with cranberry sauce

If you're travelling with someone else you can usually get a table for the two of you, but if you're travelling alone you might be put at a table with other solo travellers for lunch or dinner. Atlantic Canadians tend to be really friendly though and I had a good time with my dinner-mates.

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Unlike the Canadian, the Ocean doesn't have an observation car. They used to have one at the end of the train. A few years ago, the lease for the turning loop at Halifax Port expired and a new agreement could not be reached, so VIA no longer has the ability to turn the trains around. Without that, after arriving in Halifax the last car of the east-bound train has the control car of the west-bound train attached to it so that the train can return without having to do a loop. I’m told that because of this the observation car could no longer be used, though why they can’t have the observation car in the middle of the train like in the Canadian I don’t know.

Nevertheless, one can still get some good views from the windows, though in winter it's often dark when the more scenic parts of New Brunswick come into view.


The Baie des Chaleurs - the pic quality is atrocious, but this is definitely worth getting up early for on the eastbound service, from an hour or two before reaching Campbellton.


Miramichi, a city in New Brunswick known for being a former Mi'kmaq (the main First Nations tribe of Atlantic Canada) settlement and an Acadian holdout. The Acadians were Frenchmen who had settled in Atlantic Canada independent of the French who would later become the Quebeckers. They remained neutral during the fighting between the English and the French/Quebeckers in the 18th century but were nevertheless seen as a threat to the English and were deported to places like New England, Louisiana, and Liberia.

There's an Acadian museum in Moncton where you can learn more about them and see the original Acadian flag. Moncton is another of those cities that came into existence purely for the railway - it was where the machine shops were located for Intercolonial Railway while it operated the Halifax-Quebec line.


The infamous stop/arrêt signs of New Brunswick, which is the only province that is officially bilingual.


Another New Brunswick specialty, fried clams.


A martello tower in Halifax. Halifax was originally a British naval base to establish their territory in Canada and later to fight the French in the North American campaign of the Seven Years' War and the Americans in the War of 1812. Martello towers were built from Halifax to Kingston for defence during the War of 1812.

The Ocean is well worth taking if you're in eastern Canada, but I think definitely rent a car and have a drive around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as there is so much of those provinces to see outside of the train route: national parks, landmarks (e.g. NB's covered bridges, NS's lighthouses), military history, First Nations and Acadian culture. I lost most of my photos from those provinces so won't say much more. Next post will be some miscellaneous pics/stories about Québec to wrap up this thread.

 

[kileskus]

Québec with a whack of Canadian history

From New Brunswick I hopped on a coach to the Gaspé Peninsula of eastern Québec. The peninsula is often called "the birthplace of Canada" as it's where Jacques Cartier first arrived to claim the land for France in 1534. He erected a now-lost wooden cross there, and there's a granite cross in the city of Gaspé that commemorates his landing.



The peninsula is beautiful, especially in the spring/fall. There are four national parks

Forillon national park

There are also many craft beers from the Gaspé region, my favourite being one that adds sea salt from the bay, as well as fromageries. I think one could take a road trip all around Québec just to try the beers and cheese curds (and poutine) of each region.

From Gaspé I backtracked to New Brunswick to take the Ocean to Québec City. I stopped by a town called Rivière-du-Loup, located on the fertile southern shore of the St Lawrence river.

If you haven't lived in Québec, you likely have never heard of Rivière-du-Loup. It is an unassuming town in a beautiful part of the province, sitting at a confluence of rivers and ecosystems.



This is the story as I understand it: the need arose to transport goods from the resource-rich eastern Québec to Halifax's port. Rivière-du-Loup was chosen as the start point because of its location. The land proved difficult but they persevered, partly also to provide transport for the wealthy English sportsmen who were enamoured with the rapids and the forests of the region. They set up machine shops halfway between RDL and Halifax and called the settlement Moncton.

There was, at that time, another railway operated by a different company that linked the military cities of Toronto, Montréal, and Québec City to the US for trade. As the British grew to fear the independent United States, with its sizeable army and raiding Irish nationalists, it was decided to bypass the US and link those cities to colonial Halifax. So that company extended its line to Rivière-du-Loup to meet the Halifax line.


Then, when furs, timber and wheat were found in the untamed west, those resources also needed to be sent to the eastern ports, and industrious but penniless Europeans would be shipped over to work the land. So they extended the iron ribbon westward from Toronto. They put Winnipeg on the map, housed their workers in a place they would call Saskatoon, and brought Vancouver to the world before Vancouver built its own port. The railroad found its country.


Thanks for reading.

 

[love_the_life]

Thanks for such an interesting TR - we have not managed Canada yet, keep finding other places, but as we love train travel (sleeper only for anything overnight though), trains are high on our list for this country. Love the spectacular photos too.

 

[jastel]

Thanks for the info. I leave in a couple of weeks. Will probably be getting on a train somewhere over there.