Tag Archives: Canadian National Railways

Sunday 23rd October 2022 – DAY FOUR …

… of my enforced hibernation and I’ve actually made it out of the house.

And even as we speak, I am hurtling through the night and the Canadian Maritime Forest somewhere in between Miramichi and Bathurst. Well, not exactly “hurtling” because the speed of this train is, shall we say, “disappointing”.

Last night I went to bed early with the idea of having a decent 10-hour sleep but in actual fact I didn’t sleep at all. Not for a minute. I saw every minute of that ten hours and probably much more besides.

When the alarm went off I arose from the bed, did some paperwork and then packed everything ready to go. We had a hot drink and then headed to the bus stop in Florenceville. We arrived early for the bus too – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on one occasion it came early and left me behind.

The drive down to Moncton in the frost was quite uneventful.

There was also quite a lot of fog everywhere this morning as you can tell in this photo taken at the company’s offices in Fredericton.

We stopped there to pick up passengers and the wait meant that we could nip to the bathroom at the petrol station next door.

As it happens, I’m a big fan of these Prevost coaches. They are nice and big and comfortable. Although this one is registered in Nova Scotia you’ll notice that the licence plate says “apportioned”. What that apparently means is that the road tax is shared between Nova Scotia and the other Provinces in which the vehicle operates.

You’ll see that it carries passenger authorisation plates for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Our bus was not actually all that late, which makes a change. But now there’s a four-hour wait for the train, always assuming that it’s on time of course, which is unlikely.

When they opened the check-in, I deposited my suitcase and staggered over to the chemist’s for some medication, and then across the road to Sobey’s for some supplies for the journey. I suppose that I’m going to start eating and I want to have some food when I’m ready.

Waiting here in the waiting room at Moncton station a train suddenly appeared, so I photographed it thinking that it was mine.

However it turned out to be a passing freight train, double-headed with a Canadian National locomotive that I couldn’t identify at the front. If it’s 9551, it’s a GP40-2LW built in 1975.

The second locomotive is 2754 and is in the livery of Citibank’s “Citicorps Railmark Incorporated”, a company that leases railway equipment to various railways, but she was apparently actually purchased by Canadian National earlier this year.

She’s a model ES44AC built by my former employers, General Electric, and a similar locomotive carrying that number was built for the Union Pacific Railroad.

My train pulled up a short time later, double-headed by two locomotives that I was not able to identify. She was only 20 minutes late, which is something of a record,

As you can see, the train went past the station and then reversed in to the platform which seemed to me like a strange way to do things but it obviously works for them.

Once it was in at the platform we had to walk almost the whole length of the train to the carriage that was apparently allocated to us

For a change, I’m in the modern part of the train. It might be much better fitted out but it’s not as comfortable which is rather bizarre.

So off we went with me coughing all the way, and I’ve eaten a banana and a lump of baguette, the first food that I’ve had for 72 hours. So now I’m going to settle down and try to sleep. Surely I can’t go 48 hours without any sleep at all?

Sunday 2nd October 2022 – AS I TYPE …

… these notes I’m sitting in a train that’s rocketing eastwards along the south bank of the St Lawrence River.

For reasons that only they will know and, if the rest of us were to know them, we still wouldn’t understand them, CoachAtlantic has taken off the service that runs between Moncton and Rivière du Loup.

Back in the old days, I would catch the “Orleans Express” bus from Montreal to Gaspé, alight at Rivière du Loup and await 90 minutes for a bus to come in from Moncton and turn round. But that’s no longer possible.

What I’m having to do now is to catch a train that goes to Halifax, alight at Moncton and wait three hours for a bus to take me back north-west. It’s like travelling 270° of a circle and what started off as a journey of about 9 or 10 hours has now become a journey of 26 hours.

Any British person who is complaining about the effects of Dr Beeching on the British railway network would have apoplexy if ever he were to examine the Canadian railway network. There is only one passenger train east of Québec in the whole country and I’m on it. There is absolutely nothing else. And although I paid for four nights in my hotel I only ended up staying for three because this train only runs a couple of days per week.

And that’s the Canadian National Railway. The whole of the Canadian Pacific network east of Québec, freight as well as passengers, has been ruthlessly hacked off, every inch of it. There’s a railway station right at the back of Rachel and Darren’s mill but that hasn’t seen a train since 1982.

And that’s why you’ll see a lot of “misinformation” about “The First Transcontinental Train” going from Montreal to Vancouver. In its embarrassment, Canadian Pacific is trying its best to shove under the carpet the fact that it had at one time a huge network in the Maritime Provinces.

And if anyone is wondering why I’m not flying, I’m refusing flat-out to pay … gulp … $1335 for me and my baggage.

If you don’t have a car in Canada, you are really in some extreme kind of difficulty and for that reason I’m seriously thinking of selling Strider and going back to hiring a vehicle at the airport. I can’t do this kind of journey again under any circumstances.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I was wide-awake, and in total agony by the way, at 06:30 and I went off to have my medication.

And having dealt with that I could get on with what I had to do. And while I was doing it, I was sitting with my right foot in a bucket of ice-cold water. I have to do something to try to improve my foot.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I was going away with a girl but first of all I had to go back to the office to pick up my car, the beige MkIV that we had. When I arrived there, parked outside was the chocolate brown one with Nerina sitting in it. I had to basically chivvy her up out of the car so that I could get in and take it away with me as I had a ferry arranged for later that night. She said that I couldn’t go yet as there was a problem with a couple of the cars. The beige one had just quite suddenly cut out. She did say what was up with the second. The way that she described it, it was simply a wire off the beige one that I could fix in a matter of seconds. Then she said that one of the drivers had all the wages. I asked “which driver?” so she gave me a name but I didn’t recognise that driver. I asked about the rest and she said that it was in our lock-up. I thought that I’d better go and collect that. She said “you’ll need to go quickly before they go and fetch it”. I set off but I had to go back and ask where the lock-up was. She told me then I had to go back to ask which lock-up it was. I could see this lasting for hours, not finding the money, not fixing the car, not going away.

Later on, Mrs Ukraine was asking me why I was so interested in the fate of refugees in France. I explained briefly to her the story of my mother as a child being evacuated with 10 minutes notice to go to live with strangers. I told her all that story. Then I was on patrol with the Ukrainian Army but in France. They had found the coast and were making more of it. A helicopter then flew in. The first thing that it did was to winch out my brother. I imagined that I’d be next but it looked as if someone else was preparing to go, a woman. In the meantime my brother and two people were standing on a cloud playing football. As other people started to be winched in one of the guys came up to me to say that he needed a cannon. They had to make certain what it was that he actually wanted. It turned out to be a self-propelled armoured vehicle with something bigger than an 0.762mm machine gun. I said that I’d try to see what I could find for them and started thinking in my head about people I knew who might actually have that kind of equipment and I’d go along and negotiate it out of them.

As for the story about my mother, regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall having seen a photo of where my mother lived as a child. It’s a small terraced house at the side of the road in Birchington in Kent, about 200 yards away from the end of the runway of Manston Airfield which was a major RAF base. At the fall of France and the first stick of Luftwaffe bombs dropping on the airfield, all of the children in the vicinity, my mother and her younger sister included, were rounded up with 10 minutes notice, put on a train and evacuated. My mother and my aunt ended up living in Somerset with people whom they didn’t know and had never met, with just one small suitcase each. Listening to my mother’s stories, what happened to them must have been an appalling nightmare for little kids like them and as a result I have a great deal of empathy for anyone else fleeing from their homes under a stick of bombs, no matter who they are and where they are.

Another thing that I did was to have a shower and to clean myself up ready to leave, and then to tidy up my room. And in many senses I’m sorry to leave this place. It’s much smaller than the place where I stay in Leuven but it’s much more modern and better-equipped. Had I been more mobile this place would have been pretty high up on my list of places to stay but the stairs killed me off.

My foot had gone down somewhat and it was easier to walk about. Putting on my elastic stocking made it go down a little more and although it was still difficult to put on my shoe, I was able to move around a little better than I did yesterday and that was a relief.

On my way to the station I stopped for a quick snack before getting on the Metro. It’s as well to have some food before leaving because I’m not sure what the arrangements for food will be on the train. There is a restaurant car on board but whether there will be anything that I can eat, or whether I can actually afford it anyway if there is, are interesting questions.

At the station I had to check in my suitcase witn STRAWBERRY MOOSE on board and then wait for boarding. I declared myself as in need of assistance so someone accompanied me down the escalator – It’s a long, steep drop to the bottom if I fall.

We’ve SEEN VIARAIL TRAINS BEFORE when we were in Halifax and they seemed to be are absolutely ancient and in poor state of repair.

These days, nothing much seems to have changed. And that’s not all. The interiors are like something out of the 1960s, all leather and chrome, but it looks to be supremely comfortable.

Having had assistance to board, I was one of the first to find a seat. The train ended up to be crowded although I was one of the lucky few who didn’t have a neighbour. Mind you, someone is sitting right behind me with a couple of toddlers by which time it was too late to change seats. It’s going to be a long, noisy night.

After what seemed like for ever, our train pulled out slowly from the railway station and we eventually found ourselves out in the open air.

It was going dark quite quickly and as the train looped round to the south to cross over the St Lawrence there was a really nice view of the city with all of the buildings illuminated.

We aren’t exactly in a hurry. It’s not what you call high-speed travel. In Europe this kind of pace would be embarrassing. It’s going to be a very long journey, I reckon, but at least I was right about the seats. They are comfortable and I have two to myself so I can spread out.

Something else that I can tell you about Viarail and the Canadian National railway network, such as it is, is that passenger trains have a very low priority. By the time we’d gone an hour out of Montreal, already we’d ground to a halt twice to give precedence to freight trains.

Having now had a coffee, I’m going to settle down while it’s quiet. I’ll probably be awoken a dozen times during the night so I need to take advantage of whatever quiet I can find.

Friday 30th September 2022 – OUCH!

That was painful. I’ve just come back from an afternoon out where despite having a broken kneecap I’ve walked an agonising 116% of my daily total today.

At least last night I’d had a good sleep. This is one of the most comfortable beds in which I’ve ever slept and I really would have enjoyed it even more had I not left the alarm to ring at 07:30 this morning i.e. just 3 or so hours after I went to bed.

However no danger whatsoever of me leaving the bed at that time. Even 11:48, or 05:48 around here when I finally did surface was probably an exaggeration.

After the medication I updated the blog so you can now find out where I went yesterday and then I went for a shower and a clothes-washing.

And I forgot all about the phenomenon of “Québec Showers”.

“What are “Québec Showers”?” I hear new readers ask.
Regular readers of this rubbish will know all about “Québec Showers”. That’s where you see C and F on the taps and you think that they mean Chaud and Froid but they actually mean “Cold” and “Freezing”.

Actually, despite the foregoing, the shower is quite nice. It washed me and my clothes a treat.

Another thing that I’d done was to send a few messages to various people and as a result I went out at 11:40.

The last time that we were here in the rue St Herbert there was a big hole in the ground just down the road from the hotel – the brick-built building to the left – where I usually stay.

When we wandered past this morning we noticed that a huge tower block of apartments had mushroomed up to fill the hole and by the looks of things everyone has already moved in. It didn’t take them long to throw it up.

It’s probably a quite popular, and quite expensive place right across the road from the Berri-UQAM metro station.

Down at the Metro station at Berri-UQAM I met Dorothée. She was a young girl whom I met in New Brunswick while she was on a school exchange and we kept in touch. She’s now studying at the University of Montreal and so she nipped out in her lunch break to meet me.

We had a lengthy chat that went on for two hours, chatting all about old times and so on, and then she had to leave for a lecture.

After Dorothée left to go back to University I went to sit outside in the sun for an hour. At least I have some nice weather for it.

The crowds are out today loitering around in the place Emilie Gamelin making the most of the good weather before the leaves turn golden and begin to drop off.

And who was Emilie Gamelin when she was at home, if she ever was?

She was the founder of the Sœurs de la Providence de Montréal, one of the many religious orders that existed in Québec. She contracted cholera during the epidemic of 1851 and died shortly afterwards.

Once I’d recovered from my exertions I made my way to the Gare Berri-UQAM and caught the Metro to Place d’Armes for a wander around the square and the cathedral.

The cathedral was built in the 1820s to the design of James O’Donnell but since then has been amended considerably. The two towers, for example, were designed by John Ostell and were erected in the early 1840s.

Since then further alterations have taken place and a programme of restoration began in 1979 following an arson attack the previous year.

Before the basilique was erected there was an earlier church on the site of what is now the Place d’Armes that was demolished in 1830.

The Place d’Armes is now the home of Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, one of the founders of Montréal, or Ville-Marie as it was known back in his day.

He comes from the region of Troyes in France and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on one of our visits to the town we went to have a look AT HIS FAMILY HOME.

The site of VIlle-Marie was established after several confrontations with the First-Nation tribes.

Both Cartier and Champlain encountered settlements of Iroquois in the immediate area and once the first colonists arrived here in 1642 they attempted to push out the Iroquois.

On 30th March 1644 there was a confrontation in the immediate vicinity between a party of settlers and a band of Iroquois that ended inconclusively.

Although the war with the First nations raged on for another 50-odd years this confrontation is considered by some to be the decisive moment in the establishment of the European settlement of Ville-Marie.

Of course, these days times have changed.

European exploitation and mistreatment of autochtone inhabitants is being rightly recognised for what it was and the rights of the autochtones to defend their land, their settlements and their way of life are being rightly recognised as the heroic struggle that it was.

For that reason, the placing of a plaque to acknowledge that is long overdue and I’m surprised to see that we had to wait until 2019 to see it.

It’s not of course the first time that we’ve seen something similar.

When we were at the Little Big Horn battlefield we encountered memorial stones to the native Americans who “died defending the Lakota way of life” and when I finish editing all of the photos YOU’LL SEE THEM.

As well as that, when we were in Santa Fe we saw a plaque that spoke in extremely dismissive, if not offensive terms of the native Americans, with an explanatory and apologetic plaque attached at its side.

Times indeed are a-changin’

Despite all of the times that i’ve come to Montréal I’ve never managed to take a decent photograph of Le Vieux Séminaire De Saint-Sulpice

There has always been scaffolding around it, or lorries parked in front of it, or pedestrians who won’t get out of the way, and today is no exception.

It’s important to take a photo of it because it is said to be the oldest surviving building in Montréal, dating from the 1680s and the members of the Sulpician Order took up occupancy in 1685.

There’s said to be some very historic archives in there with records going back to the 16th Century and how I would love to lose myself inside there for a couple of days.

From the Place d’Armes I went for a wander through the old town down to the old part of the port to see what’s going on.

There aren’t very many commercial freighters that use the old part of the port these days and the freight facilities are pretty much derelict. Instead they’ve constructed a huge modern cruise ship terminal and we’ve seen plenty of cruise ships in here in the past.

And there’s another cruise ship in there today. I’ll have to go for a wander to see who she is and what she’s doing here.

You can see what I mean about the cruise terminal.

It looked quite a tempting sight for me to go to visit but there were quite a few security guards loitering around who wouldn’t let anyone past who didn’t have a boarding card. They didn’t seem to welcome anyone who might be seen as a potential stowaway .

But it does hold a special fascination for me because it was probably somewhere around here that my great grandparents first set foot ashore in Canada when they emigrated from here after my great grandfather’s military service ended.

So it looks as if we have two for the price of one here.

Firstly, let’s mention the oil tanker that’s here fuelling up the cruise ship. She’s called Juno Marie.

She was built in 2004 and displaces about 2000 tonnes. That’s not very much but she presumably just runs around the port fuelling up the ships that call in here.

We’ve seen her before, in AUGUST 2018 in fact when we were passing through Montreal on the way to the Arctic, when she was also fuelling up a cruise ship that was calling here.

As for the cruise ship herself, she’s called Amera

She was built in 1988, displaces about 35,000 tonnes and carries a total of 835 passengers and 440 crew.

A week ago she was at St Anthony and then St John’s in Newfoundland and since then she’s been sailing up the St Lawrence River, having done a lap around the Saguenay Fjord at one point with a port of call at a small town called Port Alfred.

She arrived here in Montreal earlier this afternoon.

In the meantime, having seen Juno Marie just now coiling in her pipes and setting sail out of the berth she’s now heading off downriver.

What I imagine that she’s doing is going to the storage tanks at the port to fuel up ready for her next client. She’s the kind of ship that’s being kept busy.

The crane on her deck will probably be for swinging the hose out to the ship that she would be fuelling. Modern fuelling hoses are reinforced these days and would be quite heavy.

Amera is not the only cruise ship in port this afternoon.

This one is Viking Star who is basically following in the footsteps, or, more appropriately, the wake of Amera, although she put in at Sydney on Cape Breton Island last week on her way around.

Launched in 2014, she is the flagship of the Viking Line. Displacing 48,000 tonnes, she can carry 902 passengers and 602 crew

Her relatively compact size means that she can fit into some ports into which other cruise ships can’t fit, although the town of Bourne in Massachussetts will certainly have one or two remarks to make about that.

Another ship that’s in port today is the VM S Hercules

She’s described as a floating crane and is owned by the St Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation. Believe it or not, she was actually built in 1961 by Marine Industries of Sorel, just down the river, and displaces 2100 tonnes

She’s not actually a ship, in the general way of things. She’s more like a large floating pontoon with an enormous crane on top so she’s probably used for maintenance and recovery rather than for unloading freighters that arrive in port.

If you had come here 50 years ago the waterfront scene would have been completely different.

All along the port would have been grain silos like these, dozens of them. All of the grain from the Great Plains would have arrived here and been stored in the silos ready to be shipped to Europe.

However in 1959 the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway has permitted larger ships to sail further inland via the Great Lakes

As well as that, with there being a railway line between Winnipeg and Churchill on the shore of the Hudson Bay, because of global warming the Bay is ice-free long enough for the grain to be shipped out of Churchill. Because of the curvature of the earth, it’s a much shorter and less-complicated route to Europe.

One thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall as a common feature is photographs of people taking photographs.

And, not to be out-done, this afternoon down at the old port we come across not one or two but probably a whole dozen people here down in the port taking photographs of a young lady.

It goes without saying that seeing everyone here, I couldn’t resist taking a photograph of them all myself.

There’s no doubt and judging by all of the equipment that the photographers have, cameras as well as lighting equipment, it looks very much as if I’ve stumbled upon some kind of outdoor photography class.

That much seems to be evident by all of the photographers standing around exchanging information about settings and apertures and the like.

Usually, most photographers guard their settings quite jealously. They are very persoonal and it’s quite oftten the difference between half an aperture or a tenth of a second that can transform a good photograph into a great one

As far as I could tell, in my mind that she’s a professional model being moved around as her photographers think fit.

But whoever the model is, she doesn’t look all that comfortable sitting there on the back of that bench. However the model seems to be enjoying herself, being the centre of attention with all of those guys around her. And who can blame her?

Had there been a pause in the session I’d have gone to have a chat with her but as they were all so busy and I was pushed for time I left them to it and wandered away.

Pushed for time indeed.

As you might expect with a working port and a very large country to service, there’s a thriving network around here and it’s connected to the railway network at each end of the docks.

And having heard the rhythmic clanking of the bell at the level crossing that told me that there was a train on its way.

It’s a double-headed train with two locomotives. That tells us IF OUR OBSERVATIONS IN WYOMING In 2002 are anything to go by, that it’s half a mile long.

The locomotive at the head of the train is painted in Canadian National Railway colours and is numbered 4135

That tells us that she was built by the Electro-Motive Diesel Company or EMD, a subsibuary (at least, in 2022 because the company changes hands often) of the Caterpillar equipment company

She’s a GP-9, or the ninth version of their general-purpose locomotives and was built as long ago as December 1957

Her actual designation is that she’s a GP9RM, the RM indicating that at some point in the past she’s been rebuilt and so no longer complies with the manufacturer’s specifications. Not that that’s a surprise for a locomotive that’s almost as old as I am.

As for exactly how she’s been rebuilt, that’s impossible for anyone really to say. Someone who seems to know what he’s talking about tells me that “no two rebuild programs were identical”.

The one behind is a much more modern locomotive, at least by Canadian standards.

She’s another EMD machine, this time a GP38-2 version, built between 1972 and 1986.

She’s currently wearing the livery of GATX, the General American Transport Company founded in Chicago in 1898 to lease railway wagons to rail shipment companies.

Since then the company has branched out into the leasing of locomotives and other railway equipment.

Unfortunately I can’t tell you too much about her. The company doesn’t tell us too much about the history of its locomotives.

There doesn’t seem to be too much information about her by reference to the fleet number either. It’s quite possible that she’s been renumbered at some point in her history

At the rear of the train is a caboose in which the guard sits.

In Europe it would be called a guard’s van and a caboose would probably be known as the offspring of a Native American woman.

One of the purposes of the guard’s presence is to keep an eye on the level crossings to make sure that no vehicle or pedestrian tries to force a passage across in front of the oncoming train. Traffic control along here isn’t very efficient.

Here’s something that we’ve been noticing as we’ve been coming here in the late summer over the years

The big wheel has become something of a major attraction here in the port since its erection in 2017 to celebrate the 375th anniversary of the founding of the city.

It’s 60 metres high, has 24 cabins and cost $28 million, which was apparently financed by a group of private investors. It operates all through the year thanks to its heating system and resistance to strong winds, and can carry a fulll load of 336 people.

Another attraction here in the port of Montreal is the Tyrolean Zip wire.

It’s the longest urban zipline in Canada apparently at 365 metres and is 25 metres from the ground.

Something that is unusual as far as any European in concerned is to see an upper weight limit on equipment such as this. It’s something that wouldn’t usually concern anyone but, I suppose, being situated close to the border with the USA, it’s of some kind of importance.

On the way down to the port I came by the Marché Bonsecours.

The site itself was one of the most important in the city and after the fire in 1833 that destroyed the house of brewer John Molson that was situated here the municipality bought it.

From 1844-1847 the present building was erected here as a market to the designs of William Footner to replace the older Marché St Anne.

Following the riots that led to the burning down of the Parliament building in 1849 the delegates met here for a while and once another Parliament building was inaugurated the Municipal council met here until 1878.

Today, it’s now a commercial centre with boutique-type shops and cafes.

It’s also used as a space for exhibitions of art and the like, and rooms are available for hire by the public.

It’s really very hard to believe that a building such as this was at one time left derelict and in 1963 there was even a proposal for its demolition. But as we’ve seen so many times in North America, there doesn’t seem to be the same pride in the patrimony as in other parts of the world.

So abandoning another good rant for the moment, I’m going to wander down to the waterfront.

We’ve seen this building many times in the past. It’s the Memorial Clock Tower, one of the typical symbols of Montreal and is a monument or memorial to the Canadan sailors who lost their lives during World War I

The tower was designed by Paul Leclaire and was built between 1919 and 1922. The mechanism is based on the mechanism that works Big Ben in London.

You wouldn’t have had this view of it in 1922 though. As I mentioned elsewhere, the Port of Montreal was formerly one of the leading grain exporting ports and the area in front of the tower where you can see all the trees was formerly the site of yet more grain sheds.

While I was busily admiring the Memorial Clock Tower, I noticed a ship coming upriver so I decided to loiter around to see who she might be.

The ship to the left is hidden by a wharf so I can’t see her name and by the time I’d checked on my maritime radar she had left, but the one heading my way is called Oceanex Connaigra

You can tell by the writing on the hull that she’s owned by the Oceanex company.

When I returned to my hotel I had a quick look to see what I could find out about the company.

It’s based in St John’s in Newfoundland and its mission statement is to provide transportation services between the Atlantic coast of North America and Newfoundland and Labrador, from whole shiploads to individual vehicles

It’s been carrying on this business in one form or another since 1909

As for the ship herself, she was built in 2013 in Germany

She displaces 26,000 tonnes, is 210 metres long and has a draught of 8.45 metres. She cost the company $108 000 000 to purchase. The company chairman told me that to fuel her up would cost $1 800 000 and that was a long time ago too. God knows what it would cost now.

According to the records of the maritime radar, she seems to operate a shuttle service between St John’s and Montreal.

What caught my eye about her was the fact that she can transport “individual vehicles”.

And so as she sailed past I was expecting to see that she had some kind of Ro-Ro configuration, and I was rather interested to see that she does have that capability.

But what I found even more interesting is that she is licenced to carry 27 passengers too. Are you thinking what i’m thinking? I shall have to go and sweep the dust off Strider.

On the way back to my hotel I went past the site of the Gare Dalhousie

It’s a national monument because, as a plaque on the side of the wall proudly proclaims, "the first regular transcontinental train departed from this place 28th June 1886".

However, that’s a complete and absolute fabrication, as several million people who live in Canada will tell you.

The train left here on that date and headed for Port Moody which is on the Pacific coast. There is another 1250 kilometres that separates Montreal from Halifax on the Atlantic coast and this “first regular transcontinental train” didn’t cover a single kilometre of that distance.

But then again, the people of the Maritime Provinces of Canada are quite used to being totally ignored by anyone further west and so this is absolutely no surprise whatsoever. Nevertheless, it is pretty shameful

The train, and the railway station were run by the Canadian Pacific railway so it seems to be absolutely appropriate that it later came to be the home of the National Circus School. Clowns a-plenty, I should imagine.

At one time the Canadian Pacific had quite an extensive network of lines in the Maritimes but practically overnight in the 1980s the company wiped it out entirely. Maybe the statement on the plaque is Canadian Pacific’s way of trying to hide its embarrassment.

Just down the road from the Gare Dalhousie is my favourite building in the whole of Montreal – the Gare Viger.

Gare Dalhousie only lasted as a passenger terminus until 1898. The Gare Viger, designed by Bruce Price was opened as a railway station, railway offices and hotel.

The hotel closed in 1935 and the rooms were taken over by part of the administration of the city who stayed here until 2006, having bought out the rest of the building when the Canadian Pacific ceased operations from here in 1951.

When we first came past here in 2010 it was boarded up and derelict. We’ve been slowly watching the renovations take place and much of it now is let as offices. But there’s still a lot to do with the building if it’s to be restored to its former glory.

A very slow, very agonising (and I do mean “slow and agonising”) walk brought me all the way back to Berri-UQAM – a walk that would usually take me about 15 minutes but today took me about an hour – and I caught a metro train back to Cote-Vertu.

When I’d been there yesterday I’d seen a pizza place that sold pizza by the topping so I chose one that didn’t include cheese. And it really was delicious.

There’s a fruit wholesaler there as well so I stocked up with grapes and bananas

On the way back I was feeling rather better and I moved a little easier. The climb up the stairs was ever so slightly easier but they had changed the code on the front door here and it was quite an effort to persuade someone to open the door for me.

Once inside I had a listen to the dictaphone. We were discussing one of my father’s old vans last night. When we were kids we had a Bedford Utilabrake, CA Bedford and had it for a couple of years. It was as rotten as hell and it went on its way eventually. We were chatting about it last night and much of that which we discussed we talked was actually quite accurate which was a big surprise

So having written up my notes I’ll go to bed. I’ll add in the photos at some other date – there are over 35 photos from today’s walk to edit and sort.

But a good sleep in the comfortable bed will do me good – no alarm until late and sweet dreams (I hope).

So who’s going to disturb me first then.

Sunday 9th October 2016 – AND SO THIS IS IT!

My last day in Canada on this trip. And for all I know, my last day ever in Canada. The way my health is going, I shall be hard-pushed to make it back.

But just for a change just recently, I had a good night’s sleep! In bed reasonably early, and out like a light. One trip down the corridor but apart from that it was totally painless until the alarm went off at 06:00. Didn’t feel a thing! My efforts of the last few days have worn me out as you know, and so a good sleep was an essential.

I was rather late for breakfast though and there was quite a crowd. But coffee, orange juice and bagels soon had me up and about.

It was a nicer day today too – some blue sky was out there for a change. With it being my last day, and with my flight not leaving until 22:00 I decided to take advantage of the weather to out and about, to say goodbye to the St Lawrence River. Accordingly, I had a little doze for a while, stuck my suitcase in the “left luggage” and then hit the road at 11:00, just in time to leap on board the bus 202 that was going past.

At the Ducollege Metro Station, I made a decision. I’ve been going one at a time to the different Metro Stations at the end of each line to see what was going on, but I’ve never actually been to the end of the line down from past DuCollege.

That Metro Station is the Cote-Vertu and so I headed off there. And this is a photo of the interior of the station, just to prove that I made it here. And you can even see a train down there at the bottom.

Here’s a photo of the exterior too. It’s situated on the corner of the Boulevard de la Cote Vertu and the Boulevard Decarie. The building is the one over there at mid-height on the left margin of the image.

And really, I should have come here ages and ages ago. It semms to be occupied by the Indian community and there’s a couple of very democratic Indian restaurants there, as well as a pizzeria and a falafel place too. I can quite easily find a place to eat here.

There are lots of other shops too, including a wholesale fruit and veg place that sold me a pound of delicious grapes at just $0:99.

Yes, I missed out here at the Cote Vertu.

Down one of the streets off the Boulevard Decarie I noticed a church, and so I went off down there to look at it.

It’s actually the Church of St Laurent, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise seeing as we are actually in the Borough of St Laurent. The church was built in the 1830s, although the facade was not added unti 50 years later.

It’s not the first church on the site. There was one dating from the 1730s and which was significant in being the first church on the island to be built outside the traditional city limits.

The buildings next door to it were even more impressive than the church. This is the Vanier College and is significant in that it’s one of the very few English-language colleges in Quebec, having opened its doors in 1970.

As for the name, that relates to Georges-Phinéas Vanier, who was one of the very few Canadian-born Governor-Generals, and served from 1959 until 1967, much to the chagrin of the Quebecois extremists.

Prior to the college being here, this was the site of the Couvent Notre-Dame-des-Anges – the Convent of Our Lady of the Angels, run by the Soeurs de Sainte-Croix – the Sisters of the Holy Cross – from whom the land was bought.

There was also a women’s college, the Collège Basile-Moreau, on the site. He was, by the way, the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross.

On the way back to the Boulevard Decarie, I stumbled upon a Charity Shop that was actually open. And here I had an enormous stroke of luck.

I’ve written loads of stuff about abandoned railways and the like, mostly from analysis because there seems to be nothing at all in the way of historical research into Canadian railways. It’s not like the UK, where every inch of old railway is faithfully reported and its history thoroughly researched.

But here sitting on the shelves of the Charity Shop was a book entitled Canadian National Railways – Towards the Invitable Volume 2 1896-1922. It’s long out of print but it covers almost all of the lines in which I have an interest, including the ephemeral railway line to Centreville about which I’ve been barking completely up the wrong tree.

And $3:50? You must be joking!

My perambulations brought me all of a sudden to the DuCollege Metro Station. I realised that despite all of the trips that I have made from here, I’ve never actually taken a photo of the exterior of the building.

This is the time to put this right, even though it’s the other entrance that I habitually use. And while I was taking this photo from the park across the road, I was being smiled at by a couple of these religious people with their portable news stand handing out the literature.

I’d never actually looked down the end of the side-street in daylight either, and I’d been wondering why the street was called “DuCollege”. And I dealt with both of those issues while I was here.

There was this beautiful stone building right down the end of the street so I strolled off down there to inspect it. It’s the CEGEP ST Laurent. The Collège d’Enseignement Général et Professionnel is, I suppose, one level below the University system in the same sense that the old Polytechnics were in the UK – that kind of thing

Although some of the education services here date back almost 175 years, the college came into being in 1967 when the CEGEP system was founded. It goes without saying that it is French-speaking.

As for the church next to the CEGEP St Laurent, well, shame as it is to say it, there I was busy taking a photograph of it – after all, it really is beautiful – and then off I wandered back down the street towards the DuCollege Metro Station having forgotten to make a note of its name.

Anyway, it’s actually situated in the Avenue Sainte Croix, although I do realise that this piece of information isn’t going to help anyone very much.

Back at the Metro station, I hopped on board a train and headed into town. Just as far as the Victoria-OACI station, and then walked up the hill towards the Place d’Armes.

As I walked into the Place d’Armes through the crowds, this interesting vehicle pulled up across the square so that the passengers on board could look at the Cathedral and the statue of Paul Cholmedy, the Sieur de Maisonneuve.

It seems to be another one of these amphibious vehicles of the same type that we saw years ago in Halifax and probably does the same job. I can imagine that there’s some kind of factory somewhere in Canada churning out these machines for the tourism industry.

There’s a “Subway” further on down the street and that’s where I was heading. I’ve been wandering around for quite some time and it’s way past lunchtime. My stomach thinks that my throat has been cut.

Down at the docks, we’re in luck. Last day of our journey and we are able to conjure up a “Ship of the Day”.

She’s the Venture, a self-discharging bulk carrier of 30,000 tonnes and built in 2002. She arrived here after some considerable perambulation in the Mediterranean.

The flag that she is flying, and which I didn’t recognise at first, is the flag of the Marshall Islands, a group of islands (one of which is the legendary “Bikini Atoll” of nuclear-testing fame) in the Pacific and said by the United States Atomic Energy Commission to be “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Another claim to fame of the islands is that it probably has more ships than it has inhabitants – a fact probably not unconnected with the islands’ rate of corporation tax of just 3%.

By now the clouds were starting to close in from the south, but the rain was holding off and so I went for a walk along one of the quays.

There must be something up somewhere concerning maritime traffic on the St Lawrence because there was this tug steaming … "dieseling" – ed … up the river. I hadn’t noticed any ship in the vicinity other than the Venture and she didn’t look as if she was preparing for sea, so I wondered where the tug might be going.

Over there on the other side of the dock is the quay where we saw that goelette when I was here in early September. It’s not there now (the ground’s all flat, and beneath it lies the bloke …) though.

In the background over there is the Ile Sainte Hélène and the Biosphere, which was the pavilion of the United States during Expo ’67. It was originally covered by an acrylic sheath but it will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish to learn that this sheath was destroyed in a fire in May 1976.

From my spec on the dock I walked around the quay onto the waterfront. There were hordes of people here, all taking advantage of the afternoon and what sun was still loitering about.

But never mind the people for the moment. What was interesting me was the autumn colours on the trees here in the Vieux Port. They are magnificent. You can see why I love being here in Canada in the autumn – I wouldn’t be anywhere else.

A little further on along, there was a good view down towards the east past the clock tower. This is a war memorial to the sailors of the Merchant Marine who were lost during World War I and was designed as a replica of Big Ben in London.

Further down is the Pont Jacques Cartier – the Jacques Cartier Bridge that spans the river between Montreal and Longueuil, with the modern port area further along behind.

The weather was now deteriorating rapidly as you can tell from the clouds. Scattering a cloud of pigeons, I walked around the docks to the old commercial port.

We’ve talked about the goelettes – the ships that used to run the boat services from Montreal to all of the small towns and villages along the shores of the St Lawrence in the days before the road network.

This was the dock from which they sailed and to which they returned. And all around here back in those days was a kind of market where the people from along the shore who had brought their produce down in the goelettes would set up their stalls to sell their produce.

Feeling the strain again by now I repaired to the old Marché Bonaventure. This has now been restored and occupied by all of these trendy boutiques. But down at the far end is a café where there are some comfy chairs and, surprisingly, coffee on sale at a very democratic price.

A comfy sofa was free so I installed myself there, drank my coffee and read my new book for a while. When I find my strength again, I can move on.
About half an hour or so later I hit the road again, retracing my steps to the Place Victoria and the Metro Station.

Right outside, but across the road from the entrance, I stumbled across a television crew filming someone talking into the microphone about something or other. I’ve no idea who he was and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I took the opportunity to take a photo of him.

I always seem to find a camera crew when I’m on my travels in North America, don’t I?

The metro took me back to DuCollege and there I had to wait ages for the bus 202 to take me back to the Comfort Inn. We had the usual unavoidable performance of persuading the driver to drop me off by the bridge at the end of the Cote de Liesse where I could cross the motorway (otherwise I have to walk for miles and miles because there’s no official bus stop anywhere near there).

There was an airport shuttle already on the road so I grabbed my suitcase, nipped into the Gentlemen’s rest room, and then back outside for the shuttle and on the way to the airport.

In the shuttle were a couple of people and we ended up discussing the Brexit. Even though many Quebecois have been fighting tooth-and-nail for 50 years for independence, the unanimous opinion of my fellow-travellers was that the British vote for the Brexit was the most stupid thing that they have ever heard.

Quebec has an almost-inexhaustible supply of raw materials and an almost-inexhaustible supply of energy. The UK has no raw materials and all of its energy resources are owned by foreigners (even the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is to be operated by EDF of France).

It has nothing that anyone would ever want and nothing that would be any use in launching a manufacturing industry.

There was quite a queue at the baggage check-in and I had to wait for about half an hour to hand in my suitcase. And this time, they managed not to drop my passport into the conveyor belt.

The food on Air Transat is total rubbish as I have already told you, and there is a “Subway” downstairs. Consequently, I went off and ordered a 12-inch vegetarian without cheese. Just for once, I asked for the bread to be toasted, and I’m wishing now that I hadn’t, for reasons that I will explain in due course.

The final thing that needed to be done concerned my bus ticket. I had bought a three-day one, as you might remember, and there was over 28 hours remaining on it. I intended to give it to anyone who was about to buy one but although I was there for 10 minutes there was no-one approaching the ticket machine.

What I did therefore was to write on it “valable jusqu’a mardi minuit” – “doesn’t expire until Tuesday at midnight” and left it on the machine. Whoever might need it can just help themselves.

The queue through the security was quite small – about 10 minutes to go through. And much to my surprise, not only was it painless but the staff weren’t the usual arrogant unpleasant staff that you normally find at the airport at Montreal.

I hiked off down to the gate, which was right down at the end of the terminal, and installed myself on a seat where there was a power point (and that took some finding too). Feeling hungry, I attacked my Subway sandwich but half of the filling fell out. Having the bread toasted meant that it wasn’t as pliable and so I won’t be doing that again.

At 21:15 we were called onto the aeroplane. it was an Airbus 330, quite new by the looks of things, and I was lucky in having one of the twin seats near the rear.

Once we had all settled in, we hurtled down the runway and launched ourselves off into the air, heading back to Europe. My stay in Canada was over.

I was desolate – this may well have been my last trip across the Atlantic because I won’t ever be in any better health than I am right now. Who knows where I’ll be in 12 months time? “Pushing up the daisies” I mused to myself.

And here you are – 2658 words of my last day in North America. A world-record number of words.

I hope that you all appreciate it. Don’t forget to “like” it

Friday 12th November 2010 – ONE THING …

… that I hate these days is airports.

Or, to be more precise, what is laughingly called “airport security”.

Here at the Lester B Pearson airport in Toronto we had the usual tale of harassment and intimidation. Customer service here at these airports is absolutely appalling and of course the reason for this is simple.

Security in the past in Canada has been a pretty minor affair in a country that rarely attracts any attention from the more wilder parts of the world.

But following the events of September 2001 in the USA when it was discovered that some of the perpetrators had crossed over into the USA from Canada, the Septics have leaned heavily on the Canadians in what can only be described as an export of their national paranoia (for make no mistake – that’s what most Americans are suffering from).

With a security organisation that in the past has been negligible, it’s expanded out of all proportion, far too rapidly for its own good and it’s attracted to its ranks some of the worst elements of humanity.

So here in the Canadian Security Service we have people of the type who would have previously been of a more marginal type, the type that would be overlooked in a crowd and passed by in the street.

But now these people have all been given uniforms and badges and a small amount of power and by Jupiter are they going to show the world just how important they have become and exact a cruel revenge for all of the mistreatment that they believe that they have suffered.

And so with a car hire company that tried to stick an excess mileage charge on me despite my contract being clearly “unlimited mileage” and this new self-service check-in thing that doesn’t seem to save any time at all and the only purpose that it serves is to stress out an even more-stressed out group of passengers, I was one very unhappy and very stressed-out bunny.

It didn’t help matters much with the one-in-twenty people being singled out for the full attention, and the person in front of me was number 19.

Ahh well. You can tell that I’ve been having a bad day, can’t you?

it all started to go wrong almost as soon as I had left the Motel.

You’ll probably enjoy seeing this mock-up of a steam locomotive here, but I didn’t.

I was hoping to see a real steam locomotive, but as you have probably guessed by now without me having to tell you, the museum is closed for the season, isn’t it?

And it’s not practical for me to go clambering over fences as I have done elsewhere, seeing as we are in an urban area close to the US border.

But I can poke my camera through a gap in the fence like you do … "like SOME of you do" – ed … and photograph locomotive 6218, the pride of the museum.

She’s a 4-8-4 “Northern” type, formerly used by the Canadian National and was built in 1942 – not 1948 by the way, as so many people insist.

With having been disappointed at the Railway Museum, I had to go and find something else to do.

And that included this beautiful ephemeral view of Buffalo away across the water slowly emerging from the morning mist.

There’s nothing wrong with an early-morning start when there are views like this to be had.

The area around the River Niagara was fought over, over and over again during the War of 1812 and so it’s no surprise that there are dozens of defensive works all over the place.

When we were on the other side of the river last month we saw some of the American defences.

Today, we are going to look at some of the British defences

We can start by looking at the fort from which the town takes its name.

When Nouvelle France fell to the British at the end of the Seven years War, a series of forts was constructed along the new boundary as supply depots and in a bid to keep the native tribes under control.

Fort Erie was the first one of these to be built.

The one here today isn’t the first fort at Fort Erie. Construction of this one started in 1803

The original fort was much closer to the river but floods and winter storms damaged the fort on a regular basis.

For this reason, the fort was abandoned and the new fort was built on the present site higher up the bank.

Just a quick glance out of the fort will show you the commanding view that there is over the city of Buffalo across the river in the USA

it goes without saying that during the War of Independence and the War of 1812 this fort was going to be one of the hot spots.

During the latter conflict it changed hands on several occasions.

That obelisk there is of much more recent date however.

When the renovations started on the fort as a part of a “make-work” project during the Depression, they uncovered a mass grave of about 100 British soldiers and a few American troops.

They were all re-interred here and the obelisk was erected over the bodies

You may recall from my trip up the other side of the river last month that I ended up wandering through some kind of industrial estate.

No signposts – no nothing. I wasn’t even sure if I was heading in the right direction.

But that’s the place over there. It’s hardly surprising that I was confused as I was driving through it.

I stopped to take a few photographs of the place but it was absolutely astonishing.

Whether the wind was in the right direction I really don’t know, but the noise was absolutely deafening today.

And that’s despite the fact that we are still, according to my reckoning, a good 8 or 10 miles away from the actual falls.

But I did like my view of the city of Niagara Falls over there today.

We were heading for a beautiful day now that the mist was clearing and at that moment the sky was as blue as the river.

And with a really good zoom lens, I could take a good photo from just here and it came out really well.

I’m not going to bore you with a relentless stream of photos of the Falls because you saw them before.

What I can say is that “the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over”.

Mind you, it wasn’t me who said that first. I pinched the quote from Sir Winston Churchill, and his Closing the Ring.

With it being early November and a weekday, there was no trouble finding a place to park.

A handy place where there was an excellent view of the Falls from the end of the street was good enough for me.

It was even free parking today too. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?

Leaving Casey behind me, I went for a walk into town and onto the bridge that connects up the Canadian side to the USA side.

Halfway along the bridge is certainly the best place to appreciate the magnificence that nature can produce znd the clouds of spray just add to the effect.

Shame about the sun, but you can’t have everything of course.

I crossed into the Great Satan (through one of the most painless USA border crossings that I have ever encountered) and went for a walk in the park.

You can see the bridge just there, and you can make out the two border posts – one at either end. The USA one is to the right, the Canada one to the left.

And you can also admire the rainbow too. I thought that it was beautiful. Not for nothing is the bridge known as the Rainbow Bridge

I nipped back into Canada, picked up Casey, nipped over into the USA to fuel up (as I was running low on fuel and it’s cheaper here)and then nipped back into Canada.

Fully refuelled, we carried on northwards along the gorge.

And it made me wonder how many millions of years it had taken for the Falls to carve out all of this?

There are two hydro-electric power plants on the river – one Canadian and one American.

You can’t see the Canadian one – the Sir Adam Beck power plant – because I’m standing on it and there’s nowhere to go on this side of the river to photograph it.

Instead, you’ll have to make do with the American one – the Robert Moses power plant.

It looks fairly new, which indeed it is. The original one that was here, dating from 1886 (and subsequently enlarged) collapsed in 1956.

But from my vantage point up here there’s a brief glimpse of the Sir Adam Beck facilities but also a really good view of the Lewiston-Queenstown bridge.

Queues of lorries up there waiting to cross from Canada into the USA. Commercial traffic is forbidden on the Rainbow Bridge so it all must come over here.

I was tempted to go for a stroll but pedestrians aren’t allowed on there. There is however some kind of shuttle-taxi service, so I was told.

The bridge itself dates from 1962 and was deliberately built as a replica of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls.

It’s the third bridge on (or near) the site. The first bridge was destroyed in a gale in 1854 or 1864, depending on which book you read, and the second – the original “Rainbow Bridge” which was moved here, was deemed insufficient for modern traffic.

The arch is 305 metres long and it’s 113 metres above the height of the river.

Tiptoeing through the vinyards, of which there seem to be an extraordinary number around here, we can catch a glimpse of Lake Ontario in the distance.

On the right of the River Niagara is Fort NIagara, which you may remember us visiting last month.

Today though, we’re staying on the Canadian side of the river and going to visit Niagara-On-The-Lake.

In actual fact, we aren’t going to Niagara-on-the-Lake but just to the outskirts of the town, because it’s here that we are going to find Fort George.

It goes without saying that the Fort was closed to visitors at this time of the year. No prizes there!

But there were a couple of workmen doing some maintenance in there and they had left the gate open.

So Yours Truly took full advantage of that fact – no prizes there either!

And only one glance out of the defences tells you why the fort was built here.

When the British were obliged to leave Fort Niagara and retreat back across the river in 1796, the Americans took control of the fort over there.

It was out of the question that the British would concede dominance of the mouth of the Niagara River and so they built the fort here to overlook the river and to overlook the American-occupied fort.

I’d be very tempted to show you what I mean, but unfortunately the vegetation has come between us.

It would be a really nice idea if the guys from Parks Canada or whoever they are took the opportunity to do a little brush-cutting.

Built in 1802, the Fort fell to the Americans in May 1813 but was recaptured in December of that year.

At the end of the War it was neglected, but this was another national monument, like Fort Erie, that was restored during the “make-work” campaigns of the late 1930s.

Every year since 1984 a re-enactment of the battle of May 1813 has taken place here.

Next stop (I AM being a busy little beaver!) is the entrance to the Welland Canal.

Shipping on the Great Lakes is very important but the Niagara Falls forms an impenetrable barrier.

Several “narrow canals” were built to by-pass the falls but they wouldn’t be much use for ocean-going shipping. Construction of the present canal began in 1913 and was finally completed in 1935

The canal is just over 43 kilometres long, just over 8 metres deep and about 24.5 metres wide.

The rise in the canal is almost 100 metres – handled by 8 huge locks that can take shipping of 225 metres in length.

Eight locks, I said, and about 3,000 ships use the canal every year. That’s about 8 or 9 every day.

It was fully my intention to wait here as long as it took to see a ship go through a lock, even if it was, as I had been expecting, a 50-tonne coal barge, as is my usual luck.

I didn’t have to wait very long either. And when it did come, I well and truly hit the jackpot, as you can see.

One might even say that my ship really had come in, in fact.

Right on cue, steaming … "dieseling" – ed … out of the mist – because there’s a low fog slowly rolling in – came the Perelik – all 13,887 tonnes of her.

The locks can handle a ship that it 24.5 metres wide so they say, but I’m not quite sure how.

The Perelik is a mere 22 metres wide and there’s not enough room down there to slide a feeler gauge, never mind anything substantial

As for her length though, she’s 142 metres and has a draught of 7 metres, and so there’s a reasonable marge de manoeuvre on that score.

As I watched the Perelik go dieseling off on her merry way, I counted myself very fortunate that I’d seen her navigate the locks.

You’d have to wait a long time to see anything much bigger than she try to push its way along the canal. And not only that, there’s uncertainty as to whether the canal might be here much longer.

There are plans afoot to replace the canal with one that can handle even bigger ships, but that’s a project that is continually being cancelled and it probably won’t see the light of day in our lifetimes.

2030 is the latest date for completion, but construction hasn’t even started yet, so I’m not holding my breath.

Back on the road again and round the edge of the lake towards Toronto, and we don’t go far before we come to yet another juddering halt.

What on earth is this in Jordan Harbour?

Chatting to a couple of the locals, they said that they had lived here for 20 years and this ship was there before then, and they didn’t rightly know.

But they were being somewhat economical with the truth because in reality she’s only been here since 1997.

Depending on what you read or who you talk to, she started life in 1914 as a ferry on the St Lawrence or in 1941 as an icebreaker.

She was transformed into a replica of La Grande Hermine – the ship on which Jacques Cartier came to the St Lawrence in 1535 – in 1991 and wa subsequently purchased by a local businessman to convert into a floating restaurant.

He either ran out of money, or died (or both) and the ship sat here while the legatees decided what to do with it, but a “suspicious fire” (and how many of these have we seen on our travels?) in January 2003 put an end to that.

And here she sits today.

So now I need to put my skates on and get moving towards Toronto. And not only now do I have to contend with the rolling fog that’s enveloping just about everything, I’m stuck in a confiture de circulation. It’s rush hour of course.

I fuelled up the car and drove it down to the airport and my series of confrontations with the locals.

But the tourists have the last laugh, as indeed they almost always do.

Here we are on our Boeing 767, seating capacity about 280, and I’ve counted less than 50 people on it. We can all have a row of seats each.

I like to think of myself as a pretty-seasoned traveller and I can withstand the pressure from these people and fight back.

By the look of the empty seats on this aeroplane, others don’t look as if they could be bothered and are talking with their feet

Serves the airlines, the Governments and the Tourist industry right too.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: Canadian National Railways

Sunday 23rd October 2022 – DAY FOUR …

Sunday 2nd October 2022 – AS I TYPE …

Friday 30th September 2022 – OUCH!

Sunday 9th October 2016 – AND SO THIS IS IT!

Friday 12th November 2010 – ONE THING …

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