The Canadian has left the station...

The 'Canadian' is considered Via Rail's premier route and one of the great train journeys of the world. It leaves Toronto at 9am three times a week, skirting lakes in Ontario, journeying through the prairielands of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the Rockies in Alberta before arriving in Vancouver, BC around three days later. Having only purchased a sleeper for the Winnipeg to Churchill side-trip, I decided to do the trip in chunks of around one night each, the first being Toronto - Winnipeg.

The facilities in 'comfort class' echoed those in the luxurious 'silver and blue' class, with a little less of both comfort and class. We had a dining car for meals - food both decent and decently-priced; and a dome car with a glass top which allows for a 360' view of the world rushing (or sometimes, as is the case with Via, creeping) by. Travelling in comfort class, where you stay in your seat as opposed to having a sleeper, you inevitably meet quite a few of your fellow passengers.

And you can generally bank on some colourful characters. Straight up, I was accosted by Mary-Louise (we'll call her ML for the sake of brevity), who was travelling with hubby no. 2, Frank. A self-described 'tough old broad', ML had a penchant for salty, outdated language and grievance-riddled tales. ML and Frank arrived late and were separated on the train, but ML seemed disinclined to swap with anyone offering their seat so she and Frank could be reunited, preferring fresh canvases for her often wayward stories. Frank, meanwhile, seemed happy to nap.

A newcomer at Sudbury placed next to me forced ML's return to Frank. Gerard was a very sweet and self-assured Native kid, who was returning to Sioux Lookout to see his girlfriend and dad, wielding a rose and a present for his 'mother-in-law'; a fabulous painting by his uncle. (The ladies in ear and eyeshot were quite impressed). Gerard watched a bit of 'House MD' with me on my computer at night, then took up three quarters of our seat room with his 'generous' sleeping positions. Maybe this is why I didn't sleep so well on the train, despite the often comforting rocking motions. It was a relief to start to see the sky start to pale against the narrow black shapes of spindly spruce.

At lunch the next day I met the 'spinners', two sprightly ladies from Tassie. They were in North America meeting contacts in the spinning world - a man who carved beautiful spinning wheels in Vermont, people who raised musk-ox for their wool in Alaska. Their love for their craft, and for the animals that provided the means for their craft was obvious, and created a warm burst of good feeling to accompany our lunch.

And all this took place against such beautiful and already-changing scenery - pretty rural farmscapes outside Toronto, the endless spruce and fir forests dotting dark glossy lakes in Ontario, and the mixed forest and sun-warmed rock and grass on the approach to Manitoba quickly flattening into crops and farmland.