Christmas & New Year on the train – part one

That’s me with a porter when my parents and I were travelling on the ‘Canadian’. In the 1950s it was one of the world’s most luxurious trains. We lived in Vancouver and often crossed Canada to visit family in New Brunswick.

Dad would take two double bedrooms connected to create a suite. It really was first class, a train on which one dressed – even I wore a jacket and tie – for dinner. I remember the chief steward greeting my parents by name, escorting us to our places and fresh flowers floating in bowls on the dining car tables. The Canadian was so stylish that Vogue magazine devoted virtually an entire issue to the streamlined pride of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

The picture below – the original came from Canadian Pacific’s archives for one of my television stories – shows the train’s bar. Although obviously posed, it does give a sense of what the Canadian was like more than half a century ago – high heels, furs, cocktails and cigarettes.

For a small boy, the trip was a wonderful lesson, an early introduction to the history, size and variety of my country. I treated the train as a playground, was allowed in those days to wander off, no doubt getting under everybody’s feet until Dad came to administer discipline. I have hugely happy memories of the Canadian.

This past Christmas and New Year, I was supposed to be circling the world on a freighter. Then pirates attacked ‘my’ ship. Alternative plans for the Philippines in December and January fell apart and, unable to book late, I couldn’t accept an invitation for Christmas with friends in Puerto Rico. As so often in the past, kind friends wanted me to join them and the family in Toronto, but I decided not to terrify the grandchildren.

What to do? At the last minute, I was able to single book a double bedroom on the Canadian. I decided to escape Christmas and spend four nights riding out to Vancouver, a night there and four nights back to Toronto.

Union Station on Christmas Eve is very nearly deserted with only one or two trains still to arrive and just the Canadian - Train No. 1 - to depart. I like getting to the station early to savour the journey.

No security check; no passport and immigration; no heaving airports, uncomfortable planes and worrisome connections; no missing luggage. (All this, of course, was in advance of the added complications caused by the attempted attack on the aircraft landing at Detroit.) Just an empty platform and cars – still stylish after more than half a century – again about to cross much of the continent.

In the observation car, seasonal goodies, hot cider, canapés and sparkling wine await sleeping car passengers.

At 2200 the Canadian pulls out under Toronto’s CN Tower. For awhile we watch Christmas lights, then city becomes country, the lights dwindle and most head for their berths.

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Two years ago I was on a tall ship in the South Pacific. Last year I was on the Amazon. This Christmas morning I’m in northern Ontario. Ten passenger cars, one baggage car, two locomotives. Thirty-seven passengers in all. Click on the picture and try to spot the forward dome.

After bacon and eggs, a small - but thoughtful - Christmas present of chocolates and VIA logo stuff, time to reacquaint myself with the train.

First though, here’s my cabin, a room meant for two. Fine for one, but with two you’d have to be very happily married – or desperately in love – to get along for four nights in these tight quarters.

Virtually the same as when I was a boy, although passengers nowadays must wonder about the mysterious small compartment in which you once placed shoes for the porter to shine.

One improvement which I didn't much miss when a child – showers.

Here’s the rear observation car decorated with flashing Christmas lights.

The stairs leading to the dome. With self-service coffee thermoses and now obligatory - although often blindingly obvious - safety notices, not quite as elegant as once. Still, an oasis of restrained calm by comparison with most modern modes of transportation.

Christmas morning in the dome. The couple on the left are from Washington, DC, and the pair on the right from Toronto and off to Vancouver Island to get married.

Below the dome is a bar – the mural lounge, so named for the painting (one of sixteen for sixteen cars). The original paintings, commissioned when the train was launched in the 1950s, were of the national parks after which each rear dome car is named. Eventually, wear, tear and cigarette smoke led to the paintings’ replacement. Smoking isn’t allowed now, but the new paintings – to my mind not half so appropriate – are well protected in sealed frames.

The paintings may be new, but the marvellous, original etched glass remains.

This is part of the coffee shop in the forward dome car.

Dining on the CPR – announced by a waiter with chimes – really was something, right down to the silver finger bowls. VIA’s dining service plumbed gastronomic depths in the 1980s, something I unhappily experienced. However, the standard of catering has vastly improved with emphasis on Canadian regional foods and wines. The dining cars – and meals are included for those in sleeping cars – are still quite lovely, although travellers certainly no longer ‘dress’ for dinner. I’ve seen not a single tie.

The dining cars also retain their wonderful glass with representations of Canadian birds.

On my occasional trips, I enjoy reacquainting myself with the Canadian’s details – the fluted stainless steel exterior; the rear lounge’s drink stands with long unused matchbook holders; the curved and illuminated Lucite railings leading to the domes with their stylish 50’s armrests.

In my next post, across Northern Ontario, the Prairie and into the Rockies.