On the Road Again 2017 #8

It was frustrating to arrive in Winnipeg nine hours late. In fact it had been a frustrating journey with numerous long waits, sometimes just a few kilometres outside of a train station. The most frustrating wait was just outside of Winnipeg. There we were. Just outside a major train station with numerous track and we just sat there. I could have walked into Winnipeg faster.

I suppose the only good news was that the train was quite empty and therefore we all had a lot of space to stretch out in. Of course for VIA Rail, the near empty cars meant that they were not making a lot of money - on the other hand fewer passengers meant that there were fewer people to grumble and complain.

 The buses were, understandably, a bit slow. It was, after all, just after 5:00 PM on a Saturday evening by the time I got to a bus stop. It was also windy - windy even by Winnipeg's standards; I was not alone in having a hard time walking against the wind. I had thought about staying in Winnipeg for the night, but I did not want to pay for a high price hotel room, lacked the energy to figure out where the hostels were and really did not want to be in Winnipeg on a Sunday morning when the buses, if anything, would be even fewer. As I stood on the highway just past the exit at the Flying J truck stop around 6:15 or so it felt like the right decision. The wind was blowing hard but the road was clear and I was glad to be on it once again.

 A fellow hitchhiker passed me. We said "hi" but neither of us were in the mood to talk and he was on his way. I think he was one of hitchhikers who liked to walk and so before long he had passed out of my vision. Either that or he had got a ride faster than me.

 I had been at my spot for no more than 20 minutes when a pick-up truck stopped and the driver offered me a drive. Cam was a farmer from somewhere north west of Winnipeg. One of the first things he said to me was that he did not like cities but preferred to live far away from the crowds. He raised grass raised beef and pork, as well as some organic chickens. He had a nice little business in selling his products to individuals and at a farmer's market. He was proud of what he raised - meat without chemicals, animals that were humanely treated and respected. We spent our short trip together talking about marketing boards, how hard it was for young farmers to get started and the dangers of factory farms. It was somewhat reassuring to know that the values and lessons that I had learned from some of the small farms in Ontario coincided with the opinions of a farmer who owned over 1600 acres. I however, never told him that I did not eat meat.

He also talked, briefly about his other job. He had been part of the Canadian Armed Forces special forces. After he had left the army, he had worked privately for a number of organizations in various parts of the Middle East doing training etc. I suppose he was some sort of mercenary. His other job came up in our conversation because he had been offered another contract. I don't think he really wanted to do it but it was that money that allowed him to buy the farm and to continue to farm the way he wanted to. He agreed with me when I mentioned the strange juxtaposition of running an organic, ethical farm somewhat holistic farm and a being a soldier. Something seems wrong when a farmer, trying to do the right thing in terms of raising animals, needs to go to another country to teach others how to kill humans so that he can afford to do what he wants to do.

Cam had to stop in Portage to drop a check at the bank and then was heading up the Yellowhead Highway. As much as I wanted to be travelling, it made no sense for me to be stuck at the intersection of two highways as the sun was setting. He drove me to a motel and I got out. I do wish he had been heading further west. It would have been an interesting and enjoyable conversation.

I ended up staying in the motel that I stayed in on my first trip west. I mentioned this to the Asian women who checked me in. She said "Oh it is so much cleaner now". It may have been cleaner but it was more boring. Gone was the eclectic colour scheme and the use of multiple coloured/mismatched bathroom tiles. It may have been more colour coordinated  but it was lacking in personality. I was offered the seniors discount although she said I was looked too young - I had to show my driver's license before she believed me.

 I found a restaurant still open and had a grill cheese sandwich and some fries.....neither were spectacular but it was nice to eat warm food for the first time in 36 hours.

Letter to VIA Rail

Yves Desjardins-Siciliano,

President and Chief Executive Officer

VIA Rail Canada inc.
P.O. Box. 8116, Station "A"
Montréal (Québec) H3C 3N3

1019 - 2885 Boys Road

Duncan, B.C.

V9L 4Y9

June 18, 2017

Re: Train # 1 - departing Sudbury June 9, 2017

Sir

I have been riding trains in Canada for over 60 years. In fact some of my earliest memories are of travelling as a young child by train from Montreal to the Laurentians. As well, my family travelled by train to Old Orchard Beach in Maine for a number of our summer vacations, and while attending university in New Brunswick, I regularly travelled between that province and my home in Montreal. More recently, I have once or twice a year gone between Sudbury and Vancouver to visit family. I like trains.

However my most recent trip on VIA Rail to Winnipeg was not enjoyable.  The train left Sudbury Junction just over an hour late. That, in itself is not unusual as the train is almost never on time. However by the time we got to Winnipeg the train was nine (9) hours late. That is not acceptable. What is even more alarming is the fact that I overheard a VIA employee telling a passenger that nine hours was much later than usual on the trip west but that being six hours late coming east was not unusual. That too, unfortunately has been my experience. It is absurd that a national railroad accepts the fact that it will be chronically late. VIA rail, as demonstrated by the fine print on the boarding pass that says that VIA accepts that there will be "significant delays" and that passengers "do not arrange connecting transportation on the day of your arrival" has given up on trying to run a transportation system that works.

I understand that there are an ever increasing number of longer and longer freight trains and that these freight trains no longer can fit on the sidings; I also understand that VIA Rail does not own the tracks and therefore apparently feels subservient to the freight carrying trains. But I do not understand why VIA Rail has accepted the ever increasing deterioration of its trans-continental system. In a country as large as Canada, and in one that was shaped by the creation of a national railroad, it makes no sense that in 2017 we do not have one that can be anywhere near on time.

 I can think of no other public transportation system that would allow or be allowed to serve its passengers so poorly. It is embarrassing to hear visitors from other countries complain about the terrible service. It is frustrating when a number of passengers say that they would never travel by train again and there is no argument from anyone on the train.

VIA Rail needs to at least start a public discussion of how to fix this issue. I, as a long term customer, would like to be informed as to what steps VIA rail is taking to address the issue of chronic lateness.  I will expect to hear a response from you within the next 15 working days. If I don't, I will pursue the issue in a more public forum.

Thank you

John David Woodall

On the Road Again #7

We were suppose to pull into the station in Winnipeg at 8:00 AM. Instead we were just arriving at Sioux Lookout. It had been a long night with a series of stops waiting for freight trains to pass us by. For example, we had stopped for over an hour to allow for three freight trains, heading west to pass us. To say that it is frustrating would be a profound understatement.

It was clear that at that rate of travel and all of the frequent stops for trains to pass us in either direction, that we would not be in Winnipeg until late in the afternoon. Which meant for me, that I would probably end up staying in a too expensive hotel for the night.  Perhaps I can get VIA to cover the cost of said hotel.

Yesterday, the attendants were very much present and there were a number of relatively humerous announcements. This morning there has been nothing - not even an explanation as to why we are so late. The car is still very empty and everyone seems to be accepting with some grace the massive delays - not that we have any choice.The attendants went around and gave everyone a slip of paper that entitles us to a free lunch - a sandwich, a chocolate bar and a drink.....given the lack of vegitarian options - I suspected that I would get stuck with a chocolate bar. ( to be fair - after the snack car attendant gave me the list of foods available, I said that I didn't eat meat - she then offered a little card board box with some rather bland humus, some veggies, crackers and a small bag of nuts - it was not too bad at all - not enough to sustain someone for nine hours - but it was a start)

At some point during the night a number of men and I assume their sons got on - I would imagine that they had been waiting for six or so hours at some bug invested spot; there were however in surprisingly good spirits. I would suspect that if it had just be a group of older men, or a group of teenage boys they would have been much grumpier or noisier or drunk - as it was they were quiet and their complaints were minor.



I later heard from another passenger who had been waiting for the train for seven plus hours that VIA had closed the station and they had had to spend the night sleeping on the platform - being attacked by bugs. Shameful!!

On the Road Again 2017 #6

This train trip has been a bit of a roller coaster in terms of being on time. It left just over an hour late, Three hours later we were not only on time but in fact a bit ahead of schedule. Three hours after that I would estimate that we are at least an hour if not two behind schedule. In the last hour we have spent far more time waiting for freight trains along some siding or another than we have moving. It could get frustrating if I did not know that by tomorrow morning we might have made up all of the time we have now lost - or we could be three hours late- either way it has nothing to do with me - it is totally beyond my control.

The stop in Hornepayne which is suppose to be 50 minutes was only 10. Anytime saved here was quickly frittered away by the train sitting on a siding for awhile just ten minutes outside of Hornepayne.

Train is very quiet - there are lots of seat empty although the attendant told me that at Sioux Lookout 30 people are getting on. However that will be late tonight and I have every intention of being sound asleep - using both seats.

There is only one child on this part of the train. She is, I would guess, around 18 months old. She and her mom got on at Sudbury Junction where it was dark outside and the air was fully of ravenous black flies and mosquitoes. However, the only thing that that child wanted to do was to go outside and practice her climbing up and down steps. Any other activity, especially being inside caused loud screams. Ear drum piercing screams. Poor mother, she was less than happy. Of course the half dozen other passengers waiting for the train were not all that pleased either. While I have had my ear phones in for most of the day, it would seem that the young child is much quieter on the train - much to everyone's relief. I think however, that mom is having to work fairly hard to both keep her daughter entertained and corralled.

There are two young couples on the train. I think one of them is from England and the other is perhaps from Germany. At one of our many stops in the middle of nowhere, one of them noticed an animal swimming in creek. They pronounced it as either a beaver or an otter. I give it a quick look, suggested that I thought it was a beaver and they believed me. There were less sure when I suggested that the train trip was like a ride at Disney World and that the animals were trained to swim along side the train for the passengers entertainment.Just doing my bit to entertain the visitors.

There is an interesting older woman who got on at a small stop after Sudbury. I can't quite figure out what it is, but I suspect that she might have some sort of dementia, either that or she is just use to having people answer her questions more than a few times.She is pleasantly dressed and groomed but there is something about her that is just a little bit off. She has managed to have both of the reasonably young train attendants waiting on her. Perhaps she is just smart. I have never seen a VIA staff person going to buy water for a passenger.

Just east of Longlac we waited on siding for the east bound  VIA train. When it past us - looked just as empty.

On the Road again 2017 #5

It strikes me as I watch the passing of an endless stream of images framed by the steel frame of the train's window, that I am less emotionally engaged in this trip than any other that I have taken in the past 15 years. Normally when I head west, it is at the end of a long spring where my anticipation for my summer trip builds after numerous dreams/fantasies about hitchhiking and at least a few attacks of spring fever. But now for the second summer, I am heading west  to go back home. In fact, with the exception of hitching from Winnipeg to the west coast tomorrow morning, my trip is over. It feels wrong to me- as if I have done something out of order. I never promised that any of my writing would make any sense but this feeling may make less sense than normal.

My pack is perhaps the lightest it has ever been. I am not planning on doing a lot of camping and therefore I am carrying only the basic necessities (although because of the internal frame on my fifteen year old pack, it is surprisingly heavy -even when empty). But the fun I usually  have in packing my stuff, of deciding what I need and what I really don't need was done a month ago -  when at least part of my agenda was figuring out what I could fly with. (I just at this moment remembered that I never bought gas for my stove. If I stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere I will not be able to make tea- dumb). The process of my packing has been backwards and I suspect that the gas is not the only thing I have forgotten.

I also suspect that the other reason why I have invested less energy into this return trip is that my thinking for the past month has been focused on past trips. I have just finished the first draft of my "book". I started last June trying to develop some sort of a framework for sharing the stories of the various drivers I had met in my travels. I worked on it again in December when I visited Sudbury and for the last month I have spent a few hours most days re-reading and editing some of those stories. It is a surprisingly exhausting process. As I read the different journals that I originally produced and the hundreds of blog entries that I have generated in the last seven years, those stories reminded me of those events ; they have allowed me to re-live those trips; to visit again some of my drivers. So many of those freshened memories needed to be savored, to be touched in my mind for a few minutes. So often those memories reminded me of another time, of another driver, of another scene from some other trip and I would spend half an hour trying to find my notes on that trip as well.

So by being lost in the past - delightfully so - I have had less energy and perhaps less need to dream of the upcoming trip. I am not sure what the next step in the process should be. I suspect that my just over 117,000 (150 single spaced pages) is far too long and now I will need to spend hours going through it, chopping/deleting those delightful and important memories. And of course this trip will generate a whole new set of images to be savored in the future.

On The Road Again 2017 #4

"sitting in a railroad station, got a ticket for my destination".... I wonder how many times I have typed or at least thought those words in the past 15 years. I  have lost track of the number of times I have sat either in the Sudbury Junction train station or at the other end in Vancouver waiting for yet another train. It is always with a sense of sadness and excitement that I wait for and eventually board the train. It is, in many ways, the beginning and the end of a journey. Every time I get on a train I am either heading out to visit friends and family, hopefully to have an small adventure along the way, or I am returning to my home, ready to get back into the grove of playing with wool and hanging out with friends. There are days when it all feels rather humdrum. It is not that I am not excited about the traveling but I have counted all of the cracks in the station ceiling a dozen times before and heard all of the groaning questions from first time passengers about why the train is so late probably even more often.

VIA has devised an interesting method of torture for such first time passengers at the Sudbury Junction train station. On the wall there is a large flat television monitor. On that monitor is listed the number of the train (#1) , what track it will arrive on (only one of the two tracks is reachable from the wooden boardwalk that leads from the station), what time the trains is scheduled to arrive, what time it will actually arrive at and in a fiendishly clever way of driving people mad .... what is the current time. What is particularly fiendish on the part of VIA is that if one arrives 40 or so minutes early, the scheduled time of arrival and the actual time of arrival are the same. Sometimes, the video screen states that the train will even arrive a few minutes earlier . However, about 15 or 20 minutes before the train is scheduled to arrive, the actual arrival time starts to gradually move forward. Sometimes everyone gets excited because it appears as if the train will be arriving within the next 8 or 10 minutes; then all of a sudden the numbers change and the train is going to be 12 or 14 minutes late; this cycles continues - sometimes for well over an hour. People are teased that the train's arrival is imminent and then hopes are dashed once again as the board informs all that no- the train will be 14 minutes late.

After a while all but the most optimistic  have been continued to accept that the train is late now and will be late all day, and the next day and the next. If there is a particularly friendly station master who can properly commiserate with the crowds, he or she can get people laughing at the trains lateness - surely the first step to accepting that one's train will not arrive at one's destination on time.

Like I said fiendishly clever....

Pipeline Debate (again)

It has been argued that Alberta, to maintain its economy, needs access to markets that need oil, and that the USA market is not as accessible or as open as once presumed. Therefore an expansion of the pipeline to B.C.’s shores is required. The argument for this position is reasonably compelling. Alberta is a landlocked province; it has no access to the rest of the world without transporting its oil through another jurisdiction. As well, it does not get in the US full market value for their product. A year ago when it was clear that the US government was not going to allow the TransCanada Keystone pipeline to proceed, it seemed as if Alberta needed another way of getting its product to market. As well, because of new drilling techniques including fracking and horizontal drilling, the US is able to access more of its own buried oil. Therefore the need for Alberta to find new markets was obvious.

However, if the above assumptions are not true, then the need for the expansion of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline is less obvious. I came across a report from the Parklands Institute – an Alberta non-partisan centre that suggests that the above assumptions are inaccurate. The report titled Will the Trans Mountain Pipeline and Tidewater Access Boost and Save Canada’s Oil Industry? argues that (1) that the two pipelines slated for either expansion or development to the USA will be approved and that there is still the possibility that the Trans Canada East pipeline, which is still under review, will be approved – once these pipelines are built, there will be enough capacity to ship Alberta oil;  (2) that if Alberta oil is shipped to Asia, it may sell for less than it is sold for in the US due to the cost of shipping; (3) that US still needs to import 46% of its oil from off shore and that its primary sources of Venezuela and Mexico may not be reliable

If the above report is accurate and reasonably unbiased, the argument that BC has some responsibility as a member of a federation of provinces to at least consider the wellbeing of other citizens in that federation and therefore should not block the Kinder Morgan pipeline on principle alone, holds significantly less water. There may be all kinds of reasons why the pipeline expansion should not go through including the fact that it may cross over unceded First Nation land. There are also could be compelling reasons why it should. 

It may be that we need to have, as a country, some sort of discussion as to what we can do to both protect the environment and ensure that all Canadians have equal access to supports and service. Unfortunately most of us do not know all of the facts to participate in that discussion. Furthermore, I am convinced that it is almost impossible to have the discussion in a calm, rational way. I suspect that facts, which should be absolute, can be (mis)interpreted in a myriad of ways that will ensure that no one will want to, or be able to look at the issues from a critical point of view.

Part of the problem is that both sides of the debate are afflicted with tunnel vision. The environmentalists can only see oil producers (and all of the businesses that are associated with it) as being intentionally evil, ruthless polluters whose only reason for existing is to get rich while raping the planet. Anyone who supports such people is equally as bad and deserves to be shouted down and not listened to. On the other hand those who are engaged in the extraction of crude see environmentalist as naive tree huggers who live in a fantasy world where everyone but them pays more taxes, where service are free and we can all run our cars on air. Of course neither characterization is accurate, but people cling to them. It is so much easier to feel victorious in a debate when one can demonize the opposition.

We teach or at least I hope we teach young people that when they debate an issue, while one can attack an opinion, one should never attack the person expressing that opinion. If we were ever taught that - we clearly have forgotten it. Until we adults can get to the point where there does not have to be a winner and a loser in the debate; until we can accept that some if not most of the people on the other side are not that different from us; until we can learn to look at fact in a rational way, no solution can be found that will allow us to move forward together. We really need to grow up and learn how to talk to each other as friends and neighbours – not as the enemy.