(The following story by Isobel Warren appeared on the Toronto Star website on December 24.)
TORONTO — If train buff Paul Potter dwelt upon the big Five O — his 50th birthday was last January — he probably visualized a merry dinner party with friends and perhaps some time in the basement to fine tune his elaborate HO gauge model train set-up.
Instead, he found himself aboard the Rocky Mountaineer Christmas train, rolling out of Banff toward Vancouver, the awe-inspiring Rockies towering above him and Canada’s fascinating train history prominently on the menu.
His wife, France, and 7-year-old daughter Morgan had conspired to give him the luxurious two-day trip as a 50th birthday gift.
“This is fantastic,” said Potter as he prowled the dome car.
Potter, a Toronto architect, can’t remember when he didn’t love trains. So the Rocky Mountaineer experience suited him just fine — spacious dome cars with gleaming windows, gourmet regional specialties like Alberta beef and bison, B.C. salmon and fine wines in the Yule-decorated dining car, all-day bar and snacks, non-stop live music in the lounge car, lively tales of Rockies and railroads and plenty of new friends, including my husband and I, to help him celebrate.
It also suited Morgan, who spent plenty of time hanging out in the kids’ car where Jim Raddysch, a children’s TV entertainer with an unlimited supply of patience, songs, games, magic tricks and neat crafts, held day-long court for kids.
But the highlight of the trip was undoubtedly “the rescue.”
Snug inside the dome car, we watched as fierce snow squalls gusted down the Rockies’ slopes.
And there, huddled beside the tracks and waving frantically, was a forlorn figure, knee-deep in snow.
So, obeying the unwritten law of the Canadian wilderness, our train squealed to a halt and willing hands helped the old gentleman on board.
But it was a scam. Once dusted off, he was transformed. Red suit, twinkling eyes, white beard — we knew in an instant it must be St. Nick.
And that’s when a spectacular train ride — a two-day daylight passage through the Rockies — really took off, rocking along through spectacular vistas with the music thumping, the kids whooping, the grown-ups beaming and Santa ho-ho-ho-ing through the cars.
Attendants suddenly became red-capped elves, handing out lush, maple-leaf-embellished scarves to the adults and toys to the kids.
Santa told us that his sleigh had broken down in the foothills of the Rockies so he sent the reindeer north, shouldered his bag of gifts and flagged down the train.
Santa wasn’t the only teller of tall tales.
Attendant Rodd Cruikshank spun many a yarn that brought into focus the whole incredible picture of Canada’s railroads — the sheer madness of building a rail line through the mountains; the determination and appalling loss of life that overcame the obstacles. (Two workers died for every mile of track laid.)
He showed us runaway lanes for trains that failed to negotiate the steep declines; spiral and figure-eight tunnels; delicate-looking trestles and sturdy stone bridges originally made of wood and the tiny, red-brick Field, B.C., railway station that appeared in the film Dr. Zhivago.
He told us about a derailed freight train that attracted an enthusiastic party of bears to its spilled load of grain.
The bears ate, the grain fermented and a drunken bear brawl broke out.
He pointed out the Burgess Shell, rich in fossils — some 60,000 are now in Washington’s Smithsonian — and chilled our bones with tales of Avalanche Alley, west of Mount MacDonald, which receives up to 12 metres of snow annually.
We learned that Sicamous, B.C., with its 1,000-kilometre shoreline, is the houseboat capital of Canada and that Salmon Arm, B.C., got its name from farmers’ tennis elbow, which they dubbed salmon arm, from scooping up salmon with pitchforks.
Approaching Vancouver, he recalled Canada’s first train robbery in 1904, when Billy Miner (later memorialized in the movie The Grey Fox) held up a train, escaping with a small fortune in gold, currency and U.S. bonds. His next foray was less spectacular. He misread the schedule, robbed the wrong train and ended up with $15 and a bottle of liver pills.
But for all those rattling tales of hardship and adventure, it was the mountains that dazzled us all.
Peering through the huge windows and the dome, we saw mighty peaks — Mount Robson, highest in the Rockies at 3,956 metres; the Premier Range (11 peaks ranging from 2,654 to 3,484 metres ) named after Canadian prime ministers Laurier, King, Meighen and others; Jackass Mountain, named not for politicians but for the mules that traversed it in gold-rush days, and the picture-perfect ranges surrounding Banff.
Passengers have plenty of time to look because the Rocky Mountaineer, using Canadian Pacific and Canadian national freight lines, proceeds at a stately average of 48 km/h, determined by whatever freight train is chugging along ahead and whatever mishap may occur.
“A broken-down freight train, a split rail, forest fires, trucks stalled on the tracks, native blockades, rock slides — they’re all part of the adventure,” Cruikshank commented.
As daylight and the spectacular mountains fade to black, the train rolls into Kamloops where guests spend the night at a hotel. Next morning, we return to the train and new vistas of B.C.’s mountains, rivers, valleys and market gardens as we roll down to Vancouver by nightfall.
For Paul Potter, it was an unforgettable experience.
“I’d go again in a second,” he says. “It was a dream come true.”
These days, with Morgan’s help, he recreates some of the magic as he paints elaborate mountain scenery as a backdrop to the railroad that runs through his basement.
(Isobel Warren is a Newmarket-based freelancer writer whose trip was subsidized by the Rocky Mountaineer.)