[Writer Laura Trethewey recently travelled across Canada by train, and sent us five postcards on the way, from B.C. to Northern Ontario. The “Prairie Postcard Project” chronicles that leg of her trip and the people she met along the way. Visit her blog for the whole story. Click the postcard images to enlarge.]

Dearest This,

Racing out of Northern Ontario, Dan is calling out upcoming sites for the packed passenger train: “tunnel coming up, followed by a lake on the left…” Everyone waits, camera ready, but when the tunnel or the lake takes too long to appear, Dan loses his audience, despite his “Waits,” or “Here it comes!”

“How many times have you taken this train?” I ask. About 10, he says. Dan, around 65 years old, is the youngest of a gang of train writers and enthusiasts. He’s self-published a few books already and says he needs to put out more as his colleagues keep dying. “People think Canada’s story is boring. If they only knew,” he chuckles.

When our conversation lapses into silence, Dan fills the holes with information on the numbered signs or style of railway station that whip by outside. He seems impressed, almost gleeful, that I know Grand Trunk Railway once ran through Stratford. “Really, not a lot of people know that anymore,” he says wistfully.

Laura T.

[Writer Laura Trethewey recently travelled across Canada by train, and sent us five postcards on the way, from B.C. to Northern Ontario. The “Prairie Postcard Project” chronicles that leg of her trip and the people she met along the way. Visit her blog for the whole story. Click the postcard images to enlarge.]

Dearest This:

It’s almost a requirement that a hotelier have a certain amount of eccentricity. The owner of the first place I stay at in Winnipeg definitely does. My second night there, I hear loud voices coming from the garden. Thinking it’s a gang of rowdy guests, I head back and discover the owner and a pal of his deep into a box of wine. They invite me to join in.

Both are in their 40s but have an oddly child-like appearance, the owner in particular. The corner of his mouth is stained, like a toddler who hasn’t learned to drink his grape juice properly, while his thinning hair sticks out diagonally from one side of his head, like his just awoken from an afternoon nap. He has a quiet demeanour, almost like he’s sizing me up, and then he gives himself over to proclamations like “women are bitches! They don’t want to see each other succeed. Men do. I think it comes from playing sports.”

This is followed by a huge guffaw that quickly quiets into a worried look, like he’s said too much. His friend tells me later on that the owner has recently had his heart broken by a “lady friend.”

-Laura T.

[Writer Laura Trethewey recently travelled across Canada by train, and sent us five postcards on the way, from B.C. to Northern Ontario. The “Prairie Postcard Project” chronicles that leg of her trip and the people she met along the way. Visit her blog for the whole story. Click the postcard images to enlarge.]

Train etiquette is different from all other types of travel. It’s almost rude to plug your ears with an iPod and bury yourself in a book. This is exactly what I am trying to do, but Sam, from Swift Current, Sask., sitting next to me, is relentless in striking up a conversation. He’s decked out like a true Saskatchewan stereotype: worn jeans, plaid shirt, aviator glasses, truckers’ hat and a white shock of hair poking out from underneath it.

We do the usual traveller exchange: where are you from, going, planning — that is, until I get Sam on the topic of square dancing. This is his first trip in years that doesn’t involve square dancing, usually he bounces city to town, to conference to dance with his elderly mother in tow. He dismisses what I think is square dancing as mere line dancing. There has to be an actual square of dancers, moves called out, and so forth.

I ask if his mother likes square dancing. No, she likes the hotel rooms they stay in. He seems at a loss what to do on this trip to the West coast without square dancing, listing off a few possible itineraries. He then stands up and says it was nice to talk to me and moves down the train.

Laura T.

[Writer Laura Trethewey recently travelled across Canada by train, and sent us five postcards on the way, from B.C. to Northern Ontario. The “Prairie Postcard Project” chronicles that leg of her trip and the people she met along the way. Visit her blog for the whole story. Click the postcard images to enlarge.]

Dearest This:

I arrive late at night in an Albertan station, loaded down with luggage and anxious to find a bed. Chris, the cab driver who collects me, is not pleased with driving me to the out-of-town place I’m staying at. He complies anyway, but not without informing me he’s the boss of this cab company and normally doesn’t do jobs like this. On the way there, we stop first in a gas station parking lot to have a smoke with Chris’ sole employee and then pick up and deliver a pizza (a side business of Chris’).

When we arrive at the hotel, I find out my room’s been given away. Quite naturally, I start to curse. Chris is horrified. He bungles me back into the cab and tells me that I’ll catch more flies with honey. Even so, he helps me. We drive back into the fully booked town. He drops me at a hotel, where a guy who works the front desk is a pal of his. Chris promises his pal will find me a room. And he does.

Right before I head to bed, Chris drops back in to make sure I found a spot and to take a long break with his friend between pizza runs. I’m convinced Chris is running this whole town.

Laura

[Writer Laura Trethewey recently travelled across Canada by train, and sent us five postcards on the way, from B.C. to Northern Ontario. The “Prairie Postcard Project” chronicles that leg of her trip and the people she met along the way. Visit her blog for the whole story. Click the postcard images to enlarge.]

Dearest This,

The Canadian Rockies, our great wilderness, and tourists show up with their shirts pressed and their hair permed. On the bus from Banff to Jasper, Dave, the peak hopper, gets on looking like he hasn’t seen the inside of a house in months: hair matted into a ponytail, muddy sunworn skin, yellow nails chiseled into talons. He sits down two rows ahead of me and stares at his lap.

I lean forward and ask, “you’ve been climbing those peaks?” It takes a minute for him to jerk out of his reverie and realize I’m talking to him. When he does, he doesn’t make eye contact, just cranes his neck slightly in my direction and scoffs back, “Yeah, I been climbing those peaks.” As if it’s only natural to scale the 10,000 foot peaks of the Columbia Icefield right outside our window. His voice is just a croak from 25 days of silence and climbing alone. This time, Wilcox Peak, just over 9,000 feet, was his prize. I asked him why he climbed and he described a perfectly turquoise glacial lake he saw, hidden from the highway deep in a mountain range, only visible to those who climbled that perch. “Why do I do it,” he repeated. “I love it.”

More correspondence coming soon…

Laura Trethewey