The railroad has been a part of my family's history for many years. My maternal grandfather, Alvin Carpenter, served as a Milwaukee Road depot agent for some 35 years, working out of small-town depots in southern Wisconsin. Some of my fondest memories are riding the trains with him. So when my wife Sue asked if I would be interested in going to Canada to ride the Rocky Mountaineer through the Rockies, I started packing.
We would be two members of a party of Travel Leaders agents and executives, invited by Rocky Mountaineer to ride from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Banff, Alberta. Few of us had been to this part of Canada before, and fewer still had even ridden on a real train. The level of anticipation was high, and so were our expectations. We would not be disappointed.
Thursday, September 10 -- Minneapolis to Vancouver
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| From the air, Mt. Rainier gave us a taste of things to come. |
Vancouver was incorporated in 1886, nearly twenty years after a logging settlement was established on Burrard Peninsula. The town was originally named Gastown after Gassy Jack, the proprietor of the settlement's first tavern. Fortunately, the fathers of the new city decided to name it after Captain George Vancouver, a Royal Navy officer who had explored the Pacific Northwest coast in the 18th century. Today, the metro area is home to some 2.4 million inhabitants, third-largest in the nation, and it is culturally diverse; more than half its residents have a native language other than English. And the city is tightly packed onto the end of the peninsula; it is the fourth most densely-populated city in North America, following New York City, San Francisco and Mexico City.
Despite this, Vancouver is regularly rated one of the most livable cities in the world. It is a vibrant cultural center, hosts a burgeoning movie industry and has become well-known as the site of major sporting events, like the 2010 Winter Olympics and this past summer's World Cup of women's soccer.
We checked into our hotel, the Fairmont Hotel-Vancouver, and decided to find a place for lunch. Accompanying us were two of Sue's colleagues, Bonnie and Mark Haley of Bon Voyage Travel Leaders in Grand Forks, N.D. A few blocks from the hotel we discovered Lennox Pub and had a fine meal. From there we walked another few blocks to the city's renowned Gastown district, where we met up with Laurie Passard and Mike Marok from Grand Rapids, Minn. Laurie owns and operates the Travel Leaders agency up there in the northeastern part of the state, and she and Sue are close friends.
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| Gastown was the original core of Vancouver, and by the 1920s had over 300 taverns in a 12-block area. The decline was reversed in the 1970s and today it is one of the city's most vibrant neighborhoods. |
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| The Gastown Steam Clock, built in 1977 to cover a steam grate, sounds a whistle on the hour instead of a bell. |
From Gastown we wandered toward the harbor. Vancouver has the busiest seaport in Canada, with over 3,000 foreign vessels calling here annually. We were looking for a place to relax with a drink on the waterfront and found it in Mahony and Sons Burrard Landing.
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| Enjoying the Canadian afternoon are Mike and Laurie, the author and Sue, Bonnie and Mark. |
The Rocky Mountaineer folks hosted a cocktail party for everyone that evening and then a dinner meeting for the travel agents, so the rest of us repaired to the hotel bar to watch the NFL season opener between the Steelers and Patriots. Canada has its own pro football league, the CFL, and there's a franchise in Vancouver: the British Columbia Lions, who last won the Grey Cup, symbolizing the league's championship, in 2011. The city also has a franchise in the National Hockey League, the Canucks, who have been in the league since 1970 but have never won the title. Then there are the Whitecaps, who compete in Major League Soccer.
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| Although Vancouver's NHL team has never won a title, you have to like fans who call themselves "Canuckleheads." |
We didn't stay up too late, because we had an early call for the next morning. We would be bused across town to the train station and would board the Rocky Mountaineer for our two-day train trek through the Rockies.
Friday, September 11 -- Vancouver to Kamloops
A beautiful morning greeted us as we arose in the luxurious Fairmont. Breakfast would be served on board the train, so we quickly gathered in the lobby with our traveling companions, about 50 people in all. The travel agents were excited, saying that the previous evening's meeting had gone very well and they were already impressed with the Rocky Mountaineer folks. We discovered that the railroad emphasized first-class service, and it started here in the lobby. They were well-organized and before long we were aboard our bus for the quick jaunt to the train station.
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| Early morning Vancouver has its own beauty. |
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| And so does the Fairmont, any time of day. |
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| We had just a few bags to take on the train. Hey, they could always add a car or two. |
Rocky Mountaineer was formed in 1990, taking over a Canadian government train route that had been started two years earlier. The heritage of the railroad in western Canada goes back a century before that, though.
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| William Van Horne (1843-1915), a U.S. native who extended the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia in the late 19th century. |
After the United States purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1967, the government of Canada, which had just become independent of Britain, was worried that its western provinces would soon be invited to join the U.S. The population of the country then was about 3.5 million, the great majority of whom lived in the eastern provinces. Recognizing that connecting the country by rail was of utmost importance, the government began the effort to build a railway to the West Coast. The promise assured British Columbia to the point where it decided to spurn the States and join the new Confederation of Canada.
The Americans had completed their own transcontinental railroad several years earlier, but building one across Canada's formidable western plains and mountains was a daunting task indeed, and the government soon proved that it wasn't up to the challenge. In 1881 it granted a charter to the newly-formed Canadian Pacific Railway, which hired an American railroad man, William Van Horne, as its general manager, on New Year's Day 1882. The 38-year-old Van Horne pledged to lay 500 of miles of track during the ten-month-long construction season. He came a bit short, achieving 418 miles. The Canadian government, by contrast, had managed to lay only 300 miles of track in the previous ten years.
The construction project was one of the most ambitious and difficult in world history, but it succeeded. The final spike was driven on November 7, 1885, almost six years ahead of schedule. The first train to make the trip was The Pacific Express, which left Montreal on June 28, 1886, and arrived in Port Moody, British Columbia, 139 hours later, having completed a journey of over 3,000 miles. It was one minute late.
Things have changed quite a bit since then. Our bus arrived at the station right on time and we were escorted into the ultramodern lobby of the building. The train, glistening and modern in the gold and blue colors of the railway, awaited us on the track. We would be part of some 700 people making this two-day trek. The RM folks did it up right, treating us to a bagpiper and a ceremony to start our journey. I had told Sue that I didn't want to miss the conductor calling "All aboard!" Nobody else wanted to miss it, either, and we didn't. You can see the video here.
The red carpet was rolled out, literally, and we boarded for our great adventure.
The red carpet was rolled out, literally, and we boarded for our great adventure.
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| We were all smiles as we prepared to board the train. |
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| RM has two levels of service: Gold Leaf and Silver Leaf. We were Gold, and it was worth it, with a luxurious seating car, featuring plush seats, plenty of room and our own stewards. |
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| The dining area below was large enough to seat half the car in two sittings for breakfast and lunch. |
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| The food and service in the dining room were first-rate. |
The Fraser River flows westward some 850 miles from its headwaters in the Rockies to the Strait of Georgia, near Vancouver. The first European to map it was the aforementioned Simon Fraser (1776-1862). Simon's father was a British Army officer who died in prison after being captured by colonial rebels in the 1777 Battle of Bennington, a crucial colonial victory. Simon's mother moved the family to Canada after the war and he soon became a partner in the North West Company, a trading venture that became instrumental in the exploration and settlement of western Canada. His 1808 expedition to map the river that would bear his name was perilous and along the way he encountered hostile natives, whom modern Canadians refer to as First Nations people, but Fraser and his party successfully navigated the river and its valley, on foot and in canoes, both westward and then back eastward. The trip took two and a half months. Fraser wrote, "I have been for a long time among the Rocky Mountains, but I have never seen anything to equal this country, for I cannot find words to describe our situation at times. We had to pass where no human should venture."
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| Fraser might not exactly be the image of the intrepid pioneer explorer, but he got the job done. |
When he reached the sea, Fraser established the latitude at 49 degrees. This would prove crucial some 40 years later. There had been a lot of sentiment in the States for extending the nation's northwest boundary to 54 degrees 40 minutes, which would have put the border near the southern tip of what is now the state of Alaska. Virtually all of present-day British Columbia was included in this slice of territory. The British, on the other hand, who were then still in control of Canada, wanted the boundary much further south, which would have lopped off the northwest corner of present-day Washington state, including the city of Seattle and Puget Sound. The two countries nearly went to war over the dispute, but there was also a war on the horizon between the U.S. and Mexico, so President James Polk proposed a compromise at 49 degrees, which was agreed to with the Oregon Treaty of 1846. The British kept a few islands that were south of 49 degrees, including Vancouver Island.
Soon after Hell's Gate we passed by the town of Lytton, where the Fraser River is met by the Thompson. Lytton was founded in 1858 and named for the British Secretary of State for British Columbia, Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73). In addition to having an extremely long name, Bulwer-Lytton was an accomplished novelist and poet. He coined many common phrases, such as "the great unwashed," "pursuit of the almighty dollar," and "the pen is mightier than the sword." He is perhaps best known today for having also used the most infamous opening line of any novel: "It was a dark and stormy night." It was from his 1830 novel Paul Clifford, and today its opening line lives on with the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. If you want a good laugh, click on the link.
We were now in the arid interior of British Columbia, very similar to what is found in Washington state to the south.
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| The Thompson was down from its springtime high level, when rafters challenge the Jaws of Death Gorge, further upriver. |
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| There weren't too many settlements along the Thompson, and those we saw were on the rustic side. |
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| This part of B.C. is one of the driest places in Canada, with annual rainfall of less than 10 inches. |
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| The Thompson widens into beautiful Kamloops Lake, 25 miles long. |
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| Around 6pm we pulled into Kamloops, where the North and South Thompson rivers meet. |
Kamloops is a city of about 85,000 people and draws its name from the name used by the Shuswap, a First Nations tribe that inhabited this area when European explorers first arrived. It has a relatively mild climate, with January temperatures averaging around 23 degrees F. Canada uses the metric system for measuring distance and Celsius for its temperatures, which took some getting used to. Our stewards would always say the high temp was going to be around 15 or so. When they saw the shocked looks on the faces of us Americans, they would laugh and say it's the same as 60 degrees where we come from.
Hockey is big here, as it is everywhere in Canada. Kamloops is home to a junior league team (for players age 16-20) that has sent many players to the NHL, and next February it will host the international women's championship tournament.
We checked into our hotel, the Hotel 540, and dined across the street at a unique place called Frick and Frack Taphouse. All of us were in agreement that we never imagined we'd ever be in Kamloops, British Columbia, eating at a joint called Frick and Frack, but here we were.
After a nice meal and a walk through the downtown, we retired to our hotel room to get some sleep before the next big day. We had an early call to re-board the Rocky Mountaineer and continue east, across the Continental Divide to Banff. The best, we were told, was yet to come...and they were right.
Saturday, September 12 -- Kamloops to Banff
We set out on a gorgeous morning from Kamloops, eager to experience another day on the train. By now we were very appreciative of our Gold Leaf coaches. On a Silver Leaf coach, there is no overhead dome, and meals are served at your seat, airline style. There's also Red Leaf, which is being phased out. Before boarding in Vancouver we'd been able to tour a Silver Leaf coach, and while they were very nice, Gold Leaf is definitely the way to go if you're going to ride the Rocky Mountaineer.
Each train is pulled by a locomotive that generates 3,000 horsepower, and our speed averages about 35mph. The locomotive weighs over 130 tons. Ours was one of nine in the RM fleet, all of them refitted no earlier than 2001. Our particular Gold Leaf car was one of 16 in the fleet, custom-built in Colorado. The cars are about 86 feet long and weigh over 80 tons.
Sue and I have sailed on cruise liners large and small, experiencing exceptional service on virtually all of them, and the RM stewards were right up there in the front ranks as far as we were concerned. The first seating for breakfast was around 8am, with the second seating an hour or so later. Nobody felt rushed. Lunch was served at noon and again at 1pm. The coach even included a bar, with service beginning at 9:30am. When this was announced upon our first boarding yesterday, there were lots of smiles. All meals and drinks are included in the fare, along with gratuities. By our second day, all of us were in agreement that this was really the way to travel.
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| On Day 2 aboard the train, everyone was smiling. |
RM offers more routes than just the Vancouver-to-Banff route, which is called First Passage to the West. Another goes north from Kamloops all the way into northwestern Alberta at Jasper. This one's called Journey through the Clouds. A short route goes north from Vancouver to Whistler, called Sea to Sky Climb. Then there's the big one: Rainforest to Gold Rush, which goes from Jasper back into B.C. all the way up to Prince George before swinging south back to Vancouver. Our route to Banff would cover almost 600 miles; if you want to take the big one, it's nearly 1300 miles.
Today we soon exited the arid Thompson River valley and entered the Columbia foothills of the Rockies. The main feature here was the Shuswap Lakes, with over 600 miles of shoreline. And they're deep, with an average depth of 202 feet and maximum of 528 feet. The lakes and rivers here are home to many species of fish, including salmon and trout, and we were told the fishing can be amazing. We didn't doubt that a bit.
The scenery really did the talking today, so here's just a sample of it.
We took a break for lunch, although the large windows in the dining room allowed us to continue drinking in the scenery as we ate. As usual, the meal was terrific. This was the "light" option:
I took advantage of the vestibule, which was the open space between cars, to get some great pictures and video footage. You can see one clip here. There were 26 tunnels along our route, and going through one while in the vestibule was quite an experience. The longest tunnel, the Connaught, was completed in 1916 and is five miles long. It took us nearly ten minutes to transit.
During the day we passed the Continental Divide, the highest point on the route at 5,332 feet above sea level. The Divide separates the Pacific and Atlantic watersheds. From there it was, literally, all downhill to Banff, in the province of Alberta. We arrived around 6pm. It was with more than a little sadness that we departed from the train and said goodbye to our stewards, who had taken such good care of us for the past two days.
Banff is a town of about 7,600 population and is high up in the mountains, at about 4,600 feet above sea level. Its location in the middle of Banff National Park means it is extremely popular year round. One cabbie told us they have upwards of 2.5 million visitors per year. Our group had already been booked at the Rim Rock Resort, and although the weather was starting to turn cool and overcast, we were able to explore some of the town after checking in. The next morning we enjoyed one final breakfast together as a group and then we were climbing aboard a bus for the last leg of our trip, 78 miles to Calgary and the airport for our flights home.
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| Sunday morning was overcast, but the view from the Rimrock was still very nice indeed. |
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| The skies began to clear as our bus made its way east to Calgary. |
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| Waiting for our flight to Minneapolis, Sue and Laurie talked about the trip and started thinking about the next one. |
There was a time when Americans traveled by train all the time. For about three-quarters of a century, the railroad was the way to go, in both the U.S. and Canada, especially if you wanted to cross long distances. Then the airplane came along and you could get to your destination a lot faster. The car and the superhighway meant you could get there with less expense and more convenience than the train. But as we discovered on this trip, there's something about riding the rails that is special. As the singer/songwriter Paul Simon said, "There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful."
When we boarded our plane in Calgary, there was nobody there to say, "All aboard!" And we missed it.
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