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So T.O.

14 September – And then, from morning to afternoon, I leave Toronto and land in Vancouver. Here I am, looking through slight drizzle to the mountains, with one last love-letter I want to offer “T.O.” (Tee-Oh, Toronto.)

My T.O., that is, nobody else’s — my own mix of memory and re-discovery, blind to what others would notice, alert to all my own triggers.

Glimpses from streetcars, for example.

A rampart mural by Shalak Attack, which I remember watching her paint, many years ago…

the distinctive two-tone brick and architecture I associate with my own decades in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, but common to the city in that era…

and Streetcar Dog. Not unique to Toronto, but part of my own memory bank of riding the TTC.

Then there are my re-discoveries on foot, all around the Grange neighbourhood and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where I was for years a volunteer and therefore an area where I came and went, a very great deal.

Bronze turtle watching martial-arts in Butterfield Park, the new-since-my-time refurbishment of the land just east of Grange Park and south of OCAD (Ontario College of Art + Design) University…

Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms, looking very at home in its new home in the reinvented Grange Park, with the brilliant blue rear wall and distinctive Frank Gehry staircase as backdrop…

and, once inside, the soaring glulam arches of the AGO’s front-façade Galeria Italia.

Unchanged, these arches. Ditto, the way the Galeria invites you to look out across Dundas Street. Native son Gehry made sure his design honoured and welcomed the neighbourhood of his childhood as its own visual final wall.

I am in the AGO as much to walk old ground as to see current exhibitions, but in the end I do both.

The Joyce Wieland retrospective, Heart On, speaks not only to my memories of her bursting on the scene, but also to how current she now is, once again.

Wieland was a fierce ’60s-70s feminist and, despite (or perhaps because of) long years in New York, a fierce Canadian patriot as well. She often used the soft “feminine” skills of embroidery or quilting to express strong political convictions.

For example, with her 1970 work, I Love Canada – J’aime Canada.

Awwww. (Twist finger in cheek.) So sweet.

Now read the signage.

And read the embroidered fine print.

Wieland’s narrow definition of Canadian identity is now out-dated — but the rest of her analysis is Elbows-Up contemporary.

Some hours later, I leave the building. I still have more circling and prowling to do.

I check out the S/W corner of Dundas West & McCaul. It is also the N/E corner of the AGO footprint and, in my day, was still home to Moore’s Large Two Forms. For the first time, I see what now sits on that corner — Brian Jungen’s commissioned work, Couch Monster. (Read more, here, in a fine post by our WordPress colleague, Canadian Art Junkie.)

I circle the work, and also take in the larger view, including the top of an old mural by veteran Toronto artist Birdo, now obscured by newer construction and backed by even-newer construction.

Finally, and not with terrifically high hopes, I take myself across Dundas West and into the alley between Dundas and Darcy Street to the north. I am eager but also dreading to see what it’s like, these days. My memory is of an alley bursting with street art, full of the “garage-door art” that I associate with my memories of Toronto.

And…

there it still is. On and on, to the west, beyond the frame of this image. Not exactly as it was, of course not, but alive and current and so-very-T.O.

I turn right on a second, N/S, alley, passing delicate tendrils and other art as I go…

and emerge on Darcy Street.

Where I drink in an enclave of old downtown residential architecture, oh look, some still survives…

and then pivot on my heel to look east down the block. Out to McCaul Street.

Still some old brick homes, and still the spire of St. Patrick’s Church (the 5th-oldest Roman Catholic parish in Toronto) as well — plus the immediate examples of all the new towers now exploding skyward.

There it all is.

The whole jarring/exhilarating, cacophonous/euphonious, forever-evolving symphony of the city.

So T.O.

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by icelandpenny on 14 September 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, street art, Toronto, Travel
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Posted by icelandpenny on 14 September 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/14/so-t-o/

Snowy Owl + Mailbox Spider

12 September 2025 – More old + new, here in Toronto. The joy of time with old friends and familiar places, but also the joy of discovery.

For example, Biidaasige Park — some 40 hectares once complete, down at the mouth of the Don River and part of an even larger overall program to re-gentle, re-green and detoxify the sprawling Port Lands for what we now understand to be wiser, more multi-purpose and more inclusive use. Read more about Biidaasige (“Bee-daw-SEE-geh” with a hard “g”) on the City‘s website, on an analytical design website, and in her 6 September “As I walk Toronto” post by our WordPress colleague, Mary C.

The park is very much a work in progress, but some elements are already in place. They include several imaginative children’s playgrounds, one of which has as its guardian spirit, Snowy Owl.

Not only is his open tummy a stage for all kinds of child-friendly events, the interior of his body is open to visitors as well. You can walk inside…

and start climbing. Stairs, then ladders, and up you go.

Bang-thwack-ouch! Smack your head a few times and you finally realize the structure is child-scale. You learn to bend and duck accordingly.

Your reward? You get to look out through the Owl’s eyes, across the undulating playground, across Commissioner St. and westward toward downtown.

I scramble back down. We take ourselves off to explore trails down in the marshy areas around the various channels.

I am awestruck. This grubby, much-abused waterfront is being transformed. We lean on the railing of this pedestrian bridge and admire the grace of the new vehicular bridges, the abundant wild greenery along the banks, the habitat all this must offer for so many species. (Plus the knowledge of habitat yet to come, in plans for housing and further human community and settlement as well.)

And then… we move on.

The day is hot, and sunny, and, thanks to on-going park construction, noisy. We want still to be close to nature, but somewhere that offers soothing shade and a lack of noise.

All of which leads us to discover…

Mailbox Spider.

He is only some 4-5 km. away, slightly south-west of Biidaasige Park…

but in a very different world. The world of the Toronto islands.

More specifically and of importance to me, we are on one small island within that larger cluster: Algonquin Island, which is reached by a pedestrian bridge close to the Ward’s Island ferry dock.

Trace your finger over that pedestrian bridge and tap the intersection just off the bridge: Omaha and Ojibway avenues. Got it? Right there on that corner lot, almost invisible within its own mini-forest of trees and shrubbery, there is a white cottage. The white cottage where, 60 years ago, I used to live.

So it’s heavy-duty nostalgia time for me, and my friend is generously indulgent.

We stop, immediately off the bridge, to explore the community take/leave stand. It was active decades ago and, to my delight, is still active now.

A couple of Algonquin residents are near-by, people about my age. We chat, I explain I used to live here, I name a few names and they smile. We three didn’t know each other, but we each knew these other people.

Then, my friend and I, we just weave slowly up and down the narrow, car-free streets. (It is on Ojibway that we meet Mailbox Spider, with his blue cottage tucked away in the rear.)

The atmosphere is leafy, and peaceful. It is now a world of pretty smooth relations between residents and City — the welcome resolution of the long fight by residents and supporters to protect any residential community at all, in the face of the City’s desire to remove everybody and make the entire islands cluster into one big park. Now most of the land mass is park, but residential communities are recognized and stable on both Ward’s and Algonquin.

We reach the foot of Ojibway Avenue, down at Seneca, which runs along the island’s harbour-side waterfront, and offers panoramic views back across the water to the city core.

Including that CN Tower. I gave you only a distant and slivered view in my previous post; here it is, front and centre.

Still on Seneca, a good example of visitor/resident co-existence:

a bench for tourists and residents alike; one of the island’s many art boxes, again for the pleasure of tourists and residents alike — and a hammock in a resident’s front yard. For that family only, thank you!

Finally, my nostalgia satisfied and our minds and bodies refreshed by the peaceful environment…

we board a ferry, and head back to the city.

1 Comment
by icelandpenny on 12 September 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Toronto, Travel, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 12 September 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/12/snowy-owl-mailbox-spider/

Land Cruise: 7-9 September

7 September – Continuing my new, but very happy, Winnipeg tradition, I go walkabouts on departure morning. Once again, art comes my way as a result.

I cross the Red River to neighbouring St-Boniface and, just as I’m completing a loop through the neighbourhood, I find myself pulled into a parkette.

By this.

It is Joe Fafard‘s 2011 sculpture, Entre chien et loup — a tribute to the French saying, to this francophone quartier, and to the mystery and energy of transition zones.

By 10:30 pm I’m in the train station, ready to board, eager for our 11:30 departure and all the new sights that will come our way.

Except we don’t promptly board, and we don’t leave at 11:30 pm. Instead, we board at 3:30 am.

By then we are the walking dead. (Including the staff change coming on board with us — just as tired as we are but, unlike us, required to be up and active and even happy-faced just a few hours later.)

I don’t know when we finally leave Winnipeg. I’m asleep.

8 September – When I awake, we are somewhere just over the Ontario border. It’s about 7:30 am, and Groggy Self doesn’t understand why she is awake.

But it’s very pretty, isn’t it? And still very northern-looking.

I could show you lots more photos of boreal forest and lakes. But I won’t! By now you know what they look like. So, instead, imagine you’re with me as I enjoy those stunning views, all day long.

And sunset, near Hornpayne.

9 September – We’re just leaving Washago as I slide up my blind around 7 am, passing a CN work station and a cluster of workers. I’m happy to offer them this tribute: maintaining, scheduling, running trains is hard work. Thank you.

A rusty-but-sturdy little bridge, as we pass Sudbury…

first flashes of fall colour among the trees, here near MacTier…

and also near MacTier, one example of the rocky islands that stud glacial lakes throughout the region. Complete with cottages. (You can see a white one peeking out on the left-hand side of the middle island.)

We’re on the Shield! The glorious, hard-rock Canadian Shield — more than 1 billion years old, and covering a good 50% of Canada’s land mass. Oh, I love this rock. This particular example near Torrance.

We’re now well into the transition from boreal forest to more southern, more deciduous, forest mixtures. Also in transition to gentler, but still water-rich, vistas — creeks, rivulets, rivers, marshy or rock-bordered, and flanked by forest. This particular example, near Severn Bridge.

Solar panels near Washago (northern tip of Lake Couchiching)…

and farmland. We’re back to farmland. This barn, near Brechin (east of Lake Simcoe).

I’ve loved this segment of the trip, dropping us down through Muskoka, one of Ontario’s “cottage country” regions and one where I have many happy memories.

We continue south, and as we enter Toronto, I’m into another rich cache of happy memories.

The tracks here run alongside the east branch of the Don River (just south of Eglinton Avenue East). I clap my hands like a child, in delight. I’ve walked these trails, walked that foot-bridge, stepped across these train tracks. Ohhhh, just look.

The scenery goes on being familiar, and then, as we round into Union Station, I hit old + new.

New construction, new towers — but back there, its silhouette slivered in between the two left-hand buildings, back there is the CN Tower. No longer new, but still iconic: it opened in 1976 and, at 553 metres, reigned as the world’s tallest free-standing structure until 2007.

It’s still handsome. And it still says Toronto.

Here I am.

In Toronto. Land cruise ended, magic beyond belief.

Thank you, all of you, who have crossed the country with me. I’ve enjoyed your company.

Epilogue – I want you to know: by the time we reach Toronto, we have made up all that late-time in Winnipeg. These few passenger trains have so little control over their running time! They share over-burdened train tracks with a great many freight trains — all of which claim priority. When push has to come to shove, as it often does, it’s the passenger train that sits on the siding. This explains why passenger train departure times are meant to be honoured, but arrival times are fiction. “Fiction” in the sense they are not the straight running time; they always have padding built in. Siding-waits are as much part of the trip as every station along the way.

10 Comments
by icelandpenny on 9 September 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, Nature, photography, Toronto, Travel
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Posted by icelandpenny on 9 September 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/09/land-cruise-7-9-september/

Land Cruise: 5-6 September

5 September – Now I’m doubling back across the same terrain, this time south, Churchill to Winnipeg. It will surprise none of you that even though we’re travelling the same tracks, passing/stopping in the same places, the trip is entirely different. There’s the same train culture around me, but with different people. Perhaps because I’m slightly less obsessed with the landscape this time, I’m more aware of the people — who, because we’re still between tourist seasons, are again individuals rather than job-lot packages on tour. Such a range!

  • the trio who trained as nurses in Winnipeg long ago and as a result have been friends, and attending reunions and sharing other adventures, for more than 65 years
  • the young Parks Canada IT/AI specialist, who works summers based in Churchill and winters back in Winnipeg
  • the Australian couple (she originally from Ireland) who are this side of the world to attend a wedding in the Caribbean but decided, having come this far, to explore Canada while they’re at it
  • the deep-south American who “hates heat” and therefore does advance reconnaissance each year for the following summer’s travels in Canada with his wife (so far, Newfoundland is his hands-down favourite)
  • and… Origami Man. Oh, I’ll save him ’til later.

I think the other reason the reverse trip is different is precisely because it is in reverse. You approach from a different angle, you come at a different time and probably in different weather, and you yourself, even if only slightly, are already a different person. So, you notice differently.

For example, I notice the young man dis-embarking in Thompson, sporting the cap his wife found for him on the internet…

and the bilingual aisle signs in a Thompson grocery store.

Soon after Thompson, ’round about Mystery Lake, I come through the dining car and see Origami Man teaching the basics to two VIA staff with a rare moment free of obligations.

It’s another day before I learn he and his wife (she knits, while he folds) are from Detroit, and have their own deep Canadian memories, including ferry travel some 17 years ago down the north shore of the St. Lawrence River east of Quebec City.

We roll into The Pas at 10:30 pm. This time, I’m awake. I raise my blind a smidge…

take in the sliver of train station, and decide our steward is right. The location means there’s nowhere interesting to walk, especially this time of night. I pull down my blind once again.

6 September – I meet Calgary Alex going into the dining car, also with breakfast on his mind. He tells me he saw a deer, when he looked out his window shortly after dawn. I saw no deer — but now, in the dining car, we both see cranes.

Origami Man strikes again!

Talking with him later, I learn that, maybe predictably, his career was in the spatially precise world of engineering, and that this skill has become his passe-partout worldwide. “I start folding paper wherever I am. People gather. I spent a whole afternoon with kids in Mongolia.”

I’m startled when, at about 7:30 am, our cabin attendant announces we’ll soon roll into Kenora for a 10-minute stop. I smack the side of my head. Kenora? We’re in Ontario? She smiles, sorts me out: “Cee-ay-nora. Canora. Not Kay-ee.”

At the station, the display caboose and its signage complete the story.

No, a comment from fellow passenger Sue completes the story.

She is from the other one, from Kenora, and she explains that its name is also an acronym. In their case, for local communities & history: KE – Keewatin; NO – Norman; RA – Rat Portage. I tell her I want to visit Rat Portage; she says it’s now Kenora. Kenora was called Rat Portage until Maple Leaf Milling Company said they wouldn’t build a mill there if it meant putting the word “rat” on their flour.

Back to Canora-with-a-C. The town has an historic main street…

and a this-minute communications tower.

Approaching Dauphin, early afternoon, I don’t have to gawp at the 1912 train station — I’ve done that already. I’m free to notice brightly-graffiti’d box cars…

and the RR-themed parkette, with its plaque-bearing benches.

The arrival of the first train in 1896, says the plaque, “sparked the binding of over 550 communities across Canada, and forever changed the landscape of immigration, settlement, agriculture and commerce.”

{While all this 2025 train travel is going on, Origami Man is teaching Parks Canada AI Man some serious skills. The young man bends his head to the task. There is much laughter and an accumulation of geometric, and beyond-geometry, shapes.}

And then, pouf!, we’re in Winnipeg.

By 5:30 pm, I’m physically out on the street….

but mentally/emotionally…

I’m still back there with the birch and the black spruce.


7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 7 September 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 7 September 2025

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Land Cruise: 4 September

Somewhere north of Gillam, the sun not yet visible, but the horizon glowing…

and, an hour and a half later, the first glimpse of Churchill, its massive port structure.

We arrive. We scatter, each to our own priorities.

Mine will take me pretty directly from the train station (the dark oblong near the top of that bottom blue loop) straight through town to Hudson Bay.

Not quite directly. First a stop to refuel in the Seaport Hotel’s coffee shop.

It is clean and cheerful, unpretentious, and near the station. A convenient pivot-point. (I have no idea of the dramatic role it will play in my life, later that day.)

Fortified, I take my own boots past a boots mural…

straight-lining it to the water.

And there it is.

There, too, is one of the warning signs I’ve been told about. The polar bear “season” has not yet quite started. But this is the polar bears’ world, and they live by their own instincts, not the schedule of glossy tourist brochures. Every visitor is told to obey all the signs. Yes, I am told, go to the beach area, but no, don’t go to water’s edge, because bears can rise right up out of the sea, and don’t go near the rocks, because that’s where they like to hang out. As the tourism rep in the train station explains to the person in front of me: “You wouldn’t want to step on one.”

Lots of “don’ts.” I take them seriously. You have to respect nature.

So I do something very safe. I climb this convenient, if unorthodox, observation tower…

right to the top level.

Where, first, I view the forbidden rocks to the east …

and then, second, I focus on the beach right in front of me.

I focus, specifically, on the man way down there at water’s edge, walking happily along — man plus small dog, equally happy and unleashed.

This dog.

Not eaten by a polar bear, as you can see. The dog’s owner is a quite elderly Inuk, so I decide if anyone can give me reliable advice, he’s the one. I greet him. I say I watched him enjoying his shoreline walk, and I’d like to do that myself.

He explains he goes there because he likes to pick up stones. “Me too!” I cry. We beam at each other, dig in our respective pockets, and hold out our handfuls of stones for mutual inspection. Much murmured enthusiasm and poking at treasures ensues. After all that, I ask about safety. He says, “You have to watch. I don’t see any bears around right now.” He adds that if I position myself behind the sand bar, I should be fine, since I won’t be next to deep water.

With further compliments about our respective good taste in beach stones, we part company. He toward town, and I straight to the rivulet behind that sand bar.

Where (bottom left)…

I keep the promise I made my toes, that day on the Point Grey beach.

The day is cool — about 9-10C — but sunny and not yet windy. I continue walking the beach, completely happy. I see beluga whales cresting the water surface — just arcs of white, rising and falling, nothing dramatic, but clear enough for me to know they are indeed whales and not waves.

Finally, I walk west toward another line of forbidden rocks…

obediently stop short, and turn inland.

These bright, helpful signposts are all over town. This one is just uphill from the beach, and persuades me to visit the Granary Ponds…

with an initial stop in St. Paul’s Anglican Church, there on the left.

I look at various artefacts, including this 1930s Cree plaque quoting scripture from the Gospel of St. Matthew…

and I read the 2008 Federal Government’s Statement of Apology, signed by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to all those who suffered under the residential school system. Here’s an excerpt:

The road out to the Granary Ponds leads me past riots of wildflowers, still vibrant so late in the season…

and then a closer view of the Port of Churchill…

which, if political promises are kept, will benefit from major expansion in the near future. (An initiative announced by Prime Minister Carney during a European trip — one more move in building stronger and more diversified relations with other parts of the world.)

I backtrack into town. My one goal is to walk. A lot. Though I’ve had only one prior visit to Churchill, in the early 1980s, I spent a lot of that decade going in and out of the Arctic hamlets. I haven’t the foolishness, the arrogance, to think I am any kind of insider, but I do still resonate with all of this. Young self did lots of jumping around. Old self seeks only to put feet on the land, to see and smell and hear the land, and be in this place. So I walk.

And, oh yes, I see very northern sights.

This truck decal, for instance…

and this komatik (sled), waiting for winter…

and this polite request in the doorway of Itsanitaq Museum.

But I also see streetscapes that could be anywhere in Canada.

There are community gardens all over Canada, as well…

though this one takes proper northern measures to protect the crops.

Right next to it, a happy pod of beluga whales, swimming a very different ocean.

And then… and then, no more pictures.

Because then, getting on for 5 pm, my gut announces that it is not pleased with the tasty falafel bowl I had for lunch in a highly recommended local bistro. My gut makes clear that it plans soon to start Throwing Out the Garbage.

This will be merely unpleasant, not dangerous, but also highly inconvenient. The train station is not yet open and I am not registered in any hotel. I’m again near the Seaport Hotel, so I walk in. What else can I do? They look after me. I am safe and sheltered. My gut can briskly go about its housekeeping detail in privacy. When I finally totter off to the train station, a fellow passenger, the station staff and VIA Rail staff are all equally practical and kind. Soon I am whooshed aboard the train, tucked up in my own sleeper-cabin. After a few more rounds of garbage-removal, I sleep. When I wake again, I am completely well. It’s all over.

So is the day in Churchill. Our train is now in motion.

I lie there, think about all that helpful kindness — and decide that my little bout of food poisoning was in fact the final heart-warming event in a thoroughly wonderful day.

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 7 September 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Travel, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 7 September 2025

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Land Cruise: 2-3 September

2 September – The train doesn’t depart until 12:05 pm, so I have time for a morning walk on Winnipeg’s “Cool Streets”…

before obediently turning up at Union Station by 11 am.

I just see people. I don’t yet know, for example, that the Calgary couple in the cluster on the left are delighted to see some distant relatives will also be on our train, albeit only part way. Or that the young people over there on the right belong to two separate post-grad teams, one from France and one Québécois (Université Laval), travelling north to research climate change on ice structure and on permafrost, respectively. (Even later, I learn the French project was originally planned for Siberia, but world politics got in the way, and they had to find themselves a new home.)

Into my cabin, and a quick study of our trip map.

I am excited. Once, so many decades ago, I returned to Winnipeg from Churchill by train, but I’ve lost almost all memory of the trip. Here I am, about to do it again. Both ways! We’ve been told there’ll be quite frequent stops, in many very small communities as well as the larger ones. This train run is still an important communications link — and, indeed, beyond Thompson, the only land route to Churchill.

Farms, harvested fields…

as we roll past Portage la Prairie, the land still looks a lot like Saskatchewan. Still very southern.

How could I have forgotten the imposing train station in Dauphin?

A CN station, built in 1912, when train travel was a very big deal indeed.

The next stop will be The Pas, but I’m long asleep by then. I don’t even notice our brief swing across the Saskatchewan border and back again.

3 September – Sunrise somewhere near Wekusko, and it’s a different world.

Becoming boreal, it really is. I think some of those lacy silhouettes are tamarack, also some white spruce? I’m not an expert, don’t quote me, but at least I can tell we’re moving into a different world.

Colder, too. Hoar frost rims every leaf, needle and blade…

and here I can name a few things with reasonable certainty. That tall skinny guy in the back row is black spruce, there’s at least one white birch (later I see whole groves of them) and the deciduous trees there on the right look like trembling aspen — all these species part of the boreal mixture.

As the sun rises, mist also rises…

from ponds, lakes and this pretty creek.

Usually this run has a dome car, but what should have been our dome car is in the repair shop, so the dining car is our everything car. It becomes our hangout, for much more than food.

Families wave to cars at the road crossings…

the students bend over the data on their laptops, prepping for their projects…

and I have my own little spread of resources, quite frivolous by comparison.

Notepad, map, coffee, grapes (I swapped one of my Gemini apples for some of the attendant’s grapes), and — and how appropriate is this? — Agatha Christie’s 1930s The Mystery of the Blue Train. (My copy is in French — snapped up from the Take/Donate bin on my previous train.)

We make brief stops in small communities. Fresh air and a look at daily life for us; vital on- and off-loading for them. Wabowden, for example…

and Thicket Portage, where the Quebec students are chatting next to that ubiquitous vehicle of the north, the fat-wheeled buggy.

Back on board, and in passing I meet Conductor Ted Thompson.

(So there, Paddington Bear! We have Ted.)

I see my first beaver lodge of the trip…

that knob at 11 o’clock in the pond, but I almost miss it, so many leaves cover the distinctive twiggy dome.

I watch the train curve with the tracks. Completely different from those craggy twists in the Alberta mountains! Here, a setting of scrub, aspen, birch and coniferous I don’t dare to try to identify.

There’s a rock cut that makes me think of driving though Ontario’s Muskoka region…

and piles of materials…

presumably for some project along this river.

A set-piece scene:

wildflowers, train tracks, aspen, birch and conifers.

Just before 3 pm, we do the back-and-forthing required to shift us from the main track to the spur line into Thompson. Thompson: created by INCO, a planned city and a mining town. While now more diversified, you still see that mining architecture from anywhere in town.

The part we got to walk is very big-box. Anybody who knows the outskirts of Barrie ON will know what I mean. Still, everyone I spoke with was friendly and helpful, and I did get to see my first — of what surely will be many — polar bear mural.

(Though I must add, I prefer the battered float plane mural on the left.)

Out of Thompson, back on the main line, and on to Pikwitonei. Population less than 100, says our travel guide, but don’t curl your lip. It also has its very own Greeter Dog.

Greeter Dog meets every train, and while I scratch under his ears and he leans happily on my leg, a Cree gentleman teaches me how to pronounce the town name. It is “Pick-whi-tonNAY.” with the emphasis very firmly on the last syllable. (Like NewfoundLAND. Understand?)

Round about 8:20 or so, somewhere north of Pikwitonei but still south of Ilford, I watch the moon rise…

and then I fall asleep.

Tomorrow: Churchill. Tomorrow: Hudson Bay.

My boots expect me to keep my promise.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 6 September 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Nature, photography, street art, Travel
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Posted by icelandpenny on 6 September 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/06/land-cruise-2-3-september/

Land Cruise: 1 September

1 September – I’ll be one day and a bit, in Winnipeg. On the land, and on the water too.

The theme of land and rivers, the two great pathways of our country, keeps gaining strength. Not because I intellectually seek it out. Because it is imposing itself on me.

A tear-off map at my hotel inspires my walk: down to the Red River, there behind the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and then along the walking trails up into Stephen Juba Park, back down and around the curve of The Forks (where the Assiniboine River joins the Red), onto the water in a 30-minute tour, and more river-side walking, both rivers.

The Red River. The cereal of my childhood, even my very own Red River coat, as a child.

The river, of course, is more important for reasons other than cereal and coats.

My path along the Red up into Stephen Juba Park leads me past old pilings, last remnants of the glory days of this port (before the Panama Canal opened, and offered shipping an easier, quicker route through the Americas).

This is also when I first tap my boots in the water.

Literal next step in a whimsical project I hope I can complete: having tapped toes in the Pacific (Burrard Inlet, cf. my post of 25 August), I want now to tap them in the Red River, Hudson Bay and Lake Ontario.

Did you notice the trestle bridge, in the distance of that last photo? Used for military purposes, I’m told, and now the train bridge. I’m drawn to it. I admire the utility of these bridges, their visible geometry and, once I draw near, the majesty (albeit scruffy) of the near end of this particular example.

After I turn, after I follow the riverwalk bend around the point of land, I am now beside the Assiniboine River. I tap toes in its waters as well — a bonus not part of the original plan — and, as I do so, I notice a yellow Waterways tour boat mid-stream.

There is a dock, there is a boat about to depart, I climb aboard.

Only one fellow passenger, this early in the day: a Montreal film-maker, in town to work on a production here. Our guide has an impeccably Spanish name and an impeccably Canadian accent: his family moved here when he was two years old.

Kayak going one way, we’re going the other. Miguel is powering ahead, having now explained those three lines on the bridge pillar. Each is a water level: blue for normal spring levels, yellow for the danger of rising waters, red for floods. (I think of my brother’s years in Winnipeg, and the spring he helped sandbag against that year’s inundation.)

Back on land, toes duly tapped in not one but two mighty rivers, I head for the markets within The Forks complex. While you can buy food aboard the Winnipeg-Churchill run, it’s the like of microwaved subs, I’ve been told — the same person then suggesting I lay in some supplies.

So I do. Bison Snack Sticks (Canadian), Thunderbird “real food” bars (American), oat cakes (Isle of Mull) and Gemini apples (very very very local). Tomorrow morning, I’ll snag myself a few hard-boiled eggs from the hotel’s breakfast bar as well.

Feeling sufficiently prepared, I leave The Forks. But not before I admire Caboose 76602, a permanent installation on the grounds.

Built in Montreal in the 1930s, retired from service in Winnipeg in 1988, it is now “dedicated to the thousands of CN train crews who travelled through Winnipeg and the ‘East Yard’ that is now The Forks.”

Tomorrow, 12:05 pm Central time, I’ll be back on board one of today’s trains.

The one that will take me to Churchill.

7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 1 September 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 1 September 2025

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Land Cruise: 29-31 August

29-31 August 2025 – You’ve had the tease, and my friend Larry correctly guessed: I was about to start an epic VIA Rail adventure. Another friend Blane plaintively asked, “Why not farther east?” and the answer is: I would’ve if I could’ve.

  • Plan A (back in the dreaming stage, in January): coast to coast! Vcr-Tor; visit friends; then back on VIA for Tor-Montreal and on again Montreal-Halifax.
  • Plan B (after time with a patient VIA rep in Pacific Central Station, still January): coast to coast to coast!!! Hop off in Winnipeg for the side-jaunt Wpg-Churchill-return, which would put me on the shores of Hudson Bay; then carry on, as in Plan A.
  • Plan C (after searching train availability with that patient rep across three months): the reality plan. Not possible to book sleeper-cabin on all legs of any one trip. Time to choose — Arctic or Atlantic? Arctic wins.

These first days get me to Winnipeg: 2 days + 5 hours of travel, over 2,485 km.

Just look at it. This trip, as my friends & family already know, is not about visiting cities. It is about seeing again friends farther east, and — given the mode of transport — it is hugely about once again travelling through great chunks of this astounding land. The literal land. By train, which has so shaped this country, and which has featured in many of my own earlier travels in this country, various segments at various times.

I am hungry to see it again, to cherish my own memories, and honour the land. And to be reminded of its complexity, its variety — so easily forgotten or not known, as we live each in our own local world.

But! All of this belongs to all of us. Is part of all of us.

29 August – we pull out at 3 pm Pacific time; I’ll be asleep before we arrive in Kamloops, late at night.

Last bustle on the Pac Central platform…

a train’s eye view of the bridge across the Fraser River at New Westminster…

and then, as that first map shows you, we follow the Fraser north-east.

Into the mountains where, past Yale and close to Spuzzum, I notice not just the craggy heights, but the power lines that top them.

I think about that, too — the trinity of river/railroad/power lines, our historic and present pathways through the country, the ways we connect our small settlements of people across such vast sweeps of land.

Farther along again, fading light, well into the Fraser Canyon and a deceptively calm-looking stretch of the river far below.

Deceptive, because we are just short of Hell’s Gate, where an abrupt narrowing of the river creates churning white water.

And then… and then it’s dark, and I chat a bit with others…

and then I’m asleep. Somewhere in there, passengers come and go in Kamloops, and the train carries on.

30 August – I’m up by 7 am, in the dome car by 7:30. Mountains tower above us and all around.

We clatter along, on through Jasper National Park, the train lines clinging to the cliffs, power lines ditto, with tunnels where necessary.

None of this stunning feat of engineering deletes (or even dilutes) the human cost involved — lives lost not only through the honest limitations of 19th-c safety measures, but also through sheer disdain for some of the people living those lives. (Chinese workers, for e.g., were primarily the explosive crews.) We must acknowledge all that. We can also acknowledge the achievement as well. Life is both/and, not either/or. (In other words, cancel nothing, Acknowledge it all.)

This is a long train — still the full 21 cars of high season.

Two engines, baggage car, crew car, some other utility car whose title I forget, and car after car of all of us passengers: mostly older, but not all; predominantly Canadian and (despite everything) American, but not all, and with a major presence of Aussies; train nerds among us; cruise-goers ditto, ticking their lists of Been There, Done That; and a whole range of people with other motives, from family reunions to curiosity to hikers giving their legs a break to Europeans with some Canadian connection offering themselves a nostalgic return.

We pull into Jasper…

and how telling it is that I’m showing you the rail yard, not a picture-postcard view of the town! (Maybe I’m becoming a train nerd myself…)

With 45 minutes free time in town, we scatter. I get away from the tourist-trap main streets as quickly as I can, walk a loop in-behind, stop to admire a cougar (or something) never seen in the wild…

and climb back on board.

And then, and then, after a while, we’re in Alberta. The land changes, and the uses of the land we can see from our train track also change.

Cattle!

And wheat! And nodding donkeys!

That is, the pump jacks that bring crude oil to the surface, whose rhythmic up-and-down inspired the nickname. You see them tucked into all kinds of locations. (I remember, when new to the west, being stunned to see some within the grounds of the Calgary airport — well away from runways, you understand.)

Sunset from the dome car, nearing Stony Plain…

and deep night by the time we pull into Edmonton.

Which is all I know about 30 August.

31 August – When I awake, we’re just leaving Saskatoon. (On to that second map, ‘way up above.)

Again, the changing land.

And, oh, the big sky.

Alberta carries on about being big-sky country but, old Alberta girl that I am, I have to confess that for me that sky is at its most glorious across the prairies. (The prairie landscape, period, is glorious. I had forgotten its beauty.)

Right. Back to the sky.

Straight up through the dome…

over harvested fields, near Kelliher…

over a bison ranch, near St-Denis…

over the Young (near Watrous) grain elevator (possibly superseded by now, but its architecture iconic and worth our attention)…

even over a potash mine (this one near Yarbo).

Herewith a nerdy aside about potash. Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of potash (some 33% of total world production), and all 11 of our active mines are in Saskatchewan. Yes, there is a lot more to this province than wheat.

And that’s all I can show you for 31 August.

I feel mildly, but only mildly, apologetic. I also spend time talking to people, and eating (very well), and just looking, endlessly looking, out across the land. In fact, maybe I should own up to reverse pride in the fact that, for long stretches of time, I put down the damn camera and just fall into the land.

There is one more fact of note: somewhat after 9 pm Central Time, we pull into Winnipeg, and I get off the train.

For a changing-gears day and a half in Winnipeg. Before the next leg of the train trip.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 1 September 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 1 September 2025

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Land Cruise

29 August 2025 – Here’s the tease:

Oh yes, all of that. In stages, with add-ons.

You’ll see!

(But not immediately.)

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 29 August 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in photography, Toronto, Travel, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 29 August 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/08/29/land-cruise/

Bike to Baik to ¡Bueno!

2 March 2025 – Long ago, I lived for a while in Peru. Only slightly less long ago, I lived for a while in Indonesia. And now, on this one afternoon here in Vancouver, I revisit each — in new physical experience, and in old memories as well.

1 – Bike to Baik

First, courtesy of the VPL (Vancouver Public Library) Staircase Sounds series of noon-hour musical events: a program of Indonesian gamelan music, performed by the Vancouver group Gamelan Bike Bike.

The name Bike Bike is a double, and bilingual, play on words.

In English, it nods to the fact that the musicians complement traditional gamelan instruments with ones they build themselves from old bicycle parts.

See? On the red table-tops: segments of old bike frames (left & far right) and bike sprockets (second from right).

Even their shirts, custom-designed and created in Indonesia, continue the theme, with bike chains and sprockets in amongst more traditional design elements.

The group of musicians is very good — and that is the second, bilingual, part of the play on words. In the Indonesian language, baik baik (virtually the same pronunciation) means exactly that: “very good!” (Literally, good-good.)

I sit for an hour, awash in the intricate beauty of the music as it pulses and swirls through this Vancouver space. Awash, also, in memories of another time and that other place.

Baik baik sekali. Saya senung sekali.

2 – to ¡Bueno!

And then, my head full of glorious music, I leave the glorious Central Library building (thank you, Moishe Safdie) and walk five blocks north to Silvestre (“gusto latino”) on Water Street in Gastown.

More precisely, this deli-bistro offers “gusto peruano,” for it was founded by Peruvian immigrants and is dedicated to Peruvian cuisine and ambiente. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve checked the menu online, and I know what I want: an alfajor dessert (two shortbread rounds, filled with dulce de leche and topped with icing sugar) and a mug of chicha morada (a purple corn drink, slightly tart and refreshing).

The young server treats me to widened eyes and a dimpled smile when I speak with her in Spanish. And I smile — oh, how I smile — when she delivers my order.

Odd thing, memory.

Tracking down alfajores in Vancouver had become an obsession; chicha morada was an afterthought. But now, as I sit with the physical reality again before me and in my mouth… the power is in the drink.

The alfajor is delicious, but it is not tied to any one moment or place we’d visit while in Lima. The chicha morada, however… It is absolutely tied to the one very small café in the High Selva village where we lived, and to the people with whom we conversed in that café, all those people who deepened our knowledge of the language and the place and how best for us to be there with them.

All these decades later, that taste is again fresh in my mouth — and old memories are again fresh in my mind. ¡Qué bueno!

Bike-baik-bueno.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 March 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, photography, Travel, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 March 2025

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