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….