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.