In Training: Canada

The run from Quebec to Montreal was full of talkers--Free Trade and such--and before I could say Rene Levesque, we were pulling into the gare from which I had been ungraciously expelled a fortnight before. Up the street, in the VIA building in Ville Marie Place, is a computerized tourist center. I punched up no fewer than 28 art shows I could have sought out, had I not been scheduled for the overnight train. So I settled for the McCord Museum of Canadian History, conveniently located in an old manse right across the street from McGill University. Good choice. The McCord is on a roll right now, due to a multi-million benefaction that will thrust it into the front ranks of world museums.

Little did I expect that a small drama would unfold on the Halifax train. Two young men got smashed to their gills in the bar car. The peak of their inebriation occurred at the train took a short cut across the top of Maine. The conductor seemed reluctant to follow through on his threat to expel them into the hands of the state police of Maine instead of through the more usual channel of the TCMP.

Finally, the two slobs dozed off, but not before I had asked the conductor to move me over to the Dayniter, a surcharge coach with a more sleepable ambience of reclining seats and dimmer lighting. He forgave me the $14 fee when I argued I didn't want to spend the night listening to those two cretins four-letter each other to sleep.



Next day, in New Brunswick, an ancient couple simulating Alzheimerism nicked my seat while I was having lunch as well as a leisurely read in the caboose of an observation car. The Roll of Honor issue of McLean's, in which a dozen Canucks are touted for raising the quality of life in Canada, featured a certain Douglas Cardinal, a Metis architect from Red Deer, Alberta, who has been given the plum commission of the 20th Century for Canada: the Museum of Civilization now under construction in Hull, Quebec, across the river from Ottawa.

That old couple in my seat (they had carefully piled all my gear on a single across the aisle) upgraded me yet another time on the Halifax run.

When the conductor perceived their mask of imperturbable uncomprehendingness, he pssted me to follow him to the sleeping cars, where he told me to make myself comfortable wherever I liked.

In Halifax, I opted for the Nova Scotian, a Canadian National hotel under refurbishment and with a splendid view of the harbor. I had read in the Halifax daily that Dave Broadfoot of the Royal Canadian Air Farce--CBC radio's weekly clone of the BBC's Goon Show--was appearing solo at Dalhousie University's Art Centre that very night. 

The Farce had mopped the floor last summer in Philly with the heavyweight funnymen of America (Art Buchwald, Dick Gregory, Mark Russell, Andy Rooney) at the Constitution Bicentennial Humor Summit.

I wanted to see Broadfoot solo.

"Canada," he began with mock solemn tones, "is the only country in the world" ... (portentiously grandiose pause) ... "that no other country is afraid of." (Canadians crack up en masse.) "They say," he continued brightly, "that Canada is like Australia." (Pause.) "That's ridiculous. Australia was founded by convicted felons. Canada was founded by crooks who haven't been caught yet." (More pandemonium.) So the Farce was no fluke, and Broadfoot has one leg up by himself, a most beguiling farceur indeed.

But curses on McKelvey's, reputedly the best fish restaurant in Halifax. I had called them to see whether, if I got there by 10 p.m., I could test their fishiness. So I left Broadfoot in the middle of his last routine (about a dementedly vicious hockey player) to hail a cab.

I arrived at 9:45 to be blithely told the cook went home early. Fishy excuse. A discredit to credentialed icthyphiles.

The rest of my passing-around was without such frustrations. Winnipeg became my entrepot--first up to Churchill on the Hudson Bay, where I chided the station agent as I was boarding the train that I hadn't been able to find any caribou meat anywhere.

"You want caribou meat?" he parried in tones that I expected would lead me at the last minute to a back alley black-market meat vendor. Wrong, suspicion breath. He repaired to the station fridge and came back and handed me a thick caribou steak from the 80 pounds he had dressed out from his kill the week before.

And when the rest of the passengers had finished their paid-for meals, the cook kindly threw it on his grill. I haven't tasted such delectable game in 20 years--whale meat in Finland was the last thing to touch my tongue with such gustatory enchantment.



The long haul to Prince Rupert was eased by the spectacular scenery of the Skeena River valley--slightly snowed-on going out, in the midst of howling blizzards on the way back.

The American promoter who started the Northern Pacific dreamed that his railway would make Rupert the Vancouver of the North Coast. Alas, he went down on the Titanic and P.R. was saved from such a booster's fate to be the luscious small town it is today.



Don't miss the Northern B.C. Museum, where a bright and bushy-tailed director named Elaine Moore will show you a carved bear she successfully kept from being sold out of the country and will doubtless also show you a photo of the argillite carving that she repatriates from Arizona this spring. 

Right now, she needs $3 million to finance her move into the Chatham Village Indian complex across the street. With her conviction and gift of gab, I have no doubt she will encounter some willing philanthropist in the very near future.



I made one final round trip east--to Toronto, to review the "Marsden Hartley in Nova Scotia" show at the Art Gallery of Ontario and to scare myself silly in the new Bat Cave at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Before hopping my Greyhound $59 el cheapo from Pembina, N.D., to Philly (with a $15 add-on from Winnipeg to Pembina), I spent the morning at the University of Winnipeg, getting a humongous carton out of the bookstore's trash pile to consolidate the handbags I had been collecting souvenirs in. And U.S. Customs even smiled on the $396 worth of Eskimo art I had popped for in Churchill. And the bank in Grafton, N.D., even took the Canadian currency I hadn't remembered to spend up North.

I got off the bus in Fargo. Had a fine time looking at the newly refurbished Fargo Theatre as well as the recycled Cass Gilbert train depot, which sports the vintage photos of Fargo, 1870-1900, by the legendary F.L. Haynes, the official photographer of both Yellowstone (the park) and Northern Pacific (the railroad). He's the only photographer who had his own Palace Car rolling-stock studio.



So it was a great month. A travel best buy. Just keep a few things in mind to minimize frustration: Book reservations ahead. During the winter you don't have to worry about sleeping accommodations. About 8 p.m., a steward works the aisles offering "night rates," which is to say half the standard rates, which run from $25 or so for upper bunks to $150 for your own private room.

And talk with the people. They're better than the scenery, and besides, they're available 24 hours a day.



Hazard at Large, from Welcomat: After Dark, April 13, 1988