The conductor looks at my luggage, looks me in the eye, and says, “Go ahead, load ‘em on.”
Travel Tip: Do not carry more than you can handle yourself on this journey. We are going off the tourist circuit into rough country now; no five star hotels, no obsequious porters or bellmen will be waiting to assist us at every turn.
As we settle into a pair of seats on the right side, generally the water side, more passengers board until all pairs of seats are occupied, with at least one passenger per pair. One lady carries on two trays of potted plants. At 815am the train promptly whistles off, and our Vancouver Island adventure begins.
The Dayliner has comfortable, individually reclining seats. There is ample room at the boarding end to store heavy luggage, as well as open overhead racks above the seats. A stainless-steel push-button water dispenser, with those traditional cone-shaped flimsy paper cups that seem to whisper “1950s railroading” is at one end of the car. A tiny unisex washroom is at the other end. The original stainless-steel Budd plaque, warning: “Do not flush while standing in station” inside the washroom is missing (doubtless on some railfan’s bathroom wall somewhere) but there is a hand-scrawled message on a piece of paper, done with a felt tip pen and taped it to the wall.
While there is a lot of truly creative graffiti on view as we leave Victoria, as well as a fair number of backyards, we are soon into the verdant countryside on this beautifully sunny day. Inlets, marinas, farms, and lakes abound as we gain altitude. Vancouver Island is mountainous, and while there are some stretches that are obscured by trees close to the tracks (a couple of frightfully recent clear-cut logging operations are attempting to solve that problem) there are glimpses of meadows, wildflowers, and snow-capped mountains. We pass by several tiny but neat stations, as we are entering whistle-stop country.
There are white-knuckle trestles so high over deep gorges that everyone gasps with relief once we’ve passed over them.
While there is no food served aboard this train, it does make a scheduled meet with a catering truck in Nainamo at 1045am. Here we have an opportunity to get off and stretch our legs and enjoy the truly fresh air of May on Vancouver Island.
After the 15-minute stop, we whistle off to our next stop at Parksville, where our lady disembarks with the potted plants. At noon, 15 minutes behind 
schedule, we arrive into Qualicum Beach, at a quaint late- 19th century style country station. A representative of the visitors bureau, Glenna, greets the disembarking passengers and offers street maps of the nearby village. The conductor, anxious to get back on schedule, assists us with our baggage this time, before whistling off again and disappearing down the thin rusty rails back into the woods.
Our Pacific Spirit Tours bus is to pick us up here at 130pm, so we have time to explore lunch possibilities. Glenna graciously offers to let us store our luggage in her office in the station building, then gives us directions to Bailey’s café, which is just a block and a half away. Here we enjoy dining al fresco on the café patio next to the city library and clock tower. Bright sunshine and cool fresh breezes make this village a favourite of Canadian retirees. Flowers abound, in plantings, in hanging pots, everywhere! Neatly trimmed lawns invite loungers to sit in the sun and enjoy their lunch hour on the grass. A uniformed policeman strolls by and picks up a fast food container that had been discarded on the library lawn and deposits it into a trash can a few steps away. A stunningly cared for Lincoln Town Car from the early 1990’s parks at the curb, the silvery/gold metallic paint a gorgeous contrast with the flat grays and silvers of the Japanese, German, and Korean made cars parked nearby.
I phone Pacific Spirit Tours to reconfirm our pickup and am advised that the time will be 15 minutes later, at 145pm, and that we should look for a mini-bus with the name Wilson’s on the side. Sitting on a shady bench back at the station, surrounded by our luggage, we spot a large inter-city bus with the Wilson’s name on the side. The driver stops at the curb outside the station parking lot, lets off four passengers, and drives away. I get a Pacific Spirit Tours representative on the cell phone. She tells us that was our bus, then calls the driver on his cell phone. In twenty minutes he is back, with apologies. His dispatcher had not advised him of our pickup, he explained.
Travel Tip: Don’t even think about taking an independent trip like this without a cell phone, and arrange with your telephone company to have Canadian coverage if you’re from another country. If we couldn’t have reached the bus driver, our only other alternative would have been to charter a light plane to Port Hardy – and, as everyone knows by now, Ted doesn’t fly any more.
From here we begin the 220 mile journey to Port Hardy, the north end of the road on Vancouver Island. (All the other passengers on the bus had boarded it in Victoria, not realizing that taking the train part of the way was an option.) We catch glimpses of jagged snow-capped peaks and blue water, but most of the route is through lumber clear cuts of the slash and burn variety, a sight which caused a great deal of distress and grumbling among our fellow passengers. Much of the cut lumber is being shipped to the Orient, where the ancient civilizations either have long ago cut off their timber, or in the case of Japan, are able to preserve their forests in national parks as long as North Americans are willing to harvest theirs.
I am sounding like a “tree hugging” environmentalist. But why should I worry? After all, forests are a renewable resource, we are told. But when we stopped for a tea break and saw an old growth log on display, nine feet in diameter and over 900 years old, we realized that what Canadians call First Growth Timber cannot be renewed until about 36 generations of humans have come and gone. When these trees are gone (and how often does one see a living tree nine feet in diameter?) they are gone forever, as far as we and our grandchildren are concerned.
We check into the Glen Lyon Motel, on the harbor at Port Hardy. The tide is out, eagles and ospreys are fishing for their dinner, and we could use something to renew our strength after this long day. In the motel dining room we refresh ourselves with mugs of British Columbia Honey Brown Ale to wash down a hearty Salisbury steak with jalepeno fries. There are some business dinners in progress, and from what we overhear, the business here is charter fishing.
We walk out on the breakwater which protects the boat harbor, where we find everything from rugged fishing vessels to a motor yacht which has somehow made its way here from New Bern, North Carolina. It is very quiet. No traffic noises, no aircraft, no personal water craft. It is a temporary respite from contemporary life.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll take the ferry to Prince Rupert.
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