Trip Reports by our Clients:
Canada from Atlantic to Pacific
by
Rich Thom
Dear Ted and Sylvia:
It has been my habit over the years to send comments to whomever has made our travel arrangements for us, before too much time passes and the details are still fresh in mind. So here are some brief remarks about our recently completed trip to Canada, which you arranged for us.
In short, a wonderful trip. Both the “Caravan” and “Brewster” portions of the trip went smoothly. About the only negative thing I can cite is the frightful cost of everything—but we were well aware of this in advance. We found almost everything to be priced as if the “loonie” were still trading at US 70 cents. The Canadian newspapers are filled with articles about how the Canadians are truly getting “ripped off” by their own merchants: one page-one article compared prices of major purchases such as automobiles, washing machines, TVs and the like and found, on average, the Canadians paying 30% more than we would pay in the States. A public outcry seems to be growing and, in time, this situation will likely get corrected. But, in the meantime, tourism from the U.S. is reported to be down 30% in Canada, and cost is certainly one of the causes of this serious decline.
CARAVAN
But back to the tour. The modestly-priced Caravan tour of the Maritimes was excellent, and by all means good value for money. The hotels used were very good, as were the meals; bus, guide, and driver were all excellent, too. There were over 40 people on the tour, a group rather on the large size for our taste, but it was an amiable bunch of travelers, and the guide kept everything running to schedule and didn’t tolerate laggards. Apparently, Caravan is very big in that part of Canada, and were running tours identical to ours on about 3-day separations. We found the seven days to be just about the right length; there is a certain sameness to the forests and seacoasts—as lovely as they are—and a much longer tour would have struck us as somewhat repetitive.
BREWSTER
Brewster handled the remainder of the trip beginning with our two additional nights in Halifax; the hotel (Halifax Citadel) and rental car (Hertz) they arranged were both fine, and we got to see some additional places that interested us not included on the Caravan Tour: Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, and Port Royal, both on Nova Scotia’s northwest coast and a considerable drive from Halifax. Both were worth the time to get there.
Air from Halifax to Toronto was painless, and we enjoyed our overnight at the “unusual” Renaissance Toronto Hotel Downtown, in the Skydome. You undoubtedly booked that one for us since it is so close to the VIA Station, close enough that we actually walked the following morning, luggage and all: only fifteen minutes or so, although the elderly or infirm would probably want a taxi. All the other Brewster-provided services came off perfectly according to their itinerary.
CANADIAN
Both Linda and I—but especially yours truly—are enthusiastic train travelers, but I cannot explain why we have waited so long to ride this magnificent train; perhaps it has seemed simply “too close to home.” (For example, I have logged 29,331 miles on 88 trains in China, spread over 13 trips—including the new line to Lhasa this past June.) But as you well know, the Canadian is the last of its breed, and traveling in its Silver and Blue service a wonderful experience. We enjoyed it immensely.
We had Bedroom F, as you promised, on both the Toronto-Jasper and Jasper-Vancouver segments. Thanks very much for securing this room; the additional 18-inches was a welcome comfort. (We heard some other pax mildly complaining about lack of space in Bedrooms A-E when the berths were down—they have apparently not experienced Amtrak!—or China Rail Hard Class, either). Even though these train sets are now over 50 years old and long in tooth, they are in immaculate condition. Our first sleeper, Monck Manor, had a flat wheel, but other than that everything else in the car “worked” and worked well. We especially loved the “Park” cars—who doesn’t?—and both of our sleepers were in the rearmost section of the train so we had the good fortune of using a Park car as our lounge car. (If you selected the rearmost sleeper group especially when you booked for us—thanks!) The Silver and Blue class was made up of three sections, each with its own dome car, and there was a fourth dome up front for use by the economy pax; the train was 22 cars out of Toronto, and 23 out of Jasper. Meals were excellent, and (most) staff friendly; the single exception was the steward on the first segment by the name of Farsad, who was sullen and abrupt. One of the attendants by the name of Dennis was on his very last run, retiring after 35 years. He was well known on the Canadian, apparently, for his singing—and entertained everyone in the lounge car with a beautifully rendered “It’s a Wonderful World.” When is the last time a flight attendant sang for his/her passengers on, say, Southwest??!
SUGGESTIONS FOR CANADIAN TRAVELERS
I can think of only two suggestions that you might want to pass on to “first time” pax (as we were) on the Canadian. The first one is to arrive earlier at the Toronto station than the Brewster itinerary suggests. (It advises to check in at 08:00 for the 09:00 departure time.) There is quite a mob scene of pax at that time and it is not entirely clear where to start the process of checking in: there are queues for baggage check, another for diner seating for the first day, yet another counter where one has to report (first, it turns out, before you can do any of the other steps) to exchange the Brewster voucher for the actual tickets. Most pax, many elderly, were wandering about trying to determine which queue to get into first, so it’s good to allow more time to deal with the confusion. We arrived at 07:45. The really good part of this is that we were relatively early getting our diner seating assignment for day one of the journey: we got the more desirable second of the three sittings—about 18:30 for dinner.
This in fact is our only “complaint” about the Canadian. If we hadn’t (unknowingly) arrived early in Toronto station, we would have never had the second sitting on any day of our journey. On every other day of the trip, whenever the steward got to us, on every occasion the second sitting was unavailable and we were stuck with either the first (17:00 for dinner) or the third (about 21:00), neither of which was appealing to us. On one morning, we even went quite early to breakfast in order to hopefully secure a “second sitting” chit from the steward, but even on that occasion all she had available for us—with no choice at all—was the first sitting. I don’t know how the “process” works, but my suspicion—of which I have no proof—is that the tour leaders of the various group tours on the train are cozy with the stewards and grab up the preferred second sitting slots for their pax.
The second suggestion is to advise your first-time travelers on the Canadian that the train is sometimes late—sometimes very late. Any Amtrak veteran will know and anticipate this, of course, and the situation and reasons for it are precisely the same on Canada’s rail network: VIA has track-lease arrangements, and its trains get put on the passing tracks for every freight train they encounter. We were an hour and a half late into Jasper—not bad, really. But the train out of Jasper was very late: almost seven hours. (Actual departure was at 22:15 compared to the scheduled 15:30.) This was no problem for us, since we had no ongoing connections out of Vancouver, having simply to get to the airport to pick up our car. But some people had midday flights scheduled out of Vancouver to return to their home cities and missed their flights (the Canadian arrived Vancouver, still about six and one half hours late, in mid-afternoon).
VIA looked after its passengers well, though, as you might expect. We were given vouchers for dinner in Jasper, a generous $25 per person which purchased some outstanding Alberta steaks. They also laid on more food in Jasper when the train finally arrived so that they could serve us lunch in the diner as well as the usual breakfast on the final day of the journey. A real bonus for being so late: we had a marvelous daylight run through the North Thompson and Fraser River canyons—usually traversed at night! Every cloud has its silver lining.
JASPER
Finally, our stay in Jasper was pleasant and the Amethyst Lodge quite comfortable. The weather was beautiful on one of our days there and we took the shuttle out to Jasper Park Lodge and walked back to town—having a close encounter with two bull elk enroute (it was rutting season as well, when the bulls are somewhat edgy). Thanks for making the arrangements for Brewster to transfer us from the Jasper railway station to the Amethyst Lodge and vice-versa, but we discovered these were really not necessary. The Amethyst is just about four or so (short) blocks from the station and we could have easily walked it, but of course we didn’t know that and you didn’t know how “mobile” (or not) we might be nor how much luggage we travel with (not much). And of course it could also have been pouring rain!
Altogether, a wonderful trip of which we will have pleasant memories for a long time. Thanks again for making all the arrangements for us: they were flawless.
Sincerely,
Rich Thom
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