A day and a night on the Ocean Train

Wednesday evening – east along the St. Lawrence

I am writing this on the Ocean Train, which runs from Montreal to Halifax through Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It is a twenty-two hour journey, but this train has been delayed by three hours so I have been in my seat for a long time already and we are still in Quebec.

It is ten thirty at night and I have been issued my blanket and pillow and the lights have been turned down here in Comfort Class (read Steerage). I have managed to get a two seater space to myself as there are only about fifty people on the two comfort class coaches. Everyone else is living it up in Sleeper Class. If you are in Comfort Class, you are not allowed to eat in the dining car.

HOW’S THAT FOR CANADA THE LIBERAL, EGALITARIAN SOCIETY.

MY ASS.

For one third of the price of a sleeper car, the seat is surprisingly comfy. The centre bar between the two seats pulls up to allow me to lie across them both. There is a big space underneath the seat for my bags, and the space allows the seats to push back in a really cool way, it’s as if they swing forward in an arc, rather than actually lean back. This means that you can lie back without driving the person behind you demented. And there’s loads of legroom. Would somebody please adapt these seats for use on planes.

When I asked why the train was delayed a security man told me the brakes aren’t working on the train. Having some experience of the ‘international language of lying to customers about why the plane is late’, I don’t think he was supposed to tell me that. So I hope it all goes okay. There are no steep descents anyway, according to my travel companion, Jean.

Cape Breton jam-making bear watcher

Jean is a middle-aged Presbyterian minister’s wife from Cape Breton, who loves making jam. She has been in Montreal caring for her grandchildren while her daughter recovers from an operation. She’s really cool. In a devout Presbyterian kind of way. She winces every time I take the Lord’s name in vain, but she doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure what age she is, but she has perfect skin. No life of clubbing and smoking for her, I’d say.

She loves nature. Her husband moved ministry recently and she’s still trying to settle into her new house. She told me she went out one night to take in her washing and realised a black bear was standing looking at her. So she hightailed it back inside and woke her husband up to let him know. So he said make sure and lock the door.

I said someone had told me that you should punch a black bear on the nose and she said, no, you should just run away really fast.

Limey the Native American narcotics agent

Jean and I met in the queue. We also met a Micmac, a Native American from Nova Scotia, called Limey, after the doctor who delivered him. He is a Canadian narcotics agent (I swear I am not making this shit up) and he is on his way home to eastern Nova Scotia for two week’s salmon fishing. He has a German Shepherd called Echo who is his drug dog. Echo, unfortunately, was in the kennels for his holidays and not on the train. Otherwise, we coulda had some fun.

Limey and Echo are one of the sixteen members of an all-Native American narcotics unit that work for police services across North America. There are Cree, Iroquois, Mohawk and many other nations in the unit.

I am so pitching the television show to the first media mogul I meet.

Before Limey became a cop (about fifteen years ago), he used to work on skyscrapers as a construction labourer. Apparently, high-rise construction is something that Native Americans are particularly renowned for. He worked on the CN Tower, the Sear’s building in Chicago, and the Empire State Building.

So, in terms of the plotline of my tv show, I was thinking, you could have a main character who had a problem with alcohol or something, who got careless one day and didn’t strap his buddy in properly and then the buddy fell to his death from the CN Tower. And the main character is wracked by guilt, and goes into narcotics work to make amends. But he is so wracked by guilt, that his only friend is his dog. Who is this really intelligent German Shepherd called Bravo or something.

Didn’t they have a similar show about a Mountie?

When I have my quiet time in the Lord’s presence

The night was full of broken sleep as the train stopped at dozens of fiddly little stations along the St. Lawrence river and loud Quebecois’ got on and off, chattering in French and laughing loudly. Occasionally, I managed to hoist myself out of my sleeping position and glare at them. Unable to speak for tiredness. I finally went into a deep sleep around two am, lulled by the feel of the train rocking underneath me.

At four am, Jean, who I had installed in the two seater behind me, shook me awake to see the sunrise. Which was fine. Except she wanted to talk to me about how beautiful it was. Which was also fine. Except that she expected me to be able to respond. Which I was only capable of after two cups of coffee and several hours of staring out the window. By about eight in the morning.

It was worth it, though. We were heading into Rimouski at the time, so the rising sun shone on the water of the St. Lawrence for a brief moment before we headed south towards New Brunswick, through deciduous forest alongside a wide fast river. We rose a couple of hundred feet and were plunged into dense fog that was rising up from the river like some strange vapourous cloud. The sun burned it off in less than an hour and we have been travelling through the interior of New Brunswick ever since.

There are a lot of trees in this state. It reminds me a lot of the part of Sweden I visited last year, around Stockholm. Or perhaps a ramshackle Maine, although I haven’t been there, just seen pictures.

The air is crystal clear. All the farmhouses are white clapboards, with blue or red roofs. Their edges are clearly defined and the white puffball clouds in the sky stand out in extreme three-d against its bright, bright blue. I feel as if I am moving through a picture postcard. There are barns shaped like upturned boats, all painted a deep red colour, and little lakes with swimming platforms scattered in front of wooden holiday cottages.

Every now and again we thunder alongside a river for a few miles. These are big wide salmon rivers, with the smolts working their way upstream at the moment. Towns are small and scattered. There are no defining boundaries on properties, you seem to cut your lawn up to where you think it ends.

Jean showed me a hymn she wrote this morning during sunrise.

“When I have my quiet time with the Lord, sometimes a song comes to me”, she said.

Having seen the same sunrise, I think I know what she means.