The Golden Age of Train Travel: a Journey through Canada by Barb Sligl
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Somewhere between the smoked ostrich salad and pan-seared sablefish we cross over the Continental Divide. We sip Ceago Merlot and roll past the ridge of mountains that separate the watershed flowing west to the Pacific and east to the Arctic and Atlantic. The swaying, creaking and clanking of our movement adds a hypnotic dimension to the dining experience. If the food, wine and scenery hadn’t already worked their magic, the gentle rumblings of the train definitely would.
We’re aboard the 1931 Craigellachie dining car (named for the BC town where the “Last Spike” of the transcontinental railway was laid in 1885) on the 650-mile Royal Canadian Pacific circle tour of the Rockies. We ride as if in a Ritz on rails. It’s a luxury cruise on land, through jagged peaks, deep valleys, crumbling hoodoos, massive rockslides, gentle hills and vast fields. It’s also a retro journey, a return to a historic—slower and far more lavish—mode of travel.
There are only 14 of us gathered around the long dinner table (complete with crisp white linens, fine-bone china, silver cutlery), including a WWII veteran (with tales of daring-do), a horse-racing entrepreneur and his wife (their horses compete in the Kentucky Derby), and an investment banker and his wife celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary (he gives her a vintage sapphire ring at the last night’s dinner). Everyone shares one thing in common: a love of trains.
One of the passengers grew up in India riding trains and enthusiastically describes different rail gauges, while a Scottish-born psychiatrist reveres the train’s strong connection to place and declares, “There’s no better way to see a country.” Upon arriving in Canada, one of the first things he did was send his family across the country via train to behold their new home.
If it's Good Enough for Churchill...
Before dinner we have cocktails in the 1926 Mount Stephen lounge car. We sit on brocade chairs amidst dark swirls of Circassian walnut paneling with maple inlay, scalloped-glass fixtures, brass hardware and Turkish drapes. Vintage fans suspended high on the walls recall a time before air-conditioning. Everything is restored—a huge task given that many such cars languished for years under layers of institution-green paint or served as storage depots for railway fittings. Even the carpet is a replica of patterns once tread upon by royalty or heads-of-state.
We take turns sitting in Churchill Cubby, where Sir Winston himself sat in 1943 during the Québec Conference. The Mount Stephen also hosted then-Princess Elizabeth and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Their historic photos now hang here. (More recent visitors include train fanciers Bill Gates, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.) The “name trains”—Mount Stephen, N. R. Crump, Strathcona, Van Horne (all named after CPR dignitaries)—were the private jets of their era.
For us it’s all about soaking up the romance of the old-world décor of what CPR calls North America’s last great luxury rail liner. And life on board is pampered. Brunch (Chardonnay-and-shrimp quiche paired with Aladame; almond panna cotta with ice-wine-soaked berries) is followed by high tea (complete with finger sandwiches, scones and clotted cream), and then cocktails and canapés…And then dinner: the ostrich and sablefish, passion-fruit sorbet and biscotti, and finally a cognac (or two).
In between the indulging, people find a quiet nook to read or nap or simply watch the world whizz by from a deck chair. Most of us stand in the rear observation deck of the Mont Stephen and gaze as the tracks rush away. It’s as if we’re at the stern of a grand ship. The scenery, however, is far more fascinating than a monotonous span of blue. Cameras come out to snap glimpses of the silty, aquamarine waters of the Bow River and the craggy tips of Cathedral Mountain. Then a sudden chill and dark as we disappear into the mountain itself, into the Spiral Tunnels (a 1908 engineering feat to reduce the grade).
And this is just the first day riding the rails.
The Golden Age of Travel
By day’s end we’ve toured Banff (originally the “29th Sighting” on the railroad from Winnipeg) and its majestic old hotel, the Banff Springs, and Chateau Lake Louise. Both resorts are closely tied to the railroad; CPR’s visionary director William Cornelius Van Horne concocted spa resorts for train travellers: “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists.”
The golden age of rail travel was born…Tiffany sconces, marble staircases, Waterford crystal chandeliers, piped hot springs…The Banff Springs became the “castle” (inspired by French chateaus in the Loire Valley) frequented by A-list celebrities and royalty (Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Lord Mountbatten). Chateau Lake Louise boasted Swiss guides and mountain trails: “100 Switzerlands in one” was a slogan. Van Horne even marketed the resorts as the “Gateway to the Orient.”
We stop in Golden, BC, in the Columbia Valley basin, for the night. Next morning: breakfast atop a mountain peak. After a soaring gondola ride we munch on gourmet fare (like buffalo sausage frittata) and slurp smoothies in the Eagle’s Eye restaurant at the top of Kicking Horse Resort. The jagged Purcell range prompts plenty of photos and gasps.
Returning to the train we’re greeted with mojitos. We sip as the train heads south and the scenery changes to sun-baked hoodoo formations, pocked with thousands of swallows’ nests. Lunch is served as the train glides along the Columbia River. We disembark again for the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook. The collection of historic rail cars shows the different stages of restoration and includes the Trans-Canada Limited (built in 1929, it cost $1 million and was North America’s fastest, most luxurious train). Back on the Mount Stephen the polished woods, brass and cut-glass fixtures are even more impressive.
Day two is topped by chocolate soufflé (on a moving train!) for dessert—the chef gets a round of applause. We overnight at the edge of Summit Lake nestled in Crow’s Nest Pass. The night is dark and quiet; it’s surreal to sleep amidst mountains in a plush bed with heavy damask curtains framing the lake just outside.
In the morning we ride past boulders—some as big as the Craigellachie—through Frank Slide, site of a massive avalanche that buried a mining community in 1903. It’s a bit somber but the food, yet again, keeps everyone buoyant (highlight this time: dulce de leche or “milk candy” for dessert). Soon the train purrs across prairies.
Cowboys and Indians
We pick up Conrad “Little Leaf” at Pincher Creek and gather round him like schoolchildren. He shares anecdotes and Blackfoot history and points out his reserve as we pass by. We learn how to say “oki” (hello) and follow with “soka-pii” (all’s good) and its accompanying hand gesture: a salute-like wave from the chest. We try it out with Blackfoot at the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump Interpretative Centre who chuckle at our greetings.
The Centre (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is built into the hillside, mimicking the sandstone cliffs alongside it where the Blackfoot once drove off buffalo herds. The undulating grasslands are all texture and greens—buffalo grass, fescue, sweetgrass—that melt together and seem endless, as if there is no edge (the buffalo never saw it coming). Little Leaf pays homage: “The buffalo was our Wal-Mart.” Every part was used for everything. He offers a taste of pemmican—buffalo, sage, mint, berries and tallow ground into powder—a nutritious food supplement long-used by the Blackfoot. Or for more modern palates: fresh buffalo burgers in the cafeteria.
The light of day three fades as the train rumbles over Lethbridge’s High Level Bridge (the longest and highest trestle bridge in the world) and back north along “feed-lot alley.” Cattle corralled for transport zip past. (Our fitting send-off dinner entrée and Alberta classic: roasted beef striploin.) That evening the train stops in Carmangay, a non-descript town and railyard but site of a spectacular sunset and rainbow that seemingly stretches for miles above the flat horizon. We gather on the tracks behind the train, clutching our digestifs and snapping shot after shot. Carmangay has probably never been so fondly captured.
Our last stop is Okotoks for horseback riding at Homeplace Ranch in high cattle country. We test our mettle, first on Woody (yes, a wood steed) to practice mounting and handling the reins, and then on flesh-and-blood rides (mine is Hank) for an amble through aspen forest. Bona fide cowboy Mac Makenny (clad in Wranglers) coaches us. His granddad homesteaded the ranch in 1912 after the railroad opened up the area. Everything comes back to the railroad.
After a hearty lunch over an open fire (with baked beans!) we return to the train for our last leg. Everyone’s subdued and appropriately the sky darkens. It rains as we pull into Calgary. We’ve looped through Rockies, foothills and prairies, and travelled back in time to grand hotels, quaint pitstops, sacred Aboriginal lands, a dude ranch—all tied to the railroad. It’s a journey that echoes the glory days of passenger rail travel. Hugs are exchanged between guests and crew, and we disembark one last time. It’ll take a while to lose the train legs…and return to modern everyday life.