It’s a very western glimpse of Canada, from the backside of Edmonton to the last kilometres into Jasper, lined with blackened skeletons of trees showing the devastation of this summer’s wildfire
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The romance of the rails isn’t just a thing of the art deco travel posters of the 1920s.
Depending on your accommodation choices, The Canadian offers unique opportunities to enjoy the paragon of design before her mid-century elegance gets a new flagship.
If you don’t want to leave the ground or skid around on the highway to the coast, consider trundling through picture-perfect scenery by rail at a leisurely pace over 30 to 36 hours toward temperatures that can easily be 30 degrees warmer than Edmonton — but accommodations can feel cramped or spacious, depending on what you need (and what you pay for).
Winter wonderland, no flights
As a jumping-off point for a winter wonderland without leaving terra firma, Via Rail’s cross-Canada trek heading west out of Edmonton is a good place to start.
The streamlined beauty is 70 this year, the last holdout of the rail travel era. Economic off-season fares and a gateway to West Coast mildness make The Canadian a good way to take a leisurely trundle through a larger-than-life Christmas card that is the Rockies and the mountain ranges beyond.
Depending on when you nap, you will spot out the window abandoned log barns and shaggy winter-coated horses browsing up to a trough at a tidy red farmstead flanked by unplowed country roads, where rolls of harvested hay lay in the snow like giant Frosted Mini-Wheats.
You can wish for a glimpse of a moose, lynx or bear while hoping that for their own wild sakes, they stay far away from the Iron Horse.
Chances are very good of spotting nimble and athletic mountain sheep from the resident Jasper herd, sure-footed at various elevations on the steep mountainside.
While The Canadian is pulled over in a remote siding for 20 minutes and snow falls on the lounge like an inside-out snowglobe, you can sip an Okanagan wine to the tune of live music — on our journey, the folk singer-songwriter duo of Zach and Brie — and you may be able to observe an adult male elk browsing on dried foliage like it were prime Alberta hay, just a few feet from your window.
Glimpses of Canada’s economy drivers are frequent, from pumpjacks harvesting oil to sheaves of railroad ties piled like giant beaver dams.
You can watch Canada’s heavy industry roll west on wheels while imports zing inland in containers.
A sleep through much of B.C.’s interior, and then before you know it, the rain-swollen rivers and berry farms of the Fraser Valley and the working waterfront, tugs, and bridge-building of the busy port of Vancouver, Western Canada is on parade.
Challenges of time and space
Variations of cruising and sleeping vary widely and must be chosen carefully in advance. With a full train and another one not coming along for a few more days, what you picked is what you get.
An adult fare for a one-way trip from Edmonton to Vancouver ranges, on average, from about $230 to more than $4,300.
If you have top-dollar cash, consider the sumptuous leather-panelled Cadillac car, which has a private bar and an elevated viewing lounge.
Private sleeper-plus cabins come with elevated price tags, but depending on your size and mobility, it may be challenging to get up the small ladder to the top bunk or even into your own private bathroom.
If you want the convenience of being able to nap prone but don’t hanker for the compressed realities of a sleeper cabin, consider a lower berth. A regular lower berth may be the best value for the money for those who are older or not too limber.
Families can tuck kids accustomed to bunkie sleeping up in the top berths. The berths fold up for comfortable sitting during the day.
Space is at a premium — think carry-on or backpack or both. Standard suitcases must be stowed in the baggage car.
Travelling by day and stopping off at points like Jasper or Kamloops is more affordable — but journey legs will be ticketed separately. If you have the time, it offers an affordable option, again, compared to the luxury of a cabin.
Among the challenges: a stripped-down winter schedule means there won’t be another train along in an hour — or even in a day — and due to the finite number of rail systems and the volume of freight, layovers in sidings can wreak havoc on arrivals and departures.
Don’t expect the timing to be perfect — watch those connections, and allow plenty of time. The country’s only cross-country passenger train can spend unscheduled time laying over in a siding when it’s a freight train’s turn to go through. Or a bunch of them. A plan to catch a train in Edmonton at 12:08 a.m. can turn into boarding at 4:45 a.m. and finally pulling out at 6:30 a.m. Even if the time is mostly made up, lickety-split, arrival can be two hours late in Vancouver, which can affect forward connections to Vancouver Island or out of Vancouver International Airport.
Downloading the free ViaRail app will help track actual departure times.
And though you’re bound for fairer weather, bring those gloves as the handrails to clamber up steep steps into the car can be brittle cold.
We observed a slight side-to-side sway sometimes but none of the ups and downs that can lead to motion sickness on rough seas — just some slight jiggles in the vestibules between cars as you go through passenger sleeper cars to the activities car (stocked with games, puzzles, tea, coffee, and snacks of pastries, granola bars.)
In the forward dining car, art deco-tinged Noritake ironstone is laid out with white linens amid birds of Canada etched into glass panels. Diners are assigned seating windows and good meals are served family style. Those travelling with sleeper-plus privileges can enjoy entrees like rack of lamb, maple-dijon glazed chicken and succulent blackened salmon. Wines and beers can be ordered for an additional charge, depending on your ticket class.
There are three-prong outlets for sleep apnea machines or charging devices in the private cabins, but not in the berths, as of our journey on Dec. 19.
If you’re visiting Vancouver Island and returning to Edmonton via commercial airline, Westjet and Air Canada offer flights from Victoria, Nanaimo, and Comox so you save on ferries and time.