Home From Yarmouth In Fast Train Travel, Published 28 July 1958 To
me it is aiways a great thrill to get on the Ocean Limited, knowing
serenely that I shall not have to quit my luxurious compartment till
840 miles later in Montreal. The CNR circles about Halifax like a
homing pigeon making swoops in the sky till he has got his bearings.
Then we skirted Bedford Basin, and went to Truro, non-stop, as if it
weren't there. We did not even pause at Stewiacke nor Shubenacadie.Next, we started the long climb to Folly Lake, skirting magnificent Wentworth Valley. (Why don't they cut those trees to give the passengers a better view?) We flag-stopped at Springhill Junction, then crawled down from the Cobequids, and slid over the Tantxamar. This Canadian version of a Dutch landscape, flat and dreamy, saw a pause at Amherst, where I said hello and goodbye to Percy Black, for 13 year an MP here. Then grim Dorchester, and its "pen", College Bridge and Memramcook, and the brakes go on for Moncton. Gone is the dillydallying of former years for the. Ocean around Moncton, and we were quickly gathering speed as we swept past Pacific Junction and its stillborn dream of a great transcontinental, before we bettered a mile a minute over the level but comparatively dull and flat acres of Kent County. I wondered, too, where they would find enough Protestants in this all-French and nearly all Catholic county to fill St. Andrew's Church which whizzed by, and how many veterans attended Legion Branch No. 38. I could see South Nelson, downstream on the Miramichi, and home of Lieutenant-Governor Leonard O'Brien, MP here from 1940 to 1945, we took, oil at Newcastle, and we paused also at Bathurst, which alike produced Bennett and Beaverbrook. The Canadian lord took his title from a stream at Beaverbrook, Mile 277.8, but there is, alas, no station nearby called Bennett. And so to Campbellton, where the more leisurely maritimers hold the train a full and needless 20 minutes, before releasing it to the French Canadians, who have the hard run through the Metapedia and over the hump then your Quebec engineer roars down the hill to Mont Joli, always in a hurry. Then night, then morning, then the skyscrapers of Montreal, then a fast flight through traffic to Dorval airport, and Trans-Canada Air Lines' flight No. 3 to Ottawa. Almost 2,000 miles over the weekend. If you want to meet nice people, see lovely scenery, and above all, breathe the best air there is, take a weekend trip to Yarmouth. |