I waited up to see Sioux Lookout for likely one last time. We arrived a little late, 12:00 midnight
to be precise. I know this because
from the window I could see one of those new fangled video billboards that
said, 11:59 and minus 5 degrees.
While there was very little traffic on the roads at that time of night,
every vehicle in sight or moving along the road was a truck or van of some
sort. Who would ever buy a
car in this neighborhood? As we
pulled out, I gave a little wave and kept my nose to the window until we
crossed over the railway bridge on the west end of town. Bye Sioux Lookout – the memories will
last forever.

It was like magic, we awoke at 6:00 a.m. and voila, here we were in the City of
Winnipeg – now it was minus -20 degrees – just too cold to walk around for a
tour of the city, but close enough to the station to give me Wi-Fi access for
the most recent blog update. We
ended up leaving the Winnipeg station some 7 hours later.

Today was the second day in a row that offered us clear skies and an excellent sunset
as you can see from some of the photos attached. We had the opportunity to have dinner with a lovely old couple from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
After the typical – who the heck are you? conversation – we were told
that they were originally from Montreal and had spent the last 30 years in the PEG. Given the Montreal/Winnipeg
connection, I asked him if he was a railway man and he said yes. Turns out Harold Murray was a VP for CN
and more recently VIA Rail, and low and behold knew my Uncle Bill very well,
attending the Staff College in the eastern townships together, apparently
having memorable “parties” night after night. What a small world.
He asked us to say hello to Kay.

With the time change (it’s just after 9:30 p.m.) so we’ve shut off Boston Legal for
the night. We’re motoring across the
prairies at what feels like the top speed for this train, estimates are in the
70 to 75 miles per hour range.
It’s possible to determine the speed of the train from looking out the
window by counting the number of telephone poles between two mileage markers in
one minute. Who said that this
wasn’t going to be an exciting trip home?

We’re scheduled to arrive in Saskatoon about midnight tonight and Edmonton for around
8:00 a.m. Friday morning so it’s off to sleep. Deb is in the top bunk tonight
so I’ve got the window view. As a side note Mom, our Dining Car
Steward’s name is Beven, so we’ve been constantly reminded about you back in
Abbotsford – hope all is well with you.

Hope you enjoy the pictures from the last couple of days. Only 37 more hours and we’ll be back home in Vancouver.


It’s 09:00 a.m. and we’ve just arrived into snowy and bitterly cold Edmonton,
AB. We’re apparently running about two hours late so our stop here has been limited to 20 minutes. We had an early breakfast this morning
(ham and cheese omelets) and watched the sun come up. It looks like there could be a little blue sky today as we enter the mountains – We should arrive into Jasper around 3:30 if we don’t fall further behind in schedule.

NOTE TO FILE – don’t book too many reservations or time commitments on things, as
invariably you won’t make them !!!
Traveling by VIA means you relax and enjoy not stress about phones,
emails, computers, what happens in the world, etc.