August 6, 2012

This morning we finally left Ontario. After about 30 hours. It’s quite remarkable, in fact, how large the province is, and even more remarkable how much of it is so flat, so green, so swampy, so uniform, so desolate. That is, until you get to the top of Lake Superior. The bit right before Manitoba is amazing, especially as the sun rises. Rocky hills, lakes, rivers, forests … but arranged in odd and far more vivid ways. And then, you hit the flatlands, and you know you are in a different world. The Prairies.

Manitoba

The local wildlife has been entertaining. The homo sapiens trainturiticus comes in a variety of shapes and colours, and appears to have a decidedly varied home base.

For the most part, it is of the Polar variety: ample insulation topped by white fur. The Polar trainturisticus has difficulty navigating the narrow passageways of our moving maze, but the other animals in the maze soon discover that in the face of a Polar in motion, the only thing to do is to retreat, find a corner to squeeze into or a doorway to hide away in. When at rest, especially in a choice seat in the Dome, the Polar is practically immovable.

The Talker is rare, but given the volume and vehemence of his roar (the Talker, alone among species, comes only in the male sex) he appears to be everywhere, all at once, at all times. Despite its being so rare, the Talker has been differentiated into the ad nauseum and ad argumentam subspecies. The former has the capacity, over breakfast, lunch or dinner, during coffee or tea time, or even while running away from the Polar and ducking for safety, to hold forth a conversation with no beginning, no end, and no content, usually at a rising volume. The latter has two calls in its natural habitat. Being only male, the species does not have a mating call; rather, biologists consider its natural call to be an existential one: without it, the subspecies consider itself dead. The call consists in two variations of a single theme: “In my opinion”, and “With respect, you are wrong.” The call remains at a steady volume, thereby driving its victims into a frenzy of helpless flutter.

The Canadian also comes in two subspecies: french and other. On the whole, they appear to be relatively agile navigating the maze, and limit their calls, mating or otherwise, to four short sounds, “interesting”, “very interesting,” “wow” and “even more interesting;” the french subspecies appears to be able to make four additional sounds that, as at least some biologists argue, could mean more or less the same: “intréssant”, “très intréssant”, “wow” and “je dirait même plus …”*.

* For Tin Tin aficionados, this is an inside joke.

I am told that this is a nonexhaustive list.

So we are in the Prairies. For the first two hours out of Winnipeg, the land was as flat as legend would have it. The horizon being so wide and far, I thought I could actually take the time to write.

It is not as easy as it sounds. Our car, where my small one-person cabin is, is in the middle of the train. The social car, where I tend to park myself (it is called the Park Car, perhaps for that reason), happens to be at the end of the train, some eleven cars away.

The Park Car

That’s not just 250 meters, but twenty two sets of doors, guaranteed encounter with at least three Polars (and having to back off and retrace my steps) through narrow corridors as the train lurches and heaves side to side, occasionally throwing you into an unsuspecting sap’s cabin. And, of course, from where I sit, each change of gear takes two trips to the cabin. There and Back was Bilbo’s tale; it could well be mine, each time I want to change the computer stuff for the camera bag, or vice versa.

Which is what happened: I left the camera and took the computer. But – you know the only way the story could continue: as soon as I sat down, the horizon closed in and narrowed; the flatlands gave way; rivers and hills and valleys and bridges started showing up. And me with the computer on my lap, describing the wildlife inside, while life outside was passing me by. Literally.

This sense of utter loss – an entire thirty-eight seconds worth of picture-taking opportunity wasted, gone, gone forever as I wrote this missive – is all pervasive. I get up to brave the maze and the Polars and risk being trapped or attacked by the Talkers to go exchange the computer for the camera. And bring instead with me the quaintest thing of all – a notebook. If only I remembered how to write …

The evening of the second day; God did not rest and the train keeps on moving, pressing to its evening destination, Saskatoon. We will be let out for thirty minutes, to get some fresh air, stretch the legs, move about, before heading back to our moving cells. The walk this morning in Winnipeg was good. We saw the overbudget and still unfinished Human Rights Museum – about as good a common on the subject as the museum could muster – visited the tomb of Louis Riel and ended the talk with my purchasing a three-litre bucket of sour cherries. Now there’s a memory to have of a city …

The Canadian Human Rights Museum, Winnipeg

Melville, Saskatchewan

Sunset