2013/12/11: Canada, a winter fairy tale

Travelling with the Canadian to Vancouver this summer, I had to board the train in Washago. I’ve never travelled this train between Toronto and Washago – until yesterday. Gunnar and I wanted to see some nature, snow and loneliness before we leave Canada. So we bought two tickets for the Canadian from Toronto to Sudbury Junction. We spent one night in one of the most famous and comfortable trains in the world, noticing that this famous train passes and switches near our university. As we started and finished the train ride in darkness, it was difficult to take good pictures out of the panorama car.



Fortunately, the train arrived two hours late in Sudbury, so that we could sleep until 7 AM. In Sudbury Junction, I finally had to say goodbye to the Canadian. I experienced a lot of great train rides between Halifax, Toronto, Windsor, Churchill and Vancouver this year, now it’s over.



The temperature in Sudbury was -19°C when we arrived. As the train stops in Sudbury Junction some kilometres east of the city, we had to walk through snow and cold with our frozen beards – until we finally reached a Tim Hortons, a great possibility to have a breakfast, to warm up and to look at the rising sun. All the other guests (80% male, 100% white, 120% hard workers) noticed us when we entered. Tourists with a camera? In Sudbury? What the hack, eh?! I didn’t understand at all what the Tim Hortons employee asked me (is this still English? Or are we in Quebec?).



(Greater) Sudbury, the largest city in Northern Ontario, was created following the discovery of nickel ore in 1883. The “Official Visitor Guide” tried to show us that Sudbury is a beautiful city with a lot of attractions – but honestly, it isn’t. It looks like an ugly industrial city, it smells like an ugly industrial city. Which doesn’t mean that we didn’t like it. Two students of sociology respectively geography discover a lot of interesting things in ugly industrial cities (why is every second shop a car dealer? Do they sell the same clothes as in Toronto in this mall or do they sell more working clothes? Is this hill a reshaped mining dump – all buildings on it seem to have the same age? The truckage company is showing a woman on the “work for us as a driver”-advertisement – do women face a higher unemployment rate in this hard-men-at-work-city?)…



Of course, we didn’t spend too much time in ugly Sudbury and continued our tour southbound to Parry Sound. The bus was running parallel to the train track, but this time in daylight, so that we could see the great, snow-covered Canadian landscape.



In Parry Sound there was much more snow than in Sudbury – according to the weather report and to locals 50 centimeters of fresh-fallen snow, but we still don’t believe that it was that much. We were really lucky enjoying sun and blue sky all day. Compare the picture we took during the snowy night, when our train stopped in Parry Sound, and the sunny daylight picture:



I could write a lot about Parry Sound, where we spent about seven hours. But you just have to look at the pictures to know that it is a lovely town. Should you ever go there, you have to stop at the Mad Hatter Café. The two friendly old hippies operating the café do not only sell great hot drinks, they also bake bread that is indeed eatable (which most Canadian bread isn’t).



The last two pictures show (in the background) how Canadians get rid of snow. I’ve seen this in Moscow for the first time, here it probably works similar: they collect all the snow in trucks and bring it to a place somewhere at the edge of the city, where they build hills of snow - or they just throw the snow into the Georgian Bay.