My westbound train for Montreal left at 1pm. Under the warm midday sun, the stroll along the waterfront peeled back the strata of time. Pier 21, the ocean liner terminal turned museum anchored behind the station reminds you that, in spite of its long indigenous First Nations’ history, this is a nation built by immigrants; up until the 1970s, the hanger handled nearly one million refugees fleeing economic depression, revolution and war. The rehabilitated station has the whiff of Europe about it, with a colonnaded entrance, wrought iron ceiling and skylight, as do the chatty staff who helped me board the train.
Onboard, in a twin-berth ensuite cabin with Lilliputian shower, wardrobe and non-stop entertainment (pressing my forehead to the window, I watched a showreel that brought to mind Anne of Green Gables), we moved through a flip book of landscape postcards. By the Bay of Fundy, the tracks were a portal to half-drowned lands and superlative tidal surges. By Kouchibouguac, a Mi’kmaq word meaning river of long tides, moshing waters flowed inland creating all kinds of weird nooks. In the highlands later, the ground still heavy from a late spring blizzard, I swear I held the gaze of a moose caught in a trance outside its woodland buffer.
If you ever dreamed of a quiet place somewhere in the woods, then this might not be the trip for you. There are hundreds of pretty cabins and just as many weathered huts playing peekaboo along the forest-choked tracks. It helps create the impression that life surrounded by timber is as rosy pink as a side of salmon. Even so, it is worth it for the everyday moments most of us tend to overlook at home. Watching the world outside silently fall asleep, gazing at dawn yawning through open curtains, day-dreaming just for the hell of it.