[Geography in a Photograph] The End of the Line

A photograph of the train station (foreground, right) in St. Paul, Alberta; year unknown; taken by Ron Brown, and published in the 3rd Edition of The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore: An Illustrated History of Railway Stations in Canada (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2008): p. 41.

Sometimes, ordinary photographs have an uncanny ability to capture our attention. This one (above) captured mine. I was leafing through Ron Brown's The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore: An Illustrated History of Railway Stations in Canada, and came across this image, and my brain stumbled upon the caption: "The station skyline in St. Paul, Alberta, is typically dominated by the grain elevators. Photo by author." Grain elevators and a train station in St. Paul, Alberta!? I have been to St. Paul many times, yet I have never seen any grain elevators there. Nor had I ever seen or heard of a train station in town - this would imply passenger service. But here was a photograph of a typical prairie town, showcased in a book about abandoned train stations, chosen specifically because of its iconic prairie 'skyline' - dotted with not just one, but five of the multistory beasts! Was it possible that, despite the dozens of visits to the town, I had never come across the rail station and somehow failed to see the town's tallest edifices? Surely, a story was hiding behind this photograph, so I have spent some time trying to brush off some of the dust.

St. Paul, located about 200km Northeast of Edmonton, was settled by the Oblate missionaries in the late 19th Century as a mission for Métis peoples. The settlement was originally known as St. Paul des Métis (shortened to St. Paul in 1936, when the settlement gained 'village' status). In 1909 the settlement was opened up after the original mission project was abandoned, and the doors were opened for French-speaking families from throughout the region and Québec, as well as other European settlers (mostly from Ukraine and the United Kingdom) to move in and break ground. However, like many prairie locales, it was the arrival of the railway that really facilitated the growth of St. Paul into a town...

In the early decades of the 20th Century, even getting between Edmonton and St. Paul was a struggle. From St. Paul, one had to travel some 105 kilometers by horse and buggy to Vegreville, where one of the oldest railway lines in the province was situated, owned at the time by Canadian Northern Railways (CNoR). CNoR was started in 1895 in an attempt to compete with Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) - the company started building track in Manitoba and thereafter spread its network East and West. By 1905, CNoR tracks had reached Edmonton through a southern route (see Figure 1), offering an alternative to the CP's route. In 1914, CNoR began construction of a more Northern route to Saskatchewan, but as the Alberta Heritage Community Foundation notes, the war effort stalled progress:

"... railroad officials claimed there was a shortage of labour, and construction stopped at Spedden in 1919, 48 kilometres short of St. Paul. As did many communities on the Canadian Prairies, they banded together, and recognizing the importance of the railway to the town’s economic prosperity, the citizens of St. Paul volunteered to complete the last stretch of track that would join their town with North Edmonton. In 1920, the first regular service train arrived in St. Paul. J.A. Fortier was the first Station Master and lived with his family in the station building, which was to become an important economic and service centre. Trains not only allowed passenger travel, they also brought mail, equipment, and merchandise. The railway also meant farmers could transport cattle and crops to larger urban centres more easily." 

Figure 1: Map of Alberta Railways, from the Waghorn Guide, 1941

This railway map from the 1941 Waghorn Guide shows an extensive passenger (and freight) rail network, owned by a number of distinct railway companies. For emphasis, I have highlighted two sections of the CNoR lines in red, and one of the competing CP lines in green (the dark black line is the North Saskatchewan River). The town of St. Paul is highlighted in yellow; Vegreville in orange; and Lavoy in blue; Edmonton is at left. Today, the tracks of the more northerly CNoR route AND the highlighted CP route have been torn out, while the southern route is still maintained (now owned by CN) and used as a major trans-continental freight line. 

By 1918, CNoR and other railway companies were consolidated into the new crown corporation, Canadian National (CN). The roaring twenties were a time of prosperity in Northeastern Alberta.At the time, CN and CP rail lines criss-crossed the countryside like the arteries of the nation. Indeed, the growth of the railway network deeper into Canadian territory facilitated the growth of the nation long into the second half of the 20th Century. As Tom Murray's Rails Across Canada notes, "in the decades after the [Second World] war, Canada became a supplier of resources to the world - lumber, grain, sulfur, potash, petroleum products - and CN [and CP] carried them."

The first half of the 20th Century is perhaps the heyday of Canadian passenger rail service. With automobiles and fossil fuels still largely commodities of the elite, trains were a necessary aspect of keeping people and communities connected. The train line between Edmonton and St. Paul, which the community members had helped to complete, was by no means quick (see Figure 2), but it was nevertheless reliable and, arguably, the common person's primary connection to the outside world. In 1946, the train was upgraded to daily service, and was by then fast enough to allow those from small lineside communities such as Bonnyville to come to the service town of St. Paul for the day, and make it back home in time for early evening.

Figure 2: Passenger Rail schedule from Edmonton to St. Paul, 1925

The schedule, from the 1925 Waghorn Guide, tells us that four return trips per week connected St. Paul and Edmonton. The train took an astonishing 10 hours to traverse 200 kilometers!

Vehicular Homicide: Killing Passenger Rail
The 1950s and 1960s marks a dramatic decrease in rail passenger demand (and supply of services) in North America, notably correlating with the post-war boom and the rise of the family automobile as the primary means of mobility. With each successive decade from the 1920s to present, a map of Canada's passenger rail service would get thinner and thinner (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Canadian Passenger Rail in the 1920s and 2000s compared

Compare the images above and below: The above 1921 map [digitally stitched together] shows CN's passenger rail service lines stretching throughout much of the country and into the United States. The map does not even include the competing service by CP, which also provided passenger service in the first half of the 20th Century. The present-day map below shows VIA Rail's only passenger service lines. Today, passenger rail does not pass through many major Canadian cities such as Calgary, Fredericton, and Regina.

The passenger rail service between St. Paul and Edmonton continued to be offered by CN into the early 1970s, but it was then quietly discontinued; the age of cheap oil had facilitated the rise of the automobile - and today the automobile is the only functional means for people to get in or out of St. Paul (aside from the Greyhound bus, which travels twice a day).

From Tracks to Trucks
For the meantime, freight services would take over as the main function of the St. Paul railway. As Brown's photograph attests, freight played an extremely important role in this largely agricultural region's economy. It is only after speaking with my partner's uncle Wayne, a longtime farmer from St. Paul, that I have come to begin to understand the centrality of the freight rail service (and the corresponding grain elevators) to the rural way of life: First, the rail service provided an efficient and cheaper way of bringing important farm inputs, ranging from fertilizers to heavy equipment, to the region. Second, the local grain elevators (and the agglomerations of farmers who owned them) provided local farmers with a sense of ownership and control over their product. They had a say in the local wheat pools, or at least knew who was serving on the regional board, and could make important decisions about their produce based on the buyer, the going price, and it's final destination (farmers like Wayne were even involved in loading their own rail cars with their own goods, for which they were paid a higher share of the product). Third, the elevators served as a rallying/ meeting point for local farmers. As Wayne put it: "We would come together and meet there, share ideas, discuss and network with other farmers." But as the past tense tone used here suggests, these important socio-economic functions of the regional freight railroad (and the grain elevators) are no longer available... they are no longer available because, within the last two decades, CN began to discontinue its freight services in parts of the region. Today, the evidence of a former era has been removed: The grain elevators have been torn down; the rails have been ripped out.

Covering Their Tracks
Now, it's one thing to discontinue passenger and freight rail service; it's quite another to rip out the tracks and dismantle the infrastructure! But this is precisely what would eventually happen in St. Paul, in a decision that Wayne describes as "beyond shortsighted". Today, the iconic prairie image captured by Brown's photograph is completely obliterated in St. Paul and many small agricultural towns like it. The previous landscape has literally been erased: The rails have been removed, buildings torn town, and power lines replaced (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: No more prairie skyline

It may be hard to believe - but this present-day photograph is taken from roughly the same vantage point as Ron Brown's original photograph above. The train station is gone; the five grain elevators are gone; the tracks have been uprooted and shipped away (by truck); new power lines have been put up to service the new housing developments; and as the photo shows, the municipality now piles excess snow where formerly there were train tracks. Photo by Laurie Krekoski, 2011.

How did this happen? Well, there are a myriad of reasons and forces which have come into play, some of which I will briefly touch on here. In some ways, the death of Brown's photograph is a parable of the local impacts of globalization. As mentioned above, the 1960s and 1970s saw the growth of automobile-based infrastructure. Similarly, by the 1980s, freight companies such as CP and CN began to feel competing pressure from the trucking industry. The rail companies began to discontinue service in more remote areas, in order to cut back on losses to the trucking companies.

The privatization of CN in 1995 didn't help either. Thereafter, CN began looking into ways of downsizing services and increasing profit margins. In 1993, as CN eyed its future fate as a private corporation requiring new sources of finance capital, it put up secondary lines like the St. Paul rail corridor for sale. The idea was to keep servicing the area, but to raise funds by selling the valuable property to municipal stakeholders. The corridor was purchased by the County of St. Paul. Nevertheless, thanks to heavy lobbying efforts by recreational snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) groups, a plan was floated to consider turning the corridor into a 'linear park', a trail to be used for such recreational purposes. Meanwhile, the trains kept coming to St. Paul, collecting agricultural products and delivering various goods.

The final death-knell came in 1999, when CN announced it would abandon rail service in Northeastern Alberta. Two years later, the county held a referendum on the following question: "Do you support a municipally-regulated public trail on the soon to be abandoned CN railway right of way?" Three affected rural municipalities voted on the resolution, and a slight majority voted in favor - totaling the "Yes" vote to 54.1%. There was no legal requirement to obtain anything more than a simple majority, and thus the recreational park - later to be ironically dubbed the "Iron Horse Trail", began to be constructed shortly thereafter. Today, the trail is marketed as a tourist destination.

In St. Paul, the rails were removed and oddly, the grain elevators and historic station building were demolished (forget heritage status!). For Wayne, the decision to rid of the grain elevators was symbolic, and could be interpreted more sinisterly as a way to pit farmers against one another and consolidate the control of large multinational grain companies. Today, small-scale farmers do not have it easy - they are likely the ones who have lost the most from the disappearing railways and grain elevators. They have to arrange (and pay for) their own private transport of such inputs and their own agricultural output (by truck). Bringing in heavy equipment is extremely difficult and costly. Rather than have a say in coordinating the flow of their product with fellow collaborators at the regional wheat pools, they are all too often "told what to do" by the companies who own farmer's debts. This is the focus of Ingeborg Boyens' Another Seasons Promise.  As one review of Boyens' book notes:

Another Season's Promise explores the farm crisis not as a series of occasional individual losses caused by poor growing seasons, but rather as a perpetual structural phenomenon composed of many villains. Family farmers face down multinational agribusiness, pressure to grow genetically modified foods, the perils of factory farming, massive dependence on pesticides, and an increasingly distant federal government more interested in pleasing international trade bodies than supporting Canadian farmers.

The loss of the local elevators and railroad have played a small (but significant) role in this complicated process... but ironically, the way out of this mess would be much facilitated by the very infrastructure which helped build such farming communities in the first place. We must recognize that these hardships are being experienced in an era of relatively cheap oil. What will happen when the price of inputs and shipping skyrockets as a result of a higher oil prices? What will happen when we decide to take climate change seriously, and enact policies that limit the amount of fossil fuel use? How are small rural Canadian towns like St. Paul going to facilitate the mobility of people and goods when fossil fuel based automobiles and trucks are no longer a viable mode of transportation? It is thus clear why a local farmer and longtime community member like Wayne would see the dismantling of the rail infrastructure as shortsighted. This is not to suggest that a recreation trail is a bad thing (quite the contrary, publicly-owned recreation areas, and people coming together to have fun and be healthy is a good way to build community). The shortsighted aspect is that the replacement of rails and agricultural buildings clearly does not take into consideration the long-term community implications of losing such crucial infrastructure - the type of infrastructure that has played a pivotal role in the foundation of rural life in Canada.

[Urban Geography] Ottawa’s Spatial Crisis

The City of Ottawa is suffering from what I suppose we could call a ‘spatial crisis’. Yet the crisis is largely a manifestation of human decisions. The problem is partly of our own making – and as such, the solutions will partly have to come from us too.

What are the problems?

For one, getting around is a major problem in Ottawa. Traffic is a nightmare. Aside from the city’s world-renowned ‘transitway’ (special highways for buses only), getting around on public transit is extremely costly, inconvenient, and slow. The almost complete lack of incentives to take public transit has lead to an extreme overuse and reliance upon automobiles, which has the numerous consequences of further congestion, emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants, traffic fatalities (a leading cause of death in Canada), inactive people, and continued dependence on a valuable but non-renewable resource (putting upward pressure on its price).

Another problem is sprawl. Ironically, the city’s (also world-renowned) greenbelt was designed for the very purposes of limiting sprawl. Jacques Greber – a ‘landscape architect’ who proposed many of the city’s ‘natural’ recreation areas now owned and managed by the National Capital Commission (NCC) – proposed the greenbelt in the 1950s and soon after land was expropriated for the urban containment project. Today, the greenbelt plays a very important (and beneficial) role in Ottawa, as a) an area of outdoor recreation; b) a source of some local agricultural production; and c) in a very limited sense – a protectorate for the functioning of certain ecosystemic processes (such as the conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen and the provision of habitat areas for various species). The irony, however, is that the greenbelt (or more specifically the way in which city plans have unfolded around the greenbelt) has actually served to exacerbate the level of damage resulting from transportation and sprawl problems.

But traffic and sprawl and their socio-ecological consequences are just a taste of the problems that we can expect to come. Given the realities of climate change and peak oil, the procurement of healthy food, for example, is bound to become a challenge for the average citizen of Ottawa if these regional spatial patterns continue unchanged.

Originally, the city was contained to the area within the greenbelt. In 2001, however, the region of Ottawa-Carleton, including the municipalities of Nepean, Kanata, Gloucester, Vanier, Cumberland, and the townships of West Carleton, Goulburn, Rideau and Osgoode were all amalgamated into the City of Ottawa. Although this political transformation theoretically had the potential to offer the new city council the ability to block urban sprawl and focus on increasing density in the core and maintaing regional agricultural lands for such purposes, the opposite has occurred. It became the prerogative of councilors to provide transportation infrastructure to connect those areas outside the greenbelt with those on the inside – but rather than focusing on building public transit infrastructure, the city chose instead to prioritize automobile travel. Railway lines were ripped out or abandoned, and multi-lane highways from the city core to areas in the West (ie. Kanata) and East (ie. Orleans) facilitated the suburban lifestyle, with its required commute from the place of living in the ‘outskirts’ to the place of working in the ‘city centre’…

And who wouldn’t want to live in a large five-bedroom, five-bathroom house with a fenced-in backyard and a double-car garage and access to a nearby park and all for less because the house is located an hour’s drive from your place of work and, after all, in real estate, location, location, location is everything!?

So it was that the rural areas of the Ottawa-Carleton region, which had for many decades produced much of the food consumed by those inside the greenbelt, were re-zoned along residential purposes. The agricultural lands were razed –literally flattened, bulldozed, erased – and converted into new communities where thousands of similar-looking pre-fabricated houses were placed along winding dead-end streets. The suburbs were filled, and for the most part the localized economies of former independent municipalities were integrated (and thus became dependent on) the jobs, services, and sources of goods procurement found in the urban core (reversing the traditional dependence of the core upon the periphery for agricultural products).

The people we elected into office allowed this to happen, but the influences of global capitalism played a role too: The opening of borders, the construction of global trade networks and free trade agreements, the intensification of large-scale industrial agriculture, the extraction of global supplies of hydrocarbons, and the belief in the neoliberal imperative for economic growth have temporarily facilitated this process. While it has been hard to get around, it has nevertheless still been possible to do so; and while the food of Ottawa’s citizens now comes from other climates, the main barrier to putting food on the table has thus far been one’s income, not one’s physical distance to the source of production. The high output of agricultural products from industrial farms put downward pressure on many crop prices, which in turn put pressure on small scale farmers to either go big, or get out of the business altogether.

Yet here’s the rub – while this entire structure relies on cheap fossil fuels, global supplies are beyond their peak (which happened in 2006 according to the conservative estimates of the International Energy Agency), meaning the age of cheap oil is over. What's worse, the very fossil fuels we've been consuming in ever larger quantities each year up until now have definitively to altered the biogeochemical processes of the Earth, forcing us to adapt to new weather patterns and ecosystemic realities. Numerous popular intellectuals from both the left and the right have made the point in some way or another, from George Monbiot to Al Gore to David Suzuki. Bill McKibben put it starkly, when he noted that “the entire industrial food system essentially insures that your food is marinated in crude oil before you eat it.” Or as Toronto filmmaker Gregory Greene has implied in his film The End of Suburbia, the reality of peak oil and gas means that the cost of fossil fuels can be expected to skyrocket, and thus getting around and feeding oneself (not only because of the transportation of food, but also the reliance upon natural gas for the production of agricultural fertilizers) are going to become increasingly difficult for the average citizen as a result.

The spatial configuration of the Ottawa area has been continually transformed since the beginning of this planet's history. Long before human settlement, natural climatic changes, tectonic shifts and celestial movements caused changes in the land and its surrounding conditions. Undoubtedly, the indigenous peoples who lived and subsisted for thousands of years in what is now known as the region of ‘Ottawa’ (so named after the Algonquian ‘Odawa’ nation that lived here at the time of European colonization) also influenced the space around them. Yet it has been settlers and their descendents who in the last sixty years have overseen a radical and high-paced transition of the spatial reality of the city to its present configuration – a set-up which shows signs of extreme vulnerability to the expected changes in climate and the declining global supply of oil and gas. Those of us who make decisions affecting Ottawa’s spatiality – including not just city councillors and civil servants but us everyday common citizens as well – arguably have a responsibility to take the future seriously, and that means thinking about the ways we shape and produce the spaces around us.

[Cultural Geography] On The Canadian

PART I (Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Travelling ‘Comfort’ Class on VIA Rail’s Cross-Country ‘Land Cruise’, and More…)

Welcome to The Canadian

VIA Rail is a crown corporation that owns and operates Canada’s only national-level passenger rail service. It is possible to travel across the country, on ten core route lines, which stretch from West Coast to East Coast, and as far north as Churchill, Manitoba. The majority of VIA’s passenger traffic occurs within the busy  ‘corridor’ between Québec City and Windsor, where journeys take place within a few hours and the trains (at present) offer free wireless internet service. The corridor sees multiple trips per day, and covers a region which serves as home to over half of Canada’s population.

However, it is quite a different experience to travel the multiple-overnight journey between Toronto and Vancouver. This cross-country journey is one of 4,466 kilometers, and is typically completed in over 82 hours (more below on why it takes so long). The Toronto-Vancouver line is called The Canadian, and it travels through numerous small towns and some bigger cities along the route, with planned rest stops in Capreol (near Sudbury), Hornepayne, Sioux Lookout, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper and Kamloops (and sometimes other smaller towns if the train is ahead of schedule). The Canadian departs three times a week (leaving from Toronto at 10:00pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; and leaving Vancouver at 8:30pm on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

 Figure 1: VIA Rail Route Map

I have travelled on The Canadian four times (one trip between Toronto and Edmonton at the end of 2009, returning in the beginning of 2010; and the other between Toronto and Vancouver at the end of 2010, returning in the beginning of 2011). By no means does this make me an ‘expert’ – if you travel on The Canadian you are bound to meet others on board who regularly travel on this line (though typically not the entire length of the journey). However, having spent nearly two weeks of my life on this line, having spoken with other cross-country travelers, and having done a bit of additional research, I’ve learned a thing or two about this specific passenger rail experience. If you are considering taking the Canadian you may find some of this information useful (I encourage skipping the boring parts by using the subheadings below). 

Why do they take the train?

There are many reasons why one may decide to take the train between various towns or cities along The Canadian route, as opposed to driving, taking the bus, or flying, even though the latter three options are typically quicker. I’ve encountered many reasons when asking fellow passengers why they decided to take the Canadian, and classified these reasons into six archetypes:

• The Tourists: VIA’s corporate strategy is to make The Canadian a ‘land cruise’ – a quaint, early 20^th Century style, romantic journey across the country, enabling those on board to view the impressive vistas of Canada’s diverse landscapes. As such, the train, which is typically made up of just over 10 cars, is extremely ‘classed’ – with the tourism-focused elite class passengers in one section of the train, and the ‘lower class’ regular passengers in the other. One gets the impression that VIA makes the most profit from those ‘elite class’ travelers, many of whom – it seemed to me – were wealthy international or domestic tourists hoping to see the Rockies or the vast Canadian prairies. While the line typically carries two cars for economy class (ironically called ‘comfort class’) – which each hold up to 62 seats – the majority of the train’s cars are designated for the elite ‘Silver and Blue Class’ only [there is actually a sign on the door to the dining car which reminds comfort class passengers they are only allowed through if they have reservations for the dining car]. There are different types of Silver and Blue cars, also known as the ‘sleeper cars’ (which may give you a hint as to what you’re not reasonably expected to do in the economy class cars). Both the Manor Cars (each individual car is named after an influential Canadian of British origin) and the Chateau Cars (each named after an influential Canadian of French origin) typically hold up to 20 passengers. These elite cars provide different types of sleeping arrangements, ranging from private single, double and triple bedrooms, and less private berths (which are separated from the hallway by curtains). The sleeper car passengers have access to on-board showers and typically have all their meals included in their fare. They also have a private ‘dome car’ known as the Park Car (each car is named after a Canadian National Park), which offers an upper-level scenic dome. While economy passengers also have access to a dome car, the elite Park Car is located at the rear of the train and contains a bar and a rounded panoramic ‘bullet’ lounge, where passengers are treated to free coffee, wine and cheese tastings and other entertainment. This is about all I will say about travelling first class (which I have not yet had the luxury of doing)… such elite class tickets typically cost many thousands of dollars per passenger. Of course, some tourists with smaller budgets may opt for the comfort class. I have met a number of younger ‘backpacker’ types wanting to see Canada who have not had the budget for a sleeper car. 
•   Hassle Free Travelers: The next type of passenger I would call the ‘hassle free traveler’. This includes a number of different types of people. In some cases they may hate the extreme busyness and claustrophobic character of airports, or the sardine-packed nature of buses and planes; or perhaps they are not keen on having to ‘think’ about their travel, as one has to do in a vehicle. They like the idea of being able to sit back and relax, drink, walk around, not be bound by seatbelts and directions. I have met some hassle free travelers are genuinely afraid of flying or even driving long distances (especially in winter). While automobile and air travel is harrowing during a winter storm, the train seems to do just fine in a snowfall.
  
  
  Remote Small Town Travelers: Sometimes The Canadian is literally the easiest way to get to or from a remote town. Many travelers from small towns in Northern Ontario or the Prairies seem to fit this description. For example, I met two travelers (siblings) who were taking the train from Toronto back home to a small town located two hours North of Sioux Lookout, simply because it was the easiest option. Another common short stint includes the leg between Edmonton and Jasper. By law, the train is required to stop anywhere along the route that a passenger desires (as long as the request is made in advance), so sometimes travelers wanting to go into the remote deep woods might take the train. 
• Discount Travelers: In Canada, the train is typically an expensive mode of travel. However, in some circumstances it can be relatively economical. VIA’s CanRail pass, for example, offers 7 trips within a span of 21 days for under $600 [$520 for students; $590 for adults; NOTE: these were the conditions at the time of writing – they have changed since 2009 and are apt to change again in 2011]. This can make a cross-country open-jaw trip much cheaper than air travel. Other discount travelers include those with special discount rights (such as CN employees – the relationship between VIA and CN is described below). I met one traveler who had worked for CN for decades, and when he retired acquired an impressive full discount travel pass with VIA. Finally, there are the lucky passengers who have got last minute discounts on the web. VIA posts its express deals online every Thursday morning between midnight and 3am. Deals are typically offered for various travel routes in the ensuing three weeks (so if you’re flexible this is likely the cheapest and best way to travel). The deals aren’t only for economy tickets; they also often include berths in the off-season (which I have seen for exceptionally low prices – in one instance as little as $300 per passenger, including two berths and all meals included!). The train is also an affordable option for families – and there seem to be quite a few parents with younger children willing to brave the comfort class accommodations over long distances. Parties of three or more are seated in two facing seat pairs (see ‘sleeping’ section below), which can offer two parents a space to put up their feet. 
• Outside the Box Travelers: There are always those travelers with particular quirks – there are some who take the train because it offers a rare opportunity to ‘disconnect’ from the humdrum of busy every-day life in society for four days. This disconnection offers time to sit and think, or do other time-consuming projects that just wouldn’t get done otherwise (there are a lot of knitters on the Canadian); this category of traveler also includes train fanatics, as well as adventurous types who like the idea of trying something new. Here I might also include travelers with pets: Although it costs $50 per trip to bring a dog on The Canadian, many travelers seem to prefer this option to airplane baggage compartments. At any train stop dog owners are allowed to take their dogs for a brief walk to get some exercise (though see the warning about bringing dogs below). Finally, some people take The Canadian when they are moving to another city, because the train offers each passenger to carry up to 6 bags (I met a woman who was moving all of her closest possessions, which included her bike, from a small town in Saskatchewan to Vancouver).
• Environmentalists: A small sample of the people I’ve talked to on The Canadian turned out to be taking it for the same reason as me – to yield a lower carbon footprint than the alternatives of air and automobile travel. Typically train travel is far more efficient than taking the train or driving. There is no doubt that rail travel in VIA’s corridor is more efficient (in terms of emissions) than automobile or air travel. This may be why VIA Rail has recently picked up the tagline “A Green Choice”. However, there can be exceptions, and I have been wary lately of whether The Canadian is actually as efficient as it is made out to be. At least once along the trans-continental journey you can see a large fuel truck pull up to the two locomotive engines to pump them full of diesel. This is reminiscent of a fuel truck filling up an airplane while docked at the airport. The Canadian typically uses two locomotives – one to haul and one to provide power and as a back-up – each locomotive is (usually) carrying a General Motors F40PH-2D engine – a 16 cylinder, 3000 horsepower, diesel-electric locomotive. These motors consume a lot of diesel, especially considering that they produce power for electric heating, air conditioning, cab lighting and power outlets for the entire train. Another woman I met on the train informed me that the train ‘idled’ for the full four hours while it was parked in Winnipeg’s Union Station. I’ve yet to do the calculations, but because the majority of the train’s cars are designated for elite passenger (and therefore less passengers are carried per overall train weight) it is very possible that the per passenger emissions on The Canadian, at present, are as high (if not higher) than bus travel [when I finally do the calculations I’ll be sure to post them here]. 

Figure 2: The Canadian with Three Locomotives

Think of the diesel! Photo from Cal Murray's Flickr Account

(Lack of) Speed

As mentioned above, the train travels at a slow average speed. While the F40PH-2D locomotive can reach speeds of 145 kilometers per hour, The Canadian typically does not travel that fast. Often (approximately once every few hours during the entire four day trip), the train will come to a complete stop alongside the tracks and wait. “Wait for what?” you might ask… and herein lies the story of VIA Rail’s present sad state of affairs (of which I will discuss in more detail in a future post)…. We wait for freight trains to go by. As VIA Rail’s travel guide, Canada by Train, written by Chris Hanus and John Shaske, suggests, some freights are “up to two miles long. Usually their size exceeds the length of siding tracks enabling trains to pass each other. Inevitably, the mammoth freights are given priority and passenger trains must wait on siding tracks until it is clear to continue” (120). However, there is a simpler reason why VIA is required to wait on the side of the tracks – it doesn’t own them! The freight companies own the tracks. As a CN employee told me, VIA currently rents track time from CN, thanks to a 3-year contract worth $60 million (this is obscene considering the legacy of CN as a nationally owned rail enterprise, now bilking money from the Canadian taxpayer for VIA’s mediated rail access).  This is one of the main reasons why The Canadian is so slow. Given the 82 hour journey and the distance of 4,466 km, the train travels at an average speed of 54.5 km/h (this, of course, includes stops). Freight shipments, meanwhile, are guaranteed to travel from Vancouver’s port to Chicago in no more than 48 hours – it just goes to show how much of a priority is passenger rail in Canada!

Sleeping

For the so-called comfort class, VIA’s sleeping arrangements are, by far, the WORST part of the journey. The seats recline to about 45 degrees, and an angled stool unfolds from under the seat. Light sleepers out there will have trouble getting some shut-eye! When the train is full, sleeping is difficult and at best uncomfortable. When the train is not full, however, a somewhat restless sleep can be attained by finding one’s own pair of seats and folding the body into various configurations. I never sleep well the first night of a journey on The Canadian, but luckily, because I am so exhausted and tired on the second night, sleep comes easier, regardless of the uncomfortable arrangements and all the stimuli (shaking cars, the loud humdrum of the train, the constants overhead lights, etc.). On my most recent journey I asked one of the attendants if she’d every seen passengers sleep in the main isle. She answered that she has seen just about every possible inch of the train taken for a sleeping location. After a few days on the train, many travelers are just pining for a flat place to lie down… a few odd places may provide such a space, aside from the main isle: The large overhead baggage shelves, the rectangular baggage storage area at the back of each economy car, the café car, and the dome car (by lying across the dividing aisle) – the VIA attendant confirmed she had seen passengers trying to sleep in all of these locations.

END OF PART I (Stay tuned for Part II)

[Good News] See Ya!

Good news for once: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2011/01/25/edmonton-stelmach-resigns.html

[Confusion] Historical Geography or Environmental History

Historical Geography and Environmental History share some common threads; the line between them is perhaps more accurately described as a permeable gradient.

Take these Wikipedia statements:

"Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and 'real' geographies of the past"

"Environmental history can be divided into three key components... First, nature itself and its change through time... Second, how we use nature... Thirdly, how we think about nature"

"Historical geography studies a wide variety of topics. A common theme is the study of the geographies of the past and how a place or region changes through time"

"Environmental history, a relatively new branch of historiography, is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time"

"Historical geography seeks to determine how cultural features of various societies across the planet emerged and evolved, by understanding their interaction with their local environment and surroundings"

"Environmental history is history written with the acknowledgment that we shape our environment and it shapes us. Environmental historians maintain that as nature is a key influence on human affairs then it is both an appropriate and necessary subject for historical analysis"

In reading these definitions over, I get somewhat lost and confused, but that's only because I have a tendency to want to build barriers around these 'fields' and differentiate them from one another - a tendency I imagine is shared by many in the modern academy who feel a need to systematize and categorize different forms of inquiry into disciplines, fields, subfields, schools of thought, etc.

However, arguably there is no real substantive difference in these two 'fields', aside from their name and perhaps the way their practitioners may refer to themselves. The reason why they are so similar is because they are both broadly focused on similar types of questions regarding both space and time. More particularly, the interest in space, in both of these fields, is particularly focused on the relationship of/between humans and nature, or as some would call it, 'society-nature relations'. In other words, for the most part, environmental historians and historical geographers share a similar approach. This doesn't mean that they hold the same presuppositions, but rather than the plane of focus upon which they presuppose questions of reality lies in a similar area.

Take, for example, the presuppositional level of ontology, as Harrison and Livingstone (1980) would call it. This is a level of presupposition at which theorists presuppose answers to questions on the character of reality. The point I am trying to make is that both environmental historians and historical geographers, in sharing a similar approach, tend to be attempting to answer the same types of questions (at an implicit level of cognition). The question might be something like "What is the real character of society-nature relations?"

While the question may be similar, the answers are quite diverse. Luckily, the introduction to Noel Castree and Bruce Braun's Social Nature is particularly helpful in characterizing three different types of answers to this question. In other words, Castree and Braun provide three types of ontological presuppositions regarding the reality of society-nature relations. They refer to these three perspectives as the 'people and environment', the 'ecocentric', and the 'social' approaches. The key word in the dominant 'people and environment' approach is the joiner 'and' - characterizing the interpreted disjuncture seen between humans and nature. This approach tends to equate nature with 'environmental problems', thereby often advocating technocratic solutions based in the 'management' of resources and ecological systems. The other two ontologies find fault with the 'people and environment' approach because it fails to incorporate the social processes and structures that have transformed nature itself. The dominant ontology thus "leads to policy geared to ameliorating environmental problems without ever addressing the deeper causes responsible for those problems in the first place" (3), suggests Castree (revealing his own allegiance to the 'social' approach).

In contrast, the 'ecocentric' approach offers a nature-first ontology wherein the environment is an overarching system of which humans are merely a small part (though admittedly with a large impact). A exemplary author of the ecocentric approach is James Lovelock (who came up with the Gaia hypothesis).

Finally, the 'social' approach, which Castree notes is becoming increasingly popular with critical human geographers, sees nature as inescapably social: "Nature is defined, delimited, and even physically reconstituted by different societies, often in order to serve specific, and usually dominant, social interests. In other words, the social and the natural are seen to intertwine in ways that make their separation - in either thought or practice - impossible" (3). Thus, drawing from Castree it is possible to typify three distinct categories of ontological presupposition that affect how a social scientist will interpret the reality of society-nature relations.

It is no wonder, then, that environmental historians and historical geographers seem to easily fade into the same crowd; while their methods, theoretical beliefs and ideological biases and presuppositions about reality may differ, the focus of interest upon which they make presuppositions in the first place is a shared space.