“In 2008, my wife, my then-7-year-old daughter, and I were going to take Amtrak from Los Angeles to Chicago, but the Amtrak reservation agent messed up the reservations so much that we decided to take a train from Montreal to Vancouver.
There was something poignant about this, as my grandmother was a bride from Greece. He grew up on a small island in the Dodecanese and crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s. For the last leg of his journey, he took a train from Montreal to meet my grandfather (for the first time) in Vancouver. They met on a Saturday and married on a Monday in a Russian Orthodox church. Experiencing the same trip my grandmother had taken seemed like a good hook for the vacation.
Montreal was our starting point, a charming city with fantastic food and charming locals. After a few days we headed to Toronto on a commuter train. It was perfectly adequate, but not especially charming, and certainly not the place my grandmother would have traveled.
In Toronto, my daughter and I had afternoon tea at the Fairmont Royal York, across from the train station, where we embarked on a more scenic excursion.
We had a triple compartment. It was housed in a stainless steel streamlined car built in the 1950s, perfect for our small family of Midcentury Modern enthusiasts. We watched the train wind through the forests of Ontario, felt it rumble across the plains of midwestern Canada, and then headed toward the spectacular Canadian Rockies. There were many sightings of bear, moose and other wildlife along the way. We had surprisingly good food, like trout and pork chops for dinner. At night we watched train movies like “Murder on the Orient Express.”
We got off in Jasper, Canada's Yellowstone, full of glaciers, steep mountains, waterfalls, rivers and spectacular views. We took bike and horse rides. When I chastised my 7-year-old daughter for complaining too much during a particularly wonderful field trip, she responded, “Dad, complaining is my passion!”
After a few days we got back on the train and headed to Vancouver. This was another scenic parade of mountains, rivers and forests.
In Stanley Park I reflected on my grandmother's journey. Our trip was leisure. Hers was a life decision to escape the bleak prospects of an island girl.”
—George Skarpelos, Los Angeles
